COPE Visitor Centre

An absolute must visit if you are in Vientiane. It is free but a donation is appreciated. They also have a gift shop with interesting and educational products. I bought a book all about a boy with an artificial limb. The museum gives you lots of information about the history of the bombings throughout Laos and how it effected the population. Every exhibit was fascinating. The most harrowing was of a video of woman, a mother, describing the events that led to her son's death. He was affected by a pair of cluster bombs that other children were playing with. His life also could have been saved had the hospitals in the area had blood or oxygen. It was heartbreaking. I think the scale of the bombings across Laos is not widely known - and COPE help to shed light on this and how it still affects local people everyday.

Interesting to learn. Dark. Sad history. Free. But very small and compact. So travelling far for this can feel a little moot. But feels like a place that everyone should also visit at least once.

A visit here to this small museum is a must-see, to learn about the ongoing impacts of the USAF cluster bombings campaign, and the CIA secret war forged in Laos from the 1960s to late-70s which ravaged the terrain with a tonnage of unexploded ordinance (UXO) left behind ever since. It is a strangely eclectic but moving presentation of an abhorrent tragic history; but it also features COPE's incredible work, including the major clear-up of UXO, and the supporting of Lao men, women and children with maimed physical disability to gain free access to orthotics, prosthetics, and occupational aids and therapies. There is also an UXO Museum in Luang Prabang. Entry is free; donations are welcomed. Check out and support the gift shop, which also sells books from novellist Colin Cotterill, author of numerous volumes in the popular Dr. Siri Paiboun crime series. All royalties from the book sales go towards rehabilitation of bomb and bombie victims, and initiatives that promote Lao literacy among children.

Extremely powerful and strangely aesthetic presentation of a terrible ongoing crime visited on the people of Lao. Every American should go here and support the efforts of COPE -- it's very difficult for me to comprehend the sheer tonnage of ordnance dumped into the fields and forests of this beautiful country. There's a very powerful video of a family whose life was upended when the cooking fire in their hut, which they had lived in for many years, finally activated a bomb that they had no idea was there. The farmer was blinded and maimed, and his wounds forced his wife and children to go to work to make ends meet. At the end of this moving film, the credits indicated that the film was paid for by the US State Department. I was confused -- why is the US Government making films and yet not doing everything they possibly can to clean up the malignant danger they created?

Super interesting museum where you will learn how people’s live changes after they bumped into an UXO and for example lost a leg or arm. There is lots explained and the museum tells even more real life stories of victims. Its horrible to see that many of them loose their motivation to live. There are also many options to support the project. The entrance is for free.

COPE is a Lao, locally-run, non-profit organisation and it  helps support women, men, girls and boys with physical disabilities in Laos to gain free access to prosthetic, orthotics and physical therapy. It helps us understand the brutality of war and is quite educational.

A must visit! Very informative and lead to a rabbit hole of studying online. A donation is a must in order to support such a great organization. It's not a huge museum but it's eye opening and worth the time to check out. Makes you realize how much everyone in the world needs to come together in order to do better.

You can’t overstate the importance of work the work the people of COPE are doing at this place. We were completely stunned trying to understand what happened to Laos in the secret war… A lot of Laotian people have to live with the dangers of multi million unexploded bombs. Nobody living in the western world can possibly understand the magnitude of harm the US brought out to this country…