Yes, in 1975 and 2005
but back to the present -

What was once the impenetrable barrier - is now the wide open road to bring China down into our world.
Cars, trucks, heavy trains - and even steam powered riverboats, probably. The rush is on.
Think "North To Alaska" but the other way around.

This report on current plans for Laos is scarier to me than anything i saw when on my first trip there.

Laos has borrowed a large amount of money from foreign nations to finance the construction of roads and railways to transform the country from a landlocked state into a land bridge. VIENTIANE TIMES

The LAO government must employ concrete measures to implement its policy on transformation of the country from landlocked to a land bridge, a senior economist has said.
“Laos will become a land bridge within the region. This provides us with a huge opportunity, but it is up to us to make use of this opportunity,”

The economist made the comment after attending a meeting last week to discuss the findings of Japanese-funded research on the maintenance of fiscal stability in Laos.

According to the findings, Laos has borrowed a large amount of money from foreign nations to finance the construction of roads and railways to transform the country from a landlocked state into a land bridge (to China), so it must ensure that this investment is profitable and beneficial.

Laos has built roads linking to Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and China, and is eagerly anticipating completion of the Laos-China railway, which will become operational in 2021.
The government is now planning to build an expressway and railways to connect with Vietnam and Thailand. Over the next five years, Laos will without doubt be a land bridge within the Mekong region. (to China)
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/ ... ed-country

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:09 am Cars, trucks, heavy trains - and even steam powered riverboats, probably. The rush is on.
Think "North To Alaska" but the other way around.

Just to illustrate my point a bit more
and add a bit of mood

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:50 am

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:09 am Yes, in 1975 and 2005
but back to the present -

wow, 1975
what was that like?

Yes, ALL of August.
The single most interesting trip of my life.
Thank God you think you are bullet proof, and everything proof, when you are 21 - or you would probably die of fright.

I'll tell you all about it Rich, when we get on that warm wooden deck on nice calm sea. It's not the kinda stuff to talk too much about here.
It seems far too wild, weird and improbable in the telling, except face to face - but i assure you it was far more "from another planet" in real life, than anything i have ever seen before or since.
Mankind at the very ragged edge of "civilised" existence - staring at the abyss into which they about to fall.

It is possibly why i get bored so easily with the mundane, and all the "sensible and responsible" stuff. It all seems like a TV sitcom kind of life after that. Still.

PS, Does anyone know the Lido Hotel?
Vientiane, now gone.
Legendary for lots of things
(least of all the "cigar smoking" girls, in my book anyway)

In Vang Vieng I used to go to a bar on the river, smoke some opium, put some Jimmi on and well, you know, relax. I got to know the owner pretty well after a time and was curious about an old Australian guy who lived in bit of a run down house across the river - another newer house sat a few metres away from his, with yet another one under construction just up from that. The old Ozzie married a local girl who owned the land, he built the run down house, she divorced him, married another who built the house next to him....The woman was onto her third husband and house. Not sure if the story was true, but not completely beyond the realms.

Met an Irishmen who used to drink at Ooh lLa La in Vang Vienna. He'd come in pissed every day around lunch time...complete drunk but entertaining enough. he used to go to a massage shop just up the road often. He comes in one day and says the woman stole his wallet. A few days later he tells me she stole from him again after he fell asleep on the table blind drunk. I asked why he went back after she stole from him the first time with his reply being "I think she fancies me."

Used to be a late night club/shed (trestle tables and boom box} set up nightly near the old airport strip in Vang Vieng. one night a dozen armed police come through the door on a drug raid. Bear, the guy who ran the place, hadn't paid his insurance money for a couple of months.

There was a monk who'd always be out in a baseball cap and jersey getting drunk and starting fights at night. You'd see him next day watering plants at the pagoda.

Went to a wedding with a mate and was almost forced to scull too many beers by the head Laoation at our table but still had it together when we left. Walking past the stage someone grabs us and pulls us up onto the stage where the MC announces to the 500 guests we two westerners (the only whites at the wedding )were "Super Mou". the audience breaks into cheers and mad applause. "Super mou" bestowed upon someone means they're massive drinkers but keep their shit together. Mad.

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:59 pm PS, Does anyone know the Lido Hotel?
Vientiane, now gone.
Legendary for lots of things
(least of all the "cigar smoking" girls, in my book anyway)

Near the White Rose. Same type of place.

hiway5 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:14 am

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:59 pm PS, Does anyone know the Lido Hotel?
Vientiane, now gone.
Legendary for lots of things
(least of all the "cigar smoking" girls, in my book anyway)

Near the White Rose. Same type of place.

Hey! Hway. chuckle Were you there?
I heard about the White Rose, it rings a bell.
Might have closed by the time i got there. (or maybe it was the name of the Lido's nightclub ??)
The Lido was much more than a club. A real place of intrigue.
Apart from the bar/club on the ground floor corner, it had lots of other stuff going on too
- in that big old rambling, mostly timber, joint.

I only went into the nightclub once, in the 5/6 weeks we were there.
Spooky. Very. I was only in there for an hour or so but the image is still very strong. Dark, smokey.
- classic end-days special forces, pilots and spooks. Drinking pure whisky to the background of watching girls blow smoke rings, and far worse. Think the best of Hollywood on this stuff, exactly like that.
Maybe 7-8 of these hard nuts in the bar. They would have been amongst the very last of their bunch, and they probably all left before us.

I was with an australian girl - and having a very different focus/concerns.
and i certainly did not want to get on these guy's radar. I sat in the darkest corner and pretended to drink and watch the bacchanalia. then slipped out quietly.

It was at the very end and everybody had gone. Maybe a dozen or so skeleton staff from the few western embassies still remaining (France, NZ, UK included, from memory. but i never went near them)
USAID office had been trashed and they were all gone, sent packing by the mob.

A Laos consular official in Bangkok could not give us a visa, when we were on the way up, late July.
but advised us to go up to the border and pay our way in.
Dollars were skyrocketing by that stage and you didn't need too many of them.
Vientiane was tightly encircled by then, except for the short road to the Mekong border crossing.

Zero travellers and expats, they had all been chucked out a couple of months before. The French and the Americans were the last of these to be booted. They had special privileges for the few months before that.

I met one resident couple still there. A 30-ish very bright US guest house owner, quiet guy, and his equally smart Laos wife. They probably bailed before the end, but pretty late.
"Fritz" ?? A german stormtrooper/ foreign legionnaire /corsican connected guy, or something, still had his cafe open but then he bailed too.
There would have been a few others i never saw, cos it was total madness all round.
Overcrowded to the max, bustling madly with survival activity, everybody highly anxious and highly strung. Desperate.

In one of those really weird coincidences that so often pop up in extraordinary circumstance - the only other solo independent traveller i saw there was a bloke i knew from Sydney. Caught him for 5 minutes just when he was grabbing a taxi to the border - he would have had smack in his bag, this guy, for sure.
Nobody has ever heard from him since.

Interesting trip.
nb, please do not get the idea i am a special forces or any other big-livin' kinda guy. Far from it.
I was a 21 year old kid, just exploring the interesting parts of world. I had always wanted to see the war in person, having been such a harsh critic of it all foryears. This was my last opportunity and i grabbed it. Grabbed a few sticks to pay the fares.

We got out very early September, about 10 days after the Pathet Lao marched into town on the 23rd ?? of Aug. (they were nice, thank god, the very opposite to the KR)
Went back in 2005 and hardly recognised a thing.