Thoughts on Laos

As we leave Laos a few thoughts. It’s a great country to visit, the people are friendly even though they are one of the poorest countries. Luang Prabang stands out especially - I guess Thailand was a bit like that 20yrs ago.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Laos. They are landlocked and surrounded by aggressive neighbours. Over the years their older buildings and their heritage have been sacked and destroyed by invaders. Even in more modern times they didn’t too well. In the late 1800s They ‘ invited ‘ the French in to help against the Chinese. They promptly stayed until the 1950s abusing the locals until being kicked out.( at least they left behind the concept of a French Bakery and baguettes ).The Americans promptly showed up around 1960 to help protect them from the yellow peril only to stay around through the 70s using Laos as their private battle ground and favourite bombing location, not to mention spraying Agent Orange all over the place.

Their situation now is still difficult, but the new prime minister seems to be doing a good job. Laos has limited resources. Much of the population still works on the land, but being landlocked they don’t get enough rain to be very productive in that area. The Mekong, as an energy source, and forests of nice hardwood trees, are the only other resources. Unfortunately the last government was corrupt so lots of the prime trees were cut and exported without any replacement .

Laos has no money so the new major hydro dam on the Mekong is being built by the Chinese with Thai money. Laos will get peanuts from the sale of electricity to Thailand until the dam reverts to them in 30yrs time. The Chinese are also building a high speed rail link to Vientiane from China. Eventually the rails will go all the way to Singapore. All the building is done by the Chinese so not much benefit to Laos. Chinese businessmen are now buying up property here in anticipation of the new traffic. I can see this place just disappearing under a tide of Chinese. Depressing thought.Read more