I

At the back of an unfriendly little restaurant in Sam Neua, Laos, lies a gadget rarely seen in the West, or in any other part of the world for that matter. It sits in a faded faux wood cabinet with an aging 17 inch screen and an outdated console carpeted with the mildew and dust of a dozen monsoons. But when the proper CD is inserted - as an old man did the night we were there - this old karaoke machine becomes something special: The Political Karaoke Machine!

Once it came on I couldn't keep my eyes off of it.

The music, oddly enough, sounded strangely like a poppy love song. The video however was something else. Grainy black and white images from the last Indochinese war scrolled madly across the screen. There were scenes of howitzers firing, anti-aircraft guns firing, soldiers running frantically through trenches, hot shell casings spilling out of machine guns, and all the other paraphernalia of war. There was even a shot of one idiotic - or brave - soldier getting up on the lip of his trench and wildly firing some kind of antiquated rifle into the sky.

Then, like the boogie man being let out of the closet, the object of all this animosity appeared: down out of the sky a silhouette fell through smoke and fire. Black, malignant, it was unquestionably the workhorse of the American air war in Indochina, the F-4b Phantom.

I felt a shock of dismay. Somehow,in just in a split second, I could see that this jet represented not only all that was wrong with this world but something we must all fight against. At least that is what the video seemed to say.

Still, I was hungry, so I picked up my chopsticks and resumed eating. Yet I couldn't stop watching the video. The old man played it over and over again, the same scenes of explosions and men running, the jet descending... I wanted to stand up and shout "Yes its me... I'm the killer!" Finally I thought I was going to be sick.

A Dutch man eating dinner with us turned to me and said, "What's wrong? Does seeing this video make you want to defend your country?" I shook my head no. Yet it was plain that I simultaneously felt both offended by the video and guilty of my country's conduct in war. I remembered the old bumper sticker from the Vietnam War: "My Country - Right or Wrong!" But what does that even mean in these circumstances?

I tried to explain that I had protested against the war as a college student, had rioted and run from the police with a bandanna over my face and tear gas in the air. Then I fell silent.

"It seems as if the war isn't really over for you, is it?" Yasha asked. "Maybe our trip to Vieng Xai tomorrow can help you clarify you thoughts..."

Vieng Xai was the famed Hidden City of the Pathet Lao, a warren of caves riddling the cliffs and valleys not more than a dozen miles from the Vietnamese border. At the height of the war 23,000 peasants, soldiers and commissars hid underground as the Americans rained down death from the sky.

"Yes," I thought, "Maybe going to Vieng Xai really will clarify my thoughts." But I certainly wasn't looking forward to it.

II

The mountains to the east of Sam Neua rise in a gradual arpeggio of misty ridges and passes to the highlands of Vietnam. It seems as if summer will never come there. What is a sweltering day in the lowland provinces is a chill and rainy day in Houphang Province. It is no wonder that the people of northern Laos and north Vietnam, Hanoi especially, are considered cool, taciturn and reserved.

The next morning our bus - the covered back of a truck - slowly climbed through the gentle rain. Hmong tribes people stood idly beside the road, the children entirely naked, the adults dressed in rags. It is ironic that Houphang Province is known as both the birthplace of the Lao Revolution and as the poorest region in the country. A staggering 40% of the population earns less than $1 per day. "Is that gross or net" I mused, watching the rain. At that rate I suppose it doesn't matter. The clouds parted, drawing back like the curtains in an old time movie theatre. Below us, in a lush green valley framed by limestone cliffs, was Vieng Xai.

Unfortunately, our first impression of the Home of the Revolutionary Heroes was not a particularly positive one. The bus terminal was an open space, a sea of mud, bordered by a few poorly populated market buildings. The mist thickened again and rain swept across what little we could see of the valley. Ducking our heads, we set off in search of a guest house.

We quickly found a two dollar a night cheapie, and after settling ourselves we decided to take a look around. By then it was the early afternoon and we had missed the guided tour of the caves. So armed with a hand drawn map we set off in search of the revolution.

Inextricably, it wasn't what we expected at all.

In the interregnum between the end of the American bombing in 1973 and the establishment of the Lao People's Republic in 1975 the army escaped from the caves. In front of each cave housing a Central Committee member, and there were five of them, a lavish dacha had been built for their own personal use. Unfortunately, since then, time and tide have changed.

We ambled down a muddy road flanked on one side by pretty vegetable gardens and on the other by imposing cliffs. The rain abated and we found ourselves before a rusted ornamental gate. It didn't seem to be locked, so we put our shoulders against the dripping metal and slowly pushed it open. The sign, in streaked letters on a decaying cement wall said, "Mr. Souphanouvong's Memorial." Hand in hand we walked up the path.

At the base of the cliff was a beautiful dacha, clearly in a soviet style but modulated by the sensibilities of the French. The horizontals and verticals of the pink and blue building were offset by the sensuous curves of Champa Lao (frangipani) trees in the garden. It was a stunning ensemble.

The house was deserted and the cave turned out to be locked. Yet while walking up a brick path behind the house we came across a stupa dedicated to Mr. Souphanouvang's son, the so- called Red Prince. He had been set upon in 1969 by South Vietnamese commandos who had slipped across the border and brutally beaten to death. His death was just one more small death in a horrible war, but the picture of this young man's face on the memorial was strangely affecting. Amazingly the sun came out, and the stupa, and the flowering Champa Lao trees, were bathed in a radiance of grace.

The following day we took the tour, something I had been dreading. However, when I said that I was an American our guide merely smiled, the same smile he gave Yasha when she said that she was a German. Quickly he led us on the tour. The five caves, the underground theatre and hospital, the meeting room of the Central Committee, all passed rapidly. It turned out that he was in a hurry to attend his English lessons. We shook hands and parted.

So for the rest of the day we wandered around Vieng Xai. We watched Yao tribeswomen in blue and white checkered kulaks and elaborate vests fringed with red pom-poms striding resolutely in bare feet through the mud of the bus terminal. We watched farmers planting slash and burn style, with a digging stick and a seed, dropped on at a time, into the hole. We watched Hmong tribes people digging tubers, and when we stopped to say hello everyone smiled the slow easy smile of country folks. No one cared who we were, or what our politics were. They were there in this valley before the Communist Party came and they would still there after the Party left. They are survivors, and the rituals of planting and harvesting are far more interesting and necessary than the diversions of ideology.

I suppose there must be a lesson here somewhere. Big countries all over the world push around small countries, and I just happen to be born in one of the big countries. To carry the guilt for something I never did would, in the words of Mr Spock, be illogical. But I guess that is the way it is. Hopefully some day I can attain to the equanimity of the Hmong and the Yao and simply live, joying in the rising of the sun and coming of the rains. Until then I will bow down and consider them, as all people are, my teachers.