Recycling US Air Force Equipment: Lao People Still Sail Those Boats 40 Years After Vietnam War

That was a surprise: to find shiny metal boats in a country where wicker houses and whole wicker villages aren't rare. In the district center where I stay, there are many lovely modern houses made of stone and wood but all roads are dirt ones except one. And suddenly this.

I noticed this boat during one of my photography walk in the vicinity of Xepon town, Savannakhet province:

It came from beyond thickets of castor oil plants and bamboo, and disappeared in the direction of the Banghiang River:

Happily, I had a telephoto lens mounted on my camera to quickly take a closeup of that silvery canoe cutting through the ochre waters:

At the motel I stay, they told me that was a boat made of a fuel tank of a famous Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. B-52s had external additional fuel tanks which were often jettisoned during air strikes.

B-52D with a fuel tank below a wing in the foreground, an image from the U.S. Air Force archive, public domain

There was a route in mountainous Laos used by Vietnamese Communists to penetrate South Vietnam and that was the reason why American airplanes intensively bombed Laos during the Vietnam War.

There were repeated attempts from 1954 onward to force the North Vietnamese out of Laos, but regardless of any agreements or concessions, Hanoi had no intention of withdrawing from the country or abandoning its Laotian communist allies. North Vietnam established the Ho Chi Minh trail as a paved highway in southeast Laos paralleling the Vietnamese border. The trail was designed to transport North Vietnamese troops and supplies to South Vietnam, as well as to aid the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) - wiki

Xepon (Sepon, Tchepone) on Google.Maps

Xepon, where I have lived for a month, was one of the districts suffered the most. It is reported that the old Xepon, once a home for 1500 people, was destroyed and left deserted as a result of Operation Lam Son 719. Modern Xepon was founded later at the opposite shore.

A lone pillar, a support of the old Xepon bridge, destroyed by war, is a sad reminder of the past:

Scars of the war...

A new bridge was build only in 1987:

Steles at the both entrances to the bridge say: "The bridge of friendship between the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the USSR was built in 1987 with the technical assistance of the USSR".

The bridge was constructed 12 years after the Vietnam war ended, and all that time the only reliable way of connection between the two shores of the Banghiang River were boats. That's where fuel tanks scattered across Laotian fields and jungle came in handy.

On June 18, 2023, I went to see such boats from a closer distance. And here we are:

The tips are manually re-designed for grater comfort:

You can see rusty screws, unlike the boat itself. Aluminum, obviously.

Wooden seats attached. Look at the unusual detail on the boat's belly.

A half of an internally threaded pipe in the side of the aluminum canoe.

The wooden rim along the edge prevents the side from deforming and reduces the likelihood of traumas.

Two more example of this model, one with a motor, resting by the shore, next to corn fields.

There is another popular model that looks alien in this remote corner of Laos:

Probably, a ferry type of boat. Look at its belly:

Not that standard look, is it?

There are several such ferry boats by the bridge over the Banghiang River.

Before the new bridge was constructed in 1987, they were obviously very helpful but, nowadays, some of them look neglected.

One more ferry in the weeds by the water:

And one by corn fields:

A receptionist commented: "I think it's plen [an airplane] but not sure".

(I've been in the town for a month but I only know three people who speak (very basic) English. My sociable receptionist is a godsend for me.)

Later, he told me that his friend said these boats are made of American containers for parachutes... I'll leave the question of what kind of parachute containers for later research but I can guess they used to throw plenty of these containers from the sky, along with fuel tanks and bombs...

Crazy times... So sad the world has learned little since then...

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More stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out the previous ones on my personal Pinmapple map.

I took all the images in the post with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G and a Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 in June 2023 in Xepon (Sepon or Tchepone), Savannakhet Province, Laos.