The Mekong Memo

Thailand 20260612

August Whitcraft — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:46:17 GMT

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Erawan Verdict A Decade Late

Bangkok South Criminal Court sentenced Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed to death on Thursday for the August 2015 Erawan Shrine bombing, closing a trial that outlasted a military government, a pandemic, and a transfer between court systems. The two Chinese nationals were convicted on what the four-judge panel said was “overwhelming” evidence, including video footage and fingerprints, and ordered to pay more than a million baht (~$30k) for property damage on top of the capital sentence. Mieraili, who learned Thai in prison and was asked Thursday to translate the proceedings into Uyghur for Bilal because only an English interpreter was on hand, told the courtroom, "RIP Thailand's justice system. I didn't do anything wrong." Defense lawyers plan to appeal within a month, arguing several aspects of the case went unexamined, including torture allegations that the judges dismissed for lack of evidence. Of the 17 suspects named in 2015, only three were ever caught, and charges against a Thai woman were dropped in 2024. Human Rights Watch's senior Thailand advisor said the investigation was "shoddy" and that important questions about the networks behind the attack remain unanswered.

Read more: Bangkok Post (deportation backdrop), Thestar (due process criticism), Independent (defendants' ages), Chinadailyasia (China's statement)

BKK Funds Narrative, Phnom Penh Takes Tanks

China's delivery of T-59D tanks to Cambodia received a studied shrug from Bangkok. Prime Minister Anutin said the matter was no direct concern of Thailand's; Defense Minister Lt Gen Adul said the tanks were refurbished older models under a cooperation arrangement that has included joint exercises since 2016, and said intelligence confirmed they'd arrived at a Cambodian port but hadn't been moved toward the border. The calm response is probably helpful. On June 5, Thailand agreed to join the UN compulsory conciliation process under UNCLOS to settle the two countries' maritime boundary, a bit of water sitting on an estimated $300 billion of energy resources. At the same time, Bangkok put land border talks on hold, a pressure-reducing off-ramp from negotiations it had been slow-walking for months. The government also reportedly approved 9.8 million baht (~$300k) for a Thai-Cambodian Joint Information Coordination Center, set up in January to push Bangkok's version of the border story to the international media.

Read more: Bangkok Post (Thai minister quotes), Bangkok Post (JIC budget), Foreign Policy (maritime arbitration)

Thai Inc. Tells Gov’t the Japanese Aren't Returning

Boonsithi Chokwatana, chairman of Saha Group, said that Japanese investment is slowing, Chinese money is filling the gap, and the Chinese are buying land by the hundreds of rai at a time rather than the 10-20 rai a Japanese firm might take. The same day, the JSCCIB put the heat on the government to move faster on courting multinationals looking to relocate manufacturing, pointing to 18.9% export growth in the first four months of the year, with almost half of that driven by AI and data center investment. The backdrop is a World Bank growth expectation of only 1.6% for Thailand in 2026, compared to 6.8% for Vietnam.

Read more: Bangkok Post (Boonsithi), Bangkok Post (JSCCIB forecast upgrade)

Anutin's Rural Base Checks the Bill

Diesel up more than 60% at its peak, fertilizer costs up more than 30%, and rice prices are still moving south. The Iran war's tax on fuel and fertilizer has landed on farmers like Chaon Taiupok, a 69-year-old rice grower in Ayutthaya who says the politicians who came courting before February's election disappeared as soon as the polls were closed. A May Suan Dusit University poll found 57% of respondents had little or no confidence in the Anutin government, a backpedalling from March when 68% said that they were optimistic. Nearly four-fifths want urgent action on the cost of living, but with household debt at 86.7% of GDP and inflation looking like it’s going to breach the central bank's 1-3% target, fiscal room to maneuver is thin. The government's 176-billion-baht consumer subsidy program, part of a 400-billion-baht borrowing decree that’s getting an opposition legal challenge, will offer rice farmers a little bit of breathing room, but it’s unlikely to be anywhere close to enough to make a real difference; Pramote Charoensilp, president of the Thai Agriculturalists Association, says it won’t cover the bills.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Baht Blinks, BOT Doesn't

The SET is trading at 16x earnings with per-share profits capped near 95 baht for a decade and GDP growth expected to remain below 2%, a result that appears to be forcing Kasikorn Asset Management to tell clients the rally’s already priced in the good news. The Bank of Thailand sees no need for an emergency MPC meeting despite the baht falling 5.4% since the U.S.-Iran conflict started, saying that reserves are still healthy and foreign outflows are manageable at only $1.3 billion. In contrast, Indonesia hiked 25 basis points in an emergency session and is expected to hike again next week.

Read more: Bangkok Post (K-Asset dividends), FX Street (BOT spokesperson quotes)

Photo by Streets of Food on Unsplash

Gulf Bets $12 Billion on Becoming Server Farmer

Gulf Development is expected to build out 2,000MW of data center capacity within three to five years, starting with 100MW this year with a five-year capex plan of 130-140 billion baht. That’s about 10% of what it’s set aside for digital infrastructure overall. The 100MW flagship will be erected in Rayong, a 38MW site is under construction in Chon Buri (expected mid-2027), and a 25MW joint venture with Singtel and AIS in Samut Prakan is already running Thailand's first liquid-cooled setup for AI chips. At Gulf's estimate of $6-7 million per MW, the full 2,000MW build-out implies a cost of about of $12 billion. Chief strategy officer Smith Banomyong is also trying to get regulators to create data center rules similar to those already found in Singapore and South Korea.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Seoul's Spooks Raid Bangkok's Medicine Cabinet

South Korean intelligence agents joined Thai forces to hit 10 warehouses in and around Bangkok on June 9. They hauled out 49.98 tons of acetone, hydrochloric acid, and other precursor chemicals the NIS claims could have yielded 700 million doses of a variety of drugs that could have been worth $5.6 billion on the street. It was the first time a Korean government agency has directly worked a foreign drug production site, a move that came in the wake of Seoul's April detention of “Thapanan,” a kingpin accused of controlling more than half the narcotics circulating in the country and sitting on about 50 outstanding arrest warrants accumulated over the past decade. More than 100 military, police, and anti-drug personnel took part along with NIS specialists and dismantled what the agency called a supply hub that fed not only Korea but markets across Asia.

Land Bridge to Nowhere Gets Another 90 Days

Anutin Charnvirakul's cabinet has ordered a new 90-day review of the Chumphon-Ranong Land Bridge (results due August 10). The project, with a price tag of an estimated Bt997 billion, would cut a shipping corridor across the peninsula to connect the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea. Three prior feasibility studies have already come and gone. Foreign capital committed to date is zero.

World Cup Deal Lands at Kickoff

In a last minute score, JAS chief executive Soraj Asavaprapha confirmed the deal on June 11, the same day the tournament kicked off in Mexico City, after weeks of talks that stalled over FIFA's reported $40 million asking price for Thai rights. The final package covers two World Cups and all FIFA events through 2030 in a $70 million deal. Vietnam reportedly paid about $15 million for its rights, and JAS had reportedly been pushing for something close to that figure. The 2022 tournament ended the same way, with a last-minute $33 million scramble funded by regulators and True Corp.

Read more: CNA, Asian News Network (ASEAN holdout)

ISOC Gets the Bill for Smear Campaign

The Court of Appeal ordered ISOC on Thursday to pay 210,000 baht to activists Angkhana Neelapaijit (wife of “disappeared” lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit) and Anchana Heemmina and scrub offending online content within seven days, closing a case over Pulony.com, a website that published untrue information that connected the two women to national security threats. The court found ISOC liable with the reasoning that it had authority to control and supervise the site, a principle that extends state liability to any agency overseeing a channel used to spread damaging content. Angkhana, who received 120,000 baht to Anchana's 90,000, said it was an important precedent for human rights protection. The court accepted that the operation, the kind of thing now politely called an "information operation", was carried out by people connected to ISOC Region 4 Forward Command.

Read more: Bangkok Post

A Line Message in Bhumjaithai Blue

People's Party MP Pakhamon Nunanant has called on Department of Provincial Administration chief Narucha Khosasivilai to explain a Line message reportedly reading "Please help Blue," a phrase that critics claim was as a nudge toward Bhumjaithai during a recent election campaign. The leak came from former Phuket assistant governor Roongruang Thimabut, who says he was transferred unfairly soon after. He has filed complaints with the NACC and Election Commission, accusing Narucha of breaching political neutrality and possibly violating Section 172 of the anti-corruption law. The department is under the Interior Ministry, currently run directly by the PM.

Read more: Bangkok Post

People's Lawyer Discovers People's Prison

The Criminal Court sentenced Sittra "Lawyer Tum" Biabungkerd to six years without suspension on Thursday, putting a fork in a case that began when police pulled him over in his Porsche Cayenne on the Kabin Buri-Chachoengsao Highway in late 2024, apparently mid-flight. His accuser is Jatuporn Ubonlert, a EuroMillions winner based in France who says Sittra talked her into 71 million baht for an online lottery investment, 13 million for a Mercedes-Benz, and 39 million in bitcoin to hire a Chinese artist (!?). Sittra's defense was that the money was given voluntarily, out of affection (!?). The court gave him four and a half years for fraud plus another 18 months for offenses under the Computer Crime Act, in addition to telling him to repay 72.5 million baht with 5% annual interest. He's out on 1 million baht bail pending appeal, barred from leaving the country.

Read more: Bangkok Post

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Vietnam 20260611

August Whitcraft — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:40:10 GMT

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Hanoi Buys Indian Missiles, Pours Concrete in the Spratlys

Indian Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed at the Shangri-La Dialogue on May 30 that Hanoi has agreed to buy the BrahMos cruise missile, making it the second foreign buyer after the Philippines. The shore-based version travels at nearly three times the speed of sound and has a range of almost 300 km (about 180 miles), enough to give pause to any naval commander operating near the Vietnamese coast. The confirmation arrived in the same week that satellite imagery analyzed by Radio Free Asia showed Vietnamese construction underway at 27 spots on at least 18 reefs in the Spratlys, with ports, runways, military facilities, and communications arrays going up across the chain. China is Hanoi's number one trading partner, and the two governments have spent recent years talking up warmer ties. Beijing seized the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam in 1974 after a bloody battle and has pushed its claims in the South China Sea ever since.

Read more: Newsweek (Philippines comparison), Eurasia Review (acreage reclaimed)

Hanoi's Wish List Lands on Washington's Desk

Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc gave US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau a pretty specific shopping list during talks in Hanoi on June 10, asking Washington to drop Vietnam from its D1 and D3 export control lists, recognize its market economy status, and pushed for the close of a reciprocal trade deal. Landau, in town for the ASEAN Future Forum 2026, offered the standard warm verbiage about a "strong, independent, resilient and prosperous" partner, and mentioned American interest in critical minerals, aviation, energy and defense alongside trade. Defense Minister Phan Van Giang, who also met Landau, said bilateral defense ties were one of the "most effective and practical" areas of engagement. What Hanoi got back was mostly affirmation that Trump "highly appreciated" To Lam's February trip to Washington.

