Joe Cummings Ponders State of SEA Tourism

above, Vang Vien Before Tourism

Before I do a cut and paste from The New Statesman I'll give some background.

Joe Cummings had a lot to do with my initial view of Thailand and Asia. He was the author of the Thailand edition of the Lonely Planet book when I first went there and his attitude and outlook made a lot of sense to me then, still does now.

Joe encouraged readers to dig a little deaper, look a little closer. Learn some words, eats some local food, talk to some people. Eventualy I lived in other countries, but I always used his template of learning about the people of the country as a guide.

Joe's books were exaustive and also up to date. His insight into the language, the people and culture gave him a perspecive unmatched by todays writers. After all how many guidebook writers can speak in the language of the country they write about, how many live there? More likely they are young, paid for a brief few week mad dash around the place collecting prices and names of hotels, and then it might well be off to the next country half way around the world.

Without further ranting here it is.

Beauty at a price

Joe Cummings

Published 17 July 2008
Concrete hotels, go-go bars and drug tourism have scarred Thailand, Laos and Cambodia - yet it is not too late to develop a less destructive travel industry. Part of the New Stateman's special focus on South East Asia

Tourism in mainland south-east Asia has entered a new era. Thailand, once something of an underground destination, has become hugely popular, attracting more than 12 million tourists every year. Its top resorts, such as Phuket and Koh Samui, are swamped by foreigners, particularly in the winter high season.

But political and social trends are reshaping the country's travel scene. The stereotype of Bangkok as a city that never sleeps was shattered by a "new social order", propagated by the conservative Thai Rak Thai political party (reformulated after an anti-TRT coup as the People's Power Party). Prompted by the then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's conviction that "dark influences" cause all manner of social ills after midnight, the Thai government began imposing early closing (between midnight and 2am) on bars, discos, massage parlours and every other entertainment venue.

Nowadays, tourists arriving in Bangkok expecting to party all night often say they feel cheated. "If I wanted to head home early when the pubs shut," I heard a young Englishman complain recently, "I'd have stayed in Brighton."

Although Thaksin himself turned out to be something of a dark influence (the state has filed or is considering more than 20 charges of corruption against the former premier, who was deposed in a military coup in September 2006), the new social order's strict closing times have remained in effect.

The city's notorious go-go bars along the neon-splashed lanes of Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza have been heavily affected by the policy. Their clientele was used to arriving around 11pm and staying until 3am or 4am, and even now the clubs remain relatively empty before 11pm. The owners and their female staff - many of whom depend on after-hours "dates" arranged while at work - now have to solicit business over the course of just three hours.
But in neighbouring Cambodia, Phnom Penh, once considered one of the region's more conservative capitals, is being touted as the "new Bangkok". Two of the city's most popular, long-established bars, Sharky's and Walkabout, now open 24 hours a day. Others won't close until the last customer leaves. Trendy bars and cafes, full of twenty- and thirtysomething businesspeople and tourists, have sprung up along Sisowath Quay, supplanting classic post-Khmer Rouge drinking holes such as the famous Foreign Correspondents Club.

Similarly, Siem Reap - not so long ago a dusty outpost humbly prostrated at the feet of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex - has recently been transformed into a city of art galleries, gelaterias and chic, architect-designed hotels such as the Hôtel de la Paix. The city has become such a destination in its own right that it's not unusual to meet a foreigner with no plans to visit the Angkor complex nearby.

The heady scent of marijuana, readily available for US$1 per neatly rolled, Bob Marley-sized spliff, wafts down the streets of both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. No one in Bangkok - a target of Thaksin's deadly drug wars in 2004, during which more than 2,000 petty dealers were extrajudicially executed - would dare smoke cannabis in public. In tourist Cambodia, however, it is relatively commonplace.

The right kind of travel

Drug tourism also flourishes in neighbouring Laos, particularly in Vang Vieng, a small town wedged in a river valley lined by limestone cliffs. Dozens of limestone caves, many of them holy to the Lao people, are Vang Vieng's main daytime attraction, but when night falls, foreigners often drift towards the town's half-dozen opium dens. I asked one den owner about the intricate wood-and-bamboo pipes on display. "Those are for tourists," he replied. "The locals prefer these," - smaller glass pipes filled with ya baa, the crude, locally made amphetamine. "Much stronger."

