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Published: August 11th 2016
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After a really good Pad Thai and a couple of beer lao at a makeshift restaurant on the Mekong waterfront last night I decided to walk off the calories today. My first port of call was the COPE visitors centre. The Cooperative orthotic and prosthetic enterprise is a non-profit organisation that provides care and support to UXO survivors. The visitors centre educates about the devastating consequences of war and it's hard to think of a more fitting place than Laos to do so. Between 1964 and 1973 the US army dropped over 2,000,000 tons of ordnance on Laos making it the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. Of the over 270 million sub-munitions dropped 80 million failed to explode. Cluster munitions, bomb casings containing up to 200 smaller 'bombies' were designed to explode on impact with a hard surface but the dense foliage of Lao jungles and muddy rice fields meant they fell without detonating. Today these uxo are still killing or maiming on average 1 person a day. 25% of Lao villages are affected by uxo and at current clearance rates it will take over 100 years to clear them all. The centre provides a simple but fascinating
insight into how the bombs, unexploded and otherwise, affect everyday life in Laotian villages. The bomb casings are collected for scrap with sometimes fatal consequences but are also used to make everyday utensils such as knives, spoons, tables etc.
From the COPE centre it was a 4 or 5km walk down little sidestreets and back alleys, all cleverly navigated by Google maps, to That Luang. Although the site itself is believed to date back to the 3rd century AD the original stupa was built by king Saysetthatirath in 1566 after moving his capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. The stupa is believed to contain a hair and bone of the Buddha and is Laos's most sacred and important religious and cultural monument, adorning all of their currency.
By the time I had wandered about That Luang it was midday and the heat was getting intense so I grabbed a tuktuk to a bookstore near my hotel to exchange a book I had already read and stock up on reading material for the next few weeks. Picked up the first in a series of mystery novels set in PDR Laos, The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill, could be a
good read.
The tuktuks in Laos are very different in construction to those in Cambodia, much more ruggedly built and designed to carry more passengers, almost like a mini bus.
Treated myself to a fancy lunch of croissants, salads and smoked salmon at Le Banneton and was momentarily transported to some Parisienne café, we'll almost, doesn't often get to 35c on the banks of the Seine. Lunch came to almost $8, so things are a bit more expensive in Laos.
Bought my ticket on the bus to Luang Prabang. That will be another 12 hour journey but it's not for another couple of days yet so I won't think about it.
Nipped back to the hotel to lay up in the heat of the day but didn't even get the air conditioning on before succumbing to the torpor of the hot season.
As the day cooled off I headed out to dinner at Makphet, which is a vocational training restaurant providing marginalised, at-risk youth (often street kids) with skills in the hospitality industry. It's an excellent idea, you get a stunning meal and you are still giving something back.
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