Word: townes
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...places on the Mekong have changed so dramatically as has the northern Thai river port of Chiang Saen. Located near the Golden Triangle, the point on the Mekong where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet, Chiang Saen was for centuries a drowsy temple town. But when Chinese engineers opened up the river by blasting nearby reefs, trade exploded. Laborers from all three Golden Triangle nations converged on the docks looking for work. A few years ago, only boats carrying less than 100 tons of goods could navigate this stretch of the Mekong - hardly worth the trip. Now, ships can handle triple...
When Frank Lorenti of Minturn, a rustic little burg down the road from the villageopolis of Vail in the Colorado mountains, put barbed wire up to keep snowmobilers off his property last winter, the town council responded by outlawing the spiked fencing altogether. Police chief Lorenzo Martinez agreed. "Considering the damage it could do, people don't think barbed wire is appropriate," he reported. "There are a lot of other types of fences...
...decades, the barbed-wire market has been shrinking because of falling demand, rising steel prices and the fact that almost 700 acres of Western sod are sectioned off, subdivided, annexed or paved over daily, according to the Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust. Strip malls, 35-acre "ranchettes," town houses, resorts, mini-mansions, water parks, you name it, are fast becoming the face of the West, much more so than rodeos, "Howdy, ma'am" manners and, well, barbed wire...
...Lorenti, who had posted NO TRESPASSING signs before erecting his small blockade, the fact that Minturn no longer buys into a sharp-fences-make-good-neighbors way of thinking left him slack-jawed. "No one ever got hurt," says the 13-year town resident. Still, figuring he was waging a losing battle, he took down the barbed wire in June, resigned to the return of the snowmobilers...
...build a 5,300-acre resort with a ski hill, golf course and 1,700 units of housing on nearby Battle Mountain. Of course, local opinion is split. Some say such a big-box project will generate jobs and tax revenue. Opponents argue that it will ruin the town's Grateful Dead--meets--Hooterville character, turning it into something more like Sun Valley or Aspen...