Eat To Live: Chips are down for Cambodians

May 23, 2007
By JULIA WATSON
UPI Food Writer

SIEM REAP, Cambodia, May 23 (UPI) -- Carved deep into the walls of the 1,000-year-old temples of Angkor Wat are detailed and delicate carvings of fish.

The inspiration for them probably comes from the Tonle Sap Lake nearby, the largest freshwater lake in southeast Asia and a remarkable natural phenomenon.

Roughly a mere 3 feet deep and covering the flood plain with 1,043 square miles of water, during the monsoon season an extraordinary thing happens.

Down river at Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers converge. Bulging with rain and run off, the sea can't take the river's surge. So the current is forced to reverse its flow, pushing so much water back up river that the Tonle Sap Lake expands to 9 feet deep and 6,178 square miles.

Year-round the lake is home to a floating population of hundreds of Cambodians and Vietnamese who make their living off the fish supply. This is the breeding ground for 75 percent of the nation's fish.

Cambodians depend upon fish for 60 percent of their protein. So when the inhabitants of the floating houses on the lake are not playing basketball on the floating basketball court, or having their hair chopped at the floating barber, attending services at the floating church or sending their children off -- if they can afford to pay the teachers -- to the floating school, they are out with their nets. The fish they catch are stored in fenced-off cages under their floating homes.

It's a setting that provides an absorbing distraction for tourists seeking a brief respite from visits to some of the hundreds of temples of Angkor that have stood for centuries under the scorching sun in the surrounding jungle.

They take boat rides over the caramel-colored waters and circle the floating houses with cameras. The boatmen pause for half an hour at one of the two restaurant-and-souvenir boats that, with Cambodian initiative, have set themselves up to take their own profit from the tourist experience.

The first thing facing the visitor setting foot on the damp decking is rows and rows of cardboard tubes of Pringle chips. They're everywhere the Western tourist travels in southeast Asia, and are becoming a snack status symbol for the locals.

This Asian interest in our idea of a good in-between-meals munch has inspired Pepsi-Co's Frito-Lay in Asia to come up with a fantastical range of flavors in their chips line to appeal to local tastes.

Nori seaweed is a green-flecked chip, curiously sweet. Spicy Lobster tastes like crab seasoning, Barbecue Sparerib like jerky, and Spicy Seafood like the smell that comes from a backpack that hasn't been aired for a while.

Food-label-conscious American tourists turn the bags over for more information. While each sack gives a long list of its odd flavor's ingredients, there is no indication of the calories it contains.

Health-aware travelers throughout southeast Asia are equally surprised by the massive hoardings with ads for American cigarettes promoted by smiling Reese Witherspoon look-alikes targeting the young.

Nutrition and health concerns are fit, it seems, only for the West.

Tonle Sap Lake doesn't make the temptation to ape Western habits any more resistible. Dependent upon it for food, fishermen are alarmed that their nets are no longer as full as they used to be. They mutter about the Chinese damming the Mekong upstream. But deforestation along the river may also contribute to the problem.

Instead of throwing back the smaller catfish that they used to release to grow to over 200 pounds and spawning more fish as they developed, they're keeping them for sale and consumption long before they are full-sized.

This recipe is Spicy Tamarind Fish, one cooking method for catfish or any other firm white fish.

--Serves 4

--1 pound catfish fillet, cut into 2-inch square chunks
--1 tablespoon water
--1 tablespoon sugar
--2 cups water
--2 cloves garlic, minced
--1 yellow onion, sliced
--3 tablespoons Nam Pla fish sauce
--2 tablespoons seedless tamarind pulp (from Asian markets)
--1 tablespoon sugar
--3 red chili peppers, thinly sliced (or to taste)
--2 green onions, sliced diagonally
--1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

--Add the water and sugar to a large heavy casserole and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, till the sugar browns darkly, then carefully pour in 2 cups of water while stirring.
--Add the next 5 ingredients, stirring.
--Add the fish and simmer till opaque and the sauce has thickened, turning the fish carefully mid-cook to coat. --Add the final 3 ingredients and serve with boiled or steamed rice.

