IN LUANG PRABANG

Waiting for the sun in Luang Prabang, unusually cool.. We descended the Mekong from Thailand, and the work here is almost done... The city has been transformed in a big living-museum, with temples and guest houses, bars and restaurants.. In the center there are no private residences any longer. Even here is possible to foresee how the globalized world will look, how the destinations will be more a place for relaxation then discovery (discovery of what, after all?).. But is a pleasant place, with thousands of young monks strolling in the streets and spending time in internet points.. We wanted it, we got it..

ON THE BORDER

The story on the tragic situation on the Burma-Thai border is done.. Burmese refugees are stranded in a large no man land, in camps that after September events have become cities drowning in mud, employed for underpaid labor, somebody reduced to search among the Mae Sot city rubbish for at most one dollar a day.. We talked to monks who participated in the Yangoon revolt, opposition parties acting from the border, the Karen army fighting the regime for independence.. I think will be a great story... And now we are going north, to Laos for a week, and then Yunnan.. Going cooler, i guess..