More thoughts on Laos....

As I write this, there are several young monks with orange robes and shaved heads playing about on the computers around me.

I haven't seen any monks in the town (or its wats) over the age of about 20. Maybe the older ones are busy chanting, or maybe they've given up and gone home...

The spectacular failure of history to bear out Kennedy's Domino Theory of Communism, with which he is said to have sold the Vietnam war to the post-McCarthy voters of the US, seems to have been forgotten since he was assassinated. Yet history has been kind to Kennedy. One can only assume it's because he was shot before having the chance to become a hopeless failure, like every US president since.

Freedom for all? Tell that to the poor Lao who were bombed with the collusion of their own corrupt Royal leaders. Laos is a communist state now because of a backlash against the post-colonial, aid-hungry, US-friendly administration of old.

How communist is Laos exactly? There are no newspapers on sale in Luang Prabang as far as I can see, but they are available in the capital Vientiane, or so I'm told by a tour-guide from the city. And they are allowed journalistic free-speech on Page 2, apparently, which I'm told gets the men talking in the pub. Apart from the lack of newspapers, which may be down to demand rather than supply, the signs are that the free market is in ascendancy.

But, calling this place The Peoples' Democracy of Laos? Give us all a break...

OK, rant over, I'm back on my hols til tomorrow...