1.
Champasak Province
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Champasak is a province in southwestern Laos, near the borders with Thailand and Cambodia. It is one of the three principalities that succeeded the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, as of the 2015 census, it had a population of 694,023. The capital is Pakse, but it takes its name from Champasak, Champasak Province covers an area of 15,415 square kilometres. It is bordered by Salavan Province to the north, Sekong Province to the northeast, Attapeu Province to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. The Mekong River forms part of the border with neighboring Thailand and contains Si Phan Don in the south of the province, Champasak has played a central role in the history of Siam and Laos, with frequent battles taking place in and around Champasak. Its rich cultural heritage includes ancient temple ruins and French colonial architecture, Champasak has some 20 wats, such as Wat Phou, Wat Luang, and Wat Tham Fai. Freshwater dolphins and the many waterfalls are tourist attractions. From the 1st to 9th centuries CE, Champasak Province was part of the Funan, between the 10th and 13th centuries it was part of the Khmer Empire. In 1354, the area came under the control of King Fa Ngum, the Angkor empire went into decline between the 15th and 17th centuries when it was annexed by Lan Xang. In 1707, Chamapasak became one of three kingdoms arising from a dissolved Lan Xang Empire, in the 18th century Laos became an independent kingdom. The kingdom had only three emperors, Soi Sisamut, nephew of Suriya Vangas, Sainya Kuman and lastly Fai Na, Pakse, the capital of the province, was established by the French in 1905 as an administrative outpost at the confluence of Xe Don and the Mekong. Champasak Province covers an area of 15,415 square kilometres, the Mekong forms part of the border with neighboring Thailand and, after a sharp bend projecting westward, turns east and flows southeasterly through the province down to Cambodia. Champasak can be reached from Thailand through Sirindhorn Districts Chong Mek border crossing, to Vang Tao on the Lao side, from where the highway leads east towards the provincial capital, Pakse. The capital is on Laos most important highway, Route 13, Si Phan Don is on a stretch of the Mekong north of the border with Cambodia. Of these islands, Don Khong is the largest and has a number of villages, temples. A French-built bridge on the railway line provides the link with two smaller islands, Don Deth and Don Khon. There are many waterfalls in the such as the Liphi Waterfall at Don Khon to the west of Ban Khon village. Below the falls in the waters of the Mekong the fresh water dolphins can be seen
2.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
3.
Lao language
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Lao, also referred to as Laotian, Thai Noi, is a tonal language of the Tai–Kadai language family. It is the language of Laos, and also spoken in the northeast of Thailand. The Lao language serves as an important lingua franca as the country of Laos consists of ethnic groups. Spoken Lao is mutually intelligible with the Thai language, Lao, like many languages in Laos, is written in the Lao script, an abugida. Although there is no standard, the Vientiane dialect has become the de facto standard. Oral history of the migrations is preserved in the legends of Khun Borom, Tai speakers in what is now Laos pushed out or absorbed earlier groups of Mon–Khmer and Austronesian languages. These Tai peoples are classified by the Lao government as Lao Loum or lowland Lao, Lao and Thai are also very similar and share most of their basic vocabulary, but differences in many basic words limit inter-comprehension. The Lao language consists primarily of native Lao words, because of Buddhism, however, Pali has contributed numerous terms, especially relating to religion and in conversation with members of the Sangha. Due to their proximity, Lao has influenced the Khmer and Thai languages. Formal writing has an amount of foreign loanwords, especially Pali and Sanskrit terms, much as Latin. For politeness, pronouns are used, plus ending statements with ແດ່ or ເດີ້, negative statements are made more polite by ending with ດອກ. The following are formal register examples, many consonants in Lao make a phonemic contrast between labialized and plain versions. The complete inventory of Lao consonants is as shown in the table below, hence, final /p/, /t/, and /k/ sounds are pronounced as, and respectively. * The glottal stop appears at the end when no final follows a short vowel, All vowels make a phonemic length distinction. The vowels are as shown in the table, Diphthongs are all centering diphthongs with falling sonority. There are six tones in unchecked syllables, that is. The number of tones is reduced to four in checked syllables. The only consonant clusters allowed are syllable initial clusters /kw/ or /kʰw/, any consonant may appear in the onset, but the labialized consonants do not occur before rounded vowels
4.
