Laos is still the old Asia, where children play happily in the streets, unattended, and the price of anything is whatever you're prepared to pay; even if saffron-robed Buddhist monks do carry mobiles and make plans to study in Texas.

The former kingdom of Lan Xang is still a land where the discerning traveller can savour the languid ambience of a princess’ villa by the Mekong, haggle for shimmering silks or stock up on beetles and buffalo blood....

‘A place that time had forgotten’ wrote one bemused war correspondent in 1960. ‘An apparent comic-opera world of royal courts, sacred elephants, ancient temples and orange-robed monks,’ ventured another.

Modern-day Laos is a creation of French empire-builders who stitched together a patchwork of 68 ethnic groups. This land-locked, mountainous territory the size of Great Britain is home to a scant four million people. Only recently is a modest measure of prosperity being achieved, with neither the rapid industrialisation of Vietnam nor the instability of Cambodia.