We left Vang Vieng and spent last night on a very small island on Lake
Nam Ngum. The lake is a reservoir created in Laos back in the 70's.
Apparently folks were in such a hurry to flood the river valley that
nobody thought to log it. So logging has been carried out in the lake
since then by scuba-divers using underwater pneumatic chainsaws.
You think I'm kidding don't you:
*URL removed, see below*
Our island had nothing else but the guest house we were staying in.
There was a restaurant on another island about 15m from ours. When
you wanted to eat you went down to the shore and waved at the people
in the restaurant, who'd then send a small boat over to pick you up.
Unfortunately our island had rats and I was kept up half the night by
the sounds of one skittering around our room. No doubt it was
desperately trying to find a way to steal my precious coconut biscuits
that I put in a bag and tied to our ceiling fan.
At the time that I sent the email I had an URL to an excellent
article about the underwater logging. The article is gone now
but any web search for the phrase "underwater logging" and Laos
would probably turn something up.
