Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.

A photographer in Somerset, South West England captured the mating rituals of toads as several males attempt to mate with one female all at once. (Photo by John Waters/NPL)

Indigenous Sahrawi girls play on an improvised see-saw at a refugee camp of Boudjdour in Tindouf, southern Algeria March 3, 2016. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to visit the Sahrawi refugees in south-west Algeria's Tindouf region. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Vintage Newton, a pop-up exhibition of Helmut Newton prints from 1974-1984, opens in west London at the ONGallery. These prints, which feature Charlotte Rampling and Elsa Peretti, were produced from a series of transparencies that he considered his most provocative and important. Here: Saddle II. (Photo by Helmut Newton)

Labourers load a three-wheeled vehicle onto the back of a van at the Mercato market in Addis Ababa October 9, 2015. Addis Ababa's “Mercato” – Italian for “market” – is reputedly the biggest open-air market in Africa, lying in the west of the capital. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

Mud-covered tourists pretend to be trapped inside a mud prison at the Daecheon Beach Mud Plaza in the city of Boryeong on South Korea's west coast, July 17, as they take part in the Boryeong Mud Festival, which opened that day and runs through July 26. Boryeong mud is rich in natural mineral component and is considered to prevent skin aging. (Photo by EPA/Yonhap)

Boys walk home for lunch from school in the village of Kogelo, west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, July 16, 2015. U.S. President Barack Obama visits Kenya and Ethiopia later this month. His ancestral home of Kogelo is home to Sarah Hussein Obama, his step-grandmother. The Kenyan village, burial place of Obama's father, features an open-pit goldmine, a pork butcher's, a school named after their most famous son and outdoor market stalls. Villagers get around by motorbike taxi or on foot while a donkey-cart transports water. Children, some of them named Obama in honour of the President, walk to and from school together. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)