Laos reveals "hidden city" to adventurous visitors

By Nguyen Van Vinh

VIENG XAY, Laos (Reuters Life!) - For more than 30 years, Laos' "hidden city", home of its top communist guerrilla fighters, remained exactly that: hidden.

Now Laos is opening the secret limestone caves to visitors, taking advantage of a tourism boom in one of the world's few remaining one-party Communist states.

Tour guides and backpackers have replaced the guerrilla fighters who lived in the caves underneath and around the limestone mountains of Vieng Xay province in the 1960s, where they planned attacks against the Americans.

After the war ended, Laos kept these caves off limits.

Communist party chief Kaysone Phomvihanh, who later became president, established a base in the caves in 1964 and moved the politburo and central committee office there.

The complex even included an airtight emergency shelter with an oxygen pump in case of American gas attacks.

"It's just amazing that people could really live here and have their meetings, make their plans and create a government in the cave," said Pamela Sweeney, an American tourist.

The biggest cave, called the "elephant" cave, was used as a theatre where musicals and dance performances by local and foreign performers as well as rallies and meetings were held.