But some tourism in other areas is more carefully managed. Si Phan Don is a cluster of impossibly scenic islands in the middle of the Mekong in southern Laos, close to the northern Cambodian border. Here, where the Mekong reaches its widest extent, a handful of islands are inhabited year-round. Peaceful and palm-fringed, they look like a mini-Polynesia.
Two of the islands - Don Det and Don Khon - are lined with guest-houses, constructed simply, in local styles. River breezes take the place of air-conditioning, and the islands' power generators are typically engaged from 6pm-10pm only. The main tourist activity is boating from island to island to observe Lao village life. Villagers also offer boat excursions to see one of the last surviving pods of Irrawaddy dolphins, found only in mainland south-east Asia. It is unknown how many are left in the area - perhaps as few as 20 - but the Lao provincial and district governments work hard to protect them from local fishermen, providing free dolphin-friendly nets in place of the deadly gill nets they used until recently.

Similarly, local people in the northern Lao province of Luang Namtha have, under their own initiative, created village-based eco-trekking programmes in and around the Nam Ha National Protected Area. Extending to the border with China and contiguous with Yunnan's Shiang Yong Protected Area, Nam Ha is one of the most important international wildlife corridors in the region. It is also home to minority hill-tribe groups, including the Lao Huay, the Akhas and the Khamus.

The hill-tribes supply and train leaders for the small group treks in tribal lands, which are scheduled so that no village or area is repeatedly inundated by tourists. The programme has been so successful that the United Nations Development Programme has recognised it as a "best practice" poverty alleviation intervention, and it earned a United Nations Development Award in 2001.

In many ways the late-blooming tourism industries in Laos and Cambodia, delayed by decades of war, have benefited from observing the mistakes Thailand made during its 1980s and 1990s economic boom. On Thailand's vast Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand coastlines, which still attract by far the majority of tourist visitors to the country, the negative impacts of overbuilding and congestion in parts of Koh Samui and Phuket have served as vivid lessons on how not to develop natural attractions.

The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which devastated small portions of Thailand's Andaman coast and took more than 8,000 lives (roughly half of whom were foreign tourists), brought beach tourism to a virtual standstill for a full year afterwards. A few Thais argued that the tragedy offered the opportunity for lower-impact rehabilitation of the affected areas. However, most business owners simply created the same tourism landscape as before - which has, at least, helped Thais avoid the harmful aspects of extinct local practices such as tin mining and cyanide fishing.

Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are all increasingly struggling to identify and attract a market that lends itself to sustainable tourism. One of the latest buzz terms used by national tourism offices (NTOs) in the region is "high-yield traveller". On the face of it, the concept seems relatively clear: "We want visitors who leave behind a lot of money." But who are the real high-yield travellers? Unfortunately, most south-east Asian NTOs define them as the visitors with the highest expenditure per day. The NTOs believe their task is simple: target the richest and most spendthrift.

Yet per-day expenditures are not the whole story. Higher-spending tourists typically demand hotels packed with imported amenities and foods, and managed by foreigners or local people trained overseas. Tourism revenue leaves the country through the purchase of imported goods, through expatriated salaries and through overseas tuition. Most of the high-expenditure-per-day figures are eroded by such hidden costs to the host country.

Budget is better

Other hidden costs of the higher-spending tourist are environmental and cultural. The typical international hotel chain may offer a nod to local architecture, but neglects ways of cooling living spaces that do not involve using air-conditioning, for example. Local people, awed by the hotel monoliths, may gradually come to look down upon their own ways of building, thereby contributing to a loss of culture.

Meanwhile, the average backpacker or budget traveller - a sector of the market increasingly spurned by NTOs - stays at local-standard hotels and guest-houses, eats at local restaurants and buys local handicrafts direct from village crafts people. The income "leakage" is much less, and because the backpacker typically stays in the host destination longer, the net income is in fact usually greater than for the high-expenditure-per-day traveller.

