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Phakant in Kachin state was a very quiet town among the forests in northern Myanmar, before someone centuries ago found the great treasure lying beneath it – jade.

Today, Phakant is one of the most important and dynamic cities in the country's economic landscape because it is one of a few major places on earth that produces the gem.  It has also become popular in the international gems market for its quality jades, and most of the jade ends up across the border in China.

Uncle Bounlay smiles while standing alongside his elephant, Chanmy, by a pond in Nahai village.When I was about seven or eight years old, my grandfather used to tell me that the villagers had to be very careful not to be trampled over by elephants when they headed for the forest or were walking about in their farms. Indeed, there were many more of the huge animals at the time. Elephants and humans, after all, have lived together for a very long time. The bonds between them are likely to have come from the animals’ use as a means of transportation, and not least due to the fact that the majestic beasts fought alongside various kings in the olden days.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand (IPS Asia-Pacific) – Tun Yo may not have known much about the ways of the world when he first came to work in one of the orange groves here seven years ago. After all, he was just 14 at the time and one of the thousands of Burmese migrants who pour into Thailand every year.

At 45, Yun Lungta commands respect from the Burmese migrant workers at the Thanathorn Orange Plantation in Chiang Mai’s Fang district. As head of the workers, his tasks include helping the plantation manager in pest control, along with some administration duties.

 

Breakfast in Thailand, a sumptuous lunch in Laos, and dinner before an overnight stay in Vietnam, with some shopping in between. Not only is this three-country tour drawing lots of curious tourists, it is also providing communities situated along the journey brisk -- and, for some, risky -- business.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - "I don't prostitute myself, I sell my skills," says Ton, a 28-year-old who moved from Bangkok to this northern Thai city because "it's a dream place everyone wants to live in".

 

The vast, limitless ricefields between Vietnam’s An Giang province and Cambodia’s Takeo province were full of yellow paddy just three months ago in June. But by September 2006, water from the Mekong River had flooded almost the entire area, except for a narrow three-kilometre road that links the two provinces.

PHNOM PENH, Jun 6 (Newsmekong) - It was just 8 a.m. on a Sunday
morning, but 78-year-old farmer You Song had visited almost all the
places inside the Royal Palace here in the Cambodian capital.

 

It was more than a century ago, in 1901, that French colonialists began to build a railway from Hai Phong in Vietnam to Kunming, in China’s south-western Yunnan province. By the time the railway construction reached the terminal in Kunming, it was Mar. 31, 1910.