I am sitting on the the fourth floor balcony of our hotel looking out over the Mekong River to Laos.

I am going to provide a complete recap of our  trip here because of time constraints and flaky hotel wifi but I can tell you it has been an incredible trip. We spent time with Nuch, the little girl from the three wheel motorbike taxi photo who is now fifty years old. She took us to where I used to live when I rented a room off of the radar site in 1969 (her parents owned the house). Unfortunately it was torn down several months ago because she is building a new house on the same site. Then we walked with her to the night market. When we saw the women that have a food stand that I met two years ago (the whole story is in the “I love Mukdahan Story”) they said that Sompi, who worked on the radar site while I was there in 1969, wanted to see me. Rattapol who had contacted me but I was unable to find him is her son. Since I had photos of the women in the night market in my story about Mukdahan he had alerted them if I ever showed up to send me to his house. So Nuch walked with us there. Sompis owns a bakery and her house is above the bakery shop. Rattapol was so excited to meet me and ran and got his mother from the back. Within a few minutes another women “Mukda” that had also worked on the site showed up because Rattapol called her. So Phai and I sat on the sidewalk in front of the bakery looking at photo albums and reminiscing. It was an amazing event. One that I had only dreamed of until two weeks ago when I was able to establish contact with Nuch. I will put a put a few photos here but have so many more to add when we get back to our house tomorrow evening. 

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Sunrise Over the Mekong - That is Laos on the other side of the river

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The little girl in the somloe photo 46 years later. 

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This is a different photo of Nuch in 1969. I didn’t realize it was her until she spotted it looking through the photos I had with me.

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Sompis on the left and Mukda on the right. Sumpis' son took the photo.

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Sitting in front of the bakery owned by Sompis (the woman standing) looking through old photo albums of the radar site. 

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The taller girl is Sompis 46 years ago. The other girl died several years ago. 


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