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The new and updated edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific contains authoritative reports on how 29 economies/countries are using ICT in business, government and civil society written by senior authors who live and work in the region. Included are three subregional chapters on the Pacific Island States, ASEAN and APEC....

I am in Vientiane once more, and tomorrow morning I fly to Saigon for a stop-over before heading home to Sydney on Sunday. I have run out of time to fill in the blanks from my time in Laos, so next week I will cobble together a few quick retrospective entries - Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, and the Friendship Bar... and anything else I can think of.Thanks to anyone who has taken the time to have a read of my thoughts here across the past couple of months. Traveling alone has been great, but having an outlet for my thoughts has been necessary, too.Anyway, carna Swannies in their first match on Saturday! With luck, I'll be watching the game from a bar in Saigon. For now, I'm off for one final Beerlao overlooking the Mekong. Maybe...

I was silly enough to take a short walk in the midday heat today. Won't try that again. Anyway, I was grateful to sit down and order some lunch at a quiet place and sip a cooling lemon juice, despite being able to hear a few different episodes of 'Friends' blaring down the street.I had my Lao phrasebook on the table in front of me and was reading some Ross Gittins articles I had printed yesterday morning. One of the young girls working there came over to ask what I was reading. Her english was excellent - naturally, she disagreed! - and we spoke for a while.She was starved for reading materials, and equally hungry for spare time in which to devour them. She has completed school - primary, lower high, and high - and commenced studies at college where she is learning english (from a Lao...

Tha Khek, like Savannakhet, sits astride the Mekong and faces Thailand across the water.Tha KhekAnother collection of old and new buildings arranged haphazardly along wide avenues, Tha Khek is a reasonably quiet township, despite the obvious and ever-increasing signs of international trade.It seemed that every possible consumer good was on sale at the local market - phones, TVs, DVDs and players, western clothes, gardening equipment, auto parts and tools - rather than the usual local produce, groceries and small wares. And on nearly every second shop front along the main road leading into town I saw the words 'Import Export Co' in either Lao, Chinese or Vietnamese lettering.The main drag leading into town. A bit dark. Sorry. Yep, they're rain clouds.The riverfrontThere was a string of...

I have mentioned before the very flexible nature of people's job descriptions in Laos.This grinning character, hanging on to the back of the sawng thaew (a truck with a couple of bench seats in the back), was the baggage handler, ticket collector, drink passer-arounder-er, interpreter, and tour guide on my trip from Savannakhet to Tha Khek.He was also a spruiker. His key duty seemed to be to drum up more business while we were in transit, as though there were not enough people in the truck already. So he would lean out and shout, "Tha Khek! Tha Khek!", every time we passed a street corner or shop or school or bloody well anything.Monsieur Tha Khek, enjoying the air conditioningfrom his very safe perch on the back of the truck.It was a seriously great trip. I was seated inside at first,...

The streets of Savannakhet are wide and clean, with clusters of delapidated colonial buildings and many shophouses lining the main thoroughfares.These shophouses - simply old homes on the roadfront with space for both a shop and a living area - intrigued me. Walking down the main street, I could see right through the open doorways into people's homes: usually a large mat on the floor in the front room (where meals would be shared), maybe a TV on the floor in the corner, a couple of chairs, perhaps a bookshelf with a few pictures on it, sometimes posters on the walls. Often there were young kids inside, and always a dog or two. I didn't take any photos, but felt priveleged anyway to get a glimpse of these lives. Again and again, as in Dang's home in Pakse, I was impressed and charmed by...

Scene IA street near the Night market, Luang Prabang, 8pmThe protagonist, Falang (a foreigner), is seated on a step outside an internet cafe waiting for a friend. He is reading a book on Lao history. Enter Young Girl, perhaps six years of age, carrying a cardboard box full of bracelets.Young Girl: [disinterestedly] Sa bai dii. (Hello). Buy bracelet. [holds cardboard box aloft]Falang: [looks up from book, smiles] No. Baw yaak. (No want.)Young Girl: [scrunches up nose and pouts] Yaak! (Want!)Falang: [surprised and amused] No. Baw yaak. (No want.) [points at bracelets] Moh lii. (No good.)Young Girl: [scrunches up nose again]Falang: [pokes out his tongue and laughs]Young Girl: [struts away a few steps, turns for one last tongue poke, then...

I read the Vientiane Times daily last week. It's the english-language Lao paper available in Vientiane. It makes for interesting reading.Firstly, it contains a lot of classified advertisements and job vacancies which say a lot about Laos today. In the space of a few days, I saw positions with NGOs, including Oxfam and several religious charities, and the UN, including the World Food Program and the UNDP. As someone who would like to work in this field some day I was very interested.Secondly, it sometimes carries stories which can only be described as propaganda. For example, I read last week, during the Communist Party Congress, that the government's poverty reduction program had been so successful that there are now only twenty-eight poor families in Laos. Not bad. (Unless they mean...

