Lao was a country of magnificent scenery, beautiful people and amazing culture (and an endless supply of chillis and coconuts). My first impression of Lao was one of chaos and excitement, as a) there seemed to be absolutely no road rules and b) there were motorcycles and people everywhere! While it was easy to get caught up in the ‘tourist buzz’, I also became wary of the inner city poverty that was evident in Vientiane and was struck by the immense difference between it and my own city of Brisbane.

Over the next 10 days as we explored Lao (4000km of 4WD exploring to be precise), I also discovered that behind the magnificent scenery, the beautiful people and the amazing culture, there existed some terrible poverty. We had arrived during the dry season, so much of the landscape actually resembled the Australian outback (minus the gumtrees), but the villages located out in the rural areas were a far cry from Australia’s rural towns.

The first village we visited was an enormous culture shock- despite reading about poverty, seeing poverty on TV and researching it, seeing it ‘in the flesh’ was quite a different experience. Children wearing filthy clothes, houses no bigger than my bedroom at home, families facing daily struggles to gather enough food and water ‘why are people still living like this in the 21st century?’, became a question I frequently asked myself throughout the study tour. The more villages we visited, the more I understood the poverty cycle, and the more I noticed the ugliness and the unfairness of it. How can you lift yourself out of the poverty cycle if everyday is spent working so you can simply have enough food to survive? How can you follow your ambitions if you’re constantly hungry?

The lives of the Lao people living in these poverty stricken conditions were purely about survival and working to provide the family with basic resources. Resources like food, water and medicine that we take for granted here in Australia. The time that I spent foraging with a young girl in the forest for food was a time where I gained an insight into the reality of everyday life in poverty. I watched her as she threw crabs and frogs into her basket and pounded at the ground with a wooden stick half her height. I asked her, ‘what do you eat everyday?’. Her reply? ‘I eat rice with what I can find in the forest and I share it with my family’. Keep in mind, she has 8 siblings. It hardly seems fair, but food was not the only problem that these families faced. Without proper healthcare, disease was also one. We met a mother whose baby was quite sick with a fever and an illness, but how could she afford to have him treated? She quite literally had no money to do so.

After meeting these beautiful Lao families who were so welcoming and generous despite having next to nothing, and seeing the ugliness of poverty reflected in their lifestyles and their future hopes, I realise how incredibly lucky we are in Australia with our abundant lifestyle. But even more importantly, I realise the need for us to take action against a cause that is damaging the hopes and the livelihood of many people.