A rickety boat took me across the murky, brown waters of the mighty Mekong River from Chiang Saen in Thailand, with its giant golden Buddha perched on the hillside, to the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in supposedly communist Laos. But the SEZ is neither particularly communist, nor even really a part of Laos.
‘Tonight is boom-boom night,’ he said. ‘You can do anything you want with a girl for 500 yuan (£50)’
‘This is not Laos, this is China,’ an Indian migrant worker told me. The Laotian authorities’ presence here is minimal. The Chinese yuan, emblazoned with the image of Chairman Mao, is the currency of choice.
While parts of Laos still resemble Vietnam as portrayed in old war movies – rice paddies, bamboo houses on stilts, limestone karst mountains – here the architecture can be generously described as ‘eclectic’. Standing tall over the city-like complex is the gilded tower of the Kings Roman Casino and hotel.
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