For the moment, tourism in Cambodia and Laos seems aimed squarely - whether intentionally or not - at this high-yield, low-impact market. Thailand attracts a mix of mass-market, luxury and budget travellers; it cannot turn back the clock to a time when it was at the same level of development as Cambodia or Laos. However, it is not too late to adjust Thailand's tourism marketing policy and to work towards preserving the increasingly fragile cultures and environments in the country's less explored areas of the north and north-east.

The downturn in the global economy, and the resulting dip in south-east Asian tourism, provide another chance for the industry to reflect on its way of working, another opportunity to decide whether the region needs more multinational-dominated mega-resorts - or a more old-fashioned, local approach to welcoming visitors.

Joe Cummings, an author of Lonely Planet's Thailand guide for 25 years, has spent most of his adult life in south-east Asia

Burma - Hot History Lesson

I saw this video clip over on a blog called friscodude. The blog itself is worth a look. Written by a travel writer, Carl Parkes, based in Thailand, it is Asian themed but not necessarily restricted to travel. The writing is good and there's often new material.

Craig Schuler's Photos

Self Portrait by Craig Schuler at the Chinese border Phongsali Province Laos. Abandoned Casino in background

Craig studied Thai language formally, and then taught himself Lao language. He gets on well with people and that's obvious from his photographs. People enjoy having him take their picture.

Craig's latest series called sitting on top of a million elephants is kind of a play on words. Laos is called the land of a million elephants and the province where Craig took his most recent series of pictures is the northernmost province in Laos extending by itself way up into the space between Vietnam and China. Not only are the photos from this northernmost province, they are also from the most northern district within that province. Truly Sitting On Top Of A Million Elephants

The name of the district is Nyat Ou, and the Province is Phongsali. I visited that district briefly while in Phongsali at Craig's recommendation. It was everything he had described and more. Ou Tai was remote and seemingly influenced very little yet by the rest of the world.

I'm not sure how many photos are in this set. Many more than any I've ever seen before from Craig. Usually he's very stingy with the photos. Perhaps he had many more "keepers" with this batch.If the links don't show about 100 or more black and whites of rural Laos, email Craig and demand he make the images permanently available for view.

Since I originaly posted this, things have changed. There now seem to be 12 photos all looking kind of like old colour prints, I think this is, as as called on his link to as "treated colour". Interesting to see them first as black and white, and now as faded colours. Some of the images I remember from a year ago as having vibrant but natural seeming colours. I'll have to watch and see what's next.

Update on the update. It seems as if Craig didn't get much response on the original series of black and whites, so he opted for the fall back photos. Craig promises to make the black and whites available again soon. Send an email to Craig by clicking here and going to the portion of his web site that says "contact" tell him to bring back the black and whites

He has had two other sets of color photos on the same web site. I liked both of the other sets, they were tremendous in their own right, but these photos seem to build on his earlier work and go beyond them. The black and white adds to the feeling of timelessness. If you didn't know already when they were taken you might think they are from ten, twenty, fifty or more years ago.

Of Laos and Laotians

Some Lao people in Laos. Left to right, baby Namphone, her mom Aunt Kien, Sengthian, Aunt Hong, Creag.

A great post follows about a controversial subject from a Lao American young woman whom I just happen to agree with, or else why quote it, right?

The quote within a quote, is from her blog lao-ocean girl I think the quoted article within the quoted blog is by Grant Evans the preeminent Lao scholar. (correction it's by both Grant Evans and Nick Enfield published in the Vientiane Times in 1998)

This part by LA-ocean girl

I’m Laotian-American, but currently live in Korea. I’ve travelled around SE Asia and have met other backpackers who have travelled to Laos. There always seemed to be a discrepancy as to what the country was called. There was one group, including myself, who called it Laos. Then there was the other group, who thought they were "in" with the locals, and called it Lao. Sometimes I would correct people, but most of the time people mentioned the country in passing, so I let it slide. In addition, who was I, to correct foreigners that I didn’t even know. This may seem like a trivial point, but it’s always irritated me. Sure, the local people called their country Lao, but it was in the context of "Prathet Lao" or "Muang Lao". Literally translated, they both mean "Lao land" and "Lao country". Whenever I talked to my parents about Laos, I always refer to it as "Muang Lao," but that’s because I actually speak Lao. It just seemed pretentious of foreigners to call the country Lao. Aarrrgghh! But that’s just me… I don’t tell my friends that my trip to "Italia" was wonderful, I say "Italy."

