I lived in Laos in the late 70's/Early 80's. Even with full use of the diplomatic pouch, a letter to the US and back was a 3-month round trip, with only a ~80% success rate. We'd learned to send one, then its carbon copy with the next bag, just in case.
Phoning home was utterly impossible. The only cable line back was a fax machine the size of a refrigerator that went straight to the State Department, and was the only room guarded by stern men with guns.
(the slightly more disposable diplomats themselves had only local, unarmed security to pick from. This was a non-trivial risk- while we were there, the Japanese ambassador and his wife were both murdered. Perhaps surprisingly to some in modern times, Americans were pretty well received by the local population. It was safer for us to go shopping than, say, the French, Russians, or Japanese, although it was still too much of a risk for me to go to a local school. The Australians were the most popular, although I strongly suspect this was also linked to them having a nice swimming pool that they shared with everyone.)
The only doctor we had access to was a retired, somewhat eccentric Swedish veterinarian who specialized in pigs, and pigs were pretty close to people for most things.
(He kept a copy of Playboar on his office reception table.)
And finally, I remember getting chased through the metal detector (they didn't really care about guns, for the most part. It was people trying to carry durian in an enclosed space that really pissed them off) by a scared water buffalo in the airport, which then proceeded to run around on the airstrip for an hour until the local kid from the farm it came from hopped on his back and rode him home.
Of course, nowadays I can pull up any of half a dozen free webcams and see who is strolling down the streets near where I once lived. It feels like a lifetime ago, and yet I'm barely in my mid-40's as it is. Things sure do change fast.