So I’m back from Vietnam, it took 40 hours via Laos (bus, train, tuk-tuk, walking, etc …). More details to follow, I still have a few things that I wanted to sort through on Laos first. These photos all follow a theme of “interventions”, mostly hints of modern technology intervening into scenes that are otherwise not very modern looking.

The satellite images are especially interesting as they get at the main reason that Laotians likely speak the Thai language so well, all those horrible Thai sitcoms and soap operas are invading Laos. Most Laotians that I met told me that they could speak and understand Thai really well, but couldn’t really read it as it is somewhat more complicated (see my earlier post on the writing systems).