(c) December 2007 Oliver Bonten
Laos 2007
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Laos 2007
December 2007 346 |
During my half-year South East Asia trip in 2003 I already wanted to include Laos, but in the end I was running out of time and had to skip it. In 2005 and 2006 I'd also loosely planned to catch up with this omission and visit Laos, but was distracted by other plans. So I tried again in 2007 and this time I found the opportunity to go. Laos has a reputation with travellers as a very laid-back and unspoilt place with a very quiet pace. As a land-locked country, Laos does not offer any scuba diving activities but other than that, it is culturally very close to Thailand - it is more a fluke of colonial history than anything else that Laos ended up as an independent country and not, like other Siamese vassal principalities in that region, as provinces of Thailand.
The People's Democratic Republic of Laos is one of the remaining socialist countries of the world, and it is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world as well. The Lao government opened up the economy to some level of free enterprise already quite early, but it seems the Lao people did not really seize the opportunity. But the country is developing: it is obvious that there is a lot of new construction and development going on, and you can see that most of the features that show some affluence are rather new: shopping malls, cars, fancy cafes, traffic lights, paved roads, ...
Laos is a very scenic country with a lot of mountainous landscape and of course the Mekong river plains. There are plenty of old (and new) Buddhist temples around and a lot of well-preserved colonial architecture, and even an Angkor-era temple. In the cold winter mornings, the landscape is covered in mist which, during the day, recedes to higher and higher levels until finally a clear cloudless blue sky and a brilliant tropical sun emerge. In winter, after the morning mist is gone, the humidity of the air is low and I've hardly ever seen such bright sunlight. (Responds a lot better to the polarising filter as tropical light normally does, not as good as in the temperate latitudes though.) Very good for photos.
It is a bit of a challenge to reach Laos, though: although the airport in Vientiane is now equipped to handle 747s, they (and other large aircraft) still need to be seen there. Laos has three international airports, but most if not all connections are from neighbouring countries by small craft - propeller planes usually. The ATR 72 seems to be the main workhorse for Laos connections. This means to get to Bangkok (or Saigon or any other major South East Asian city) first, and then to switch to a regional flight.
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