ABSTRACT
The Lao PDR is landlocked and bordered by Burma, Cambodia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam. Today, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic covers only a small portion of the territory of that former kingdom. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British Survey of India extended their classical triangulation into neighboring Burma and the French triangulation in the Lao PDR was subsequently connected. In 1982, in cooperation with the Soviet Union, the Lao National Geographic Department initiated a new geodetic survey to provide control for small-scale mapping. The Lao Datum 1993 was created following completion of a national GPS survey in cooperation with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
