Vangviang : Chinese shops

Photographer

Halpern, Joel M. (Joel Martin), 1929-

Date

• 1969

Summary

• In Laos even shops like this in small towns tended to be owned by Chinese before the 1975 socialist revolution. A bit more than a generation later in 2001 one tour guide spoke of Vangviang as a "favorite" with many travelers but inferred that the more sensitive tended not to stay too long because this town had become a "party village," with noise lasting late into the evening. Such problems were not foreseen by the French colonialists, the American imperial presence or, more recently, the Pathet Lao.