I haven't logged in for an update for a while, so thought I'd better do so now. I am in Vang Vieng, backpacker capital of Lao PDR, and finally - thanks, I believe, to fellow Aussie travellers - have come down with a travel bug. Could've been worse, though, and after a day or two's rest I am feeling ok again. Time for a beer, then...Seriously, though, I spent a good five days in Vientiane. I mentioned to someone via email that I was "drinking, networking, and scheming", and I should add now that I was also reading, learning languages, and having a bloody good time with a bunch of people from very diverse backgrounds. And I am determined that I must return to Laos in the future.Over the next few days, while I drink awful rehydration fluids and eat plenty of rice and bread, I will bring this...

And that's the way I like it...The sun has set on the Mekong, and a cool breeze is sweeping away the day's heat and dust from Vientiane's wide old boulevards. I don't know how I survived the overnight trip here, but I did, sans sleep. And despite the livestock with which I shared the bus.I am dead tired - still no sleep since Tuesday night. So the overdue posts will have to wait another day. They're coming. Brewing nicely.My Lao is coming along well, especially now I picked up a huge Lao-Phonetic-English dictionary and grammar guide from Vientiane's talat sao (morning market), as recommended by a French engineer I met in Tha Kaek who is working on the huge hydro project. I'll visit some koo baa (monks) tomorrow and pester them, too.And my Asian Financial Crisis of 2006 has been overcome....

I was up at sparrow's fart this morning to catch a bus that didn't leave until an hour and a half after it was supposed to. And from a different spot. On a more positive note, I enjoyed a banana pancake and some more lovely iced Lao coffee, then I met some interesting people.Bob is an older Aussie bloke, eighty seven he said. He was on for a chat with the gang who were taking the bus north, some of us to Savannakhet and others further on to Vientiane. Bob had spent the last twenty years saving his pension then traveling around the world four weeks at a time. Now he hoped to see the same Mekong sunset he had seen when we first visited Lao ten years ago. He was carrying a Sydney Morning Herald bag and reading Robert Fisk. And he told some tales. What a character.When we finally hopped onto...

Behind the fold are a few hand-selected and painfully-uploaded photos that should give a feel for the events of the past week or so.1. A shot of the path that wound its way around Kho Pan, the island near Kompong Cham in Cambodia. A beautiful place. In retrospect, I can see it one day becoming a bungalow strip. I should have suggested it to Richie Rich.2. The streets of Stung Treng, dusty fontier town. I saw that many pigs, cows, ducks, geese... I thought I was on a bloody farm.3. The frontier. The two fellas at the left are Frenchman who have turned up here in Savannkhet with me. One is currently missing - hired a motorbike a few hours ago and has not been seen since. Bit of a worry. Hopefully he'll be at the guesthouse when I get there, beer in hand.4. Bungalows along the sunrise strip...

I took the bus north to Pakse on Wednesday. The "bus" was actually a truck with bench seats in the back. The roads were good, and the driving was, too. The countryside is dry and brown here, like the north of Cambodia, but mountains sit in a hazy blue mass on the horizon in most directions, which is something new.Pakse is an old town near the border with Thailand. It has many of the features of old Cambodian towns - colonial buildings falling down around you, wide streets, a river front, and a small hostel strip for the increasing numbers of tourists passing through. It is perhaps the cleanest place I have visited in weeks. The streets are clean, the air is clear, and the river Se Don looks good enough to swim in. So everyone does.And the roads. Ha! Traffic lights, which people actually...

My first experience in Lao was not what I had expected. I'd heard that the area known as Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand Islands, was a hit with backpackers, but I still found it a little overwhelming. There were people everywhere, all of them browned, wearing their new clothes from Thailand, and looking like they were into some x-treme sports.But I can see why they would come. The trip from the border took us - that is, a gaggle of travelers huddled in the back of a truck - through very quiet villages and along dirt tracks. A small wooden boat then took us across the river, weaving in and out of small islands, to Don Det, kind of the second ranked spot in the delta area after Don Khong.At first I was stunned - no moto drivers, no one asking where I was staying. In fact, no one at all. I...

Just a quick entry to report that I have made it to Lao PDR in one piece and am now in Pakse in the country's south. There has been no net access before now. I shall post a couple of entries tomorrow or Friday to bring this thing up to date. Also, I have read all your emails, but have had no time to reply as yet. I will soon. Now I have to head off for dinner with Dang (my waiter-guide-driver-mate) and his family, and likely a few bottles of...