From Travell and Leisure

by Kevin West

 

Kevin West From left: The pagoda-style station in Luang Prabang, built for the 2021 opening of the country's new high-speed rail; prehistoric megaliths at the Plain of Jars, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the south of Laos. © Provided by Travel + Leisure

The Mekong River has been a primary source of food, livelihood, and transportation in Laos since time began. Now a high-speed railway has arrived. What changes will it bring, and what will it take away?

As the twin-engine prop plane from Bangkok began its descent into Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos, I saw through the pearly dry-season air a wide river, one of the mighty Mekong’s many tributaries. Along one bank ran glinting steel track that arced like a shot arrow and pierced the mountain in its way — the path of a new high-speed train. The river and the rail: one representing Laos’s past, the other its future. 

A landlocked country threaded by waterways, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic was once a densely forested Buddhist kingdom called Lan Xang, known as the land of a million elephants. More recently, it was a revolutionary communist state bombed to smithereens during the Vietnam War, when the United States rained down some 2 million tons of explosives on its jungle-clad hills. 

"The river and the rail framed everything I saw during a 10-day tour of northern and central Laos —the temples, palaces, rice paddies, monks, bamboo footbridges, tribal festivals, mountain villages, long-tail boats, caves, backpacker cafés, elephant preserves, and waterfalls."

"The river and the rail framed everything I saw during a 10-day tour of northern and central Laos —the temples, palaces, rice paddies, monks, bamboo footbridges, tribal festivals, mountain villages, long-tail boats, caves, backpacker cafés, elephant preserves, and waterfalls."

Today, Laos’s future is unfolding in the shadow of the colossus to the north. The multibillion-dollar rail system, part of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative, was engineered with Chinese expertise and financed by Chinese capital, and on any given day its first-class compartments carry mainly Chinese tourists from Borten, on Laos’s northern border, to the modern capital of Vientiane, with sightseeing stops along the way. 

The river and the rail framed everything I saw during a 10-day tour of northern and central Laos — the temples, palaces, rice paddies, monks, bamboo footbridges, tribal festivals, mountain villages, long-tail boats, caves, backpacker cafés, elephant preserves, waterfalls, foreign-owned luxury hotels, local markets full of river fish and bushmeat, archaeological sites, forlorn guesthouses, sugarcane plantations, silk-weaving workshops, and roadside noodle shops.

It was a fast-moving trip. Indeed, the idea was to test the promise of the high-speed train in a country notorious for slow going. Laotian roads are measured in rattles and jolts. Even the main national highway, a paved four-lane that leads from Vientiane to the north, is tortuous — a “snake road,” one local told me. “Lotta curves.” Now what was once a full day on the snake road whooshes by in half a morning. 

Continues at

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/i-explored-the-lesser-known-parts-of-laos-on-a-new-high-speed-train-heres-what-to-know/ar-AA1nlO7X#

8 hours ago, reader said:

From Travell and Leisure
by Kevin West

Continues at
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/i-explored-the-lesser-known-parts-of-laos-on-a-new-high-speed-train-heres-what-to-know/ar-AA1nlO7X#

It's a very good article, full of useful details about places in Laos now easily accessible.

our man was there

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15 hours ago, vinapu said:

our man was there

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