Buddhism
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Buddhism is a religion and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars, Theravada and Mahayana. Buddhism is the worlds fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices. In Theravada the ultimate goal is the attainment of the state of Nirvana, achieved by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, thus escaping what is seen as a cycle of suffering. Theravada has a following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon, rather than Nirvana, Mahayana instead aspires to Buddhahood via the bodhisattva path, a state wherein one remains in the cycle of rebirth to help other beings reach awakening. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian siddhas, may be viewed as a branch or merely a part of Mahayana. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth century India, is practiced in regions surrounding the Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhism aspires to Buddhahood or rainbow body. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of Buddha, the details of Buddhas life are mentioned in many early Buddhist texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother queen Maya, and he was born in Lumbini gardens. Some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, Buddha was moved by the innate suffering of humanity. He meditated on this alone for a period of time, in various ways including asceticism, on the nature of suffering. He famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He reached enlightenment, discovering what Buddhists call the Middle Way, as an enlightened being, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his teaching the Dharma he had discovered. Dukkha is a concept of Buddhism and part of its Four Noble Truths doctrine. It can be translated as incapable of satisfying, the unsatisfactory nature, the Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism, we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, incapable of satisfying and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha
5.
French Indochinese piastre
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The piastre de commerce was the currency of French Indochina between 1885 and 1952. It was subdivided into 100 cent, each of 5 sapèque, the name piastre, from Spanish pieces of eight, dates to the 16th century and has been used as the name of many different historical units of currency. There was also a silver milled dragon coin and associated subsidiary coinage in circulation, in the region that is nowadays Cambodia and Laos, the Siamese coinage circulated and Cambodia had its own regional varieties of the Siamese Tical. The French began their Indo-Chinese empire in 1862 with Cochin-China which is the area around the Mekong delta and Saigon, and this empire very quickly expanded to include Cambodia which had been a vassal state of the Kingdom of Siam. In 1875, the French introduced a Cambodian franc to Cambodia, although these francs were minted in Belgium between 1875 and 1885, they always bore the date 1860. The French also began to introduce a subsidiary coinage in cents into Cochin-China in the late 1870s and these cents were actually subsidiary coinage of the Mexican dollar unit as opposed to being subsidiary coinage of the French franc. In 1884, the French Indo-Chinese empire further expanded to incorporate Annam, the piastre was initially equivalent to the Mexican peso. The piastre was therefore a direct descendent of the Spanish pieces of eight that had been brought to the Orient from Mexico on the Manila Galleons. It was initially on a standard of 1 piastre =24.4935 grams pure silver. This was reduced to 24.3 grams in 1895, French Indo-China was one of the last places to abandon the silver standard. The silver standard was restored in 1921 and maintained until 1930, during the World War II Japanese occupation, an exchange rate of 0.976 piastre =1 Japanese yen operated, with the pre-war peg to the franc restored after the war. However, in December 1945, to avoid the French francs devaluation, in 1946, the North Vietnamese đồng was introduced, which replaced the piastre at par. In 1952/1953, the Lao kip, Cambodian riel, and South Vietnamese đồng were introduced at par with the piastre, initially, the paper money bore denominations both in the local currency and the piastre, but coins were denominated in the national units since the beginning. These initially circulated alongside the old piastre currency, the peg of 1 piastre =10 francs was restored in 1953. The dual denominated notes circulated until 1955 in South Vietnam and Cambodia, the coin was first introduced in 1880 then 1883 then in 1885 as so on. In 1885, bronze 1 cent and silver 10,20 and 50 cent and 1 piastre coins were introduced and these were followed in 1887 by holed, bronze 1 sapeque. In 1895, the weights of the coins were reduced. From 1896, the 1 cent was also a holed coin, in 1923, holed, cupro-nickel 5 cent were introduced, followed by holed, bronze ½ cent in 1935
6.
