Laos

No sea touches Laos, the only landlocked country in South-East Asia; the Mekong is its highway and marks much of the border with Thailand. Mountains fill the north, the Annamites wall off the east, and limestone towers rise around Vang Vieng. Hundreds of carved stone jars lie across the Plain of Jars on the Xieng Khouang plateau. In the south the Bolaven Plateau grows coffee, and the Mekong tumbles over the Khone falls among the islands of Si Phan Don.

In 1353 Fa Ngum united the Lao principalities as Lan Xang, the kingdom of a million elephants. It split into rival kingdoms soon after 1700 and fell under Siamese control; Siam sacked Vientiane after a revolt in 1827–28. France took the lands east of the Mekong in 1893 and held them until full independence in 1953. During the Vietnam War, American aircraft bombed the country heavily from 1964 to 1973, leaving unexploded bombs in its fields, and in December 1975 the monarchy was abolished.

Most Lao are Theravada Buddhists, and at dawn saffron-robed monks walk the streets of Luang Prabang collecting alms. Glutinous rice, rolled into a ball by hand, is eaten from bamboo baskets with larb, a salad of minced meat and herbs. Pi Mai, the April new year, brings water fights, and Boun Bang Fai fires bamboo rockets to call the rains. Dams sell hydroelectric power abroad, Sepon and Phu Kham yield copper and gold, and village looms weave silk.