Foxconn Wants Its Watts Green AND Guaranteed

Foxconn and Brookfield Asset Management released a plan on June 9 to build up to 1 gigawatt of utility-scale wind, solar, and battery capacity to power Foxconn's Vietnam factories and supplier network, underpinned by a long-term power purchase agreement and funded through Brookfield's Catalytic Transition Fund. Before war in the Middle East upended energy supply lines, Vietnam was buying nearly four-fifths of its oil from Kuwait, a dependency that has been surely been focusing minds in both Hanoi and Taipei. Foxconn chief investment officer James Tu said the deal was a good way to get "stable and cost-effective power" for the company's regional growth more than it was a green-washing exercise. The buildout will come as Vietnam's direct PPA framework continues to evolve. The National Assembly is at this moment rewriting it to try and better court foreign investors. Brookfield manages more than $1 trillion in assets and runs one of the world's largest renewable energy portfolios of hydro, wind, solar, and storage on five continents.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (Daniel Cheng), Vietnam News (Vietnam legislative efforts), Semafor (Kuwait oil dependency), Focustaiwan TW (James Tu), Asian Power (direct PPA framework)

LG Innotek Bets Big on Hai Phong Substrates

LG Innotek signed an MoU with Hai Phong on June 4 to build its first semiconductor substrate plant outside South Korea in what will be a 330,000 sqm facility. Construction starts next month, completion is expected by May 2027. The plant will produce RF-SiP, FC-CSP, and FC-BGA substrates, the advanced packaging components that sit between raw chip fabrication and finished devices, and that every AI server rack and 5G handset currently needs more of. The Gumi factory already running in Korea is running near full capacity. CEO Moon Hyuk-soo wants the packaging solutions unit raking in more than 3 trillion KRW by 2030.

Read more: Vietnam News (Gumi reinvestment), Vietnam Insiders (6G demand)

China Eats What Washington Won't

Vietnamese seafood shipments to China and Hong Kong rose 40.5% to $1.2 billion in the first five months of 2026, more than offsetting a 10% slide in US-bound exports to $689 million. Shrimp led the pack globally at $1.9 billion in all markets, which is about 40% of all seafood shipments. The industry is already raising the flag about raw material shortages and stricter Chinese food safety rules as reasons the second half may not keep up.

Read more: VnExpress

Photo by Ruslan Bardash on Unsplash

Gold Bugs Get Squashed

Retail investors who rode bullion to its peak are nursing losses of more than 27% since early March, with the Saigon Jewelry Company bar price settling at VND138.3 million per tael on Wednesday after a single-day drop of 3.82%. The local premium that once made Vietnamese gold a juicy arb play has collapsed to roughly VND4 million per tael, down from nearly VND12 million recently, as sellers cashed out over fears that new supply would push prices lower still. Precious metal and gemstone imports rose 284% year-on-year, the fastest growth of any major import category, and the Vietnam Gold Traders Association is lobbying for a 50-ton yearly tariff-free import quota, saying the ask is needed to support more jewelry exports.

Read more: VnExpress (Wednesday price drop), VnExpress (local-global premium), VnExpress (rate hike pressure), VnExpress (50-ton import quota)

A Single Stock to Rule Them All

The VN-Index saw an all-time high of 1,933 points in May, and nearly two-thirds of actively managed funds still couldn't keep up. Eighteen closed out the first five months in the red. The rally leaned heavily on Vingroup-connected names, even as the VN30, tracking the market's biggest stocks, fell 1.3% in May and is down 1.7% so far for the year. Dragon Capital's DCDS and DCDE both held VIC and VHM and still lost 6.5% and 6.1% respectively, dragged down partly by Mobile World, which fell more than 9% through the month of May. Even the year's top fund, VNDAF, watched its return shrink from 16.5% to 9.3% in a month after property developer NVL fell more than a quarter in May, after having rocketed 45% in April.

Vuong Sells a Million Cars to Himself

VinFast has signed a deal to supply Green SM, the ride-hailing company that is also controlled by Pham Nhat Vuong, with a million electric cars and four million e-motorbikes by 2030, according to its Q1 financials. VinFast showed a loss of more than VND28 trillion in Q1, up from VND17.7 trillion a year earlier, even as Green SM's charter capital has risen from VND3 trillion to VND43 trillion since its 2023 launch. Outside the empire, real customers are hard to come by, though VinFast did sell 58,600 electric cars in Q1, up 61% year-on-year. 8% of the total went to overseas markets.

Read more: VnExpress (Green SM expansion), TechNode Global (charging infrastructure)

Bangkok and Hanoi Pencil In $50 Billion

Thailand and Vietnam set a bilateral trade goal of $50 billion, with a nearer-term waypoint of $25 billion, after Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's June 8 talks in Hanoi on the sidelines of the ASEAN Future Forum. The two are currently in the middle of celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations, and in May they upgraded their relationship to a Complete Strategic Partnership. The bi-national talks included much more than just trade, taking in defense exchanges, joint maritime patrols, a shared "Two Countries, One Destination" tourism pitch, and invitations to Thai defense firms for December's Vietnam International Defense Expo in Hanoi.

Read more: Aa Com TR (summit), Travel and Tour World (tourism visitor counts), VnExpress (defense expo invite), VnEconomy (three connectivity strategy)

Hanoi Stops Promising Workers a Deed

In a noteworthy shift of messaging, Vietnam is retiring the dream of mass homeownership for its workers. At the 14th Vietnam Trade Union Congress on June 5, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh changed the goal from “owning a home” to having "the right to housing." He mentioned long-term affordable rentals near industrial zones as part of his pitch. Housing prices may have made the change inevitable, because costs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City now run 20 to 30 times average annual income. That’s compared to what’s considered healthy elsewhere of of 5 to 7 time. More than 70 percent of Hanoi's 2.7 million workers already live in rented boarding houses. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor says it’s on track to deliver about 10,700 social housing units by 2030, with 1,722 apartments already under construction in Bac Ninh and the former Ben Tre (now Vinh Long), expected to be finished sometime next year.

Read more: VnEconomy (PM rental commitment), VnEconomy (VGCL timeline), VnEconomy (National Housing Corporation)

Towers Down, Trees Up on the Saigon River

Ho Chi Minh City has put the kibosh on a 2016 plan for more than 3,100 riverfront apartments at the Nha Rong-Khanh Hoi site and broke ground April 29 on a 39.5-hectare public park instead. Sun Group is building it under a build-transfer contract worth VND20 trillion ($760 million), with no state budget money involved. The reversal is remarkable partly because the city currently offers residents about 0.7 sq.m of public park space per person, against its own stated livability benchmark of 8 to 10 (for comparison, Bangkok (no green paradise) manages 3.3). The Nha Rong site is a few hundred meters from the Nguyen Hue walking street, on one of the most coveted land banks in the city.

Read more: VnExpress

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Laos 20260610

August Whitcraft — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:53:47 GMT

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All-Weather Friends, Whatever the Forecast

Thongloun Sisoulith finished his Beijing visit on June 6, having signed 32 cooperation agreements. The relationship also got an upgrade to what Xi Jinping is calling an "all-weather China-Laos community with a shared future in the new era," a phrase that does a lot of diplomatic work for a country that's carrying more than $18 billion in cumulative Chinese investment. The deals run the gamut of trade, finance, agriculture, energy, and human resources (training, mostly). Xi is also pushing a new "3+3" dialogue on diplomacy, defense, and public security that both sides say will help to tamp down on cross-border fraud. The last item is probably the most interesting - Vientiane handed nearly 500 telecom and online fraud suspects to Beijing in May. On the economic side, bilateral trade was $9.82 billion in 2025, up more than 19 percent year on year, and Xi is making noise about faster railway connectivity through to Thailand. Thongloun, for his part, said China's development was a "valuable reference" for Laos as it modernizes.

Read more: Asian News Network (AI corridor), CCTV (Li Qiang meeting), Laotian Times (visit timeline), CCTV (3+3 dialogue), CGTN (railway cargo)

Vientiane and Beijing Pencil In Twenty Billion

Bilateral trade between Laos and China has doubled since 2021, reaching $8.8 billion in 2024 (and then the aforementioned $9.82 billion in 2025). Both countries are now looking at a $20 billion target by 2030. The roadmap was hammered out in Suzhou on May 21, when Industry and Commerce Minister Malaythong Kommasith met his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao. It covers energy security (especially timely since March's fuel crunch), electric vehicles, a domestic NPK fertilizer industry built on Lao potash reserves, and mineral processing. The fertilizer play is the sleeper story. Laos supplies the potash, China ships in phosphorus and nitrogen, and the finished product will remain mostly in-house. Beijing and Vientiane also renewed their currency swap agreement, which greases the payment rails that the Suzhou meeting had flagged as a priority.

Read more: Laotian Times (four pillars), TradingView (currency swap)

Vientiane's Villa Problem

Police raided a rented villa in Xaythany District on June 3 and hauled out 24 Chinese nationals, along with electronics tied to alleged telecom scam work. That was the cap on a week in which 73 foreign suspects were detained in both Vientiane Capital and Vientiane Province. The June 1-2 sweep through Vang Vieng, Keo Oudom, and Viengkham netted about four dozen more. Passports and equipment was taken from nationals of China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. The arrests come as part of a campaign that Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone ordered in late April and that’s racked up more than 1,000 detentions across the country in just the month of May, from 605 suspects shipped from Savannakhet to Vientiane on May 7 to a 27-person bust in Chanthabouly on May 26. On June 5, UNODC and the UK government brought partners together in Vientiane to talk about trafficking links, cybercrime, and illicit finance. British expert Rob Clark shared regional notes.

Read more: Laotian Times (arrest breakdown), The Lao Times (UNODC meeting)

Graduating Poor, Still Paying Tuition

Forest cover was reduced by 2.9 percent between 2000 and 2015, public debt tipped 131 percent of GDP in 2022, and only a third of Vientiane's estimated 970 daily tons of waste gets collected and properly taken care of. That's the balance sheet behind this year's UN least-developed-country graduation, an achievement that Vientiane’s been on the heels of since the early 2000s. Debt has since been reduced to 88 percent of GDP (year-end 2025), and poverty is down to 15 percent. The 2055 target to get to “upper-middle-income status” was set in January 2026.

Potash Pit Swallows a Village

Vientiane authorities met June 3 to start coming up with compensation rates for land, crops, and structures that were wrecked by sinkholes in Thongmang village, Xaythany district, though no figures have become public yet. Five holes have opened since May 2025, the biggest/ worse one on January 2, when one swallowed four villagers whose bodies were never recovered. Thirty-eight households have been evacuated, mining was stopped in July 2025, and ground stabilization work continues.