Mekong water level predicted to be at 10.45-meter

Friday, May 18, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

An official from the department of hydrology of the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology said that, in 2007, the water level in the Mekong River could rise to up to 10.45-meter high at the Chaktokmouk station. Mao Hak, the director of the department of hydrology, told the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper that, based on forecast, the Mekong river could rise up to 10.45-meter high in 2007, however, he said that this number is a preliminary forecast only, and that in some cases, rainfalls could affect this number also. Mao Hak also said that rainfall is early this year, and the water level rises much sooner than last year. Mao Hak reminded that last year, the water level was predicted to be at 10.20-meter, but in reality, the actual measurement indicated that it was only 9.90-meter only at the Chaktokmouk station. If indeed, the water level at the Chaktokmouk station reaches 10.45-meter high, the water level in the provinces of Stung Treng, Kratie, and Kompong Cham could be even higher, and attention must be paid in these provinces.

How to Survive in Cambodia: For a Turtle, Beneath Sand

One of the world's rarest freshwater turtles has been discovered on an isolated stretch of the Mekong river in Cambodia, raising hopes that the species can be saved from extinction (AFP/WWF/File/You Porny)

May 18, 2007
Sambor Journal

By SETH MYDANS The International Herald Tribune (Paris, France)

SAMBOR, Cambodia — With the self-confidence of tens of millions of years of instinct, 12 tiny turtles raced down a mud bank of the Mekong River on a recent day, plopped into the water and disappeared with a wriggle under the sand.

It was a moment of relief for the man who released them, David Emmett of Conservation International, who had kept them at home in little plastic tubs since they hatched two weeks before.

“It wouldn’t have been too good to have a bunch of endangered turtles die in your bathroom,” he said.

Now they were on their own, carrying the hopes of scientists who are trying to preserve one of the last pristine stretches of the river.

Known as frog-faced turtles for their strange blank stares, the hatchlings are members of an endangered species — Cantor’s giant soft-shelled turtles — that was recently rediscovered here in northeastern Cambodia.

The shrinking of their habitat to this small nook of landscape and the dwindling numbers of Mekong giant catfish and Irrawaddy dolphins here are signals that the complex ecology of the river is quickly fraying.

“The area we are working in is the best of the whole river, all of it, from China all the way down,” said J. F. Maxwell, who has surveyed the lower Mekong. “China is all wrecked.”

Until recently it was war that saved the turtles, but it is peace that threatens them now. For decades this 30-mile strip of river was a refuge for Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the armed remnants of the regime that cost the lives of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979. The area became accessible when the guerrillas disbanded at the end of the 1990s.

As a no man’s land it offered a haven for rare plants and animals that have fallen victim to development in safer places. “It’s an emergency to get this place preserved, because if it goes there’s nothing to replace it,” said Mr. Maxwell, who is curator of the Chiang Mai Herbarium in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“They’ve had their war, they’ve killed their people, and the second generation is coming in now,” he said of the Cambodians. “Motorboats are coming up the river, people are moving in, and no one is controlling this.”

In the natural course of things, two or three of the released baby turtles will survive, grow into giants the size of a sofa and live for as long as a century, almost all of it buried under the sand, Mr. Emmett said.

Or they will all die, victims of overfishing, pollution and environmental degradation, bringing their endangered species closer to an end.

“These things have survived the extinction events that wiped out the dinosaurs and now we’re going to wipe them out,” said Mr. Emmett, a wildlife biologist based in Cambodia. “Look, we can’t let them go extinct now.”

The huge and little-studied Cantor’s turtle (Pelochelys cantorii) seems to have already disappeared from the neighboring countries of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. It was last spotted in Cambodia in 2003, and nobody knew until now whether it still survived.

In March a team that included Conservation International, the Cambodian government and the conservation group WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, made the first survey of the area since it became safe to explore and found it teeming with the diversity of a complete ecosystem.

“The existence of such an extensive area of natural habitat that still borders the Mekong is almost unthinkable,” R. J. Timmons, a bird and mammal expert, wrote in a report for the WWF. He called for the creation of a haven along this stretch of river, and the WWF said local fishermen would be hired as monitors and paid for reducing their catch.

To everybody’s surprise, a group of young researchers, the Cambodian Turtle Conservation Team, using a trap of its own invention, immediately confirmed the presence of Cantor’s turtles in the area, capturing and releasing a 24-pound turtle in March.

