Recently, Miss Minnesota USA 2012, Nitaya Panemalaythong, was invited by the U.S. Embassy in Laos to “help promote business, charitable, and cultural ties between Laos and the U.S.” She’s running a fundraising campaign at http://www.gofundme.com/hok38 in preparation for her trip, which will be the first time she has ever gone to Laos. I remember my first time to Southeast Asia. I felt so many emotions, one of which was excitement and the others were somewhat bittersweet. I was going there to study abroad with a program called SPAN (Student Project for Amity among Nations) at the University of Minnesota when I was a senior in college.  My project was on Child Prostitution and the Prevalence of AIDS. I can still see myself riding the ferry, this lonely, one Lao-American girl crossing the Mekong River with her backpack and luggage, and a gift for my aunt who I hadn’t seen since leaving in the 1970s. The trip was only 10 minutes, but it felt like ages on the water. It was a quiet, almost lonely “homecoming.” When I …