The Bangkok Post recently published an article entitled Cambodian War Mines Removed from Thai Border which is a grim reminder of how lucky we were back in the old days in that neighborhood.  As incredible as it may seem, social media is an information tool utilized by the Thailand Mine Action Centre (TMAC) of the Royal Thai Army to locate remaining hazardous armaments.  TMAC was alerted that three land mines had been sighted by local villagers.  Explosive ordinance disposal officers, shown below, were sent to the sites where they safely defused three mines that were as close 300 feet to the roadside. 

The ongoing effort to remove land mines was covered several years ago in another Bangkok Post article, De-mining Push Off with a Bang! The Ministry of Defense destroyed some 3,133 land mines in its initial push to get Thailand off the Ottawa Convention’s blacklist which was expected to improve the appeal of jungle treks to the foreign tourist community.  A TMAC officer in the Royal Thai Army presents below examples of the myriad of land mines in existence.

The Thai Army made quite a production when the large cache of land mines was destroyed. The event was chaired by a Thai General with foreign attaches, NGOs and various government representatives attending.  As shown below, it was quite a show.

A friend of mine who was a General in the Vietnam War related a story when he had the pilot of his personal helicopter put him down on a landing site.  He hopped out of the aircraft and realized that he was surrounded by “bouncing betty” land mines.  He radioed his pilot to take off and then hover over him and drop a sling to extract him out with as little disturbance as possible.  He made it but I would guess that he had several extra shots of scotch that evening. 

Another land mine account was from a guide Joey and I hired at Angkor Wat, Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge had fled to their sanctuary near the Thai border.  The guide said one day the Khmer Rouge came into his classroom and asked the boys to stand up and file out the door.  They were being drafted on the spot to walk in front of Khmer Rouge soldiers to see if there were land mines present.  He hopped out the window and successfully escaped to live to adulthood while many of his classmates perished or lost limbs.  The moral of that story is the Khmer Rouge were worse that anyone can comprehend. 

There is one famous “lost in the jungle story” that concerns the disappearance of Jim Thompson in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia in March 1967, a year before I made my way to that part of the world.  For those of you who do not know his background, he is a legend in Thailand, worked for the OSS (predecessor to the CIA) in WWII, was a part owner of the iconic Oriental Hotel and basically put Thai silk on the world’s screen.  One day Jim Thompson, shown below, went for a walk in a Malaysian jungle setting and never returned to his bungalow. 

There have been endless conspiracy theories surrounding his disappearance.  My theory has been consistent since my time lost in the jungle—he was not scooped up and spirited off to China nor killed by bandidos or communists.  He simply made a wrong turn in the rain forest/jungle, lost his way, and likely died of dehydration.  If one knows what plants represent safe sources of water, you can live a long time there.  Simply stated, the jungle is neutral. I once spent a few days in a survival training course at Pensacola Naval Air Station which was a piece of cake for an Eagle Scout.  However, in a dense jungle setting with Khmer Rouge killers all around it is an entirely different challenge.