Soon afterward they captured a young seven-pound female that Mr. Emmett studied for a month at his home in Phnom Penh before releasing it together with the dozen hatchlings. The researchers also found a trove of eggs, some of which hatched in his bathroom.

What he observed was a very peculiar turtle.

Without a shell to protect it, he said, the turtle spends more than 95 percent of its life almost motionless under the sand, surfacing just twice a day to take a single huge breath. It emerges once a year to lay its small round eggs on the riverbank.

The secret of longevity that it offers is to sit in one place, preferably under a layer of sand, and do nothing. “It’s a very boring lifestyle, really,” Mr. Emmett said.

But when it does move, it strikes with the lightning of a snake rather than the leisure of a turtle. When its tiny eyes, protruding from the top of its head among the grains of sand, spot a shrimp or a fish or a crab, the turtle shoots its neck out the way a chameleon shoots out its tongue.

“It strikes faster than a snake,” Mr. Emmett said. “I have seen cobras striking, and this is easily the same speed. And it has the hardest bite of any animal known to man.”

Its very longevity goes to show the success of the turtle’s adaptation, he said. But the environment today, crowded with human predators, presents challenges of a new sort.

As Mr. Emmett released his turtles into the water plants and grasses at the side of the broad, brown river, a fisherman towing his net drifted idly nearby, watching.

The modern history of the Mekong, with its fishermen, its factories, its polluters and its dam builders, does not offer much hope to conservationists, Mr. Maxwell said.

“We get together, all of us, and it’s the same story,” he said of ecological specialists. “I talk about plants, others talk about fish, others talk about birds and amphibians. It’s the same story. Things are going down the tubes. It’s all going.”

[Himalayan] Glacier loss [due to global warming] to hit Asian farmers [including those living along the Mekong river]

Tuesday, 24 April 2007
Reuters

The loss of glaciers in the Himalayas from global warming threatens hundreds of millions of farmers across southern Asia and China, Chinese climate scientists say.

Commenting on their contributions to an upcoming UN climate change report the scientists said the disappearance of glaciers would first swell major river systems in the region before leading to substantial reduction in water flow.

The Himalayas, surrounding highlands and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are home to a network of glaciers covering 500,000 square kilometres, major sources of water for the Ganges river in India, China’s Yangtze and the Mekong feeding Cambodia and Vietnam.

The repercussions could be enormous for the populations of the region with food production cut and farmers’ livelihoods ruined.

Wu Shaohong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said these glaciers could recede to just 100,000 sq km by 2030 if global warming continues unchecked.

Chinese climate scientist Qin Dahe predicted, however, that about one-quarter of glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau could melt by 2050.

The Chinese government says lakes, wetlands and grasslands would retreat and more agricultural land would turn to desert.

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), India’s Rajendra Pachauri, said glacier loss would threaten disaster for his country, northern India being “the granary of South Asia”.

Mekong gets 24-hour navigation system

By Post Reporters
Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 07, April 6 - 19, 2007

In an onboard ceremony held in the Mekong near Phnom Penh Port, government ministers, foreign ambassadors, and the Mekong River Commission (MRC) launched first-ever 24-hour navigational buoy to be placed on Cambodia waterways.

"This is the first buoy in a series of 56, plus 12 leading markers over a 100-km stretch of the river," said Belgian Ambassador Jan Matthysen, at the April 5 launch. "It will improve safety and efficiency of navigation, so that sea-going vessels and inland barges can proceed in a safe way, 24 hours a day."

Over the next six months, the rest of the navigational system will be installed over the busiest 100 km stretch of the Mekong in Cambodia. The buoys will mark a safe channel from Phnom Penh to the Cambodia-Vietnam border.

Installing this internationally recognized system of aids to navigation will transform the shipping industry in Cambodia and be of great economic benefit to the country, said , Minister of Public Works and Transport Sun Chanthol.

"The project will double the sailing window by allowing vessels to navigate at night," he said. "It will make river transportation to and from Cambodia much more cost effective and efficient."

Cambodia's potential for exports has grown dramatically over the last few years but the Kingdom has been hamstrung by the expense of shipping good by road, said Chanthol.

