Wearing a plastic ladle, this barefoot boy was wandering through the food court, begging for money and food. The place itself was filled with comfortable looking people, eating, drinking and relaxing. A city of 120,000, Savannakhet is a backwater, for sure, but it appears reasonably prosperous, with plenty of stores, restaurants and hotels. Thailand is just across the Mekong.
.
3 comments:
“ Savannakhet is a backwater, for sure, but it appears reasonably prosperous”
I see this everywhere I travel around SE Asia .. and I’m perplexed where their “prosperity” comes from. I see them eating Pizza Company, drinking Starbucks. There is obviously a rapidly rising middle class in all the ASEAN nations judging by the cars they drive, the clothes/jewellery they wear.
Apart from the 1%’ers .. do you have a handle on how they have so much disposable income? I understand a lot of it is debt, but they still have to service the debt. Obviously I’m a foreigner with no deep social connections, but it still confounds me.
Having just traveled more than 400 miles through Laos on two buses, I can say that the countryside looked pretty poor, with a bunch of shabby houses. In Vietnam, rural people also tend to be considerably poorer than city folks.
A curiosity about Laos is the relative abundance of cars and trucks, and the main reason for this is that they're not taxed as highly as, say, in Vietnam. A Vietnamese man I just met also told me that Laotians would splurge on a car before improving his house, unlike a Vietnamese.
Agree .. Cambodia is the same .. a car is social status, far more than a house and next only to gold jewellery. I was just talking to a young Cambodian guy .. net worth zero .. somehow managed to borrow a 50% deposit on a used $13,000 2006 model Prius (USA retail value USD$5,000) because, well, y’know, a young guy has to be socially acceptable and have a car to pull the “pretties” in these hybrid westernised places.The Prius is popular for the masses in Phnom Penh, the 1% drive Rolls Royce, Bentley, S-series Benz, C6 BMW and of course Tundra and F150 if they are truck inclined.
Post a Comment