Elsewhere ...

One objective of the blog is comparison with other countries. In Lao, public transport is apparently like this:

Walk through the streets of most Asian cities and you'll be besieged by taxi drivers clamouring for fares and traders desperate to sell their wares. In Vientiane, things are starkly different. In a queue of three-wheeler tuk-tuk cabs in the centre of the city, all the drivers are asleep in hammocks strung along the length of the passenger seats.

Well, at least that's the case as described in the Austrailian of March 17, 2007. But the author points straight away that Vientiane may be the exception. A positive one?
Unfortunately the author seems a bit lost, for instance

... the first traffic lights arrived only recently

Bursting the bubble: traffic lights have been a feature of Vientiane's roads from at least 2000 onwards. In a sense that's recent.