By Beaumont Smith
Asia Times Online
VIENTIANE - It is easy to be seduced by the peaceful rural scenes, punctuated by rice fields, vegetable patches and reed-filled wetlands. But behind the natural tapestry, tension and anger are brimming over in the local communities near the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge outside of the Lao capital.
The communal complaint: their long self-sustaining community will on government orders soon be converted into an 18-hole golf course, luxury hotel and top-end residential developments, and the compensation on offer to relocate is well below going market land prices.
The Vietnam-owned Long Thanh Golf Trading and Investment Joint Stock Company, the developer behind the US$1 billion project, has already placed survey stakes and bulldozed certain areas in the 557 hectare plot. To make way for the construction, which is scheduled for completion in 12 years, over 250 mostly poor families will be forced to abandon their communities and small farms.
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