How To Find Out Everything There Is To Know About Laos Tourism In 9 Simple Steps

You can read more about this in our ‘elephants in tourism' guide. Riding on an elephant's back hardly represents the nature and majesty of an elephant's spirit. As for elephants: get off their backs!

The same goes for any Traditional Chinese Medicine involving animal parts - tiger bones or penis, bear bile, rhino horn - avoid it like the plague and be extra sure of what ingredients make up any cosmetics or creams that you buy. Chances are it won't taste half as good as it looks prowling in the wild, so it's best to stick to eating what you know is sustainable. A turtle shell should be on the back of a turtle swimming in the sea, not painted and put on your mantelpiece.

It's easy to get carried away with the exoticism and apparent ‘traditional' practices of far flung destinations, but it's important to remember that just because you can eat it or buy it, it doesn't mean you should. There is no system of social support in Laos, so the poor rely on each other in times of need and a large majority of the population (roughly 90% of women alone) work in agriculture earning meager incomes - incomes that might be just enough to feed their families, but are not enough to put their children through education, or to secure collateral to invest in their existing farms. The country is in transition and is benefitting from economic growth as a result of exposure to global markets; increased foreign investment in its abundant natural resources, notably timber and hydropower; and a burgeoning tourism industry, but booming economic development doesn't translate into improved access to essential services for the people.

It will also increase revenue, which could help Laos's poorest out of poverty and into better schooling and healthcare provision, but there will always be a lingering flipside that laments the gradual loss of an old way of life and fears that the lives of Laotians will become more like ours - more concerned with material ‘stuff', a notion at odds with their Buddhist underpinning. Laos is in the midst of a huge period of development and this inevitable progress will likely bring electricity and running water to the masses. In addition, more and more villages are having to be resettled as the waters of the Mekong rise due Top things to do in Laos (www.laostourism.info) dams being built to tap into the country's greatest natural resource: hydropower.

It's incredibly easy to romanticise the seemingly idyllic Laotian way of life, but Laos is the poorest of all the Mekong nations, school is not a priority in family life, and one in four Lao people is illiterate. A holiday in Laos will doubtless drift by in a sea of happy faces and a chorus of ‘baw pen nyang' - no worries! Is it the rush of the Mekong River, the soaring limestone castes of Vang Vieng, the river islands of Pakse, the ancient temples that dot Luang Prabang, the strange stone jars strewn across Phonsavanh?