Below is an article I found about this topic. It has some insightful linguistic information.

This part by Grant Evans and Nick Enfield. Grant Evans needs no introduction to those who read about Laos. Nick Enfield I hadn't heard of as I don't really speak Laotian, (I fake it and smile a lot) People who are into it would probably call him an ethno linguist or something.publications of Nick Enfield

There appears to be confusion among some foreigners in Laos about how to spell the name of the country known today by its official name, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In particular there is confusion about whether to refer to the country as ‘Lao’ or ‘Laos’ when writing or speaking in English. Historically it has been common for English writers to refer to the country as Laos when not using the country’s official title, and this is the standard form outside of the LPDR today. So why confusion inside the country? One source of the confusion for some foreigners appears to be that when they come to the country they discover that in the Lao language, the country’s name has no final ’s’. Indeed, there are no words at all in Lao which have a final ’s’. Some people therefore seem to think that it is more correct to say, for example, that Vientiane is the capital of ‘Lao’ rather than ‘Laos’. But where does this logic come from? There are a great many country names that are pronounced quite differently in English, or indeed are completely different words in the home language. An outstanding example is the country name ‘China’ which actually does not exist in any variety of Chinese. In Mandarin, the official language of China, the country is referred to as ‘Zhong Guo’. In Lao, China is referred to as ‘Jiin’. Another example is India, whose name in Hindi is ‘Bharat’, a completely different word to the English. Further away from the Asian context, inhabitants of the country called ‘Finland’ call their homeland ‘Soumi’. A better known European example is Germany, which is known as ‘Allemagne’ in French, and ‘Deutschland’ in the native German. All these examples show that it is quite common not only for the name of a country to be pronounced quite differently in various languages, but indeed may be a completely different word. We have heard reports where foreign experts have been instructed by some Lao officials not to use the term ‘Laos’ in their reports, but to call the country ‘Lao’ instead. "Laos does not exist", they have been told by officials. So, for example, we can find the following sentences in a recent UN document: "Reduction of rural poverty is a main motivating factor for rural development in Lao. At its stage of development, rural poverty reduction in Lao will come by increasing rural employment possibilities…" The uses of ‘Lao’ in both cases could have been ‘Laos’, and we would suggest that it is more desirable to use ‘Laos’ in these contexts. Only if the document had used Lao PDR’ in both cases would it have been correct to use ‘Lao’. It is a puzzle to us why some officials would issue such instructions to foreign experts. Despite that fact that the Lao themselves have their own distinctive ways of pronouncing the names of other countries, we can only think that this instruction is some kind of zealous nationalism which insists that foreigners use the name ‘Lao’ in the same way the Lao do in their own language. Such officials may be unaware that the Lao also force the names of other countries to conform to their own pronunciation conventions.

Consider the ways in which the Lao language renders the names of various foreign countries. While in the cases of Vietnam and Cambodia, Lao pronounces the names of these countries quite like the natives do, there are others that are extremely different in terms of pronunciation. Two good examples from Europe are Austria and Belgium. These are pronounced in Lao as something like ‘Ottalik’ and ‘Bensik’ respectively (from French Autteriche and Belgique). It so happens that English has a huge range of possible sounds that can appear at the end of a word. In English, the rounding-off of the word ‘Laos’ with an ’s’ is a very typical thing to do, as any Lao who struggles with an ’s’ on the end of every second word will attest. In Lao, however, and many other languages of Southeast Asia, it is impossible to finish a word with sounds like ’s’,'f’,'th’, and so on. In Cantonese, for example, there is a tendency to add an ‘ee’ sound to the end of words that end with ’s’. ‘Price’, for example, is pronounced ‘pricey’, or ‘tips’ becomes ‘tipsy’, and so on. Cantonese does not have a word-final ’s’ sound, and so it has to add a vowel so that the ’s’ can be colloquially pronounced. This process of changing the pronunciation of a borrowed word to conform to the conventions of the borrowing language is called indigenisation. Laos with an ’s’ was one solution in English for the country’s name. It could have been ‘Lao’, but it may well have been ‘Lao-land’, by literal translation from the Lao. This of course happened with Thailand when ‘Prathet Thai’ was translated as ‘Thai-land’. But, for reasons which are obscure to us, ‘Pathet Lao’ is not ‘Lao-land’ and nor is it a country called ‘Lao’. Indeed, the latter usage is quite marked in English, and when used by foreigners seems almost pretentious. Of course ‘Lao’ is perfectly correct in English when used as an adjective. For example: a Lao person, the Lao language, a Lao poem, etc. One other possibility that has tended to fall into-use is ‘Laotian’. So one can say: a Laotian person, the Laotian language, Laotian poem. This, however, seems to be losing out to the more economical ‘Lao’.

