Word: settha
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...most remarkable thing about the Settha Palace Hotel is that it still exists. Built by the French in the 1930s, it was a mainstay of colonial Vientiane and in its heyday was managed by Frenchman Michel Theodas and his Chinese wife Yusin. Their tenure, and an era, ended in 1975 when the communists came to power, seized the property as worker housing and sent the Theodas family packing...
...When Hong Kong-based Jardine Securicor hired Kerry to run its subsidiary, Lao Securicor, the company's client list included the Settha Palace Hotel, the Australian embassy and a sapphire-mining company that, despite the appearance of its dirty, three-story office building on Sihom Street in Vientiane, seemed on the verge of success. Gem Mining Lao held sapphire mining concessions, estimated to be worth $100 million, in Bokeo province, a region of dense forest, green rice paddies and rusty tin shacks where farmers were known to find sapphires and rubies in the red earth after heavy rains...
Prince Boun Oum's U.S.-supplied army moved north on the road from Vientiane to take the village of Muong Kassy. But immediately after the battle, the battalion commander, Colonel Oudone Sananikone, flew back by helicopter to Vientiane for a civilized French dinner at the Settha Palace Hotel. Both sides seemed interested in saving their skins, and their bargaining points, until the rest of the world got them out of trouble. "We have been frightened long enough," said Minister Nhouy. "Let others worry...
Somewhat bemused by all this, the 17 U.N. representatives accepted their flowers and settled down in Vientiane's decrepit Settha Palace Hotel and the firetrap Somboun Hotel, emptied for the occasion of its usual tenants-dancing girls and prostitutes. By general admission, the task before the fact-finders was roughly like trying to plow...
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