Laos Trivia
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47 free Laos trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, the heir of the Kingdom of a Million Elephants, the home of the world's widest waterfall and a plain of giant stone jars, and, per head, the most heavily bombed country in history. It is also a one-party state with a golden stupa on its money, a French "s" on its name and a beer The Economist called the most important lager in the world. This Laos trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-four questions run from geography (Vientiane, Luang Prabang, the Mekong, Phou Bia, the Bolaven Plateau, Khone Falls, Vang Vieng) through history (Fa Ngum and Lan Xang, the 1707 split, Anouvong, French Indochina, 1953, the civil war, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the bombing, the Pathet Lao and 1975, Kaysone Phomvihane) to culture and economy (Theravada Buddhism, Pha That Luang, the flag, the kip, sticky rice and laab, Beerlao, muay Lao, the Plain of Jars, the Boten–Vientiane railway). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the Mekong region. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and most populous city of Laos?
Vientiane
Vientiane. A Siamese army destroyed the city in 1827-28, and it recovered its standing only when the French made it their administrative capital in 1899.
Q 02Laos holds what distinction among the countries of Southeast Asia?
The only landlocked one
The only landlocked one. Five countries enclose it, and for centuries its stronger neighbours fought over it, leaving Laos a buffer between them.
Q 03In the Lao baci ceremony, held for weddings, births and farewells, what is tied around each guest's wrists?
Cotton strings
Cotton strings. Each knot is meant to hold the body's 32 guardian spirits in place, and the rite matters so much in Laos that it is performed at state ceremonies too.
Q 04What does the name of the historic Lao kingdom Lan Xang mean?
A million elephants
A million elephants. Its founder Fa Ngum, said to have grown up in exile at the Khmer court, marched home at the head of a Khmer army and took the throne in 1353.
Q 05What happened to the kingdom of Lan Xang in the early 1700s?
Dynastic break-up
Dynastic break-up. Pretenders fought over the throne until the realm split into rival kingdoms, and within a few generations the weakened successor states had become vassals of Siam.
Q 06Air America, the airline that flew supplies during the 'Secret War' in Laos, was covertly owned by which organisation?
The CIA
The CIA. Bought in 1950 as Civil Air Transport and renamed in 1959, it looked like an ordinary airline while its crews carried arms and supplies for covert operations.
Q 07Which Lao vassal king rebelled unsuccessfully against Siam in the 1820s and died a captive in Bangkok?
Anouvong
Anouvong. Siam destroyed his capital and carried off its people, yet Laos now honours the defeated king with a riverside park and a towering bronze statue.
Q 08Laos was unified under Paris's rule in 1893 as part of which colonial federation?
French Indochina
French Indochina. France won the territory by gunboat: in 1893 its warships blockaded Bangkok until Siam signed away its lands east of the Mekong.
Q 09Which city hosted the conference where 14 nations pledged in 1962 to respect the neutrality of Laos?
Geneva
Geneva. All fourteen governments signed, but North Vietnam kept thousands of troops in the country and American bombing soon followed, so the neutrality held only on paper.
Q 10Which communist movement fought the Royal Lao government in the 1959–1975 civil war?
Pathet Lao
Pathet Lao. The name means 'Lao Nation', and its public face was royal: Souphanouvong, the 'Red Prince', whose own half-brother led the government he was fighting.
Q 11Who became the first sitting US president to visit Laos, where America dropped over two million tons of bombs?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama. Speaking there in 2016, he said the tonnage exceeded what fell on Germany and Japan together in World War II, and he doubled US funding for clearing what never exploded.
Q 12About 80 million of which US weapons dropped on Laos failed to explode and remain in its soil?
Cluster bomblets
Cluster bomblets. Some 270 million were scattered over the country and nearly a third never went off; in the 2020s they were still killing or maiming dozens of people a year, most of them children.
Q 13US bombing of Laos aimed to deny the North Vietnamese the use of which supply route through the country?
Q 21Phra Lak Phra Lam, the national epic of Laos, is a retelling of which ancient Indian story?
The Ramayana
The Ramayana. Its episodes became the stock of Lao court dance drama, and the title puts the hero's brother first: Phra Lak is Lakshmana and Phra Lam is Rama.
