- News>
- Travel
Laos expanding eco-tourism niche
Luang Nam Tha, Laos, May 15: Young Western women, stripped down to bare essentials to catch the tropical sun, pass out candy and coins to begging village children. Their male backpacker cohorts bargain for some opium and maybe a tribal tryst for the night.
Luang Nam Tha, Laos, May 15: Young Western women, stripped down to bare essentials to catch the tropical sun, pass out candy and coins to begging village children. Their male backpacker cohorts bargain for some opium and maybe a tribal tryst for the night.
Such cultural collisions are becoming ever more common as once remote Asian regions open up to tourism, bringing worries about the breakdown of vulnerable societies and environmental harm.
In Laos, with rich tribal traditions, pristine landscapes and a fledgling tourist industry, the government and foreign groups are trying to head off such damage while reaping some of tourism's rewards.
Here in the mountains of northern Laos, home to the Akha, Hmong and 36 other officially recognized ethnic groups, trekkers are guided to carefully selected tribal villages that receive $1.30 for each tourist, revenue that is used for medicine, schooling and general community welfare.
The guides, locally recruited and knowledgeable, explain cultural taboos to the visitors, such as not touching Akha villages gates, where guardian spirits are said to dwell. And they interpret the ways of foreigners to often perplexed hosts. Tour groups are limited to a maximum of eight to avoid straining supplies of food in villages visited.
Boontha Chelernsuk, a tourism official, says the Nam Ha Eco-tourism Project has brought other benefits. With tourist income coming in, illegal logging and hunting of wildlife by poor tribesmen have diminished.
Health is improving, too. As part of the training on how to host foreigners, villagers learn about using toilets, boiling water, sleeping under mosquito nets and preserving the environment.
"Nam Ha has become a model. We're going to replicate it in other parts of Laos," says Steven Schipani, an American who was key in launching the award-winning, government-UNESCO project four years ago.
Schipani says the Luang Nam Tha area will be used to train guides and tourism officials from other provinces where similar projects are planned. He hopes private operators will emulate the approach.
"Laos is still very much at the point where we can catch runaway development, but it can go haywire because tourism can be a real money-spinner," he says. "I worry things can go the way of the freewheeling Thailand model, which makes a lot of money."
Bureau Report
In Laos, with rich tribal traditions, pristine landscapes and a fledgling tourist industry, the government and foreign groups are trying to head off such damage while reaping some of tourism's rewards.
Here in the mountains of northern Laos, home to the Akha, Hmong and 36 other officially recognized ethnic groups, trekkers are guided to carefully selected tribal villages that receive $1.30 for each tourist, revenue that is used for medicine, schooling and general community welfare.
The guides, locally recruited and knowledgeable, explain cultural taboos to the visitors, such as not touching Akha villages gates, where guardian spirits are said to dwell. And they interpret the ways of foreigners to often perplexed hosts. Tour groups are limited to a maximum of eight to avoid straining supplies of food in villages visited.
Boontha Chelernsuk, a tourism official, says the Nam Ha Eco-tourism Project has brought other benefits. With tourist income coming in, illegal logging and hunting of wildlife by poor tribesmen have diminished.
Health is improving, too. As part of the training on how to host foreigners, villagers learn about using toilets, boiling water, sleeping under mosquito nets and preserving the environment.
"Nam Ha has become a model. We're going to replicate it in other parts of Laos," says Steven Schipani, an American who was key in launching the award-winning, government-UNESCO project four years ago.
Schipani says the Luang Nam Tha area will be used to train guides and tourism officials from other provinces where similar projects are planned. He hopes private operators will emulate the approach.
"Laos is still very much at the point where we can catch runaway development, but it can go haywire because tourism can be a real money-spinner," he says. "I worry things can go the way of the freewheeling Thailand model, which makes a lot of money."
Bureau Report