After a month of soporific Marijuana smoking in Thailand, my American friend Eric and I crossed over the Thai/Lao border and arrived in the city of Vientienne. We're keen to sample the legendary Opium biscuit and we're not put off by tales of addiction and overdoses. We're seasoned psychonoauts.

We find accommodation in a semi-colonial style guest house that has an airconditioner and ceiling fan; luxuries in the sweltering heat.
Laos is richly forested, in spite of large scale bombing, and the use of defoliants by the US. Logging and slash-and-burn agriculture are rife, yet it has one the most pristine ecologies in South East Asia.

Opium was introduced to the Chinese by Arab traders in the 13th Century. The hill-tribes of Southern China started to grow it to pay their taxes to the Chinese. Many of these tribes migrated to Thailand and Laos with their crop after WW2, to escape persecution. In spite of US attempts to wipe it out, Opium is an agricultural staple amongst the hill tribes of Laos.

Until five years ago, Opium was an official Lao export and is till unofficially the country's biggest export earner. Licensed opium dens had been permitted until the PL revolution, and in 1975 there were over 60 licensed opium dens in Vientiane.

At the local market, we marvel at ready-to-braai frogs skewered like sosaties, partially-alive birds caged between woven bamboo and bear paws. But there is no Ganga and no Opium. Eric has a little hat made from hemp, with a Ganga leaf embroidered on the front. It's a bit naff and he'd had doubts about wearing it, but now we see a reason for its existence. Hailing a tuk-tuk ( a three-wheel scooter ) we gesticulate madly at Eric's hat and make smoking gestures at the driver.
"Oooh, pow-pow." He grins .
He stops outside a small English language school.
Two teachers are standing outside. Discretion falls by the wayside and we yell out that its drugs we're after. They don't seem fazed.
"Come back at 7pm and I'll sort you out," one of them says. When we return, our connection is standing outside the school, vicious sweat on his upper lip. He's thin and wired and sports an American accent. I wonder what he's on. He starts acting all weird. He hands over the goods; a bag of reasonable-looking weed and a brittle brown disc of Opium.

The next evening we eat the Opium. I start to feel nauseous and very itchy. Eric is doing yoga stretches while I lies prostrate on the bed under the ceiling fan. I feel slightly dreamy but the predominant feeling is one of queasiness. I want to stay as still as possible. I throw up and feel better. Just mild euphoria and a sensation of warmth in my belly. I'm not that impressed. We resolve to look for a pipe the next day and to search for a den for some professional advice.

Back at the school, our connection has disappeared. Instead, we meet an even stranger American, who is married to a Lao woman. He tells us this six times. He's skinny, dark, balding, early-forties, and reminds me of the hero in the film of William Boroughs' Naked Lunch. An incipient gleam of madness creeps into his eyes as he tells us paranoid tales of tourists caught by the Lao authorities, spending years in jail with only a crust of bread each day.

It appears that Christian missionary groups...