Q 22French archaeologist Madeleine Colani concluded in the 1930s that the stone vessels of the Plain of Jars were linked to what?
Burial practices
Burial practices. Later digs found human remains and grave goods beside the jars, more than 2,000 of them carved by an Iron Age people who then vanished from the record.
Q 23Pha That Luang, the gold-covered stupa in the capital, was ordered built in 1566 by which king?
Setthathirat
The Ho Chi Minh Trail
The Ho Chi Minh Trail. Footpaths that had crossed the mountains for centuries were built up by North Vietnam into a garrisoned network of roads able to carry truck convoys.
Q 14At Boun Bang Fai, held in Laos just before the monsoon, villagers compete to launch what into the sky?
Homemade rockets
Homemade rockets. They are fired skyward to remind Phaya Thaen, the god of rain, to send the monsoon in time for the planting season.
Q 15Who led the Lao People's Revolutionary Party from 1955 and became the country's de facto leader in 1975?
Kaysone Phomvihane
Kaysone Phomvihane. The son of a Vietnamese father, he was recruited by Vietnam's communists as a law student in Hanoi and then ran a party whose very existence was kept secret.
Q 16Which ethnic minority, many of whom had fought alongside the Americans, fled Laos in large numbers after 1975?
Hmong
Hmong. Their US-backed guerrilla army had held the northern mountains for years; when the communists won, General Vang Pao was airlifted out and many of his people followed him into exile.
Q 17Which energy export, bought mostly by one neighbour, was for years the biggest foreign-currency earner for Laos?
Hydropower
Hydropower. Dams such as Nam Ngum were built to sell their surplus across the border, and Laos still sends about three-quarters of the electricity it generates abroad.
Q 18The khaen, whose music UNESCO lists as Lao heritage, is a mouth organ with pipes made of what?
Bamboo
Bamboo. Each pipe holds a small metal reed, and at village festivals listeners are expected to join the singing and dancing rather than simply watch.
Q 19The Khone Falls in southern Laos hold which world record?
Widest waterfall
Widest waterfall. The cascades spread across about 10 km of channels and stop all shipping on the Mekong, so the French built a small railway across two islands to carry cargo past them.
Q 20The name Luang Prabang means what?
Royal Buddha Image
Royal Buddha Image. The name honours the Phra Bang, a Buddha statue said to have been given to the kingdom's founder in the 1350s and long treasured as a symbol of the right to rule the Lao.
Setthathirat. His stupa was wrecked when a Siamese army sacked the city in 1828 and lay in ruins for generations, until it was rebuilt under French rule.
Q 24The middle stripe of the Lao flag is which colour?
Blue
Blue. The band stands for prosperity and the red ones for blood shed in the fight for independence; the design was a party flag until 1975, when it replaced the royal banner.
Q 25What is the currency of Laos?
Kip
Kip. It replaced the French colonial piastre in the 1950s, when the single currency that Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam had shared was split into the kip, the riel and the dong.
Q 26Which branch of Buddhism, also dominant in Cambodia, do most people in Laos follow?
Theravada
Theravada. In Laos it is blended with a belief in spirits, and villagers who go to the temple also make offerings to the guardian spirits of house and village.
Q 27The Lao language is closely related to and mutually intelligible with which neighbouring language?
Thai
Thai. Across the Mekong in north-eastern Thailand people speak Isan, which linguists count as Lao, so the river has long joined its two banks more than it has divided them.
Q 28The first bridge over the lower Mekong, opened at the Lao capital in 1994, was paid for by which country?
Australia
Australia. It gave about A$42 million in aid for the Friendship Bridge, where traffic has to switch sides of the road, because Laos drives on the right and its neighbour on the left.
Q 29Which large forest mammal of the mountains along Laos's eastern border was unknown to science until the 1990s?
Saola
Saola. A survey team first met it in 1992 as a pair of long, pointed horns found in a hunter's home, and it proved so unlike its relatives that it was given a genus of its own.
Q 30Laab, the Lao minced-meat salad, is traditionally seasoned with lime, fish sauce, herbs and what?
Roasted ground rice
Roasted ground rice. Raw grains are toasted in a dry pan until brown and then pounded to a coarse powder, which is stirred through the meat just before serving.