Thai Cavers Answer the Call Next Door

Lao PM Sonexay Siphandone sent a thank-you letter to his Thai counterpart Anutin Charnvirakul on June 7 and credited three Thai rescue units with helping pull five of seven villagers from a flooded cave in Xaysomboun Province's Longchaeng District. The men had been trapped by flash floods on May 20. The survivors were able to make an exit between May 29 and 30, after rescuers ferried supplies in and pumped water out. Teams stopped work inside the cave on June 6 after they thought that there were signs of a collapse forming at the entrance. Two villagers are still missing after more than ten days.

Bombs Outlast the Bombmakers

Michael Boddington, the British consultant who set up COPE in Vientiane in 1997, has passed away at the age of 84. What began as a small operation that made fitted prosthetics for amputees now treats about 1,500 patients each year. Lao staff have run it since Boddington previously stepped back from regular work in 2016. The problem of UXO continues to plague the nation. On March 27, a clearance team destroyed a 500-pound American MK82 bomb in a village near Luang Prabang; three days earlier, another team had taken out a similar one in Xiengkhouang province.

Read more: The Guardian (Boddington biography), Nikkei Asia (MK82 clearance)

Toyota Tsusho Brings the Factory to the Customer

Toyota Tsusho has set up a vehicle assembly subsidiary in Laos called Toyota Tsusho Manufacturing Laos. Production is scheduled to start in April 2028 and output is expected to best 5,000 vehicles a year. The trader has run Toyota's authorized dealership in the country since September 2018, and is now moving past finished-vehicle imports to knock-down assembly. It expects to have components shipped in before it puts them together locally. The Hilux pickup and Fortuner SUV will be the anchor models. Toyota Tsusho says the expansion is about price competitiveness and supply stability, since import costs and logistics have been squeezing margins. About 150 local jobs are expected to be created once the line is running.

Vientiane Swats Malaria Down to 269 Cases

Indigenous malaria cases in Laos fell from 15,497 in 2016 to 269 in 2025, a remarkable reduction of more than 98 percent. The success was shared at the 10th Asia Pacific Leaders' Summit on Malaria Elimination in Vientiane on Friday. Deputy Health Minister Phayvanh Keopaseuth has further ambitions, saying he wants zero indigenous cases by 2030. Throughout the Greater Mekong Subregion, confirmed cases fell by more than a third between 2015 and 2024.

Not Wine Vats After All

When archaeologists excavated a squat, collapsed stone jar on the Xieng Khouang Plateau in the winter of 2022, they weren't expecting to find ancient rice wine, but they also were not expecting to find what they did find: the jumbled remains of at least 37 people. Skulls were stacked around the rim, thigh bones laid across the edges, infants and adults together in a single multigenerational crypt. The find, published in the journal *Antiquity*, backs what scientists have long suspected. The Plain of Jars megaliths were communal ossuaries, used by Indigenous communities that first let bodies decompose elsewhere before gathering the bones for collective burial. Lead archaeologist Nicholas Skopal of James Cook University said it was a dig that left the team in silence.

EDL Pulls the Plug on Vientiane

Three Vientiane districts are losing power for stretches between June 5 and 9 as Electricité du Laos runs maintenance, equipment installs, and pole relocations. Sikhottabong gets the worst of it, with nine straight hours on June 7 in Nahae, Nonsawang, Dankham, and several other villages, from 8 AM to 5 PM. Soknoy village along the 450-Year Road in Xaysettha is getting eight-hour cuts from 8 AM to 4 PM on June 5, 6, 7, and 9. Near Patuxay Monument in Chanthabouly, residents will lose four hours on June 7.

Myanmar 20260609

August Whitcraft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 02:37:19 GMT

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Modi Buys the Bridge, Resistance Owns the River

Min Aung Hlaing got to New Delhi on May 30 for a five-day state visit and left with what junta media said was the biggest diplomatic breakthrough of his presidency. He left with full state honors from Modi, a rare earths deal, a rupee-kyat currency settlement agreement, and renewed commitments to two infrastructure projects that have been collecting dust for years. The problem with the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project is that Chin State's Paletwa, the route's key transit point, has been held by the Arakan Army since January 2024. The India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway runs through Sagaing, where resistance forces are formidable, and contested parts of Karen State. The rare earths deal has the same sort of shape to it. The accessible dysprosium and terbium deposits are in Kachin State's Pangwa-Chipwi belt, under control of the Kachin Independence Army since October 2024, and the ore currently runs to Yunnan processors under a KIA-structured deal. India has spent about $340 million on Kaladan over two decades and it still isn’t done.

Read more: The Irrawaddy (pre-monsoon offensive), The Diplomat (Neighborhood First policy), DVB (U.S. sanctions risk), DVB (northeast India dissent)

Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Much news this week recapping the election story (again). The usual summary, but for those who haven’t been keeping up: Aung Hlaing hung up his uniform in exchange for a longyi on April 10 when he made himself president. That was after elections in which the military-proxy USDP took 339 of 420 contested seats AND awarded themselves 25 percent of parliamentary seats. That gave military-aligned lawmakers more than 86 percent of the new legislature. Turnout in the election was 54 percent, but the National League for Democracy had been dissolved and voting was canceled in many conflict areas across the country. The commander-in-chief title was given to General Ye Win Oo, a former intelligence chief. Aung San Suu Kyi was (reportedly) moved from prison to house arrest after (reportedly) meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group: "The uniforms may have changed to civilian clothes, but this is not a political transition."

Read more: East Asia Forum (Myitsone Dam revival), International Crisis Group (economic crisis), DVB (food insecurity), The Diplomat (junta propaganda machine), Foreign Policy (China's role)

Junta Hires Roger Stone as Beijing Hauls Tungsten

Roger Stone continues to rake in $50,000 a month from the junta's lobbying budget. He was brought on as a consultant to DCI Group, which signed a $3 million, one-year contract with Naypyitaw's Information Ministry in mid-2025 to rebuild ties with the Trump administration around trade, natural resources, and humanitarian relief. The pitch is that Washington gets rare earths diverted away from China, and the junta gets rehabilitated. Marco Rubio told a House panel that Beijing holds "tremendous" influence over the regime, said Myanmar was "a hard nut to crack," and said only "baby steps" were realistic. He’s right, and there might be a case for moving faster. A Chinese mining company working with the United Wa State Army has been running tungsten out of Shan State's Mong Ton Township since February. The product gets moved through Tachileik and Mong Phyak to Mongla on the Chinese border. Wang Yi received the junta's foreign minister Tin Maung Swe, himself a former ambassador to Beijing, in the Chinese capital on Friday and restated his terms. He wants continued Belt and Road progress and safety guarantees for Chinese staff in-country.

Read more: The Irrawaddy (Rubio quotes, Wang Yi), The Irrawaddy (DCI contract, Stone)

A Fifth of the Map and a Full Air Force

The junta controls 21 percent of Myanmar's territory against resistance forces that control about 42 percent. On Saturday, four airstrikes on Mahlaing Township's Thayetkaung Pin village killed five civilians and wounded 15. Three of the dead were teenagers walking home from a weekend class. The same night near Kyaukphyu, a Y-12 transport modified for combat dropped eight bombs on three villages. The strike wounded a 12-year-old girl and two elderly residents, gutted a family home, and killed three cows and two pigs. Since the 2021 coup, Insecurity Insight has reported almost 2,000 attacks on health care facilities. Min Aung Hlaing announced his "100-day peace plan" on April 20, but DVB says at least 149 people have been killed by regime aerial attacks since.

Read more: Asia Times (territorial control), DVB (post-April 20 toll), Narinjara (Kyaukphyu strike), ReliefWeb (healthcare attacks)

Beijing Plays All Sides of the Border Fence

Wang Yi went to Naypyidaw in April to reaffirm Beijing's support for Min Aung Hlaing's new presidency, with the usual script of stability, sovereignty, and friendship on the agenda. What was less prominent in the announcements was that Beijing has been keeping its own channels open with the ethnic armed groups that control Kachin State's rare-earth deposits, particularly around Chipwi and Pangwa. The mines are in Myanmar, but processing, pricing, and downstream industrial power all run through China.

Read more: East Asia Forum (CMEC joint security), East Asia Forum (Modi meeting, ASEAN exclusion)

Photo by Maria Bolgiani on Unsplash

Resistance Takes Roadshow to Ottawa, Canberra

NUG Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung wrapped up a cross-country Canadian tour on June 3 and pitched the newly forged SCEF alliance to Parliamentary Secretary Robert Oliphant after stops in Toronto and Vancouver. The Steering Committee for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union binds the NUG and the ousted lawmakers of the CRPH with four ethnic armed organizations, including the KNU and KIO. The delegation has now introduced the coalition in Washington, Tokyo, and Istanbul. SCEF representatives briefed envoys from 24 countries at a Bangkok session on Friday. In Australia, Aung San Suu Kyi's youngest son Kim Aris made his first visit to the country on June 4 and called for independently verified proof that his mother is still alive.

Read more: DVB (SCEF member organizations), Mizzima (Bangkok briefing), DVB (Kim Aris demand)

Arakan Army Takes a Headcount in Maungdaw

Village administrators connected to the Arakan Army have started collecting names of Rohingya residents aged between 18 and 30 in Maungdaw Township. They're using household registration documents to create lists (for as-yet-unrevealed reasons) in villages including Paungzar, Hla Baw Zar, Kyauk Hla Ka, and Mingalar Gyi. Some young people who previously joined armed groups have gone missing for long stretches without a word, and residents say anxiety over the registration is pushing youth to sneak out of their villages before the next gang comes knocking.

Tourist Visas, Drone Lessons, Mizoram Detour

India's NIA has asked a Delhi court for voice samples from Matthew Aaron Van Dyke, a US citizen, and six Ukrainian nationals who were arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act over a (purported) plan to train Myanmar's ethnic armed groups in drone warfare, assembly, and jamming. The case was filed March 13 after the group reportedly flew in on tourist visas, made their way to Mizoram, and then went into Myanmar without permits. The agency also wants its investigation window extended from 90 to 180 days, saying forensic work on seized devices and a trace of the money trail is still ongoing. The next hearing is July 2.

Junta's Plainclothes Dragnet Tightens in Kalay

For about three months, junta forces in plainclothes have been working Kalay Township in Sagaing. Reports say they’re using unmarked vehicles to grab solo travelers and young adults off roads, from near hotels, and at bus terminals, before shipping them to the Central Regional Training Center 10 for redistribution to military camps nationwide. On June 6, the Kalay Public Strike Steering Committee told residents to avoid Bogyoke Road and the Sanpya intersection, steer clear of bus terminals, and to never travel alone.

Read more: Mizzima

Naypyidaw Calls Moscow to Reboot the Servers

Yatanarpon Cyber City, the junta's Silicon Valley fantasy planted near Pyin Oo Lwin in the mid-2000s, has found a new patron in Russia. Cut off from Western technology and apparently unwilling to fall fully into Beijing's arms, the military is now working on the project through a Moscow partnership that's built on surveillance tech and digital sovereignty. The campus has been stalled for the better part of two decades, hobbled by patchy electricity, sanctions, and the (tiny?) problem that it’s difficult to find investors for a military-run tech park.

