Laos: Khone falls-six miles of cataracts on the Mekong River in southern Laos-kept the longest river in Southeast Asia, (7th longest in the Asia, and world of the 12th no. of the longest river. Its length is almost 2700 miles or 4350 km) from becoming a trade route to China. With fewer then seven million people, the region’s smallest population, Laos faces pressure to dam its stretch of the Mekong to export hydropower. The river is now dammed only in China. Northeast of Khone falls, the fertile Bolovens plateau is an isolated extrusion of basaltic lava. As a link on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, much of which ran through Laos, the plateau was heavily bombed during the Vietnam War.