LONG TIENG, LAOS – We met in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, not far from the spot on the Mekong River where the Xiong family fled to Thailand one night in May 1975. At the time of their escape, it seemed unlikely that they would ever again see their old home of Long Tieng far away in the highlands.
But one morning in November 2023, a Hmong driver came to pick us up and set out on a journey from the capital to the former CIA-run airbase. Long Tieng was so secret when the Xiongs lived there that it did not appear on maps; now, anyone can find the location and directions on Google. Traveling east and north, the van passed rubber trees and strained and rumbled over an increasingly rocky route as Chinese mining trucks loaded with gold and gravel hurtled by.
“I pity your car,” Mayka Xiong told the driver.
Fifty years have passed since the clandestine military base fell to Communist soldiers, forcing tens of thousands of Hmong people to run from persecution for their alliance with Americans in the “Secret War.” Long Tieng closed to outsiders for decades after the Pathet Lao seized control of Laos, living on in Hmong refugees’ memories and the stories shared with younger generations. After Long Tieng reopened to the public in recent years, some Hmong Americans have finally been finding their way back.
As the Xiongs learned, it is no easy journey.
The drive had taken the better part of the day when we came upon a line of eight trucks stopped on the hillside, blocking the road. The driver shut off the engine. Soon came word: A truck had fallen over a little way ahead. “Tonight, we‘ll be sleeping here,” fretted Mayka’s husband Kao.
Mayka, born in 1952, grew up as one of 10 children in east-central Laos, where they carried water from the well every day after school and foraged for vegetables and bamboo shoots to help their parents. Kao was born in 1943 and raised in a village north of Long Tieng, where his parents were prosperous from farming corn, opium and rice.
Their families fled to the Xayaboury province as Royal Lao Army leader Kong Le swept through at the end of 1960. The country fell into civil war as the North Vietnamese Army invaded Laos with the help of the Pathet Lao and occupied the eastern region for its Ho Chi Minh Trail to send supplies and troops to carry out the war against South Vietnam. As the U.S. fought in Vietnam, it trained Hmong fighters to disrupt North Vietnamese operations and battle Communists in Laos.