Lan Xang
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The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao existed as a unified kingdom from 1354 to 1707. For three and a half centuries, Lan Xang was one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia, the meaning of the kingdoms name alludes to the power of the kingship and formidable war machine of the early kingdom. The kingdom is the precursor for the country of Laos and the basis for the national historic, with the rise of the Sukhothai Kingdom the principal city-states of Muang Sua and south to the twin cities of Vieng Chan Vieng Kham, came increasingly under Tai influence. The cultural memory of the migrations and the mixing of Tai influence with the indigenous, Mon. The cultural, linguistic, and political roots which highlight the commonality of these legends can help to understand Lan Xang. Throughout the history of Lan Xang the legitimacy of the monarchy was tied to the dynasty of Khun Lo. The traditional court histories of Lan Xang begin in the Year of the Nāga 1319 with the birth of Fa Ngum, Fa Ngums Grandfather Souvanna Khampong was king of Muang Sua and his father Chao Fa Ngiao was the crown prince. As a youth Fa Ngum was sent to the Khmer Empire to live as a son of King Jayavarman IX, in 1343 King Souvanna Khampong died, and a succession dispute for Muang Sua took place. In 1349 Fa Ngum was granted an army known as the Ten Thousand to take the crown, the opportunity for the Khmer was to create a friendly buffer state in an area they could no longer effectively control with only a moderately sized military force. Fa Ngums campaign started in southern Laos, taking the towns and cities in the region around Champasak and moving northward through Thakek, from his position on the middle Mekong, Fa Ngum sought assistance and supply from Vientiane in attacking Muang Sua, which they refused. However, Prince Nho of Muang Phuan offered assistance and vassalage to Fa Ngum for assistance in a dispute of his own. Fa Ngum agreed and quickly moved his army to take Muang Phuan and then on to take Xam Neua, the Đại Việt, concerned with their rival Champa to the south sought a clearly defined border with the growing power of Fa Ngum. The result was to use the Annamite Range as both a cultural and territorial barrier between the two kingdoms, continuing his conquests Fa Ngum turned toward the Sip Song Chau Taialong the Red and Black River valleys, which were heavily populated with Lao. Having secured a sizable force of Lao from each territory under his domain Fa Ngum moved down the Nam Ou to take Muang Sua. Despite three attacks the King of Muang Sua, who was Fa Ngums uncle, was unable to deter the size of Fa Ngums army and committed suicide rather than be taken alive. King Phayu of Lanna raised an army which Fa Ngum overwhelmed at Chiang Saen, forcing Lanna to cede some its territory, having secured his immediate borders Fa Ngum returned to Muang Sua. In 1351 Uthong, who was married to a daughter of the Khmer King Suphanburi, however, the remains of the Khmer Empire were in direct conflict with the growing power of Ayutthaya and the two became rivals rather than allies. Throughout the 1350s Ayutthaya expanded over western Khmer territories and the Khorat Plateau, in 1352 Angkor was attacked by Ayutthaya in a failed attempt to take the capital
7.
