Philip Malone

This article is part of a series of guest blogs contributed by Brits who have lived and worked in Laos, or who have other interesting links to Laos.  I was posted to the British Embassy in Vientiane in 1959, only four years after the Embassy had first been set up. It was a very small mission. Only an […]

This article is part of a series of guest blogs contributed by Brits who have lived and worked in Laos, or who have other interesting links to Laos.  My parents were both born in Laos but came to the UK in the 1970s. I was born in Hackney in East London. Having visited Laos twice (once 8 […]

The following is a guest post by Colin Cotterill. In 1976, like Captain James Cook on his ill-fated trip to Hawaii, I set off from Blighty in search of adventure and never came back. Oh, perhaps the occasional Christmas or odd publishing junket, but I knew I’d never be taking advantage of the over-sixties London […]

We officially held our first day of work in the new British Embassy building on Monday!  After months of preparing for this occasion, everyone was very happy to move into the new building with nearly all of the staff in place just days before the official opening of the Embassy on 2 April. After a […]

The last few weeks have been particularly busy for us as we move into the final phase of our Embassy set-up. The renovation works on our new Embassy building (the former Australian Embassy building on Rue Nehru) are on schedule – if you are in Vientiane you may have noticed we have re-painted the building […]

It has been a few weeks since my last blog so time for an update on our progress in re-establishing our Embassy in Vientiane and on what we have been doing more broadly. As for our Embassy set-up, I think it important to highlight that, while we had the formal opening of the Embassy by […]

The Foreign Secretary announced in April 2012 his intention to re-open our Embassy to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (closed in 1985). Colleagues at the FCO in London have pretty much moved heaven and earth since then to make it happen. I arrived in Vientiane on 12 October, just two months after I received the […]