Aventures Bicyclétales ...

country overview, map and followed itinerary, the journal with the best pictures, the highlight, what I liked / didn't like, useful information.
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Laos overview (as of June 2008)

• Capital city : Vientiane.
• Area : ~ 236,800 km2 (= 0.3 x France).
• Population : ~ 5.9 millions inhabitants (= 0.1 x France).
• Density : 25 inhabitants / km2.

• Language : Lao.
• Religions : Theravadda Buddhism (65%) and Animism (33%)
• Human Development Index (HDI) : 0.553, the 133th country out of 177. What is HDI ?

• Government : Socialist Republic.
• President : Choummaly Souriya Sayasone (since June 2006).
• Prime minister : Bouasone Maly Bouphavanh (since June 2006).

• Growth rate in 2006 : 7%.
• Currency : Kip (LAK), 1 Euro = ~ 14,000 Kips.
• Main imports : not much ...
• Main exports : hydro-electricity, especially when Nam Theun 2 dam will be completed. Click here to read a related article, by Malee Traisawasdichai Lang, Environnement Journalist.

Laos map and followed itinerary (green color)





The journal from Laos with the best pictures 

Savannakhet is a charming little city on the border of the Mekong river, with still a few colonial houses left. Savannakhet is the second largest city of Laos …

 


We can find, and it is quite a shock when coming from Thailand, REAL bread here !! Of course, we can find as well the extremely popular BeerLao …




Buddhist temples (Wat Sayaphum on the pictures below), are quite similar to the Thai Buddhist temples on the other side of the river …

   


... nevertheless, this is really unusual for a temple to run its own Buddha factory !




Communist propaganda boards or simply graphic communication towards the citizens ? Many of those boards can be seen along the streets ...




Talaat sing market of Savannakhet …




With bread, here is the second main legacy from the French time : pétanque ...




Bicycles : now this is a real surprise, because even in Laos, one of the really poorest country on earth, bicycles are being slowly replaced by Chinese moppets … But how can they afford the machine and the gasoline that goes in it ? No idea ...

… however, some bi and tricycles are of course still in use, such as this ice-cream machine (below right) or those two bread & pate sandwich shops (second row below).






Sunday the 13th of July 2008 : After two days of rest spent in Savannakhet, I will now cross the country from West to East by Road 9. There is about 250 km to go before the Vietnamese border.

This road, which I was expecting to find in such a state of disrepair, is actually in quite good condition (despite a few holes here and there). It was totally re-built from scratch four years ago with Japanese aid money.




Animations on and around the road never stop : here is a … high voltage climbing specialist and there are two young women carrying lots of things.



This is just a quick remark about how to climb an electric post in Laos : there are holes on the post in which you are supposed to insert something that looks like a big pin and on which you step. With two such pins, you can virtually create a ladder that will bring you to the top. Now the trick is how to move the pins higher and higher ? Well, it looks easy : just squeeze the pin between your flip-flop and your foot, extract it, move it higher and then insert it back in. Repeat until you reach the top. WARNING : Do NOT drop a pin, or you may spend a night or two on the post !!








Just as in Thailand, there are a lot of water buffaloes and cows in Laos, but surprisingly, here there are also plenty of goats (but no goat cheese !!!).




What the traveler will certainly remember from his trip in Laos, it’s that the Lao children are the heart of this country ; and they are everywhere, and they do everything : working, playing, running, swimming, jumping, climbing trees … they take life to the fullest.



  


Wednesday the 16th of July : It's my last day in Laos, and I will be riding from Sepon to the Vietnamese border, going through the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail ...

What is the Ho Chi Minh trail ? : The Ho Chi Minh trail is a complex network of dirt paths and gravel roads, running parallel to the Laos-Vietnam border and beginning at a point directly east of Savannakhet.
Though mostly associated with the 1963-74 Vietnam War, the road network was originally used by the Viet Minh against the French in the 1950s as an infiltration route to the south. The trail was used most heavily between 1966 and 1971, when more than 600,000 North Vietnamese Army troops -along with 100 tons of provisions and 500,000 tons of trucks, tanks, weapons and ordnance- passed along the route. The North Vietnamese denied its existence. The USA, for their part, denied bombing it.
It is during the late 1960s that the Nixon administration lost any sense of measure and poured bombs beyond what a sane mind can imagine : 900 daily sorties of B52 and a total of 1.9 Million tons of bombs over this country which was at the time protected by the Geneva Accords (1962). This gave Laos a record which will be difficult to beat (but who knows what the next US administration will come up with) : the world record of Kg of bombs/inhabitants, amounting to an amazing half a ton per Lao man, Lao woman and Lao child. For a country which was protected by the international community, because of its neutrality in the American-Vietnamese conflict, this tells a lot ...

But shame on the US does not even stop here. Since the quality of US-made bombs at that time did not even reach the average quality standard of a toy made in China (far less dangerous, even with lead paint), a very large proportion did not explode after being dropped, and still lie ready to kill about everywhere along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Two loud detonations heard this afternoon gave some substance to what seems to be too immoral to be true ... yet, it's happening just right now.




It's now time to embark for Vietnam ...






The highlight from Laos

The contrast between the innocence and the joyfulness of the young Lao generation … and the millions of tons of unexploded American bombs lying around the country, mutilating and killing everyday, nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnamese war.




What I liked / didn't like in Laos

I liked	I did not like
the people and their friendliness	hotel rooms without window
"sabai dii", "sabai dii" which never end from the kids	the ongoing destruction of the forest
"French" bread, sticky rice and beerlao	the many areas still covered with unexploded US-American bombs ... 40 years after the conflict with Vietnam
the light, very light traffic on the road
morning markets for breakfast	... and the regular explosions which remind everybody to stay on well marked footpaths
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.	the strong dual influence of Thailand and Vietnam

Useful information about Laos