The News Review:

- Businessmen urged to tap two-way ties: Tourism agriculture food…
- Charting the Mekong’s Changes
- Changing trends

Businessmen urged to tap two-way ties: Tourism agriculture food…
Free with registration – Bangkok Post – AccessMyLibrary.com – Aug 30, 2007
–>CPYRIGHT 2007 Bangkok Post Byline: Achara Ashayagachat Aug. 30–Thai and Malaysian businessmen should take advantage of the two countries’ warm bilateral relationship to trade and invest more with each other especially in tourism agriculture and food processing according to Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Albar. “For example Thailand has strong hotel operators but they invest nothing in Malaysia but more in other countries” Mr Syed Hamid said. He added that there was still ample room for expansion in bilateral trade. Thailand was Malaysia’s fourth largest trading partner.

Charting the Mekong’s Changes
TIME – Aug 30, 2007
The biggest thoroughfare in Vientiane as well as the capital’s main park and the National Cultural Hall were all built with money given to the city by the Beijing government. More than 3000 Chinese laborers are also busy constructing a national stadium the centerpiece of Laos’ debut as host of the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. “Laos is profiting from China’s own development path” says Sun Lei the president of the Lao-China Business Association and owner of the Mekong Hotel in downtown Vientiane. “Without China’s help and advice Laos would be much more backward. Private Chinese cash is flowing in as well. More than 20000 Chinese now work in Laos up from a few hundred a decade ago. Some are farmers who were lured by land so cheap they can grow rubber corn and fruit and sell their crops back home at a profit… In Cambodia many still remember the People’s Republic’s patronage of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime which oversaw the deaths of an estimated one-quarter of the population. And even in countries with less complicated historical ties to China suspicions of an economic overpowering endure. Farmers in northern Thailand complain that they cannot compete with the influx of cheap Chinese-grown garlic apples and onions. Even Thai customs official Ratchaphol expresses reservations about the future container port he is helping oversee. “We don’t get many of the benefits” he says. “Most of our own people are not very educated so the Chinese just bring in their own employees. Such concerns are mystifying for the dirt-streaked farmers who are loading their produce onto ships in Guanlei the Yunnan port from which most Chinese goods set sail down the Mekong.

Changing trends
Al-Ahram Weekly – Aug 30, 2007
"It is natural that the tourist trade be split between hotels and apartments. Yet the revenue generated by tourists in apartments tends to be invisible though they consume as do those in hotels" points out Amr El-Ezaby head of the Egyptian Tourist Authority (ETA). There is too the emergence of longer haul destinations such as Thailand Malaysia Singapore and Australia. "These destinations have succeeded in attracting Arab travellers. They provide competitive rates better services and tremendous facilities. This is beside the natural beauty of the countries" says Magda Sami public relations manager of the Cairo Sheraton. "This has been happening for some time now.

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