Mar 9, 2025
A great night in a lovely hotel.
Now here is a fundraising idea. Everything in our room is available for sale and, helpfully, they even tell you that they will provide assistance for you to get it downstairs and presumably into your car. It only remained for us to decide whether we wanted to buy our fridge at $150 or our ornate coffee table at $150. I’m guessing that they might as well offer you assistance to get it out as you can hardly stick it in your backpack.
In the morning we wandered out onto our balcony and looked out over the picturesque Mekong River, and Thailand on the other bank. Plenty of luxury hotel construction going on next door which we later found is a Chinese ‘gift’.
After doing some online bookings of train tickets, we walked along the banks of the Mekong for a short distance before coming back, checking out, and enjoying our armchair shuttle back to the airport. Allowed the full recommended two hours for check-in to find that we were the only people around and three staff waiting for something to do. Slightly different to Bangkok!
When our flight was finally called, it was the most casual wander to a gate by a group of passengers I’ve ever seen. Nothing like a Chinese stampede. A small twin prop French ATR72 where oversized carry-on definitely doesn’t fit, and we vibrated our way north to Luang Prabang.
Met by our driver and driven into the town. Reminds us very much of Ubud in Bali. Mountainous, with only a couple of roads running the length of the town through the middle.
Somebody said that Laos is one of the only five remaining communist countries in the world. These days it probably depends on how you define ‘communist’, but the fact remains that there are very few, and Laos is one of them. However it’s a modern and progressive country where visitors are very welcome. Lots of renewable energy initiatives – EVs abound, web sites are all modern, things are online, infrastructure is well maintained. It’s generally poor but modern and well looked after. Lots of construction, though much of it is probably ‘belt and braces’ Chinese.
Our accommodation is not so swish as last night, but still lovely. Good wifi, and the shops and restaurants in the town are all well kept.
Went down into the town after checking in to get our bearings and grab a bite for lunch. Ended up having a wonderful meal in a restaurant overlooking the tropical garden. Food was very Thai in nature – cheap and lovely.
The exchange rate is 14,000 which does your head in but you learn to drop zeros off prices with gay abandon. ATMs are everywhere, but if you want to use a credit card it will all be done in American dollars.
The meal was so lovely that we promptly fell asleep in the afternoon and woke up to find it dark. Oh well, time for the night market.
If I asked you to name the most heavily bombed country in the world, what would you guess? Bet it wouldn’t be Laos, but that’s the answer.
The 1962 International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, signed by China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, the United States and 10 other countries, forbid signees from directly invading Laos, but that didn’t deter the Americans during the Vietnam war. The U.S. bombing of Laos (1964-1973) was part of a covert attempt by the CIA to wrest power from the communist Pathet Lao, a group allied with North Vietnam and the Soviet Union during the Vietnam War. American bombers dropped over two million tons of cluster bombs over Laos—more than all the bombs dropped during WWII combined. Together with the 2,756,941 tons of bombs they dropped on Cambodia (which killed as many as 150,000 civilians and is credited with contributing to the rise of the Khmer Rouge), it was part of the secret, unauthorised war that they attempted to keep the world and the US Congress from knowing about, Today, Laos is still the most heavily bombed nation in history, and an estimated 30 per cent of the bombs never detonated meaning that they are still live today.
Many of the night market stalls have adopted the slogan of ‘bombs into bracelets’ and are using the recovered bomb metal to fashion saleable items.
I can’t help reflecting on how forgiving the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian people are.
The streets were full of people – lots of the younger demographic from all over the world but a lot of older French speaking tourists, no doubt due to the French colonial past.
Thatsaphone Hotel
Laneway to our hotel
Night market
Night market
Luang Prabang
Our ATR72
EV charging stations are everywhere
The Mekong and Thailand