Word: laos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...touched down at California's Travis Air Force Base. A stream of 396 Indochinese refugees began to struggle down the stairway with their makeshift shopping-bag luggage, pausing at the bottom to fold their hands and bow formally to the flight attendants. After a briefing in Khmer and Lao and the processing of health forms, the refugees were hustled aboard buses and taken to a TraveLodge motel for introductory lessons on American life: how to operate light switches, how to use a toilet. Many stood on the motel's second-floor balcony and stared uncomprehendingly at the rush...
...terrorize civilians and harass Vietnamese units immobilized by the monsoons. Last month Khmers thought to be loyal to Hanoi's new regime in Phnom-Penh expelled the Vietnamese garrison from the river port of Kratie. Though the town was quickly recaptured, the startled Vietnamese began to transfer Pathet Lao troops from Laos as a means of guaranteeing village security...
Hanoi, in effect, is trying to fill one pocket by emptying another. The Pathet Lao troops are needed in northern Laos, where Chinese-supplied tribesmen are smuggling rifles to anti-Communist Meo guerrillas. According to Western and Thai intelligence, the insurgents last month killed 200 Pathet Lao troops assigned to guard a new highway...
Scattered throughout Southeast Asia, the refugee camps have taken on personalities of their own. The Laotian camps in northern Thailand are probably the most satisfactory, in part because the Lao are ethnic cousins of the Thais. The sprawling camp at Nong Khai, with 46,000 people, is larger than the provincial Thai capital. Its inhabitants were able to bring some valuables with them into exile; the camp has a nightclub, several silver shops, a produce market, a makeshift gym and an arts and crafts center. Farther south, camps for Cambodians are little more than barbed-wire enclosures. The Vietnamese camps...
...islands are as delightful to the philologist as they are to the bird watcher or plant stalker. All Hawaiian place names have meanings, poetic or factual. Maui's Waianapanapa, site of a 120-acre, stream-laced state park, is "glistening water." There are lao (valley of dawning inspiration), Kapilau (sprinkle of rain on leaves), Lanilili (rippling surface) and Waiakoa (waters used by warrior). Kaanapali is "rolling cliffs." It is comforting when boating off Wailea to know that the "waters [are] governed by Lea," goddess of canoe making. Lahaina is "land of prophecies...