"It is essential that we improve the quality of our waterborne transport," he said. "If we can use our river in a more efficient and economic way we can realize our export potential and this will, in turn, help Cambodia achieve its poverty alleviation goals."

Currently, many international shippers would like to increase the volume of traffic to Phnom Penh, but Cambodia's unmarked shoals and sandbars have deterred them.

"This will soon be in the past as the channel markings will make the Mekong a more reliable waterway and, as such, a more attractive option for regional and international traders, freight forwarders, investors, and shipping agencies," said Chanthol. "It will help take Cambodia on a path to increased prosperity and open our ports to the world."

Oliver Cogels, CEO of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) said the new navigation scheme would help promote economic development in all of the countries in the Mekong River area.

"This exciting initiative will assist in supporting the overall development of navigation on the Mekong," he said. "Inland navigation is a very competitive mode of transport for carriage of bulk materials and bulk liquids over long distances, provided there is a proper network of ports and supply-demand centers, and these conditions are met."

In addition to economic benefits, the safety of people who navigate, and live close to, the Mekong river will be improved by the navigation system, said Tram Iv Tek, secretary of state at the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.

"A lack of aids to navigation is the main cause of various accidents from collisions, ships running aground, and risks for pollution, threatening the ecosystem of the river," he said. "Many riparians depend largely on the resources of the Mekong for their livelihoods. A pollution accident could be a serious threat to those people who often do not have alternatives for income generation."

Life on the Mekong River in Kratie province, home of the Irrawady dolphin

An Irrawaddy dolphin, also known as the Mekong dolphin, swims in the river at the Kampi village in Kratie province, 230 km (143 miles) northeast of Cambodia, March 24, 2007 .Cambodia's rare Mekong dolphin is making a tentative comeback from the edge of extinction after net fishing was banned in its main habitat, Cambodian and World Wildlife Fund officials said earlier this month. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

A fisherman casts a net on the Mekong River, home to Irrawaddy dolphins, also known as the Mekong dolphins, at Kampi village in Kratie province, 230 km (143 miles) northeast of Cambodia, March 24, 2007. Cambodia's rare Mekong dolphin is making a tentative comeback from the edge of extinction after net fishing was banned in its main habitat, Cambodian and World Wildlife Fund officials said earlier this month. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

A boat travels on the Mekong River, home to Irrawaddy dolphins, also known as the Mekong dolphins, during dusk at Kampi village in Kratie province, 230 km (143 miles) northeast of Cambodia, March 24, 2007 .Cambodia's rare Mekong dolphin is making a tentative comeback from the edge of extinction after net fishing was banned in its main habitat, Cambodian and World Wildlife Fund officials said earlier this month. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

Asia's majestic Mekong begins to feel pinch of development

Thai fisherman are seen in their boat along the Mekong River at Chiang Khan, near Thai-Laos border on 12 February 2007. China has built two dams on the river, and has blasted rocks and sandbars in portions of the 4,000-km (2,400-mi) river to make it easier to navigate, opening a shipping channel to Southeast Asia. Fishermen here say the increased traffic on the river is one of the reasons why their work has become more difficult.(AFP/File/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

by Thanaporn Promyamyai

CHIANG KHAN, Thailand (AFP) - Phol Nasa cannot recall a time when his family wasn't fishing on the Mekong River where it sweeps through the misty hills along Thailand's northern border with Laos.

"I've watched my grandfather, my father and my brothers fishing on the river since I was very, very young," the 24-year-old said as he perched on the bow of a longtail boat in the middle of the river.

The family boat sets out every morning laden down with their nets which they men use to trawl the river bed for catfish and gourami.

Phol says the daily catch used to be enough to provide food for his family, and if he was lucky there would be enough fish to sell at the local market to earn a bit of money as well.

But now, he says, most days his nets come back empty.

Phol began joining the other men in his family when he was 10, when the river was very different and the fish were plentiful, he remembers.

"Fishing was easier when I was young. We had plenty of fish to catch, enough for everybody," he said.

Phol's family lives in one of the dozens of villages that stretch out near the river banks.

This region of northeastern Thailand is one of the poorest in the country, largely left out of the rapid modernisation that has taken place elsewhere.

