Laos 🇱🇦

Laos is a country in South-Eastern Asia, one of the 11 entries this site files under that subregion. The long form of the name is Lao People's Democratic Republic. The capital is Vientiane.

Some 7.8 million people call it home, placing it 102nd of 249 by population — between Sierra Leone above it and Hong Kong below. Among the 11 entries in South-Eastern Asia it ranks 7th by area and 8th by population.

Its territory runs to 236,800 km², which ranks it 84th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Romania and just ahead of Guyana. That makes it almost exactly the same size as Romania.

Laos has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Laos's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Laos's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇨🇳 China
• 🇻🇳 Vietnam
• 🇹🇭 Thailand
• 🇲🇲 Myanmar
• 🇰🇭 Cambodia

Its reference point sits at 18.0° north and 105.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,004 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

5 countries share a land border with it: Myanmar, Cambodia, China, Thailand and Vietnam. The largest of them by area is China, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 1.65 billion people.

It has no sea coast of its own. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, and it means every shipment in or out has to cross someone else's border first. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Density comes out at around 33 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

People from Laos are called Laotians.

The one official language is Lao. No other entry in this dataset lists Lao, so on this list it stands alone.

Inside Asia it places 32nd of 50 by population, and it accounts for 1.1% of everyone living in South-Eastern Asia.

Zoom in from the world to South-Eastern Asia and Laos sits 8th of 11 by population and 7th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Cambodia just above and Singapore just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Indonesia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in South-Eastern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇰🇭 Cambodia
• 🇸🇬 Singapore
• 🇮🇩 Indonesia

Money there is the Lao kip (₭, LAK). It shares that currency with.

Websites there use the .la domain. The international dialling code is +856. Its ISO codes are la and LAO, which is what most databases and flag files use.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Laos, the answer is Vientiane.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

The Lao kip (LAK) is used only in Laos among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Lao is listed for Laos and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.