The Southeast Asia Travel Specialists Since 1999
Visitors frequently get confused between Cambodian and Khmer, aren’t always sure whether they should be saying Burma or Myanmar and we’ve also even heard people referring to the inhabitants of Thailand as Thailandese. However, the small, land-locked and mountainous country of Lao or Laos probably comes out on top of the name confusion charts. The country’s official name is the…
Whilst Tai groups had probably been gradually infiltrating southwards into what is now northern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand for several centuries from their homeland in Southern China the migration of Tai groups into Southeast Asia was hastened during the late 12th- and 13th-centuries as the Mongol armies under Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan extended their empire southwards. Ethnic Tai clans…
When we first turned up in the small town of Vang Vieng, (must have been 92 or 93?), it was as close to paradise as anywhere we’d come across on our backpacker trail across Southeast Asia. An idyllic, bustling little market town for the surrounding Hmong villages and set on the banks of the Song River opposite some of the…