Yangon Throws a Travel Expo, State Department Sends Regrets

Myanmar's tourism ministry is pitching Bagan, Mandalay, and Inle Lake to ASEAN buyers and European operators at an International Travel Expo in Yangon this June. It's being billed as the country's most ambitious comeback push since the pandemic/ 2021 coup. The U.S. State Department still has Myanmar at Level 4 "Do Not Travel," and Australia says the security picture is still unpredictable even in major cities. The EU extended its sanctions in April over human rights violations. Strange times to be making a strong travel pitch, but A for effort?

Cambodia 20260608

August Whitcraft — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:48:02 GMT

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Phnom Penh Drags Bangkok to The Hague's Cousin

Hun Manet delivered notice of UNCLOS compulsory conciliation on June 2, sending a message to both Bangkok and the UN Secretary-General about the 26,000-square-kilometer Overlapping Claims Area in the Gulf of Thailand, a patch of seabed thought to hold up to $300 billion worth of oil and natural gas. The notice arrives shortly after Thailand tore up the 2001 MoU that had at least in theory kept the two sides talking, and it sets a 21-day timer on Bangkok to get it’s its own conciliators appointed or get the UN do it for them. Phnom Penh has already arranged its team, which is headed by Peter Taksoe-Jensen, the Danish diplomat who chaired the only previous use of this mechanism (the Australia-Timor-Leste commission that finished in 2018), and includes French ICJ veteran Jean-Marc Thouvenin, with Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn as Cambodia’s agent.

Read more: Khaosod English (Hun Manet framing), The Diplomat (conciliation mechanism), Ny1 (Anutin), CamboJA News ($300B reserves)

Petrol, Matches, and 1,181 Steps

Thai soldiers got their photos taken as they poured gasoline on a 325-meter wooden staircase leading to K'nar Temple before setting it on fire, destroying a 1,181-step access route that Cambodia built in 2017. The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts also accused Thai forces of pulling down Hindu icons and swapping in Buddha statues in temples that it took control of in last year's border fighting. Thailand reportedly went even further by opening Ta Krabey to ticketed public visits and religious ceremonies over this past weekend which Phnom Penh said was not acceptable under the Franco-Siamese Treaties of 1904 and 1907. Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn told The Times that Bangkok was trying to manufacture a "fait accompli."

Read more: The Star (staircase), The Times (casualty & displacement), Khmer Times (international forums)

Open Skies, Open Wallet, Open Embassy

After 12 years of stop-start talks, the US and Cambodia closed an Open Skies Agreement during Deputy Assistant Secretary Hunt VanderToll's visit to Phnom Penh last Friday, clearing the way for direct commercial flights for the first time. The trip also brought a $100 million DFC financing commitment for Techo International Airport, routed through Canadia Group's OCIC after more than two years of due diligence work. The airport money still has to get congressional notification done before it can properly close, so keep that in mind before you break out the confetti. The White House also put forward Wisconsin's Christopher Anderson as nominee for the role of ambassador, filling a post empty since Patrick Murphy left in mid-2024.

Read more: Khmer Times (Boeing deal), Cambodianess (ceasefire), Khmer Times (VanderToll meetings), CamboJA News (Walker interim tenure), Cambodia Investment Review (OCIC due diligence)

Forced Labor, Forced Tariff

Cambodian exports will get an extra 10% US tariff under a June 2 USTR proposal targeting countries that fail to ban goods made with forced labor. Cambodia is one of 54 economies that the US claims does not have an effective legal prohibition, but its reciprocal trade commitments with Washington spared it the steeper 12.5% tier that’s been reserved for countries with who have neither measures nor commitments in place. Garments, footwear and travel goods, the backbone of Cambodian export revenues, are in the crosshairs. Written comments are due in about a month and public hearings will begin July 7. The Labor Ministry waved it off, saying there are no forced labor issues in Cambodia.

Read more: Khmer Times (analyst), Cambodianess (tariff)

From Wats to Vodka, Siem Reap Courting Moscow

International arrivals fell 46% in early 2026, with 1.01 million visitors in the first four months and ticket sales to Angkor Archaeological Park down 31.8% through May. The collapse has been seen from every major source market. Chinese and Vietnamese tourists, who together used to make up more than a third of arrivals, have largely stopped coming after trafficking cases tied to scam compounds poisoned the country's reputation in both Beijing and Hanoi. As part of work to stem the tide and resuscitate the moribund arrival figures, Lotus Group CEO Vladimir Palancica brought the first delegation of Russian tour operators to Siem Reap this week. He, and the group, were welcomed by State Secretary Neang Mao on behalf of Tourism Minister Huot Hak. The pitch leans on "high-yield" Russian visitors who typically stay five to seven days.

Read more: Travel and Tour World (airline adjustments), Travel and Tour World (luxury product pitch), Cambodia Investment Review (BRICS House launch)

Photo by allPhoto Bangkok on Unsplash

Hobson Offers Three Hundred Dollars a Hectare

Nearly 700 families in Preah Vihear met authorities and company reps Thursday over land disputes that go back to a nearly 6,000-hectare concession granted in 2012. China Great Cause moved onto farms in 2025 and cleared crops without notice, then offered $300 per hectare to residents who had worked the land for years. Global Green, tied to U.S.-sanctioned tycoon Try Pheap, did the same to cashew and cassava plots cultivated for decades, paying one farmer $3,987 for two hectares of cashew plantation to make way for a mining project. When one resident asked what he was supposed to do without his nine hectares, provincial officials suggested he could go work for the company that took them.

Read more: CamboJA News

Roofs for the Living, Ranks for the Dead

Hun Manet's government has handed out two very different forms of post-war relief. More than 11,600 people displaced from Banteay Meanchey and Preah Vihear have moved into government-built stilt homes with power and piped water, finished in March, but the new settlements offer little beyond shelter from the worst of the elements. Sok Horn, 62, who once ran a clothing shop in Boeung Trakuon, says customers are scarce because "they are all displaced people, and there is not much money." Her son Hour Kimhak, who used to make about $700 a month from a mobile phone shop before the fighting destroyed it, has no capital to start again and has struggled to find work. A decision Hun Manet signed in March and made public on June 3 gives Second Lieutenant commissions to 41 relatives of soldiers killed or seriously wounded. The promotions are being seen as a gesture to families of those lost in the 2025 border dispute, though the document isn’t explicit about that.

Read more: CamboJA News ($75 household aid), Cambodia Daily (Second Lieutenant appointments)

Seven Hundred Days and Counting

The Phnom Penh Court of Appeals postponed the appeals hearing for all 10 Mother Nature Cambodia convicts on June 2 and hasn’t set any new date yet. The five who are serving, including Yim Leanghy, who was given eight years for plotting against the government and insulting the king, are 700 days into terms of six to eight years. They are scattered between prisons hundreds of kilometers from their families and lawyers. Seventy-three civil society groups, from LICADHO and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have signed an open letter to Hun Manet this month asking him to reverse the convictions before the Francophonie Summit arrives in Phnom Penh later this year.

Kith Meng's House, Kith Meng's Rules

Seven international chambers, including AmCham, EuroCham, and BritCham, brought 24 reform proposals to a CDC-hosted breakfast on June 4, and not a single one got any real opposition. Before the day was out, the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce had fired off a formal letter to Deputy PM Sun Chanthol defending its role as G-PSF Secretariat and warning that "no individual business association should bypass established mechanisms." The letter was signed by Kith Meng, who is also the chair of the G-PSF's Coordinating Committee.

Read more: Cambodia Investment Review (24 reform proposals), Cambodia Investment Review (CCC rebuttal)

Paid in Full, Plot Unknown

About 30 buyers of the Borey Morn Dany housing project come together outside the Land Management Ministry last week, about five years after paying for villas and townhouses that remain unbuilt on undemarked land. Him Lina spent nearly five years working in Japan, saved close to $20,000, bought a villa in 2021, and still can't point to his own plot. The ministry has issued land titles, but they cover ownership only, and buyers say the missing boundary lines make the paper useless as bank collateral. After the meeting, officials told buyers to submit more documents and wait for a future sit-down with the developer.

Read more: CamboJA News

A Holiday in Search of a Reason

A May 21 sub-decree designates July 11 as "National Population Day," instructing government bodies to help the public "address demographic shifts" and build "population resilience and harmony." What that means in practice, nobody seems to know, but we can think of some risqué activities that might help stem the decline. The Ministry of Planning didn't respond to questions. A former ministry spokesperson said he had no information. A Royal Academy researcher said he had only recently seen the decree and also had no information.

Thailand 20260605

August Whitcraft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:34:21 GMT

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Pardoned and Packing for Dubai

King Maha Vajiralongkorn's birthday clemency for Queen Suthida, published in the Royal Gazette late Tuesday, wiped out the remaining four months of Thaksin Shinawatra's parole and freed the 76-year-old billionaire from his ankle bracelet and travel restrictions as of Wednesday. He had served eight months of a one-year sentence for corruption, after the original eight-year term had been commuted (also by royal grace). He spent much of that time in a Police Hospital suite before the Supreme Court sent him to a real prison in September 2025. His next stop, reportedly, is Dubai, where he spent most of his 15-year exile. The family says he may want to step back from politics.

Read more: AP News (lawyer confirmation), Japan Times (Dubai travel), AZ News (anklet removal)

Washington Gives Bangkok a 12.5% Bill

The USTR has finished its Section 301 probes and found that 60 countries, Thailand included, have failed to enforce bans on goods made with forced labor. It is now threatening a 12.5% tariff on Thai imports that could be put in place as early as next month. That's an increase from the 10% blanket rate currently in force and would put Bangkok in the same bracket as China, Brazil, and South Korea. Regional peers Cambodia, Malaysia, and Indonesia, which have already cut deals with Washington, are only looking at 10%. The USTR's evaluation includes the thinking that a country doesn't need to use forced labor itself, it only needs to import from someone who does use forced labor in order to bring the hammer down. This interpretation obviously widens the net considerably. Hearings are scheduled for July 7, the rates won’t be formalized before then. K-Research reckons Thai export growth in the second half of 2026 could go flat if the tariffs bite. The government is scrambling to negotiate; Thai business groups publicly say the impact is manageable.

Read more: Bangkok Post (K-Research forecast), Thai Enquirer (business downplay), The Diplomat (ASEAN peers affected)

Thailand's Richest Bets $4.3B on Server Farms

Gulf Development will spend 140 billion baht in the coming five years to build 2,000 megawatts of data center capacity, up from the ~200 megawatts they own today. CFO Yupapin Wangviwat shared the plan Thursday on an investor call, and the stock rose 5.8% to a new record. That brings the ticker’s year-to-date gain above 61%. Sarath Ratanavadi, worth $18.3 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, already has Microsoft and Singtel as partners and signed an exploration deal with Google earlier this year. The build-out will be funded through operating cash flow, bond sales, and $400 to $600 million in bank loans, with a 20 billion baht bond issue planned for September.

