Laos is one of the worst places I have ever visited.

5 hours ago, Bobthegimp said:

Is that where the cheap dope and rub a dub places are?  I know young guys who went to some Apocalypse Now river tubing place. They hit the bong pretty hard and copulated with the Western girls of low virtue.  They had a good time, then some guys chose brides from the pack o tarts and haven't had a stress free day since then. 

 

 

I think it was VV with the tubing, some guys stayed there hit opium hard too.

 

If it wasn't for Luang Prabang it would have been a country to avoid

8 hours ago, Chris Daley said:

Laos is one of the worst places I have ever visited.

I agree .............

After reading the comments i think I'll give Laos a miss, maybe remember it as it was 25 years ago

7 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

After reading the comments i think I'll give Laos a miss, maybe remember it as it was 25 years ago

Do you have a car? If not hire one. Go for a drive north. Nong Khai to Chiang Khan is a great drive. Then onwards to Kho Kor.

3 minutes ago, bignok said:

Do you have a car? If not hire one. Go for a drive north. Nong Khai to Chiang Khan is a great drive. Then onwards to Kho Kor.

Motorbike maybe more fun

3 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

Motorbike maybe more fun

Do that. 

16 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Leave it to the commies to mess up an economy. I don't think it is possible to point to a single success story. Maybe Vietnam. Maybe. All others have failed miserably. The world is not ready for an idealist philosophy put into action. We are simply too backwards as a species. 

Yes that's true,Communism, like Christianity has never been put into practice, even Russia called itself a Soviet Socialist Republic, not a Communist republic but was just a dictatorship of the politburo whereas we in the west have a dictatorship of corporations and central banks which so called democratic governments have to obey. When they swing to far to the right the backlash causes an exaggerated swing to the left, we can't seem to get a middle way.

Laos is only very superficially communist. It's more of an oligarchy of descendants of the 4 families -who may or may not have been war hero's in the Vietnam War, since their stories are unverifiable. All Lao of all political persuasions happily accepted money from all sides, and at all times.

 

And still do. The USA still tosses them $3M a year for landmine removal. Given these outlays for 50 years and that not that much of the country was bombed, it strains credibility. For all it's trouble and expense, Laos has consistently refused to sign on to the global no landmines effort. 

 

Nor were they were  ever particularly ideologically aligned with the Vietnamese, who vie with China to control them. Nor did the Lao army fight much (beyond dodging bombs) during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam considered them to be unfit to fight. The Vietnam connection runs deep; 70% of the country is Lao Loum, which means of Vietnamese descent. 

 

I read The Little Green Book of Kheopethom, their home-grown Mao. It was clearly written in Moscow. It's  page-long paragraphs of boiler plate marxism that would be just as at home in Latin America. It doesn't even mention Laos. To the Kremlin, indigenous people were and still are interchangeable.

 

Moscow always had a racist relationship with it's SEA little brothers. When awe struck Ho Chi Minh managed to snag an autograph from Stalin, Stalin had a minder go and take it back from him, who he referred to as The Monkey-man.

Typical BBC article advocating "progress" by quoting some youths' griping. People are doing it tough all around the world at the moment, and this article is just another manifestation of lefty BBC gerontophobia.

 

The BBC is a national embarrassment in the UK these days, and should be defunded.