I’m just on a train from Luang Prabang back to the capital, writing my last two posts, before my flight home tomorrow.

All the Lao people I have met have been utterly charming. They seem kind, quiet, serene, and clearly dislike conflict. My very kind request to “possibly have a weaker cup of coffee” the other day was met by a waiter, who quickly retreated to the kitchen and was never seen again. I have also seen hundreds (literally) of motorbikes queuing in the only possible disorderly manner at petrol stations, waiting for rare supplies of gas, and yet there is no ill temper. The men are generally very smiley. The women are a little less so, but I suppose this is due to shyness.

The Lao people are described by those who live amongst them as very proud of their nation and respectful of ‘otherness’. People who place importance on honour and reputation, and who dislike corruption and oppression. Don’t we all !

Seventy per cent of people are said to still live in rural poverty, with Buddhism in the villages being the most important governance. I see that apart from the main roads and railway running north to south, most outlying roads are pot-holed tracks that must leave the villages feeling pretty isolated. The UNICEF report for Laos bears out this relative isolation of the rural areas, describing: early marriage, child motherhood (the girl in my picture is just fifteen and on her second child), low nutrition, limited healthcare and low school attendance.

Unlike other places I have visited, this appears to be a nation divided into three groups. A large population of low-income people in rural areas, a slightly better-off urban group trying to climb the ladder of modernity, and then the third group, the ‘party’.

I reflect on my time in Madagascar. It felt there that the people, with all their problems, somehow ‘owned them’. Here, there is a strange feeling of…. ‘non-participation’…. The Laotian people were deeply affected by the dropped ordnance from the Vietnam War, limiting their economic growth, while the countries around them were quickly modernising. Now it feels (I will share my evidence) that they are negatively affected by their sizeable northern neighbour and a Government not strong enough to resist.

A Lao national voiced what I had already been thinking: the Lao people may have lost their nation. When history books are written, they will record the failure of a government to support its then 5 million people during the pandemic, despite abundant natural resources. It seems the only solution they found was to sell the family silver, but then this was met with little resistance.