ABSTRACT
The first time I visited the border town of Lao Cai was in the year 2000, when I made an exploratory trip with the purpose of locating my PhD research subjects. My feeling at the time was that I had basically landed on quite a backward small town, with most of the roads being mud and with passing lorries bringing up sand and dirt. I remember my friend working at Oxfam Hong Kong had once told me that this was a place needing much development, and an Oxfam office from the UK was set up in the Sa Pa district of the Lao Cai province.