50,000 Companies Get an Uncomfortable Call

Thai authorities have identified up to 50,000 “foreign-connected” companies for scrutiny in a crackdown on nominee shareholding, and inspectors say that they’re using AI to cross-check official databases against real business activity. The results got specific fast. One accounting firm in Krabi registered nearly 500 companies, all of them listing Thai nationals as majority owners on paper even though foreigners were running the show. One of the businesses was nominally a nail salon, but turned out to (allegedly) be an OnlyFans operation run by an Israeli woman. Legal firms say they are fielding more than 100 calls a day from foreign business owners and property holders who are now beginning to understand that "my lawyer said it was fine" is not a legal defense. Assets can be frozen pending investigation. Turns out that everything can be fine… until it’s not.

Zuckerberg Gets His Day in Thai Court

Thailand's Consumers Council is going to file the country's first civil lawsuit against Meta and Facebook next week, on behalf of 10 victims who lost 230 million baht to scams running via the platform. The suit names 16 other defendants along with Meta. The council first wrote to Mark Zuckerberg in November 2024 with specific recommendations on fraud prevention; the response, in the council's telling, was unsatisfactory. Secretary-general Saree Aongsomwang has been less-than-forgiving about the double standard, saying Facebook applies stricter ad screening in the US, Europe, and Australia than it does in Southeast Asia. Of the 6,164 scam complaints the council received between 2024 and March 2026, three-fifths involved Facebook. Meta's standing defense is that financial transactions don't take place on its platform and therefore they can’t be held responsible for the losses. Thailand is one of the biggest markets for Facebook in the world - the country is home to about 51 million users.

Read more: Bangkok Post (filing timeline), The Edge Malaysia (complaint breakdown)

Photo by Lisheng Chang on Unsplash

Two Million Fewer Chinese Island Crackdown

Thai travel agents have lopped two million visitors off their 2026 Chinese arrival forecast (from 9 million to 7), as ransom cases, disappearances, and scam-network stories have flooded Chinese social media. ATTA president Thanapol Cheewarattanaporn said online claims that some Thai police have ties to criminal groups (quelle horreur!) had done serious damage to the country's reputation. The Tourism Ministry's response, the same day, involves inspections of shops, restaurants, hotels, and transport operators on southern islands including Koh Samui and Koh Samet. Officials who turn a blind eye to mafia-style operations will (now?) face prosecution. Tourism Minister Surasak Phancharoenworakul has also met Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jianwei, whose embassy has offered to help screen outbound tourists before they leave to Thailand.

Read more: Nation Thailand (island crackdown measures), The Star (ATTA forecast, roadshows)

Iran War Bill Lands in Bangkok

Finance Ministry permanent secretary Lavaron Sangsnit said Thursday the last five months of fiscal 2026 will look nothing like the first seven, when the energy shock from the Iran war had yet to fully bite and collections were 31.3 billion baht ahead of target at 1.50 trillion. Thailand's Business Sentiment Index dropped to 42.5 in May, the lowest since August 2021, as production, performance, order books, and export conditions all got worse when compared to April. The 2.92 trillion baht full-year goal is now in doubt, though Lavaron wasn’t willing to put a number on the gap.

Read more: Bangkok Post (tax refund overage), TradingView (sector breakdown)

Corn on the Cob With a Side of Trade

Thailand's livestock and feed lobby has thrown its weight behind importing up to a million tonnes of US corn yearly. It’s positioning the ask as a fix for a feed deficit that the industry says is 4 million tonnes (5 million tonnes of domestic production vs the 9 million tonnes the sector says it needs). Pornsil Patcharintanakul, president of the Thai Feed Mill Association, says the cost of local feed corn has climbed to the highest level anywhere in the world, and blames tighter import controls, restrictions tied to crop burning, and delayed rain. Twenty-one livestock, aquaculture and feed associations signed the statement.

Coalition Partners Read the Fine Print

Pheu Thai's constitutional amendment bill lost its coalition footing after Bhumjaithai lawmakers pulled their signatures and warned that the plan for a 300-member directly-elected drafting assembly may be in conflict with a Constitutional Court ruling that limits that job to sitting lawmakers. Pheu Thai leader Julapun Amornvivat says the party is going to give the proposal a rethink before the joint parliamentary sitting on July 7-8. He says the spat is procedural, and that there’s definitely for sure no coalition trouble.

Read more: Bangkok Post (Bhumjaithai withdrawal), Bangkok Post (Surapon dissent)

Bureaucrats Meet the Bots

The Civil Service Commission has been told to draft an early retirement scheme for the 415,000-member central government workforce, with higher pay promised for those who stay. Deputy PM Pakorn Nilprapunt, who swatted down proposals to raise the retirement age beyond 60, is benchmarking the overhaul against OECD standards and saying that agentic AI is the reason large bureaucracies are losing their rationale. He pointed to Denmark and France as cautionary tales, where he claims that pushing workers to retire later ends in street protests. If you add state-school teachers, doctors and nurses to the 415,000 tally, the total gets to about 1.7 million.

Read more: Bangkok Post

SCB X Taps the Brakes as Rivals Floor It

SCB X is holding its Gen 2 lending arm, a 169 billion baht book of credit card, auto finance, and digital loans, to single-digit growth despite what executives say is a strong market appetite for more. They are appear to believe that the conflict in the Middle East still has more to play out and acknowledge Thailand's punishing household debt is… worrying. Card X grew 12.2% quarter-on-quarter to 97 billion baht, so the restraint really does seem to be a choice and not a ceiling. The consortium's virtual bank, Bank X, is still expected to launch toward the end of this year after Krungthai-backed Clicx Bank's June 19 debut and CP's Ascend Bank that’s expected in July.

Read more: Bangkok Post

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Vietnam 20260604

August Whitcraft — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 02:39:09 GMT

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Washington Opens a New File on Hanoi

Vietnam's May trade deficit got to $5.21 billion, the biggest number since December 1996 and a mile further than Bloomberg's $3.98 billion median forecast. Imports were $52.14 billion (+33.8%), as manufacturers stockpiled semiconductors and energy ahead of what looks like might be a rough second half. The first five months of 2026 have flipped a $5.1 billion surplus into a $13.8 billion deficit y-o-y. It’s not a great time - USTR Jamieson Greer announced a Section 301 investigation into Vietnam's IP protection and enforcement on May 29, after the country got slapped with a “priority foreign country” designation in the April 30 Special 301 Report. The January-May trade surplus with the US was up more than a fifth to $60.4 billion. A determination is expected by the end of November (a three-month extension is possible). This is the third Section 301 action against Vietnam in of late, after the 2020 currency and timber probes. Both of those were resolved through bilateral agreements instead of tariffs.

Read more: Yahoo Finance (export miss), TradingView (May surplus reversal), Woodworkingnetwork (IP enforcement scope), Furnituretoday (tariff risk, timeline)

Hanoi Buys Spares for Planes It Doesn't Have

The US State Department approved a $100 million foreign military sale to Vietnam for sustainment support for the C-130 Hercules, an aircraft Hanoi does not fly. The package includes engine propellers, aircraft components, ground handling equipment, spare parts, and repair-and-return support, in addition to training aids and contractor logistics services. Washington's official reasoning is that the sale supports US foreign policy and national-security objectives by updating the air and transport capabilities of an Indo-Pacific partner. RTX is named as contractor, which indicates a likelihood of secondhand C-130s, not newly-built aircraft. Ordering sustainment infrastructure before aircraft arrive is not entirely unusual in the procurement game, however. The last major US-Vietnam defense milestone was Hanoi's elevation to Complete Strategic Partner status in 2023, and the arms relationship has been improving steadily since.

Read more: Aviationweek (future acquisition hint), TradingView (regional balance), Militaryembedded (full package breakdown), Flightglobal (RTX secondhand)

Hanoi Takes the Mic, Beijing Sends a Major General

To Lam opened the 23rd Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on May 29, the first time Vietnam's top leader has given the keynote at Asia's top security forum. The speech hit some familiar notes for anyone who’s been watching Hanoi's diplomatic evolution. Competition between states is real, To Lam said, but must be "bounded by law, guided by transparency, and exercised with restraint," with ASEAN at the center of whatever regional architecture comes into play. He mentioned the sea specifically and reaffirmed the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as his preferred basis for resolving disputes in what Hanoi calls the East Sea. China's defense minister Dong Jun skipped the forum for the second year in a row, so Beijing was represented by Major General Meng Xiangqing of the PLA's National Defence University.

Read more: CNBC (responsible commitment), Vietnam Insiders (diplomatic exit ramps), VnEconomy (To Lam recommendations)

To Lam's Three-Capital Shuffle

Bangkok, Singapore, and Manila over four days, and the deliverables from To Lam's Southeast Asia swing can be tallied. A CP-FPT MoU signed in Bangkok on May 28 puts AI and smart-farm tech across C.P. Vietnam's Feed-Farm-Food chain, and is expected to result in full product traceability and operational cost cuts of 20 percent. In Singapore, the talk was on increasing the number of Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Parks to 30 this year, three decades after the first one opened. Two-way trade with SG was nearly $12 billion in 2025. In Manila, Hanoi and the Philippines upgraded to an “Enhanced Strategic Partnership,” set a $10 billion trade target, and signed a defense MoU on maritime security and disaster response.

Read more: VnEconomy (CP-FPT MoU), VnEconomy (Singapore $100B FDI), VnEconomy (Philippines trade sectors), VnExpress (four agreements signed)

Six-Year Price High, Targets Slipping

Annual CPI was a warm 5.6% in May, the highest reading since January 2020, with transport costs up about 12.5% year-on-year as Middle East conflict keeps fuel prices up and hot weather edges electricity demand higher. At a June 3 cabinet meeting reviewing the first five months of ‘26, PM Pham Minh Chinh confirmed what anyone watching the data already suspected: industrial production, agriculture, trade, and services are all running below target in a few important areas. He asked ministries to find the root causes and propose better policy remediation. Core inflation held at 4.67% in May, the highest rate since March 2023. Deputy Prime Ministers are now expected to work directly with ministries, localities and sectors to unblock bottlenecks, and particular attention is expected for industry, agriculture, and other sectors that are showing signs of slowing growth or even (gasp!) decline.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (AMRO forecast), TradingView (CPI breakdown), Nikkei Asia (trade deficit), VnEconomy (cabinet response)

Photo by digitalarbyter :) on Unsplash

A Doi Moi Rewrite at 40

At a national scientific conference in Hai Phong on May 26, policymakers, economists, and business leaders chewed the fat on at topic that Hanoi’s been circling for years but rarely said outright, which is that the 40-year-old Doi Moi growth model has run its course. Growth is still far too reliant on investment capital and cheap labor, productivity and innovation lag, and the social governance system is missing the data interoperability needed to run anything in real time (which seems like table stakes in 2026). The framework on offer borrows from the developmental state playbook that Japan and South Korea ran during their industrial ascensions, reoriented around science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation, using data and algorithms as the new growth drivers. The 2045 target, when Vietnam wants to realize its ambitions as a high-income country, is what's concentrating minds. The way that institutional machinery might be able to deliver on the pivot is the bit which the conference papers left for later.

