Up the Mekong River in the Golden Triangle

A surreal Buddha theme park along the Mekong River in the Golden Triangle. Photo by David Lansing.

In the morning, I took a longtail boat out of Chiang Saen and headed up the Mekong River. The haunting notes of an electric organ backing Jim Morrison singing about the end, my beautiful friend, the slow thack-thack of Huey helicopters flying low overhead, the yellow marker smoke leaving an acrid taste in my throat—it all came back in a heady rush as we silently moved upriver.

For people of a certain age, even if, like me, you have never been on the Mekong before, you feel like you have. Déjà vu races up your brain cord like goose bumps on your arms. You hear Walter Cronkite’s sing-song voice announcing the Tet Offensive during the Lunar New Year in 1968; see the American gunboats on the cover of Life magazine in 1967 predicting “the widening Vietnam war”; and you hear Jim Morrison singing “The End” as palm trees along the banks of the river explode in orange fireballs in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”

There was none of that, of course, as our longtail boat headed up the river. Instead, there was an abandoned Buddha theme park, with a mix of Hindu gods, Chinese dragons, and a stoic golden Buddha; a desultory casino on the Burma banks that appeared to be empty; and a few Laos fisherman who stopped what they were doing long enough to suspiciously watch us pass.

No Jim Morrison, no Huey helicopters, no burning palm trees. Still, the whole experience spooked me and made me feel depressed. Before we got to Don Sao Island in Laos, where a loophole in immigration law allows you to visit without a visa and where, I’ve heard, you can buy famous Laos rice whisky, I told the boat driver to turn around. I’d seen enough.