In Laos, The Lady and the Jars
The New York Times - Friday July 13, 2012 - Story by Elisabeth Eaves, Photos by Joe Ray
By Elisabeth Eaves - Stuffed with passengers and piled high with luggage, our minivan careened down a twisting mountain road, descending across northern Laos. The spot where I got carsick, I later learned, was precisely where the unfinished French colonial road had reached its westernmost end in 1932.
That year, an archaeologist named Madeleine Colani took refuge at the road works encampment there, where a Monsieur Ruffet presided over the construction of Route 7, which would run from Hanoi, the capital of French Indochina, to the royal city of Luang Prabang on the Mekong River. Though Monsieur received Mademoiselle and her crew amiably, troubles awaited them at his camp that far exceeded my own temporary discomfort…
Read more here in The New York Times.
