Word: mekong
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...millenniums, China hardly touched the mighty Mekong, content to let its raging headwaters flow unimpeded from the Tibetan plateau down through Laos, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But over the past few years, the emergent superpower has begun turning the world's 12th-longest river into a highway for regional commerce and a source of hydroelectric power. For many Indochinese entrepreneurs, increased China trade and investment has allowed a backward region to participate in their upstream neighbor's remarkable economic expansion. Southeast Asian governments hope China will share the electricity it will harness after a series of massive dams...
...nets yield almost no fish today, the same as yesterday and the day before that. For generations, Bun Neang's family has depended on the bounty of Cambodia's Tonle Sap, a vast lake fed by one of the world's greatest rivers, the Mekong. Two decades ago, his father could rely on a daily catch totaling about 65 lbs. (30 kg). When the water gods were feeling particularly charitable, he would land a Mekong catfish, a massive bottom-feeder that can weigh as much as a tiger. But today, when Bun Neang dips his net into the caramel-hued...
...Africa, where Chinese investment is building roads and railways, opening textile factories and digging oil wells. You hear it on the farms of Brazil, where Chinese appetite for soy and beef has led to a booming export trade. And you hear it in Chiang Saen, a town on the Mekong River in northern Thailand, where locals used to subsist on whatever they could make from farming and smuggling--until Chinese engineers began blasting the rapids and reefs on the upper Mekong so that large boats could take Chinese-manufactured goods to markets in Southeast Asia. "Before the Chinese came here...
...ONLY 12 BAHT A MINUTE. A sign outside the Glory Lotus hotel advertises CLEAN, CHEAP ROOMs in Chinese. It is not aid from the U.S. but trade with China--carried on new highways being built from Kunming in Yunnan province to Hanoi, Mandalay and Bangkok, or along a Mekong River whose channels are full of Chinese goods--that is transforming much of Southeast Asia...
...complex marketing challenge requiring lots of time and money. Seeking to redress the balance - at least as far as the travel industry is concerned - is worldhotel-link.com. Originating in 2002 as a project conducted under the auspices of the World Bank to help small and medium-sized hotels in the Mekong area access the Internet, the site now provides booking services for locally owned accommodation in around 30 countries. Uniting the hotels - apart from the fact that most are modest in size - is a commitment to sustainable tourism and environmental responsibility. If they stick to these principles, they'll continue reaping...