Chapters
Intro - A Note on Bus Travel In Laos
At the very end of October and the beginning of November 2013, Kelsey and I were fortunate enough to go on a vacation to southern Laos. We had a week off thanks to the SIS Term 1 break, and while a week isn't enough time to go some place really crazy, it was enough time for us to scoot "next door" so-to-speak, and see a bit of our neighbor to the west.
Lao is a beautiful country. The jungles are breathtaking, and since the country is a bit behind other Southeast Asian nations in development, many of them are still around and haven't been cut down for timber yet. Although the US-Vietnam conflict has been highly publicized and is extremely well known, it's a little known fact that while that war was going on, the US was also engaged in an extensive bombing campaign over much of Laos. Although we never sent any ground troops in, the US was dropping just as many bombs on Laos as it was on Vietnam, trying to stop the communists from overrunning that country, just as it was trying to stop them in Vietnam. It's interesting to note that Vietnam was trying to fight a with the US, and help Laos fight a civil war, all at the same time. It's a much more murky picture of eastern IndoChina than most people are aware of. Laos is sometimes referred to as "the most bombed country on the planet" because of the raw amount of munitions that were dropped here, and UXO (unexploded ordinance) continues to be a major problem throughout rural Laos.
Lao is a beautiful country. The jungles are breathtaking, and since the country is a bit behind other Southeast Asian nations in development, many of them are still around and haven't been cut down for timber yet. Although the US-Vietnam conflict has been highly publicized and is extremely well known, it's a little known fact that while that war was going on, the US was also engaged in an extensive bombing campaign over much of Laos. Although we never sent any ground troops in, the US was dropping just as many bombs on Laos as it was on Vietnam, trying to stop the communists from overrunning that country, just as it was trying to stop them in Vietnam. It's interesting to note that Vietnam was trying to fight a with the US, and help Laos fight a civil war, all at the same time. It's a much more murky picture of eastern IndoChina than most people are aware of. Laos is sometimes referred to as "the most bombed country on the planet" because of the raw amount of munitions that were dropped here, and UXO (unexploded ordinance) continues to be a major problem throughout rural Laos.
Because of that "Silent War", and the lack of capital investment that other SE Asian countries have received, Laos today is still quite poor and rural. Towns that appear to be large cities on the map are usually sleepy towns that would scarcely be on the radar in other countries. Regional towns, district centers that look like they should be somewhat sizeable on the map are nothing more than a collection of some houses on the side of the road. Everywhere you look, poverty is the name of the game. It's impressive in that it makes Vietnam look like a rich man's paradise.
Since our schedule was limited we wanted to focus on one area of the country. In the north, the ultra-popular tubing destination of Vang Vieng is close enough to the cultural center of Luang Phrabang and the capital of Vientiene, that we could have gone there, but we were looking to get a bit more off the standard tourist path and started looking at the southern part of the country, specifically the cities of Pakse and Savannakhet. We looked at flights to Pakse but they were just too expensive, so we decided on taking the bus, and set out to do a road trip to visit the cities of Savannakhet and Pakse, and see some things in the areas around.
Since our schedule was limited we wanted to focus on one area of the country. In the north, the ultra-popular tubing destination of Vang Vieng is close enough to the cultural center of Luang Phrabang and the capital of Vientiene, that we could have gone there, but we were looking to get a bit more off the standard tourist path and started looking at the southern part of the country, specifically the cities of Pakse and Savannakhet. We looked at flights to Pakse but they were just too expensive, so we decided on taking the bus, and set out to do a road trip to visit the cities of Savannakhet and Pakse, and see some things in the areas around.