Read more: VnEconomy (middle-income trap), VnEconomy (governance components)

Twenty Years' Salary for a Flat, or Rent

Hanoi apartment prices have gone up a dizzying 72% in the last five years, but annual wage growth has only tipped 6-10% and the gap seems like it’s going to keep widening. The result is that residential prices are now about 20 times the average annual household income. The result is a sorting of young buyers into three camps. Some are saving grimly and waiting, some are retreating to satellite cities where prices have more give, and others have dropped homeownership as a near-term goal altogether. The PM says a supply shortage is "the primary bottleneck."

Read more: VnEconomy (Gen Z survey), Asian News Network (rent-to-own demand), VnEconomy (PM directive timeline)

Hanoi Puts a Price on the Old Quarter

Starting January 2028, drivers who want to get into the historic core around Hoan Kiem and Ba Dinh will need to pay a toll. The fee zone will expand ring by ring out to Ring Road 2 by 2030 and Ring Road 3 by 2032. The city has 8.1 million registered vehicles (7 million are motorbikes/ ~95% running on gasoline), plus another 1.2 million rolling in daily from the provinces. A low-emission zone inside Ring Road 1 is going to be implemented first, next month, and will limit gasoline motorbikes by time and area.

Read more: VnExpress

Seoul Pitches Reactors but Moscow’s Banked a Deal

Korean President Lee Jae Myung flew to Hanoi last month to try and flog Korean reactor technology. He stood beside PM Pham Minh Chinh and pointed to Czechia, Poland, and the UAE as proof of concept. The problem is that Rosatom locked in Ninh Thuan 1 in March, when Moscow and Hanoi formalized the deal as a sign of their countries' friendship. What's left on the table is Ninh Thuan 2, and Korea is going into that fight trailing on the metrics Hanoi wants to use (state financing, guaranteed fuel supply, and a partner willing to move on Hanoi's timeline). By 2050, Vietnam wants nuclear to cover 6 to 8 percent of its grid needs by way of using up to four large reactors and fifteen small modular reactors.

Tiki Who? TikTok Shop Turns VN Into a Two-Horse Race

Vietnam's four biggest e-commerce platforms reported a combined $13.6 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) between May 2025 and April 2026 (+37% yoy). Almost none of that growth went to anyone outside the top two. TikTok Shop's GMV was up 83% to $5.96 billion and increased its share to 44% from 33%. Shopee was still the frontrunner with $7.29 billion in sales, but its share slid from 61% to 53%. Lazada, the Alibaba property that was once a serious contender, saw its share slashed in half to 3% on $385 million in sales. The biggest tailwind in TikTok's climb is "shoppertainment," the livestream-plus-short-video format that has brands redirecting ad budgets toward influencers who flog everything from diapers and dairy in real time. Tiki, the homegrown pioneer, wrangled $5 million in GMV, down 82% yoy.

Nine Thousand Needed, Twenty-Five Hundred Short

Long Thanh is 76% complete and has burned through VND65.6 trillion ($2.5 billion) in contracted work, but it's still short 2,500 workers. The passenger terminal (which is the most complicated piece), is at almost two-thirds done - imported equipment remains covered and waiting for crews that haven't shown up yet. Competing infrastructure projects in Dong Nai are pulling from the same labor pool, and several contractors have started to slow progress as a result. Everyone’ waiting on price-adjustment policies that don't exist yet for fixed-price contracts that have been squeezed by rising costs. ACV is still expected (hoped?) to begin trial operations in September, the first of three testing phases before a December commercial opening.

Read more: VnExpress (labor shortfall), VnExpress (180-day campaign)

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Laos 20260603

August Whitcraft — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:47:37 GMT

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Five Alive, 300 Meters to Go

Divers reached five of the seven men who have been trapped since May 19 in a flooded Xaisomboun cave, and found them alive on a rock in the dark about 300 meters from the exit. Getting them out is not going to be easy. Some tunnels are as narrow as 60 centimeters, floodwater has cut visibility to zero, and Thai rescuers are publicly asking for donated oxygen tanks. Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, who worked the 2018 Thailand boys' rescue, said the environment is "extremely remote and hostile.” The two other missing men have not been found. The cave is about 120 kilometers north of Vientiane, and requires a four-kilometer jungle hike to get to. In addition to everything else, rain has hampered the operation since the beginning. Sobering.

Read more: AP News (survivor condition), The Guardian (extraction challenges)

Thongloun Goes Shopping in Hangzhou

Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith got to Hangzhou on Tuesday and spent his first afternoon on a factory floor, watching robots run and somersault at a Deep Robotics facility before going to Alibaba HQ to review the company's global data center and cross-border e-commerce setup. A robot gave him a small plush toy; he thanked it in Chinese. The five-day visit will last through June 6, and is happening during the occasion of the 65th anniversary of China-Laos diplomatic ties.

Read more: Global Times (railway passenger volume), Xinhua (bilateral trade)

Thakhek to the Sea

The Lao National Assembly has approved a rail extension that will connect Thakhek to Vietnam's Vung Ang seaport. The new spur adds to a network that currently delivers Chinese-made electric vehicles to Vientiane from Chongqing in as few as five days, down from the (up to) 30 that it used to require when they were getting sent by sea and road. Cross-border trade on the Laos-China Railway was nearly a billion USD in Q1 2026, still climbing at a robust 62ish% clip year-on-year. Cross-border services have risen from two trains a day at launch to 23 today. The train gets a lot of ink in the Mekong Memo, but it’s truly been a game changer for Laos.

The Zoo That Wasn't

Authorities and Free the Bears have rescued 27 Asiatic black bears from a Lao bile farm, the largest rescue in Southeast Asia. Authorities say the operation had been registered as a zoo to dodge regulatory scrutiny. The facility, run by a Chinese national, was designed to an industrial scale and built to keep up to 200 bears. Fortunately for our ursine friends, the capacity was never reached. The rescued animals, all aged one to three, are believed to have been poached as cubs and will join more than 150 other bears that the NGO has collected over nearly a quarter century at its Luang Prabang Wildlife Sanctuary. Laos has closed the legal loopholes that once protected older farms, making all commercial trade in moon bears illegal.

The Mekong’s New Extension Cord

A 100-megawatt stream of Lao hydropower is now running south through Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore, and the city-state's energy regulator says the grid could eventually go all the way north to southern China. Puah Kok Keong, chief executive of Singapore's Energy Market Authority, said the prospect was "very real." Companies in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia have signed agreements over the past year to further develop renewable projects together and improve cross-border trade in low-carbon power.

Brussels Remembers that Laos Exists

A three-member European Parliament delegation led by Wouter Beke held an EU-Lao Inter-Parliamentary Meeting in Vientiane on May 25. It’s the 7th such meeting, and the first session since 2017. Cybercrime and human trafficking were on the formal agenda along with trade, climate, and ASEAN integration.

Flour Power

A three-year partnership between Dongguan Technician College and the Lao Women's Union Training Center has put 52 Lao women through courses in tailoring, baking, and Cantonese cuisine. Graduates say they’re able to earn monthly incomes up 50 to 70 percent higher as a result. One of ladies, Khanpovan Phanthadasomchith, is a 37-year-old cooking instructor who returned from a May study trip to Guangdong fixated on meat floss sponge cake and now says that she hopes to open her own bakery in Vientiane.

Myanmar 20260602

August Whitcraft — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 01:54:50 GMT

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TNLA's Mining Stash Takes Half a Village With It

Gelignite stored by the Ta'ang National Liberation Army's economic department blew up (like, as in, exploded) around noon on May 31 in Kaung Tat village, Namhkam Township, killing at least 39 people and injuring dozens more. The blast site, about three kilometers from the Chinese border, left a crater where the storage building stood. More than half the village's houses were destroyed, and those nearest the center were blown apart completely. The TNLA confirmed the gelignite was held by its economic department for use at nearby mining and quarrying sites that run jointly with Chinese businessmen and produce raw materials for silicon metal used in semiconductors and solar panels. Residents of the 200-household village say they were never warned about the local storage of explosives.

Read more: Bangkok Post (witness), The Hindu (mine operators), DW (blood shortage), DVB (six children killed), Arise TV (Pan Lone damage)

General Gets the Full Red Carpet

Min Aung Hlaing arrived in India on Saturday and got more than a meeting with Modi - he also got Bodh Gaya, Hyderabad House, and a tour of NTPC's clean-energy research facility in Greater Noida, with business talks in Mumbai to follow today and tomorow. India is the first country he's visited since swapping fatigues for a civilian suit in April, and New Delhi treated it accordingly. A joint statement revived the long-stalled Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit project and the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (70 percent done but going nowhere), agreed to improve the rupee-kyat settlement mechanism and cooperation on critical minerals. Bilateral trade was ~$2.5 billion in FY2025; India is Myanmar's fourth-largest trading partner. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri shared New Delhi’s position on engagement: "Disengagement only produces a vacuum that others go on to fill, to our detriment, and those others have no interest in democracy," he said. Modi raised Aung San Suu Kyi's case but pulled up short of asking for her release.

Read more: Dawn (cyberscam rescues), Economic Times (ICCR scholarships), The Wire (China vacuum rationale), DVB (Indian investment), KDH News (Western sanctions stance)

Washington Gets in Line for Junta Dirt

The Trump administration has put aside decades of bipartisan sanctions policy and is laying groundwork to cooperate with Myanmar's generals (we wonder if they share some of the same view as in India), and rare-earth minerals are the prize. A group of entrepreneur-diplomats has materialized in the gray space between business and statecraft, each positioning themselves as the broker who can connect Trump and the junta. One told Foreign Policy the scene is like "Shark Tank."

Beijing Dusts Off the Myitsone Blueprint

The junta has started public consultations on restarting the $3.6 billion Myitsone Dam, a Chinese-backed hydroelectric megaproject that Thein Sein shelved in 2011 after it became a politically inconvenient as a lightning rod for popular anger. The dam is in territory largely controlled by the Kachin Independence Army, which hasn't softened its position. Running "public consultations" through a government that holds no meaningful elections and controls little of Kachin State makes the word “public” do a lot of work.

Eighty-One Candles, No Sign of the Birthday Girl

Kim Aris still wants to know if his mother is still alive. The younger son of Aung San Suu Kyi launched an "81 for 81" campaign yesterday, suggesting that supporters walk 81,000 steps, run 81 kilometers, or cycle 81 kilometers between now and ASSK’s 81st birthday on June 19. She was reportedly moved to house arrest earlier this month after more than five years in solitary confinement, with no family visits, no lawyer access, and a single undated, grainy photograph the junta offered as proof of life. Aris, 49, says he plans to skate 81 kilometers in a day to mark the occasion.

