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The houses in the background are actually in China! That's how close it is, and that's why I came to Lao Cai in the first place. If they hadn't closed the border, I would probably be in China. With the level of secrecy, spin and propaganda that's going on over there, a foreigner running around with a camera would certainly not be welcomed, so it was a very stupid idea. I can only look at China from Vietnam.

When Archibald Little was here in 1910, this was what he saw:

LAO-KAI presents the same contrast to Ho-k'ou, that the Model Settlement does to the Shanghai city; on crossing the railway bridge that now unites the two towns, one passes abruptly from filth and disorder into wide macadamised streets lined with shade trees; clean white bungalows, one and two-storied, a small bund with pontoon wharf—a miniature Point de Galle with the same tropical air and vegetation, but also a close, steamy atmosphere due to its situation in a narrow valley distant 265 miles from the sea. There are few or no Chinese in Lao-kai (it costs them about six shillings a head to enter French territory) and, in the siesta hour, in which we landed, there were apparently no inhabitants. The military are stationed on the right bank and have to cross the rushing river by ferry to come into Lao-kai; the piers of a high bridge, solid circular pillars of brick and stone, were erected some years ago, but the idea of completing the bridge seems to have been abandoned. The chief buildings are the offices of the administration, a spacious Custom-house with godowns attached, the offices of the "Messageries Fluviales," the Post Office and the Hotel Fleury, where we put up, also a roomy military "cercle," pleasantly situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and a bandstand in the central "Square." Towards evening, after an enjoyable dejeuner at the hotel, we sat on the verandah listening to a military band, we having happily arrived on band-day, and felt that in crossing the Nam-ti we had re-entered civilisation; but we pitied the folk whose duties relegate them to this depressing spot, with little to occupy them, no sports, no society, nowhere to go; hemmed in as they are by pathless jungle.

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