ABSTRACT
In 1994 and early 1995 I lived on the Mekong River border dividing Thailand and Laos. My base was the northern Thai trading town of Chiang Khong which was experiencing a boom as a result of the increase in trade that followed the offi cial re-opening of the border in 1989. I was conducting doctoral research on cross-border trade between northern Thailand, northern Laos and southern China. In the resulting book, The Legend of the Golden Boat (1999) I suggested that much of the contemporary rhetoric about borderland liberalisation was misplaced. In fact, I argued, the open borders of the mid-1990s provided more opportunities for profi table state regulation than the closed borders of the preceding decades. This point was made to me most clearly by a Lao customs offi cer who had experienced, fi rst hand, the proliferation of state intervention in cross-border trade. ‘When the border was closed my job was easy,’ he said, ‘there was nothing for us to do. But now I’m working harder than ever.’