Rakhine's Rebels Inherit the Junta's Strategy

Satellite analysis from Bellingcat shows 115 villages in Rakhine State partially or completely destroyed since the coup, and the Arakan Army's fingerprints are on much of the recent damage. The centerpiece is Htan Shauk Khan, where Human Rights Watch says the AA "may have killed at least 170 Rohingya men, women, and children" on May 2, 2024. The death toll came to light more than a year later, after survivors made it into Bangladesh and the camps at Cox's Bazar where they told the tale. The AA denies it, claiming those killed were junta soldiers and Rohingya militants.

Thirteen-Gun Salute on the Tamu Border

The Assam Rifles fired heavy weapons 13 times at Min Thar Village in Tamu Township on the night of May 31, hitting a junta-held position about a mile from the Indian border, hours after Min Aung Hlaing met with Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in New Delhi. Junta forces responded with three rounds of counter-battery fire before the exchange settled in the wee hours around 3:30. The garrison at Min Thar houses about 300, including Pyu Saw Htee militias, Shanni Nationalities Army elements, and Meitei and Naga insurgents who have been known to run armed campaigns against the Indian government from Myanmar soil.

Read more: Mizzima

Thought Police Keep a Spreadsheet

The Myanmar Internet Project counted 374 people arrested for speaking their minds online between February 2022 and July 2024. The surveillance net has made even basic connectivity a risk and (therefore) a chore. In Rakhine's Thandwe area, residents have to trek more than 10 miles by motorbike or car, then hike two hours up a mountain to find a phone signal. One source used that route to reach family for the first time in more than two years.

Read more: Mizzima

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Cambodia 20260601

August Whitcraft — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:22:14 GMT

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No Peace for the Emerald Triangle

A year after Cambodian and Thai troops first swapped lead in the Emerald Triangle on May 28, 2025, in action that killed a Cambodian service member and gutted what was meant to be a celebration of 75 years of diplomatic ties, Phnom Penh is using the anniversary to accuse Bangkok of taking territory under cover of the ceasefire. Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn told the UN Security Council on May 26 that Cambodia doesn’t recognize the "modification of the border by force or the creation of a de facto situation," before meeting with his Thai counterpart on the sidelines. Two rounds of fighting, the second in December which went on for more than three weeks, have knocked diplomatic relations down to second-secretary level. On May 28, Phnom Penh held a three-hour “Day of Reckoning” ceremony that pulled together Khmer Rouge remembrance, COVID-19 hardship stories and border-war footage to try and win hearts and minds. Deputy Prime Minister Hun Many was keen to remind everyone, however, that the event was "not intended to encourage Cambodian people to despise any nationality."

Read more: Cambodianess (investor confidence), Cambodia Daily (Sokhonn-Hossain meeting), Cambodianess (analyst voices), Cambodianess (Hun Many remarks)

Buddha Statues on Land, Gas Fields at Sea

Thailand has spent its time since the December 27 ceasefire doing things that don't look much like peacekeeping. There are now 36 Buddhist statues built in Preah Vihear and Oddar Meanchey provinces, two flagpoles planted in Preah Vihear, roads built, containers and barbed wire reinforced, and tourism activities running on what Phnom Penh claims is Cambodian territory. The Foreign Ministry's May 30 protest says all of this violates ceasefire points 2 and 3, which are supposed to require both sides to keep to their (then-)current positions and only use the existing border demarcation mechanisms. The same pressure campaign has also gone offshore, where Cambodia this month walked away from a 25-year joint exploration agreement over roughly 27,000 square kilometers of the Gulf of Thailand. The area is thought to hold up to 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and nearly $300 billion in combined oil and gas reserves. Energy Minister Keo Rottanak says conciliation under UNCLOS is now the only realistic path forward.

Read more: Cambodianess (UN Security Council), Modern Diplomacy (TotalEnergies interest)

Sokha Walks, But Not Far

Kem Sokha left his Tuol Kork house at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, freed by a royal pardon that Acting Head of State Hun Sen signed May 25 on behalf of King Sihamoni, (abroad being treated for cancer). Even as he’s been able to get out from under house arrest, his lifetime ban on political activity has not been relaxed. Nor has his five-year travel ban. Sokha, 72, greeted officials, but declined interviews, and said he planned to enter monkhood to show gratitude to his 101-year-old mother. The U.S., EU, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada all welcomed the release, but most of them also suggested that “more” would be appropriate. The partial pardon is seen as mostly a play for Western goodwill, with Sokha visible enough to satisfy foreign critics but shackled enough to be no political threat. CPP spokesperson Chea Thirith said that the skeptics are "extremists."

Read more: CamboJA News (Western missions), CamboJA News (analyst dissent), Cambodia Daily (geopolitical motive), CamboJA News (Sokha's exit), Cambodia Daily (U.S. stance)

Hun Sen Shocked to Discover Scamming

About 300,000 foreign nationals have been arrested, deported, or have departed voluntarily under Cambodia's Anti-Telecom Fraud Law came into effect, Deputy PM Sar Sokha told Swiss Ambassador Pedro Zwahlen on Wednesday. Since January, the government also says that 91 casinos have been shut. Days earlier, Senate President Hun Sen told a Phnom Penh administration meeting he was "very surprised" to learn tens of thousands of scammers were operating in the country, even though the UN reported the figure to be about 100,000 way back in 2022. Since a May 22 sub-decree, senior police in Mondulkiri Province have been let go, and Phnom Penh Municipal Court issued an arrest warrant for a Banteay Meanchey provincial military police deputy chief of staff on charges of conspiracy in aggravated online fraud and money laundering.

Read more: CamboJA News (Hun Sen), Asia Gaming Brief (300K breakdown)

Cops Raid the Raid

More than 30 Kampot police and gendarmes, including a deputy provincial police commissioner, were arrested Wednesday after allegedly cutting the locks of a casino near the Prek Chak border crossing with Vietnam and “liberating” evidence that had been taken in an earlier anti-scam raid. The casino had already been raided for hosting scam operations. Provincial police chief Mao Chanmathurith confirmed the arrests but decided to say no more, even refusing to name the casino. The National Military Police spokesperson also passed on giving much commentary, offering only that prosecutors were “on the case.”

Read more: CamboJA News

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

An Eviction Notice That Wasn't

A forged immigration document, complete with lifted signatures from GDI Director-General Som Sopheak and Interior Ministry Secretary of State Sar Sokha, tore through African social media last week claiming Ghanaians, Kenyans and others had until May 31 to leave or suffer two years in prison and an $8,000 fine. Several major African outlets ran it straight. Cambodia's Interior Ministry said the note was fabricated (Ghana's FM Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa confirmed the same). Even though the document was fiction, the immigration waivers referenced in the fake notice are real instruments, used on workers with expired visas who had fled or been freed from scam compounds and needed time to arrange passage home. Ghana's High Commission in Malaysia, which handles Cambodia affairs, evacuated 85 Ghanaians between March and May, and 76 more are waiting on the next flight out.

Read more: Phnom Penh Post (forged signatures), Cambodianess (19,000 expulsions), The Whistler (ministry), Modern Ghana, TVC News (76 pending evacuation)

Master 25's Ponzi Trail Leads to the Ministries

Leng Channa and two sidekicks have confessed to getting between $93 million and $98 million from a figure known only as "Master 25." They used the money to buy land and pay interest to earlier investors in what the Anti-Corruption Unit says was a Ponzi. About 5,000 victims were taken in by Brilliant City, whose CEO and two deputy CEOs were arrested in Siem Reap in March 2024 on charges of aggravated fraud and money laundering. The ACU has since begun investigations into Sean Borat, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Education, and Sar Thavy, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of National Defense. The PM has assigned Ky Tech, head of the government’s legal team, to look after victims' interests.

Bank Crisis or Challenge?

Cambodia's banking sector sanctioned and placed multiple financial institutions into liquidation over the past year. That’s the sort of news that often gets buried in otherwise reassuring press releases, but it’s not a good look. Total banking assets are $101.8 billion, the result of roughly 400 percent growth over the past decade, and the National Bank of Cambodia's prudential ratios still look fine on paper. The non-performing loan ratio is 3.7 percent, which should be manageable, even though that’s a historical high for Cambodia. The bank closures are doing reputational damage to be sure, the question is if this is "crisis or challenge?"

Read more: Khmer Times (NPL historical highs), Kiripost (3.7% NPL rate)

The Golden Emblem Opens Doors, Wallets

Susumu Tai, 73, Cambodia's honorary consul in Sendai, raked in more than 2 billion yen ($12.5M) from more than 20 Japanese companies for sham investment consulting, then returned most of it as kickbacks while skimming 10-20 percent as his “commission.” The Sendai Regional Taxation Bureau has charged him roughly 260 million yen in back taxes and penalties on some 370 million yen in unreported income; the companies that paid him face a dues of another 700 million yen or so. Tai's pitch was gentlemanly, and his business card carried the golden national emblem of Cambodia, and clients' confidence was fortified in January 2024 when Hun Manet appointed him a special adviser to the prime minister. When tax authorities came calling, Tai claimed diplomatic immunity, a privilege Japan (not unusually) does not extend to honorary consuls.

PTT's Cambodia Pumps Run Dry

PTT's OR unit has watched its Cambodian petrol station network shrivel from 200 to 91 since border tensions between Thailand and Cambodia began, and says that sales are off 50 or 60% from what they were a year ago. Forty or fifty of those lost stations didn't close so much as defect, switching to rival (non-Thai, natch) brands. Café Amazon locations saw a more modest reduction, from 150 outlets to 136. CFO Wilaiwan Kanjanakanti's silver lining is that the Cambodia apparently only accounts for 2-3% of the firm’s net profit.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Tuk-Tuks 1, EVs 0

Cambodia's transport ministry suspended WowNow's electric taxi fleet on Wednesday after tuk-tuk drivers complained the EV service had cut their daily earnings from $25 to $10. Left unmentioned in the ministry’s announcement was WowNow's previous tie-ups with Prince Bank and Prince Supermarket, both companies which were sanctioned by the US over alleged links to online scams, money laundering, and human trafficking under the Prince Group crackdown. WowNow itself hasn't been accused of wrongdoing, and Prince Group continues to deny the allegations. Dozens of suspended EV drivers petitioned the labor ministry the same day, and were asked to "remain silent" while negotiations are ongoing.

Read more: CamboJA News

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Thailand 20260529

August Whitcraft — Fri, 29 May 2026 04:27:21 GMT

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Vaccine Critic Thanathorn Beats the Charge

Bangkok's Criminal Court acquitted Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit on Thursday of lese-majeste charges that had been hanging over him for half a decade, ruling that his January 2021 Facebook livestream, titled "Royal Vaccine, Who Benefits and Who Doesn't?", targeted the Prayut government's handling of the COVID-19 rollout rather than the monarchy. The case bas based on his criticism of Siam Bioscience, a pharmaceutical firm that won the right to produce AstraZeneca doses in Thailand under a technology-transfer agreement and was running behind on deliveries to Thailand and neighboring countries. Acquittals under Article 112 are rare enough to be news on their own. The law carries up to 15 years per count, and Thai Lawyers for Human Rights says there have been more than 290 people charged under it since 2020. The attorney general's office said it is considering an appeal (appeals are typical in results such as this one). Outside the courthouse, Thanathorn spoke about those still imprisoned. "They are in jail because they think and they speak."

