Half way through already!?

Luang Prabang - beautiful city. Our house is on the left-hand bank in this pic.

17 January 2019

The journey from Cambodia to Laos was painless but boring. We took a taxi to Phnom Penh along the dreadful Route 3, most of which is being widened to four lanes, which means it’s clogged with construction traffic from end to end. It took us 4 hours! After a night in our usual hotel opposite the airport it was on to Bangkok then Luang Prabang, where our friends Sue, John and Toui met us.

LP feels relatively unchanged since we left in March last year. There’s always a bit of building going on but that’s to be expected. The house next door to our place, which has been empty ever since it was built 3 years ago, now has occupants - an Australian with his Lao wife - and they have cleared the garden and planted veggies so we now have a view down to the river. I’ve never seen the river so high. Water levels are controlled by the two new Nam Khan dams upstream.

http://ariverstail.com/laos/damming-the-nam-khan
Diurnal temperature range also takes a bit of getting used to - morning 20 degrees feels chilly.

Just to complete my thoughts on the contrast between the two countries - Cambodia has a population of 16 million, half of whom are under 22. In general they are forward-looking, wanting a modern society with western style convenience. The economy boomed 10 years ago and it is no longer a “least developed country”. There’s little interest in heritage, tradition and culture. Next door neighbours Laos, by contrast, has a population of just under 7 million and a rich and varied cultural and spiritual heritage, most of which is still highly valued by the Laotians. “Same same but different” as they say!

I’ve just started doing some work to help a new agro-biodiversity project with their English texts. Here’s one of their videos: https://www.phakhaolao.la/en/inspire/14700-reasons-be-proud-laos