NEW THAI-LAO BRIDGE TO BOOST MEKONG TOURISM

Travel and tourism to and within the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) gets a significant boost with the opening of the second Friendship Bridge between Thailand and Lao PDR on 20 December.

The bridge, which started construction in March 2004, was officially inaugurated by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand and Lao Vice President Bounngang Vorachit in the presence of the Prime Ministers of the two countries as well as members of the diplomatic corps.

Linking the Lao province of Savannakhet with northeastern Thailand's Mukdahan province, the second Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge is a key component of a major economic and infrastructure development plan to facilitate transportation, trade, investment, and tourism in the Mekong Subregion.

Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said the bridge would foster intra-regional trade and investment, facilitate travel to Myanmar and Vietnam and ''in the future help to extend the corridor to China, Korea, India and Bangladesh''.

Lao Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh said the bridge was important to a landlocked country such as Lao PDR, and would enable it to boost the potentiality for transport services and expand trade and tourism with its neighbours.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung also attended the ceremony.

A member of ASEAN since 1997, Lao PDR is working hard to attain a three-fold improvement in national living standards by 2020.

Development of the Mekong basin has been actively promoted since the first half of the 1990s after the restoration of peace in Cambodia and in the Indochina Peninsula, and with the transition to a market economy among socialist states in the post-Cold war era.

The first Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge over the Mekong linking the Thai province of Nong Khai and the Lao PDR capital of Vientiane was opened in 1994 with Australian funding.

The second 1.6-kilometre, two-lane bridge was funded via loans from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to the tune of 4,011 million yen to Lao PDR and 4,079 million yen to Thailand. It was JBIC's first Overseas Development Assistance loan for a cross-border infrastructure development embracing two countries.

The bridge will play a major part in giving landlocked Lao PDR access to ports in Thailand and Vietnam.

It is part of the East-West Corridor route which originates from central Vietnam's Da Nang port, a centre of maritime transportation, and runs north along Vietnam's National Highway No. 1 to Dong Ha. The route then connects Vietnam and Lao PDR via National Highway No. 9, and further connects Laos and Thailand via the new bridge.

The route connecting Vietnam and Savannakhet has been improved in the past through assistance from multilateral agencies and Japan. In Thailand, JBIC has financed improvement work on existing national highways that are part of the East-West Corridor. The new bridge will connect all these routes.

Although the bridge has international border control checkpoints, visitor flows will only begin after the relevant agreements are finalised between Thailand and Lao PDR. Cars travelling across the bridge will be charged 50 baht each and larger trucks, 350 baht.

The two provinces that will certainly benefit on both sides of the river are Savannakhet and Mukdahan, where the people share a lot of cultural, historical and ethnic heritage.

Home to an interesting mixture of cultures from various tribes since ancient times, Mukdahan is a land of fantastic natural rock formations and also renowned for its sweet tamarind fruit. Further information about Mukdahan province: http://www.tatnews.org/emagazine/1603.asp
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Savannakhet can be easily explored by foot and has a number of interesting temples and architectural landmarks dating back to the colonial French days. There are 11 ethnic minorities.

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Ho Tay Pidok Library houses a collection of 200-year-old palm leaf manuscripts written in the ancient Khom-Pali and Lao alphabets. Fossilized dinosaur bones discovered in Xonbuly District in 1930 are housed in the Dinosaur Exhibition Hall in Khanthabouly, the provincial capital.
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In January-March 2006, overland Lao PDR arrivals to Thailand totalled 38,269, up 45.27% over the same period of 2005.