The fishermen here say they don't know why the Mekong has begun changing, but say the water level is lower than it used to be, making it harder to catch fish.

"It should be easy to catch fish while the water is low, if there were any fish to catch," says Thom Nonla, a 55-year-old fisherman.

Experts say the low water levels are the result of unusually light rains last year, highlighting the chronic cycle of flood and drought in this part of Southeast Asia.

The unpredictable cycle is one reason that governments of countries along the Mekong, and especially China where the river begins, want to build dams, which they say will help regulate the waters.

China has already built two dams on the river, and is considering several more. It has also blasted rocks and sandbars in portions of the 4,000-kilometre (2,400-mile) river to make it easier to navigate, opening a shipping channel to Southeast Asia.

Fishermen here say the increased traffic on the river is one of the reasons their work has become more difficult.

"The big boats keep the fish away. We cannot fish because they make too much noise," Phol says.

Compared with the other major rivers flowing from China, the Mekong's ecology is in remarkably good condition, experts say.

It remains one of the world's most bio-diverse, and overfishing, rather than pollution, is to blame for the difficulties facing fisherman, experts say.

Relatively little industry lines the Mekong's banks -- partly because navigating the river is so treacherous.

As it runs from China through Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, the water alternates between silky smooth and white-water rapids, eventually leading to a major waterfall in Cambodia before stretching out into the swampy delta in Vietnam.

Sumatr Phulaiyao, coordinator of the Southeast Asia River Networks (SEARIN), says 500 Thai villagers have already been affected by the dams and the blasting, and the resulting changes in water levels.

"The blasting causes the river to run faster, and the water will hit the bank harder," causing erosion that will cause the river to swell, Sumatr says.

In areas where the river water becomes shallower, fish will push their way farther down river, he adds.

Whether this section of the river changes more over the next decade depends largely on how China proceeds with its planned development.

Phol says he has already been forced to look for extra work, finding odd jobs to earn extra money.

"I do whatever I can get hired to do. Fishing alone was not enough," he says as he pulls in his nets at the end of another day without a catch.

Open Borders Expose Mekong's Disparities

By Johanna Son

CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Feb 10 (IPS) - In the town of Bo Ten in Laos, near the border with China, local people are training to be card dealers so they can get jobs at a soon-to-rise casino owned by a Chinese company.

In January, Burma and Laos formally opened their first border checkpoint just north of the ‘Golden Triangle'. This falls between Banpong in Burma, on the west bank of the Mekong river, and Ban Mom on the Lao side.

Earlier on Dec. 20, 2006, the second cross-border bridge spanning the Mekong, connecting Savannakhet in Laos and Mukdahan in Thailand, was inaugurated. There are plans for a third, linking northern Chiang Rai in Thailand with Houey Sai in Laos.

These snapshots reflect the buzz of activity that shows how borders -- territorial, economic and social -- continue to be torn down in the Mekong region where, until two decades ago, government officials of adjacent countries were not even on talking terms with each other.

Once divided by war and conflict stoked by foreign intervention, the Mekong region -- comprising China's western provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam -- is becoming better connected by roads and airways. Investments across borders, infrastructure projects in one country that affect another, competing tariffs and increasingly mobile populations are all part of the churn.

In many ways, former Thai prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan's call in the eighties for "battlefields to be turned into marketplaces" is turning into reality now. But, while the region is now more interconnected, development and its economic benefits have also been uneven -- and raise questions about gainers and losers.

Some trends also indicate the onset of increased competition and possible tensions in the region, given the emerging roles of China and Thailand in the Mekong region, and concern about exploitation facilitated by improving transport.

At a conference on the ‘Critical Transitions in the Mekong Region' in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai in late January, no expert --from Asian Development Bank (AsDB) officials to activists -- disputed that economic changes do affect different sectors differently. For instance, the casino project in Bo Ten was given economic logic by its access to road connecting these countries -- but then this may have undesirable social effects.

"Open borders are an opportunity, but there is also that downside to development," Pattana Sitthisombat, president of the Chiang Rai Chamber of Commerce, said, calling the casino far from his definition of desirable investments. Similar concerns have been raised about other casinos at the Thai-Burmese border and the Cambodia-Vietnam border, among others.

