BOTEN, Laos — For five years, this remote town on the China-Laos border has lived in the shadow of more prosperous times.

On the main street, weeds grow where bustling shops and restaurants once stood. Old nightclub signs blister and peel in the tropical climate. Around town, abandoned multistory hotels loom like decaying sentinels, colonized by armies of jungle insects.

About a half-dozen years ago, Boten was a casino boomtown, a pinprick of neon amid thickly forested hills. Its gold-rush economy revolved around the Chinese casinos and gambling halls, which drew in thousands of visitors a month from across the border in Yunnan Province.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/world/asia/china-laos-boten-gambling.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Was there in 2013. An absolute ghost town. Plenty of mainly Chinese vehicles passing through, but no one lingering at the border. Even the local petrol station was abandoned. Wonder what it's like now.

Interesting article thanks for sharing that.

The neon lit place in the picture looks like the last girly bar at the end of civilisation!

Coincidentally, an old friend of my wife (they went to university together in Bangkok and are both accountants) is working there in Boten doing the accounts for the ladyboy cabaret business. She regularly calls my wife from Lao (on Line) to ask about various aspects of doing the accounts if she's not sure. She apparently gets free accommodation with the job, but it's on the 6th floor of a building with no lift! I don't think she's terribly impressed with the place. They must be paying her well.