New Zealand aid helping turn Laos into tourist attraction

New Zealand taxpayers’ money is helping the world’s most heavily bombed country develop into a tourist destination.
At the same time the United States was fighting the North Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s, it was dropping one bomb every eight minutes on neighbouring Laos.
The northern and most heavily bombed province, Xieng Khouang, was almost destroyed, and has spent four decades recovering. New Zealand money is helping that process.
An estimated 80 million unexploded bombs dot the province, which undoubtedly deters tourists from visiting the mystical Plain of Jars.
Between 2007 and 2010, New Zealand money helped clear the Plain of Jars sites of unexploded bombs, and now it is funding clearance work in other areas.
In Xieng Khouang each year 50 or 60 people are killed by the bombs, and many more injured.
“That’s why there are many difficulties,” Laos National Tourism Administration Xieng Khoaung Provincial Tourism Department director Khamphet Phommadouakaisone says.
“It stopped everything. We can not make a living and use the land safely. People are still being killed.”
New Zealand money has allowed paths to be created through the jar sites, attracting tourists to the area. Aid money is now helping the province develop tourism initiatives, to lure more foreigners.
About 25,000 tourists head there annually, in contrast to the nearby world heritage site Luang Prabang, which was not heavily bombed, and attracts 400,000 tourists a year.
The Plain of Jars has more than 100 sites dotted with large stone jars that locals believe are 2000 to 3000 years-old. They were for a king and his comrades to drink wine from.
Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) is in the process of assessing the Plain of Jars sites, and Mr Phommadouakaisone hopes they will be made a world heritage site by 2015.
With New Zealand money, the tourism division plans to develop a museum, information centre and car parking near the sites to cater to the influx of tourists it expects to visit the area.
It is working to create guest houses in rural villages, shops which sell villagers’ handicrafts, a giant jar, and an international airport, which will receive more than the current two flights a day.
Tourism is a new concept to this area, Mr Phommadouakaisone says, and that’s why the tourism industry will accept any help it can get.
Three other provinces will benefit from the $4.5 million New Zealand has provided to develop tourism initiatives between 2011 and 2014.
Tourists generally visit two places in Laos – Luang Prabang, famous for its temples, and Vang Vieng, where tourists spend weeks drinking alcohol and floating down the river on tubes.
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Other communities don’t want the Western binge-drinking culture which has encompassed Vang Vieng, but they do want to capitalise on the tourist dollar, tourism sector specialist Acksonsay Rattanavong says.
The NZ Aid-funded programme is only in its initial stage, but progress needs to be made soon to cater for the increasing tourism market.
Laos has only been open to the outside world for the past couple of decades, and has strict rules such as no sexual relationships between foreigners and Laos people.
The tourism authority is faced with a challenging task to work out the right balance between developing a tourism market, while retaining the Laos culture