Land-locked Laos has history of isolation, unrest

Through a combination of history, geography and politics — and with the exception of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma — Laos may be the least known to the outside world of any country in Southeast Asia.
To begin with, it’s landlocked — bounded by China on the north, Vietnam on the east, Cambodia on the south and Myanmar and Thailand on the west — so access to tourists as well as traders historically has been relatively difficult.
Besides that, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is one of the world’s few remaining traditionally communist nations; the Pathet Lao took control of the country in 1975 from its royalist government two years after the departure of the United States military from Vietnam, and kept the country pretty well closed to outside influences until about 10 years ago.
In the eighth century, after hundreds of years of Chinese and Indian influence, the country now known as Laos became home to the Lao people, who began to migrate into the area along with other Thai groups and Hmong-Mien hill tribes.
These groups set up separate principalities that lasted for the next 500 years, until they consolidated to withstand the threat of invasion by Kublai Khan’s Mongol army.
In the mid-14th century, a strong warlord in the area of the present-day city of Luang Prabang further consolidated his power, but centralized control disintegrated into three separate kingdoms in the early 1700s.
Friction between what is now Thailand and Vietnam over the area continued until Laos became a French protectorate — part of the vast holdings known as Indochina — in 1893, which ushered in nearly a century of unrest, semi-autonomy, civil war and unification followed by more war.
French control ended in 1953, when Laos became an independent monarchy, which lasted until the 1975 Pathet Lao takeover.
Of all the countries in Southeast Asia, Laos suffered the heaviest bombing during the U.S.-waged Vietnam War because the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran down the eastern slopes of its mountain valleys, linking communist North Vietnam with Cambodia and South Vietnam.
More than 100 people die each year in Laos from inadvertently setting off unexploded bombs left from the Vietnam War.
With a land area of about 91,000 square miles, Laos is nearly the same size as Oregon, which has 96,000 square miles. However, its population, estimated at about 6.5 million, far exceeds Oregon’s 3.7 million.
Vientiane, the capital city, has about 700,000 people.
The mainly agricultural economy depends primarily on the health of its rice, sugar cane, tobacco, coffee and fruit crops, as well as cultivation of silk for turning into textiles. Tourism has become an important part of the economy during the past 10 years, although travel to remote areas remains difficult.

By Randi Bjornstad
The Register-Guard