"When I drove through Laos nine years ago, the villages were very dark. People were watching me from the shadows. Now it's brighter and it's possible to talk about the secret war. But it's still not safe," says Thai photographer Vinai Dithajohn, who traveled earlier this year to remote parts of the small and often neglected country.
The World Bank reports that Laos has been one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia in the past decade, but the United Nations calls Laos one of the least-developed countries in the region. This contradiction was already apparent when I researched "The Most Secret Place on Earth," a 2007 documentary on the secret war led by the CIA against communist forces in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s.