The challenge in the region -- where the AsDB in 1992 pushed a set of infrastructure projects that contributed to regional integration of the Greater Mekong Sub- Region (GMS) -- is how to manage the ill effects of change. .

Today, after more than 20 years of the GMS scheme, Bank officials say they recognise this. "Connecting markets (by itself) doesn't always work," Jean-Pierre Verbiest, AsDB country director for Thailand, told the Chiang Mai meeting.

Bridges can link countries but their full utility depends on the ease of movement across borders, he explains. Yet having open borders raises other worries. ‘'There are good things" such as allowing movement of goods, "but you can also reverse everything" and realise that borders also ease the mobility of problem issues, he added.

For a project like the second Mekong international bridge, "whether it leads to a reduction of poverty or whether poverty is just repeated" is a key issue as well, Verbiest pointed out.

There are also fears that cross-country roads -- central to the Bank's and the governments' recipe of interconnecting the region -- may grow into highways leading to environmental risk and degradation.

For instance, as the East-West corridor connecting Burma, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam gets completed, there are reports of a gold mine in Laos near the border with Vietnam that elicits concerns about the exploitation of natural resources. Verbiest concedes that in parts of the North-South corridor, running from Kunming down to Bangkok, one sees truckloads of logs and mined material going in and out of Laos. "These raise a lot of questions," he said.

"At the end of the day, the success or failure of this programme (GMS) is really how it addresses the environmental issue," Verbiest explained.

What was once a sketch of a plan to link the region through roads is today a network of transboundary roads, with more to come. The AsDB says the East-West corridor is completed, except for a stretch inside Burma. Work on the North-South corridor is expected to finish in 2008, and the road from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Bangkok is almost done.

Where roads get built -- or do not get built -- are also an issue when states weigh the benefits they get from regional linkages.

For instance, Burmese officials are concerned about losing economic opportunities if cross-country roads connect China by passing through Laos, rather than through Burma.

One could ask how much Laos can gain from the East-West Corridor, which merely passes through it and facilitates transport for goods and people outside the country.

The Mekong region is an ‘'emerging economic area" and "a new frontier for development", but the focus on social concerns has lagged behind, says Rosalia Sciortino, a professor at Mahidol University and Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "While there is general growth, when you look at the distribution of growth, you see a different picture."

Statistics do point to increased trade among Mekong countries. About half of Laos' trade is with Mekong countries. There has been an explosion in border trade, including in areas that only two decades were closed -- China only opened its borders to the South-east Asian neighbours in the eighties. Sciortino says the Thai-Burma border trade is about thrice the value of formal trade.

But the bulk of this economic activity appears to be between the bigger actors like China and Thailand, also the bigger investors in the region.

At the Chiang Mai conference, Jim Glassman of the University of British Columbia cited figures from the Bank of Thailand indicating that Thai exports to the Mekong region have increased sharply, rising from about three percent of total exports in 1995 to about nine percent now.

China has investments in Cambodia, and sends assistance and investment to Laos.

The navigation agreement that opened up transport on the Mekong river by bigger vessels has led to more ports sprouting up along the way. Pattana says some 3,000 Chinese trucks go to or pass through Chiang Khong each day, highlighting how northern Thailand has become the country's trade conduit with China.

Asked if China and Thailand were the winners at this stage of Mekong development, Glassman said the two were clearly major players in the region.

Yet Chinese presence is not without controversy -- Thai media reports now and then about complaints that cheap products like Chinese garlic threaten to drive locals out of business.

Regional integration and open borders also continue to give shape to the economic map of the Mekong region. For instance, rubber plantations can be found across swathes of land on the China-Laos border. Often, they hire Lao workers to work in Jinghong and Mengla in China.

Economics is also the driving factor behind what Roy Rickson of Griffiths University in Australia calls "contracts without borders", explaining how Thai companies are sourcing raw materials and using cheaper farm labour from neighbouring countries.

But, Pattana says, competition is part of the game. "Heavyweight or lightweight, we all have to deal with one another on the same level. We have to deal with China -- how to cooperate with them, and not against them."

(*Newsmekong.org is a venue for Mekong-related news and issues, and the website of the Imaging Our Mekong media fellowship programme, coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific.)