We spent our final day in Luang Prabang walking, eating and relaxing. The town is so pretty, especially at night. I look forward to going back there some day, I have a feeling it’s going to continue to change and evolve at a fast pace.

Vientiane (/vjɛnˈtjɑːn/; French pronunciation: ​[vjɛ̃ˈtjan]; Lao: ວຽງຈັນ, Viang chan, IPA: [ʋíəŋ tɕàn]) is the capital and largest city of Laos, on the banks of the Mekong River near the border with Thailand. Vientiane became the capital in 1563 due to fears of a Burmese invasion. Vientiane was the administrative capital during French rule and, due to economic growth in recent times, is now the economic centre of Laos.

We’re now in Vientiane for three days, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring Theresa and Caellum here, as it doesn’t have as much to do as our next stop,  Bangkok. I’ve been here a couple of times before and I was curious to see how it was developing.

There is a lot of new development, mostly retail and residential, but it probably needs another few decades to catch up to other cities in Asia. There is even a Laotian stock exchange now, it was set up with the help of South Korea and began trading with two companies.

On our first evening, all I wanted to do was eat at a French restaurant I really liked the last  time I was here, L’adresse Cuisine by Tinay. There’s a new Chef Patron, and he was quite accommodating for the more selective connoisseurs of cuisine in our party.

It didn’t disappoint, as the food was great, but we were all too tired to do much else after dinner. We walked around the core a little bit, but we’ll save a longer exploratory walk for tonight.

We had two things on the itinerary for day 1, and that was to visit The Cope Visitor Centre and go bowling. I’ve never bowled in Laos, so why not?

First up, the Cope Visitors Center.

COPE was formed in 1997 by agreement between the Ministry of Health of Lao PDR and a group of non-Government organisations including POWER, World Vision and Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics.

COPE was created in response to the need to provide UXO survivors with the care and support they required, namely by way of orthotic and prosthetic devices.

COPE is now a local not-for-profit organisation that works in partnership with the Centre of Medical Rehabilitation (CMR) and provincial rehabilitation centres to provide access to both orthotic/prosthetic devices and rehabilitation services, including physiotherapy, occupational therapy and paediatric services to people with disabilities.

The main purpose of the visit was to show Caellum the UXO problem that exists in Laos and other Asian nations from decades of war. It destroys nations and people, and even 42 years after the war ended in Laos, people are still dying and being maimed because of it. It’s likely to take at least another 50 years to clean-up the UXO (unexploded ordinances) in the country.

Some UXO statistics about Laos (United States Bombing Data):

The Lao PDR is, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in the world. Throughout the Second Indochina War (1964-1973) more than 580,000 bombing missions (or a bombing mission every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years) and wide ranging ground battles, led to over 2 million tons of ordnance being dropped on Laos. Over 270 million cluster munitions were used, of which there an estimated 80 million malfunctioned and remanined live and buried in the Lao landscape after the war’s end.

There are still 300 new casualties every year from UXOs, of those more than 30% are children.

It was good to show Caellum that after a war has ended, the hard part actually begins. In this case, the citizens of Laos that had nothing to do with the conflict, will feel its effect for at least 100 years, and in the worst possible ways.

The Cope Centre seemed like a wonderful facility. Not only does it provide free lifetime prosthetics for UXO victims, but it also provides support for all physically disabled citizens of Laos.

Another purpose of the centre is cluster munition awareness. The Convention of Cluster Munitions took place in 2006 and more than 90 countries have ratified the treaty. The countries that produce the most cluster munitions, the United States, China and Russia have not signed the treaty.

For the record, Canada has.

The centre is a great place, doing good work. If you’re even in Vientiane, please take the time to visit.

Theresa and Caellum decided that it would be fun to go bowling in Laos, and I agreed. We loaded up the tuk tuk and headed to the bowling alley. It was like travelling back in time, it was quite cool.

None of us are very good bowlers, and the lane warps and bulges sure added to the challenge of 10 pin bowling. I’m Canadian, I like 5 pin. I have an absurd fear that the 10 pin ball is going to rip my thumb off on release.

Theresa was the only one of us to get a strike and no one broke 100, that’s probably not something we should admit. I blame the fact there were no bumpers, we all like using them for bouncing the ball off of.

That was it for today, we came back to the hotel and I posted this. We’ll see more tonight under the lights.

Caellum will do his blog post tonight or tomorrow.