Laos is known as “The Land of Million Elephants” for years. The reason for that was that the capital was the Luang Prabang in the northern mountains of Laos.
Laos, landlocked country of northeast-central mainland Southeast Asia. It comprises an irregularly round portion in the north that narrows into a peninsula-like region stretching to the southeast. Overall, the country extends about 650 miles (1,050 km) from northwest to southeast.
The capital is Vientiane (Lao: Viangchan), on the Mekong River in the northern portion of the country. This part of the country had lush jungle and huge grazing fields that sustained massive herds of wild elephants- and these large strong animals were cough, trained, and used largely as the principal engines of war and a main means of transportation for the Laos Royal Family back in ancient times.
Asian elephants loved to live in Laos because they’re used to have extensive forest and crops to live on, and there was a sparse human population.
However, in modern days, the wars and bombs have scared the elephants away, losing natural habitats like the expansion of settlements, agriculture, and industrial infrastructure, the trade of the ivory and the forests have been cut down which results in less food. So the elephant population in Laos is dwindling fast.
Now, Laos only has about 700 elephants left in the wild. And there are only about 400 domesticated elephants. With an increase in demand for elephants by the logging industry, they make the animals work at a furious pace. They are overworked and exhausted, and as a result, cannot reproduce.
From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped over two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.
The bombings were part of the U.S. Secret War in Laos to support the Royal Lao Government against the Pathet Lao and to interdict traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The bombings destroyed many villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao civilians during the nine-year period. Laos is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country.
The official language of Laos is Lao, although various foreign languages have often been used by the elite. French was once the language of the Lao upper classes and of the cities, but by the 1970s English had displaced it.
Under the leadership of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, the Vietnamese became the third language of the elite.