The old saying (in English) goes: "When in Rome do as the Romans do", but only if you are speaking Italian should you say ‘Italia’. Similarly in Laos, only if you are speaking Lao do you need to say ‘Lao’ when referring to the country.

Antelope Laap

Recently Bryan, the guy who gives me meat, gave me some seal-a-mealed antelope, that somebody gave him. I don’t know the name of the guy who shot it or where. I’m assuming somewhere here in Colorado. I do know he used a 308, another one of those rounds that can knock something over way out yonder.



Having no idea what antelope tasted like I lightly fried some in canola oil. Gamey, kind of like venison. Perfect for a strong Laap.



Before I get into the laap some antelope explaining is in order. Pronghorn Antelope as found in the Americas aren’t really an antelope at all. The only surviving genus of the family Antilocapridae, it’s closest living relative is the giraffe. Yes, I looked it up.

Having worked on the prairies of eastern Wyoming I knew they were extremely fast, according to Wikipedia the only faster animal is the cheetah but the antelope can sustain high speeds for a longer period. Besides being fast they also have exceptional eyesight. If you just try to walk up to normal shooting range they will quickly become a small dot on the horizon.



Back to the laap. I pre-cut some of the ingredients, shallots, garlic, thin sliced lemon grass, regular Thai peppers, cilantro, and lime ready to add. My wife keeps a container of ground up toasted sticky rice in the spice drawer. I fried the ground up antelope, (that’s how it came. I am not too lazy to chop if that’s what you were thinking), turned off the heat and added the shallots and green onions, then a couple spoonfuls of fish sauce, a little bang nua and some pah dek water to taste.



I made the pah dek water by mixing a dab of factory made pah dek with some water in a sauce pan and simmering it until it dissolved. ( a couple of minutes) The pah dek water was key to add some juice to the whole thing and also the pah dek and gamey meat compliment each other. My Lao supervisor chastised me for over cooking the meat. I did not. Turned off the heat just as soon as it began to look like it might cook through. Antelope is just a little dry. I mean the prairie out here is technically a dessert.


Vietnamese Pah Dek in a Jar


Pahdek water yummy



Lastly I stirred in the cilantro, green onions, and hot peppers while squeezing six pieces of lime into it. I like lime juice.

And sticky rice.

Sabai Dii Pi Mai

This is the day before yesterday. It might be new years and the height of the hot season in Laos but it's still snowing here. This photo was at 9:30 AM. The snow is so thick the movement activated light over my garage/shop came on illuminating the rack I have mounted above the big rolling door.

Today is the day they celebrate here, Saturday, I think in Laos it's the next or following day.

For My Feet

Often I hear people discussing what’s the best thing to wear to go for a walk, specifically “trekking” in South East Asia.



Above my old hiking boots. My first pair I spent a two week pay check to buy, I think they were about $65 in 1974. Eventually I trashed them in the salt water on the back deck an anchor boat in the Gulf of Mexico. An ignominious end for a hand made boot by a master craftsman. This pair I bought later in my mid thirties when I had plenty of money to pay the then price tag of $250. They are called Limmers. A typical yearly production run was a thousand pair. They were made around a wooden last of your foot. Limmer Boots of Intervale NH


A common theme of footwear discussions is why bother carrying boots all the way to Asia, when a pair of sandals might do as well or better. I used to be of the same mind but of late have changed my tune. There are caveats, it all depends on where you are going and how far.

