I Explored the Lesser-known Parts of Laos on a New High-speed Train — Here's What to Know
As the twin-engine prop plane from Bangkok began its descent into Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos, I saw through the pearly dry-season air a wide river, one of the mighty Mekong’s many tributaries. Along one bank ran glinting steel track that arced like a shot arrow and pierced the mountain in its way — the path of a new high-speed train. The river and the rail: one representing Laos’s past, the other its future.
A landlocked country threaded by waterways, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic was once a densely forested Buddhist kingdom called Lan Xang, known as the land of a million elephants. More recently, it was a revolutionary communist state bombed to smithereens during the Vietnam War, when the United States rained down some 2 million tons of explosives on its jungle-clad hills.
More information:
https://www.travelandleisure.com/traveling-laos-high-speed-train-8601315
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