The temples Laos traded for electricity

For generations, the temples along Laos’ rivers served as the spiritual centers of their communities. Now, many are being demolished or submerged – as the country builds dam after dam to export electricity to its neighbours.

By
Konlaphat Siri

Published 13 July 2026
4 min read

Luang Prabang province, Laos – Construction workers loaded broken brick and rubble onto trucks, one load after another, before the vehicles rolled slowly out of the site. What was left behind was barely recognisable as a building at all: the wreckage of Wat Ban Ladhan Rattanaphosaiyaram, a temple in Laos’ Nga district, Oudomxay province, that had served as the spiritual heart of its community for many generations.

The temple in Ban Ladhan village stood in the path of the Luang Prabang dam project. Operated by Luang Prabang Power Company Limited, the dam has drawn investment from CK Power and its Thai business partners, alongside Vietnamese capital and Lao energy firms. Construction began in 2021, and the dam is expected to formally open in 2027.

The temple was demolished between March and April this year. Poom, a Ban Ladhan resident identified here by a pseudonym for his safety, said the temple meant a great deal to him: for as long as he could remember, his life had been tied to this place.

He said it was a feeling hard to describe, watching a temple he knew so well be destroyed before his eyes in such a short space of time.

Footage of the demolition, filmed by residents before they left the area, soon began circulating online and drew a wave of comments. Villagers who remembered the temple wrote messages of grief, many echoing the same fear: that before long, the place where they once made merit, and the village where they once lived, might become part of the Luang Prabang dam.

Similar stories soon surfaced from other parts of Laos: villages whose own temples had already been flooded and left abandoned, or that might one day be dismantled because of dam projects elsewhere. This loss was not confined to Ban Ladhan. It has spread along the waterways, from one community to the next, across the country.

Where World Heritage protection ends

The Luang Prabang dam sits roughly 25 kilometres upstream from the Unesco World Heritage town of the same name. Since construction began, worries have grown that its development might affect the old town’s landscape, its traditional architecture and the community’s way of life.

In 2025, the World Heritage Committee warned that large-scale development in Luang Prabang province could threaten the town’s “Outstanding Universal Value” (OUV) if left unmanaged. At risk, the committee said, were the old town’s landscape and traditional architecture, along with the balance between economic development and the community’s way of life. The warning covered dams, transport infrastructure and commercial tourism alike.

“The concern is real, of course. Building a dam is bound to have an impact. But the World Heritage site has to come first, and in this case we’ve already been studying it for a long time,” said Kingthavan, an official at the Department of World Heritage and Fine Arts under the Lao Ministry of Culture and Tourism, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for safety.

Kingthavan also said the ancient temples inside the World Heritage town have been well preserved and have not been affected by the Luang Prabang dam project. It is a protection that stops at the town’s boundary. Many of the temples affected by dam construction elsewhere in Laos, such as Wat Ban Ladhan, lie outside the heritage zone, and outside its safeguards.

What the water took

Further north, along the Ou River in Ngoi district, Luang Prabang province, another community watched a temple disappear, not to a bulldozer this time, but to rising water.

“We could only get the small Buddha images out. No one wanted to move the main one: it was too large and difficult to carry, there was no equipment for it, and no one dared take it apart, for fear something bad would happen,” said Souksavat, a resident of Ban Hat Sa, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym.

Since PowerChina’s Nam Ou 3 dam began commercial operation in 2021, Souksavat said, water levels on the Ou River have risen and fallen unnaturally, leaving Wat Ban Hat Sa submerged. The forest temple once served more than sixty Lao Buddhist families from ten villages in the area.

The Ou River, about 448 kilometres long, is the largest tributary of the Mekong in Laos, a transport route and a lifeline for people across the north. It is now home to seven Nam Ou dam projects.

The abbot, novice monks and villagers worked together to save what they could, Souksavat said, carrying small Buddha statues and other items out of the submerged temple. They were enshrined in a new Wat Ban Hat Sa, which the Nam Ou 3 project built as a replacement.

Wat Ban Hat Sa was not the only one lost. The dam also submerged at least two other temples along the river, Wat Ban Hat Kham and Wat Ban Som Khing, and the company built replacement temples for both on new sites.

None of these temples ever stood within reach of the protections that apply inside Luang Prabang’s World Heritage boundary. The Lao authorities have no official conservation plan for temples affected by dam projects elsewhere in the country, leaving such decisions to be made according to the conditions and needs of each area.

Under the policy of pushing the country toward becoming the “battery of Southeast Asia,” Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams over the past decade, exporting most of the electricity they generate to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and China. But this development has changed more than the rivers. It has also changed the communities, temples and memories of the people who live along them.

New homes, but no farmland

Data from International Rivers shows that the seven dam projects in the Ou River basin have forced around 9,700 people from 127 villages to relocate, and have also affected the livelihoods of tens of thousands more who depend on the Ou River for fishing, farming and transport.

Among them are residents of Ban Hat Sa village, Ngoi district, Luang Prabang province, who had to move from their original homes to a new resettlement built for them by the company constructing the Nam Ou 3 dam project.

The resettlement includes housing, a temple, a school and a clinic, along with full basic infrastructure: water and electricity. Yet no farmland was allocated, so villagers still have to travel back to their original area to farm.

“They moved into the new houses, but most still make their living in the old area. On foot it takes half a day. They have cattle, orchards, old rice fields there – so they go back. Here, there is no farmland at all,” said Sangthong, an official at the Luang Prabang provincial department of agriculture and forestry, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for safety.

He added that this was not unique to the villagers of Ban Hat Sa. The same has happened to Lao people in many towns and provinces affected by dam construction projects across the country.

“Now only memory remains”

“I feel sad about losing something so beautiful, but it’s necessary for development. We have no right to decide, it has to be up to the government to allocate,” Souksavat said, recalling the sandy beach that once ran along this stretch of the Ou River, the site of Wat Pa Ban Hat Sa before it disappeared beneath the water. “But if there were no dam, there would still be the beach. There would still be nature.”

Souksavat said it was a feeling hard to put into words. Villagers’ objections, in the end, made no difference to the project.

In Ban Ladhan, a resident posted a message on Facebook mourning Wat Ban Ladhan, the temple he had known since childhood. All that was left, he wrote, was to pack up and leave for the resettlement village, and the new temple the company had built there as compensation.

“Everyone wailed, thinking of home, of the birthplace of our grandparents,” he wrote. “Today we must leave it all, with tears: the home we once lived in, the temple we once relied on. Now only memory remains.”

Another villager wrote: “Once, hundreds of people lived in this village. But today, and before long, everything will be submerged beneath the water.”

Note: Given restrictions on independent reporting access in Laos, interviews for this story were conducted by phone and through social media. Pseudonyms have been used in place of real names throughout for the safety of sources.