When I visitied Boten several times in 1994 it was a dusty and rather decrepit border crossing between northern Laos and China. Its key features were a row of rustic shop houses, a border checkpoint and, a kilometre or so to the south, the old salt works for which the village has long been regionally famous. I was travelling with Lao traders and spent a good many days passing the time waiting for customs and immigration formalities to be completed.
From recent accounts, many features of this remote border crossing are now much the same – the bamboo shop houses, the trucks laden with cargo waiting to cross the border and the inevitable border-crossing paperwork. The standard of trucking has improved but the border bottleneck seems much the same as ever.
But there is one dramatic new development at Boten.
Des Ball from the ANU recently travelled there and reports that a massive casino-hotel is under construction. He has kindly provided this photo taken by his sister (in fact, given the size of the building, it is two photos stitched together). There is also a scanned report from the Vientiane Times about this borderline monstrosity (apologies for the quality):
This is clearly a major development for sleepy Boten. No doubt it will create significant employment and may boost some forms of tourism and cross border commerce. But the social impacts of this isolated pleasure dome are likely to be significant, especially in an area of persistent poverty and marginalisation.
Has the casino openned yet? Have any New Mandala readers graced the roulette tables or soaked in the spas? Please send us your Boten borderline accounts.
Some time ago, China strictly cracked down on gambling within it’s borders. This was done for two reasons. 1) To channel gamblers to Macau, where gambling is legal. Macau needs to be successful in the long run, or else the Chinese government will be accused of post-transfer economic mismanagement. 2) To reduce official corruption and money laundering. Casinos have traditionally been a preferred place for officials to launder ill-earned income.
Some North Korean border casinos thought they could cash in and expand their operations to attract Chinese gamblers. China didn’t look favorably to this, and threatened to shut down electricity transmission to the North Koreans. The North Korean border casinos soon shut down.
I suspect the border casinos at Boten will soon meet the same fate. What Big Brother wants, Big Brother gets.
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I gather that another one is planned for the banks of the Mekong opposite the Royal Steps in Luang Prabang. I am not sure that it will be of the same Disney Park dimensions, but nevertheless it will no doubt be of the similar Mad Ling Ludwig dimensions as all the other so called cultural gifts from China.
There is one going up in Udomxai that looks a bit like one of those huge places that builders erect to show how well they are doing. It is I gather from my Lao colleague that it is part of the Boten chain as will be the one in Vientiane Province. There is a law that says that you cannot build more than one, so they are licenced as being subbranches of the Boten one.. Learned from the King of franchising, Soeharto.
A huge golf course is being planned outside Vientiane and in LP.. Gosh how did they know we all wanted such things.
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