Thakhet and Savannakhet
On our way from the Spring River Resort and the King Lor Caves, we stopped at Thakhet for lunch, There is a bridge here across the Mekong, opened in 2011 and one of only a handful across the river as building bridges across such a wide and fast flowing river is a challenge. There is also a special economic zone to encourage employment and development.
It was also to be a railway town with a train link to Tan Ap on the main railway line running north - south in Vietnam which was abandoned with only a few kilometres ever being built.
In 2005, western scientists first discovered the Loatian Rock Rat, in a Thakhet market, a new species unrelated to other living rodents and possibly linked to an extinct species more than 1 million years old.
Thaket has a sinister past as it was the location of a massacre of Lao women and children in March 1946 by French Empire forces as they tried to re-exert control over their colonies after the end of the Second World War.
The monument.
No comments:
Post a Comment