Laos: now open for tourist business.

Laos, a former French colony in Southeast Asia which shifted to communist rule in 1975, attracts around 150,000 tourists yearly. Tourist visas are imposed so as not to inundate the country's limited facilities. It has a large number of Buddhist temples and a quiet ambiance.

Planning a trip to the Lao People's Democratic Republic, or more commonly, Laos? Do it soon before it changes. Still largely uncontaminated by capitalism and with little evident prosperity, this landlocked nation of 4.7 million people, with an area about the size of Great Britain, is on the threshold of ope