Laos

Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, a rugged, sparsely populated land where the Mekong River forms much of its western border and threads its valleys. Mountains and plateaus cover most of the territory, and a traditional, overwhelmingly rural society endures in villages of stilt houses and Buddhist temples. Once the kingdom of Lan Xang, the land of a million elephants, it remains one of the region's least developed and least visited nations, prized for the languid charm of Luang Prabang.

The terrain is dominated by the forested Annamite Range along the Vietnamese border and the limestone karsts and plateaus of the interior, with Phou Bia the highest peak. The Mekong and its tributaries shape settlement and supply hydropower that Laos exports to its neighbors. The climate is tropical monsoon. Subsistence rice farming, hydroelectricity, and mining of copper and gold anchor an economy heavily tied to Thailand and China.

Lan Xang flourished from the fourteenth century before fragmenting and falling under Siamese and then French control. Laos gained full independence in 1953 and, after the Indochina wars, became a one-party socialist state in 1975. It was the most heavily bombed country per capita in history during the Vietnam War, and unexploded ordnance still scars the countryside. The capital, Vientiane, sits on the Mekong, while Luang Prabang's gilded temples are a UNESCO treasure.

• Asia
  Earth's largest and most populous continent located in
• Cambodia
  The land of Angkor on the Mekong floodplain neighboring country
• Myanmar
  A land of pagodas and rivers between India and China neighboring country
• Thailand
  The never-colonized kingdom at the heart of mainland Southeast Asia neighboring country
• Vietnam
  An S-shaped coast from the Red River to the Mekong Delta neighboring country