UXO

Between 1964 and 1973, the US conducted one of the largest sustained arial bombardments in history, flying 580,344 missions over Laos and dropping two million tons of bombs, costing US$2.2 million a day. Around 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate, leaving the country littered with unexploded ordnance, or UXO. Clearance work is slow and money for this cause is almost non-existant. At the current rate of clearance it will take more than 100 years to make the country safe. Please visit www.mag.org.uk for more information.

My tour of this country found fields littered with craters, and most parts of the hillsides off limits. The Laos people are however quite inventive and have found dozens of practical uses for UXO. Bomb casings, rockets, mortars and fuel tanks have been fashioned into spoons, boats, lamps, fence posts, chairs and house stilts.