Interesting Facts

I crossed into the Lao People's Democratic Repulic (Laos) a few days ago, and took a two day trip down the mekong river to Louang Phrabang, where I'll be for about a week.  Before I crossed over the border into Laos I read up a little on it, and there were a few little facts that jumped out that make it interesting to be an american here:

Bear video

Fact #1: Laos is the most bombed country per capita in the history of the world.  During the vietnam war, we dropped 2.1 BILLION TONS of bombs on laos, even though we weren't even at war with them.  That's a ridiculously large number of bombs... it works out to a plane full of bombs dropped every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 8 years.

Kate in a tree over a swimming hole

Fact #2: There are about 200 "accidents" every year in Laos involving unexploded ordnance.  Basically, when you drop 4 trillion pounds of bombs, they don't necessarily all blow up when the hit the ground.  Some sit around and rust, and never go off.  Others sit around until somebody wanders by and bumps them, and then they decide to go off and blow off a limb or two (actually, with the state of medicine in Laos, you'd be lucky if that's all you lost).  Sorry about that, I know the war's been over for over thirty years (and that we were never actually even at war with you, for that matter), but yeah, your leg just got blown off by an american bomb.  I guess it's just one of those fun little things about war that no one ever really talks about....

Mekong river, north of Louang Phrabang

Louang Phrabang is an interesting little city.  It's full of old french colonial villas, it has dozens and dozens of little cafes, and it's very european looking.  It was almost as if I wandered out of the jungle into a little french village.

I'll post more about the boat ride & the river later, and hopefully get some more pictures up...

Naga handrails at the top of the sacred hill

Rescued tiger at the waterfalls

Sunset on the Mekong

Tiger Video

Upper Waterfall

Waterfall and swimming hole