Noah Shepherd's Personal Webspace
The story of SeaCanoe, the Bird’s Nest concession holders, the National Park and a shooting on the steps of the company’s office. It’s been over 20 years since the incident. Pete Troy interviewed me about the story for his Thairish Times YouTube channel.
This story from Action Asia in 1999.
In 1999, I made a deal with the Lao Government to produce a website for their Visit Laos Years 1999 – 2000. They were trying to promote tourism in the country but had no budget to speak of. All of the marketing spend was in country. I proposed to build an official website for them at no cost, but allowing my consultancy business to make revenue from it.
It was early days of the Internet. Images and copy were very limited. Lao had very few visitors but the country was opening up. I started by knocking on doors and selling ‘web pages’ to local businesses in Vientiane. I then took on a salesperson to work in Vientiane and subcontracted the advertising pages to others. The site was very successful and well received and received. Most of the businesses in Vientiane and Luang Prabang that were involved in tourism became customers.
In those days, very few people had Internet access in Lao. There were a couple of ‘internet cafes’ with really slow connections. Some people used to get an internet account in Thailand and make an international dial up call with their modems.
A hotelier with 20 rooms decided to pay for four pages of advertising. A few months later at a travel seminar in Vientiane, he stood up and told the audience that he used to be able to fill three or four rooms a night from walk ins. Since he advertised on the site, his hotel was always at 100% occupancy.
You can see an early version of the site here.
I sold out my consultancy business and became part of Asia Web Direct, an online hotel booking company. visit-laos.com and other sites we built are are now part of Expedia.
I was interviewed about this story by Pete from Thairish Times.
I visited Claude Vincent in his office in Vientiane in 1996. Claude was French and had lived in Laos for many years. His company, SODETOUR, was the first and only tour company owned by a foreigner at that time. Claude’s office was on the bank of the Mekong river on the Quai Fa Ngum. In those days, the riverside road was a narrow, dusty avenue with bamboo bars and restaurants on the banks of the river.
SODETOUR ran standard three day and six day trips to the main tourist attractions. I was the GM of an adventure travel company (Sea Canoe Thailand) and I was looking at opportunities to kayaks down the tributaries of the Mekong river. Claude showed me a huge map of the country on the wall. He told me that he had heard of a river that ran several kilometres through a cave, in Hinboun (limestone) province but was not quite sure where it was, or what it was called. Claude agreed to do the fixing and ground handling for our trip to take place the next year. Soon after our meeting, Claude was shot in an ambush, allegedly by the Hmong when travelling with his staff from Luang Prabang to Vientiane.
After a few months of detective work, we ended up working with another tour operator and in late 1997, ran an exploratory trip on the Nam Ou river in the north, from Oudomxay to Luang Prabang and up the Hinboon river in central Laos. The three videos are the story of those two river trips.
Kong Lor Caves (Tham Kong Lor) are now an established attraction in Lao as part of the ‘Hinboon Loop’.
I organised and lead the trip to Kong Lor Cave that SeaCanoe made in 1997. Our return the next year was the first commercial tour to Kong Lor caves.
We made these videos in the late 1990s using a Sony DCR VX-1000. John Gray was the producer, editor, camera, script and director. I did the voiceover. The videos have gone from VHS to VCD to DVD to MP4 and now YouTube so there is a lot of quality loss.
Interview with Pete Troy from Thairish Times
Part I
Part II
Part III. Journey to Kong Lor Cave.