Insight Guides - Insight Guides: Laos & Cambodia

How To Use This E-Book

Getting around the e-book

This Insight Guide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for your visit to Laos & Cambodia, as well as comprehensive planning advice to make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editors Choice categories of activies and experiences. Detailed features on history, people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Laos & Cambodia. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full information on getting around, hotels, activities from to culture to shopping to sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your trip.

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights in Laos & Cambodia are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of Laos & Cambodia. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.

Insight Guides are written by local authors who use their on-the-ground experience to provide the very latest information; their local expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide to you the best places to stay and eat, so you can be confident that when we say a restaurant or hotel is special, we really mean it.

Like all Insight Guides , this e-book contains hundreds of beautiful photographs to inspire and inform your travel. We commission most of our own photography, and we strive to capture the essence of a destination using original images that you wont find anywhere else.

2012 Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

LAOS AND CAMBODIA

Ignored for decades, these two countries are emerging as amongst the most exciting travel destinations in Southeast Asia.

That Makmo Stupa, Luang Prabang.

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Together, Laos and Cambodia form the little-known hinterland of Indochina. In the colonial period they were considered backwaters by the French, who concentrated on exploiting the resources of Vietnam the third and dominant country in French Indochina. During the turbulent years that followed independence, the United States waged a viciously destructive Secret War against the North Vietnamese Army and its Lao allies, the Pathet Lao, while Cambodia, having been illegally carpet-bombed by the US Air Force, was then liberated by the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Both countries experienced impoverishment and isolation from the outside world.

Baguettes in Vientiane.

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Nowadays both have put this brutal period behind them, although it has been a long and tortuous process for Cambodia. Opening their doors to the international community and to overseas visitors, the governments in Vientiane and Phnom Penh perceive tourism as a way to increase national development and assure a more prosperous future.

There are good reasons for linking Laos and Cambodia in a single guidebook. Both countries have a long tradition of Indic culture, as well as being closely related through Theravada Buddhism (northern parts of Laos are rather different in this respect, however) and long years of interaction with neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam. Each is startlingly beautiful and relatively undeveloped, populated by generous and friendly people, and home to some unforgettable sights. Their dependence on the mighty Mekong River and a shared colonial past further bind them, with both having benefited from the French culinary tradition as Cambodias King Sihanouk once put it: I am an anti-colonialist, but if one must be colonised it is better to be colonised by gourmets. Today both countries are members of ASEAN, are developing and are increasingly prosperous. There has never been a better time to visit them.

Fisherman casting his nets.

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Laos & Cambodia Top Attractions

A selection of the top sights of the two countries, from the haunting Plain of Jars to romantic Luang Prabang, vibrant Phnom Penh and the unmatched splendour of Angkor.

Top Attraction 1

Angkor. Indochinas top attraction dates from almost 900 years ago, the golden years of the Khmer civilisation. The sprawling site is a unique repository of incredible craftsmanship on a staggering scale. The towers at Angkor Wat, the most famous site of all, appear otherworldly at sunset as they are flanked by hordes of flying foxes.

fotoLibra

Top Attraction 2

Vientiane. A smaller and more unassuming capital city would be hard to imagine. French-flavoured Vientiane extends languidly along the Mekong walk along the river banks at sunset and enjoy a Beer Lao..

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 3

Luang Prabang. This beautiful royal capital is the religious centre of Laos. The old stupas and temples give the city a unique ambience, populated in part by hundreds of saffron-robed monks..