UXO Laos Visitors Centre in Luang Prabang

Laos is the most heavily bombed country, per capita, on the planet…in history. Take a moment to think about that and to put it into context against what you may know of WW1 or WW2 or even the recent US actions in Iraq.

I’m not about to go into the politics of what happened, there are much better places online to read about both sides of that. What I am going to do is strongly suggest a visit to the UXO Lao Visitors Centre while you are in Luang Prabang.

UXO Laos is located a short distance from the tourist heart of town and may be a little convoluted to find. If you’re not confident of navigating the streets then a tuktuk will be able to take you. I’ll put a map to the location at the end of this post.UXO Laos Visitors Centre

The Visitors Centre is in the back left hand corner of the UXO compound so don’t worry about making your way through the parked UXO vehicles, they are glad you are visiting. Open Monday to Friday 8am – 12pm and 1pm – 4pm, entry is free but there is a visitors book to sign when you leave and a donation box. If there is any organisation that could use a donation then this is probably it. There are also t-shirts available at a very reasonable price.
The centre itself is not large and doesn’t have the fancy multi-media displays that you might find in other such places but I’m happy to think that they are instead spending their money on the job at hand and what they do have on display is more than enough to get the point across.

This is where I throw numbers at you, but they are truly staggering.

20151201_111333Between 1964 and 1973 the US dropped two million tons of ordinance on Laos. That’s about 38 times the weight of the Titanic or equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years

270 million cluster munitions (bombies) were dropped with 80 million failing to explode. Only 500,000 of those have so far been cleared leaving about 79.5 million potential explosive devices still out there waiting.

UXO Laos bombies
The Visitors Centre has displays explaining the painstaking work that goes in to clearing these UXO’s. After seeing what’s involved it’s easy to understand why so relatively few have been cleared. There are also displays explaining where and why the bombing occurred and the personal impact it is still having in the villages.

There is a death or injury almost every day in Laos from UXO’s and countless other injuries that would not go reported due to the lack of medical treatment in remote areas. Cheap metal detectors have made finding bombs, exploded or not, for there scrap metal value, a growth industry. Of course, without the training the consequences of this are obvious.20151201_111107

The displays may be simple but that seems to reinforce the job that one of the poorest countries has yet to do in order to make itself safe from this overwhelming threat.

Do make the effort to see the UXO Visitors Centre. It may not give you photos you will hang on the wall when you get home but it will give a glimpse into another side of a beautiful country and a resilient people.

 

Center map

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