The Best of Cambodia & Laos

part in Lao culture; arguments are the exception, and the sangha, or monastic community,
fosters a strict moral code. Even the shortest visit to Laos offers unique insight into Buddhist
culture.
Laos is a place to tread lightly, but foreign travelers are made quite welcome and
encouraged to do their part to preserve and participate in cultural practices. The beauty
of Laos exists not only along the Mekong at sunset, but also in smiles at the market or
impromptu Lao lessons on the street corner, things that are easily missed if you’re in a
hurry. It’s an enchanting land that demands you slow your pace to match its own, and
even the shortest visit might add tranquillity to your travels.
Despite its mineral resources, Laos is one
of the least developed countries in Asia.
The vast majority of Lao people, approximately
75%, depend on subsistence agriculture.
Traditionally there is only one rice
harvest a year, compared to the three that
one often sees in Vietnam. For most people
life tends to be simple. It’s early to rise,
planting or harvesting rice or fishing, then
maybe a drop of rice whiskey and fairly
basic food which will almost certainly
center around sticky rice. Families tend
the fields together. Men plow and prepare
the ground, control the irrigation to the
paddies, and thresh the crop; women perform
the transplanting of the seedlings,
weeding, and carry the harvested rice to be
threshed.
Villages consist of collections of basic
wooden houses, stretched along one street.
Education is very basic. In the evening,
families will often gather around the communal
TV to watch Thai soap operas or
premier league football (that’s if the village
has electricity, which many don’t).
Buddhism and Theravada Buddhist
ritual is central to life in Laos. The Communist
Pathet Lao wisely never made any
attempt to suppress the religion after taking
power in 1975, and from the 1950s
actually attempted to co-opt the Buddhist
clergy to their cause. Almost every Lao
male will spend some time as a monk at
some point in his life. Monks remain
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revered and anywhere near a wat or temple
you will see people making their early
morning food donations as the monks go
on their alms round. Unlike in neighboring
countries, in Communist Laos monks
are required to work, taking on the role of
physicians and teachers.
Laos is very much a one-party state,
ruled by an all-powerful and largely aging
elite with absolute power to crush any dissent.
The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party
(LPRP) is led by President Chummaly
Sayasone as the head of state, while Bouasone
Bouphavanh is the prime minister
and head of government presiding over the
National Assembly, elected with no legal
opposition in 2006. The real power is the
10-member Politburo, and to some extent
the 52-member Central Committee, all of
whom are appointed and operate behind
firmly closed doors.
Foreign aid, whether European, Japanese,
or Chinese, is what funds development
here. There is no taxation since
the country is too poor to afford it or
implement it. The politics of donor countries
and the concessions they try to
wring out of the recalcitrant Politburo—
be that trade, human rights, or future
access to natural resources—remains a
dance of competing agendas at which the
Lao authorities have become very adept.
The more they interact politically and
commercially with the outside world,
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