Written in 1958, The Edge of Tomorrow is American physician Tom Dooley’s first-hand account of his humanitarian work in Laos. Want to date a Lao person? Go into business with a Lao partner? Spend two weeks or two years in the country? This is the go-to guide for answers to the questions that leave most westerners perplexed. Cooper discusses the connection between the Thai and Lao people, their similarities and what makes them distinct. CultureShock! Laos: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette answers questions about Buddhism, the heavy drinking culture in Laos, Lao people’s relationship with the truth, strong family relationships and more. This easy-to-read guide is from the perspective of author Robert Cooper, an Englishman who runs a book shop in Vientiane and has lived in South East Asia for more than 30 years. Laos can be a confusing and contradictory place.

CultureShock! Laos: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette There’s something for everyone on this list. Laos’s boarders have been reopened to tourists for just over a quarter century, but Laos’s rich history and gorgeous scenery has been written about in genres ranging from fiction and cookbooks to memoirs and travel guides. To read the original and see the book covers, click here. A series of chance meetings left her with a profound sense of a beautiful country and a unique culture threatened-once again-by the extreme pressures of the modern world.This post was originally published on Culture Trip. But she also discovered that the persisting problems bequeathed by its recent past are tragic and other problems threaten its immediate future. What she found was a country where the people-kind, gentle, welcoming-more than compensate for everything that can go wrong. When renowned travel writer Dervla Murphy went to Laos in 1997, she discovered a country that had only just opened its borders to the West. By the time of the ceasefire in February 1973, Laos had become the most heavily bombed nation in the history of the world.

But the biggest bully in its history was the United States which, starting in 1964, carried on a 'secret war' against Laos.

Nestled between Vietnam to the east, Myanmar and China to the north, Thailand to the west and Cambodia to the south, Laos has long suffered from the depredations of its larger neighbors.

One Foot in Laos by Dervla Murphy