Oan (imagine a Mexican pronouncing ‘one’ and you are pretty close) our guide met us as arranged and upon hearing of the length of our journey uttered the now immortal phrase which simply had to be the title of this post. Apparently just short of 70% of the population are Buddhist (only 1.5% are Christian) which at least offers an explanation of Oan’s version of OMG.

Born and brought up in Loas Oan spent 9 years in Leningrad learning Russian under a Government sponsored programme  – Laos has been run by a Marxist and communist  government since 1975 before returnig home to find that the blossoming tourist industry needed English speaking guides more than Russian speaking ones – although that is changing rapidly.