The first guest house I stayed at in Chang Mai was developed around the trekking business. The guides taught me to speak some Thai and explained many seemingly inexplicable parts of Thai culture. When I came back to Thailand to work at first for half a year and later on a one way ticket I always stayed at that guest house when in town, my home away from home.

Eventually one of my friends convinced me to go on a trek. It was the typical two night/three day /elephant ride/rafting thing. Being as I was a non paying guest I missed out on the rafting / elephant walk. I also was extremely sick due to being incautious when peeling the cover off some rambutans. The walking was so easy I was able to keep up without strain, even being sick. Leisurely wanders with convenient rests in closely spaced villages I considered to be the norm.

Laos was different...



Above I’m doing the powder mag traverse at an LZ in southern Idaho. Notice the skid marks from my feet where I’d edged on the bolts during previous post-work workouts. I was an obsessed climber.

During the 80s I did a kind of job that required lots of walking in the mountains of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana. Half of our pay was by the mile so we covered a lot of ground very quickly often walking hundreds and hundreds of miles, with weight, over rough terrain. On my feet I’m wearing a lightweight pair of European hiking boots. I used to buy discounted pairs in Boulder or Jackson Wyoming. Pivettas, Fabianos, Lowas, and Galibiers. Returns, last years models, any brand, cheap and high quality were all I cared about. I found it was less expensive to buy them for fifty or a hundred dollars on sale and throw them away when they were worn out rather than resole. I also liked the light weight and close cut.




Many of my friends preferred Galibier Super Guides above. They were heavy and didn’t bend much but they could be resoled, and were indestructible. Good for kick stepping in the mornings when the snow was still frozen.


Thinking that walks in Laos would be similar to those in Thailand I took the footwear above on most of my treks. On my very first excursion I took Crocs, a rubber type clog thing. After the second day I switched to the sneakers that I’d carried as backup. Subsequently I wore the sneakers exclusively and the flip flops once I’d reached the villages.

Most of my walks were long drawn out affairs, often going as fast as possible just to make the next village by night. The relocation of many of the villages has caused trails to become obscure and sometimes even disappear. In the wetter seasons there’s lots of slippery mud. In a word footing is usually bad and often worse than that. I did go on one standard commercial trek rated fairly hard but in reality much easier than the more unravelled walks. I think a pair of Tevas or similar would have worked fine. Of course from a stylistic perspective I’d rather go barefoot.

If I ever make it back I swear I’m going to take a good pair of boots with me. Boot technology has changed.


A couple of years ago a neighbour who often works as a hunting guide urged me to hurry on down to Walmart and buy some Herman Survivors as they were on sale. I remember Survivors from when I used to hike as a young teen. High topped leather and heavy. Somewhere along the way the brand got sold and they are now made of cordura, gortex and thinsulate. They are made in China as are almost all boots.


I bought three different styles at that sale, all for around twenty five dollars marked down from fifty or sixty. They were extremely light, water proof in a way my old leather boots could only dream of, and the support was in all the right places without being stiff. A far superior boot for what now amounts to a fraction of an hour of my labour. I was sold.

They are “hunting” boots. Usually having some sort of fashionable camouflage on them somewhere just so you get the idea. They are also high tops and often with some insulation because hunters are often out in the cold. For some reason the big box sporting goods stores clear out their inventory with the seasons. I think it’s cheaper to sell at a steep reduction than to inventory it and sell it to some discounter.


This year I kept my eyes open and bought better brands at a lot larger markdown. My average price was $32, average new prices were $130. Thank you China and the Dominican Republic, just wish we still employed people in our own shoe factories.

Update, I should mention in all honesty that I've had problems with my "buy cheap stuff and just wear it" philosophy. I took two of my unused pair of shoes to Laos and had some uh. . . difficulties. Probably a good idea to take some long walks with any pair of shoes before bringing them with you on the airplane.