Kingdom of Laos
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The Kingdom of Laos was a constitutional monarchy that ruled Laos beginning with its independence on 9 November 1953. The Kingdom of Laos was officially proclaimed when the new Constitution was promulgated in 1947, as part of the colonial French Union, following the Franco-Lao Treaty of 1953, which gave Laos independence, the Royal Lao Government took control of the country. This treaty established a monarchy, with Sisavang Vong as King. Many attempts were made by the Three Princes and King Sisavang Vatthana to establish a coalition government, the First Government of National Unity was established in 1958 under Prince Souvanna Phouma, but collapsed after two months. The Prime Minister, who under the constitution appointed his ministers and received advice from the King, Souvanna Phouma gave the Communists two seats in the Cabinet, and in return Souphanouvong would integrate 1,500 of his 6,000 Communist troops into the royal army. Prince Souphanouvong was given the post of Minister of Planning, Reconstruction and Urbanization, while member of the Communist Party was named Minister of Religion. The Kingdom of Laos was divided into five military regions, the United States supplied the Royal Lao Navy with twenty river patrol boats and sixteen amphibious landing craft. Between 1962 and 1971, the United States provided Laos with an estimated US$500 million in military assistance. The Royal Lao Government had close relations with the United States, which gave the country aid and assisted it in the campaign against the Pathet Lao, during 1957, the United States spent more per capita on foreign aid for Laos than it had on any other nation. That worked out as US$150 per Laotian, twice the average annual income. Some of the went to support pro-American candidates in an election, while other money went to a program to support the local currency. King Savang Vatthana visited the United States in 1963 to meet with President Kennedy, Laos was also supported by France, Australia, Burma, Thailand and Japan. The Pathet Lao were backed militarily by the NVA and Vietcong, Laos was also dragged into the Vietnam War since parts of Laos were invaded and occupied by North Vietnam for use as a supply route for its war against the South. It also provided supplies, training and funding to the central government, in 1968, the North Vietnamese Army launched a multi-division attack to help the Pathet Lao fight the Royal Lao Army. The attack resulted in the army largely demobilizing, leaving the conflict to irregular forces raised by the United States, massive aerial bombardment against Pathet Lao and NVA forces was carried out by the United States. It has been reported that Laos was hit by an average of one B-52 bombload every eight minutes,24 hours a day, US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos in this period than was dropped during the whole of the Second World War. Of the 260 million bombs that rained down, particularly on Xiangkhouang Province on the Plain of Jars, some 80 million failed to explode, Laos is the most heavily bombed country, per capita, in the world. In 1975, the Pathet Lao, along with Vietnam Peoples Army and backed by the Soviet Union, overthrew the royalist Lao government, a ceasefire was finally attained in February 1973, following the Paris Peace Accords between the United States and North Vietnam
8.
Laos
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Present day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to the kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao, which existed for four centuries as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Due to Lan Xangs central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom was able to become a hub for overland trade. After a period of conflict, Lan Xang broke off into three separate kingdoms— Luang Phabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In 1893, it became a French protectorate, with the three territories uniting to form what is now known as the country of Laos and it briefly gained independence in 1945 after Japanese occupation, but returned to French rule until it was granted autonomy in 1949. Laos became independent in 1953, with a monarchy under Sisavang Vong. Shortly after independence, a civil war ended the monarchy. Laos is a one-party socialist republic and it espouses Marxism and is governed by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, in which the party leadership is dominated by military figures. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnam Peoples Army continue to have significant influence in Laos, other large cities include Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, and Pakse. Laos is a country with the politically and culturally dominant Lao people making up approximately 60 percent of the population. Mon-Khmer groups, the Hmong, and other hill tribes, accounting for 40 percent of the population, live in the foothills. It is a member of the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asia Summit, Laos applied for membership of the World Trade Organization in 1997, on 2 February 2013, it was granted full membership. According to the anti-corruption non-governmental organisation Transparency International, Laos remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world and this has deterred foreign investment and created major problems with the rule of law, including the nations ability to enforce contract and business regulation. This has contributed to a third of the population of Laos currently living below the poverty line. Laos has an economy, with one of the lowest annual incomes in the world. In 2014, the country ranked 141st on the Human Development Index, according to the Global Hunger Index, Laos ranks as the 29th hungriest nation in the world out of the list of the 52 nations with the worst hunger situation. Laos has also had a human rights record. In the Lao language, the name is Muang Lao or Pathet Lao. Stone artefacts including Hoabinhian types have been found at sites dating to the Late Pleistocene in northern Laos, archaeological evidence suggests agriculturist society developed during the 4th millennium BC
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Laos
Thailand
Cambodia
Vietnam
