First a bit of history... Xieng Khouang Province lies East of Luang Phabang towards Vietnam. It's a pretty isolated place, whose population is mostly made up of minority ethnic groups such as Hmong, rather than Lao. Apart from some noteworthy and fascinatingly mysterious archaeology (see later) there wouldn't be much reason to know of the place were it not for a shocking historical fact. Xieng Khouang Province holds the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most heavily bombed places on our Planet. In the 10 years from 1965 to 1975, courtesy of American B-52s, the countryside here was at the pointy end of over 6,000,000,000 lbs of bombs. That's six billion pounds. There are fewer than 250,000 inhabitants in the entire province. The maths doesn't even bear thinking about. The region's proximity to the theatre
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