Into Vientiane

Just outside the Inter City Hotel in Vientiane, along the Mekong, I noticed that there was a lot of new construction, with dirt piled up along the river bank. I asked Nai what it was all about, but he wasn’t sure. We asked a cashier in one of the markets and he told us it was a new levee to protect the city from the type of flooding that occurred last summer. Good idea. Nai blames the flooding on the upstream dams that China has built, which some claim has altered the seasonal flow of the river. I certainly hope they don’t get the high water they had last year. Nai’s family farm doesn’t need another incident like that.