Read more: AP News (political backstory), Bangkok Post (Computer Crime Act)

Bangkok Bets 200 Billion on the Plug

Thailand is committing 200 billion baht from its 400-billion emergency loan package toward an energy transition, but the ministries that are most likely to manage the cash still haven’t figured out the details. The Interior Ministry says it wants solar panels on as many government buildings as possible within a year to reduce state power bills. The Transport Ministry is looking into incentives to turn public buses, trucks, taxis, and motorcycles electric. The Excise Department is getting ready with a program to increase EV adoption. Finance permanent secretary Lavaron Sangsnit says getting to a 50% renewables energy mix would generate "enormous economic value" by reducing fuel and electricity import costs. The demand side is changing too. Mercedes-Benz Thailand booked 2,111 vehicles at the famous Bangkok International Motor Show, which is more than double what they did last year and the first time the number’s breached 2,000 since 2019. CEO Christian Schell says this will be a record year for BEV sales.

Read more: Bangkok Post (disbursement deadline), Bangkok Post (Q1 registrations)

Exports Up and Most Everything Else Down

April's trade numbers came in a little weaker than hoped for. Exports were up nearly a quarter over the same period last year, but imports ran so far ahead that the trade deficit reached a record $10 billion for the month. Factory output fell 0.36% against forecasts of a 0.2% gain, and the Ministry of Industry has cut its full-year manufacturing forecast to 1.0-2.0% from up to 2.5%. Tourist arrivals were down 7%, pulling down hospitality-adjacent industries that factories also supply. First-quarter output was reported to have grown just a hair under 1%.

Read more: Bangkok Post (May outlook), Thai Enquirer (tourism & inflation), Thai Enquirer (crude oil imports)

Fraud Finder Can’t Find the Brakes

Jarong Kroamoh, director of the NACC's Office of Investigation and Special Affairs, was put in hot water on a Nonthaburi bridge late Wednesday after his Mitsubishi Triton cut into the left lane and slammed into a hapless delivery rider, killing him. The director’s blood alcohol was reported to be 189mg per 100ml (that’s blowing .19, for the North Americans), which is almost four times the 50mg limit. A blown tire brought his attempt to escape to an end, and witnesses say they blocked a bid to swap him out for another man in a black shirt before police showed up. At the scene, Jarong reportedly told onlookers he was a senior official who knew Nonthaburi police. The NACC says it has not removed him from his post, though a fact-finding committee is being formed.

Read more: Bangkok Post

A $10 Ticket to the AI Big Leagues

Thailand's AI diffusion rate (apparently that’s “the depth and extent of usage” - first time we’ve come across the term) is reportedly 10.7%, well behind Vietnam's 23.5% and far, far behind Singapore at 60.9%. The poor showing is part of the government's argument for the TH-AI Passport, a 1.6-billion-baht plan to give 5 million Thais a year of access to 12 AI platforms for the low, low price of 324 baht (about $10) a head. Opposition People's Party MP Rukchanok Srinork, who sits as chair of the House budget scrutiny committee, questioned the project's transparency, value for money and data privacy details; Digital Economy Minister Chaichanok Chidchob pushed back. Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are all involved. User prompts and account data, the minister said, will remain on cloud infrastructure inside Thailand and will be accessible only in anonymous form. Providers will apparently be barred from using any of it to train future models.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

Pick a Number, Any Number

Clicx Bank, a joint venture of Krungthai, AIS and PTT OR, will go live on June 19 with a pitch to roughly two-thirds of Thais that the central bank considers to be underserved by traditional finance. The licence was issued on May 14, and the partners bring a combined customer base of more than 50 million people to the table. The opening gimmick is a customizable seven-digit account number (oh la la). Accounts can be opened with no minimum deposit, and the bank says it will especially work to court the gig workers and online merchants whose irregular incomes get them shown the door at traditional lenders. Interest rates for deposits and loans has yet to be set.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Café Amazon Counts the Cost of Cambodia

The cost of OR's Cambodia retreat is coming into the light. The Thai oil-and-retail group had around 200 fuel stations and 150 Café Amazon outlets in Cambodia before the border flare-ups; by end of March, only 91 stations and 136 cafés were still flying the flag - the balance of stations switched to competing brands. Sales fell more than half year-on-year. Cambodia makes up only a sliver (2-3%) of OR's total profit, so the Q1 damage was contained, but overseas oil volume also dropped 12.5% to 519 million liters, mostly on the same Cambodia closures. Total net profit was down 44% to 2.41 billion baht, with hedging costs on jet fuel doing the biggest part of the damage.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Half a Century of Friendship, $24 Billion in Fresh Receipts

Thailand and Vietnam upgraded their official ties to that of a “complete strategic partnership” on Thursday, as PM Anutin hosted To Lam in Bangkok to celebrate half a century of diplomatic relations. The number everyone keeps bandying about is a $24 billion bilateral trade target, a modest stretch when compared to last year’s ~$22.1 billion. As Anutin said, the goal is "well within reach." Four MoUs were penned, the most notable of which puts the Eastern Economic Corridor Office together with VietJet to work on a feasibility study for an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul center at U-Tapao airport.

Read more: Bangkok Post

TAT Plots an Exit from the China Habit

South Korea was able to bring in almost 4 million Chinese visitors in the first four months of this year (+22% yoy), and the Tourism Authority of Thailand is watching. The agency is working on its master plan for FY2027, expecting more biz from short-haul markets and leaning on event-driven bookings, including Belgium’s Tomorrowland (in Pattaya, December), to give visitors a reason to come back. Short-haul arrivals currently make up about 60% of volume. The full plan should launch come October.

Read more: Bangkok Post (South Korea comparison), Travel and Tour World (weekly arrivals)

Forty-Three Billion Baht Picks Its Friends

Thailand's "Thai Chuay Thai Plus" co-payment scheme will open June 1 through September 30, for the 43.2 million eligible recipients who will be given 43 billion baht to spend. Tris Rating says the deal is more of a spending redirect than a spending boost, and expects the thing to result in a GDP lift of less than half a percent. The winners will be traditional retailers, small merchants, and Thong Fah stores, where the subsidized baht will get spent. Hypermarkets are expected to take the hardest short-term hit as price-sensitive grocery shoppers follow the subsidy away from modern trade.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Pirate Stream Hits a Buffer

Thai and Malaysian police have charged three people over the popular-with-foreigners MyIPTV4K, a gray-market streaming service that’s been peddling pirated movies and premium sports throughout Southeast Asia. The Thai miscreant was charged after a February raid on his Chiang Mai home turned up computers, phones and receipts for server time. A Malaysian couple running a Selangor electronics and web-design firm were picked up at the same time as part of a sweep that brought together Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the US and Interpol. The service, which used a MyIPTV Android Box or app to run, was sold openly by third-party sellers on Lazada Malaysia and Lazada Singapore. All three suspects have denied the charges.

Read more: Bangkok Post

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Vietnam 20260528

August Whitcraft — Thu, 28 May 2026 03:02:42 GMT

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Mango Tree Diplomacy in Udon Thani

To Lam went to Udon Thani (Thailand) on Wednesday, planting a mango tree at a Ho Chi Minh memorial and then sitting down with business leaders at a Vietnamese restaurant to talk about direct flight routes. It's a charming opener for a state visit in the province with Thailand's largest Thai-Vietnamese community. The three-day trip is coming during 50 year anniversary year of diplomatic relations and it’s To Lam's first visit since taking office last month. Thai investors are participating in 804 projects in Vietnam worth $15.4 billion of registered capital (Thailand is Vietnam’s eighth-largest foreign investor), and two-way trade was $22.1 billion in 2025, (+8.3% vs 2024). Thursday will get To Lam an audience with Thailand's king and talks with Prime Minister Anutin; both governments want to push trade to $25 billion.

Read more: Khaosod English (arrival), VnEconomy (investment)

Italy Bumped From Top Ten by Upstart Vietnam

Vietnam pumped out 2.1 million tonnes of crude steel in April 2026, enough to push Italy out of the World Steel Association's global top 10 for the first time. Output in the first four months was 8.5 million tonnes, and the country is now Southeast Asia's largest producer by a comfortable margin. Vietnam’s journey to this point is worth reviewing. In 2000, local mills depended almost entirely on imported billets to make construction rebar. By 2025, output had risen to 24.6 million tonnes and the product mix had grown to include products like wind power towers, oil rigs, and shipbuilding plate. All is not perfect, in the story, however, as Australia's Anti-Dumping Commission has begun an investigation some forms of steel from Vietnam (and also South Korea) after a complaint.

Read more: Tvbrics (2023 baseline rank), VnEconomy (Italy surpassed), Kallanish (import volumes, timeline)

Hanoi Tells Speculators the Party's Over

Notice No. 64-TB/VPTW, from the Party Central Committee's Office last week, is an indication that Hanoi wants to reorient its property market around renters, not flippers. Party General Secretary and State President To Lam said clearly that "Housing is for living, not for speculation or asset accumulation." The notice names rental apartments in major cities, industrial parks, economic zones, and labor migration hubs as a priority through 2030, and it’s release is going to inspire a raft of agencies to crack down on profiteering. Amendments to both the Housing Law and the Real Estate Business Law are expected later this year.

Read more: VnEconomy (digital housing tech), VnEconomy (finance mechanisms)

Banks Catch a Chill in Hot Economy

The World Bank sees 6.8% growth for 2026, calling it the strongest-positioned economy in ASEAN after last year's 8% showing. Exports hit a record $475 billion (93% of GDP). The macro picture is pretty good, the banking sector picture is… less so. In Q1 2026, mid-sized retail lenders took the hardest hit, as return on average assets fell 10 basis points on-quarter to 1.4%, net interest margins were compressed an average of 11 basis points on higher funding costs, and CASA-to-gross loans slid 2 percentage points to 18%. Techcombank and ACB saw deposit outflows and MB and TPBank had weaker corporate deposits. Large state-owned banks were able to mostly hold steady, helped by stronger deposit franchises and more diversified loan books. VIS Rating expects NIM compression and rising credit costs to keep grinding on smaller lenders through the rest of the year.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (retail delinquencies), VnEconomy (FDI disbursement)

September or Bust

FTSE Russell's September 2026 review is still the date that stock market participants have circled on the calendar. An upgrade to growing-market status should bring in up to $1.7 billion in passive ETF money to Ho Chi Minh-listed stocks. The harder sell is going to be almost everything else. Foreigners have been net sellers so far this year, liquidity’s eased over the past eight weeks as deposit rates crept higher and money drifted into gold, dollars and bank savings accounts. The VN-Index's gains have clustered almost entirely in Vingroup-connected names even as the rest of the board has stumbled sideways. If you take out the Vingroup gang, the market is trading at about 12 times earnings, compared to a five-year average near 16.

Dad's Money is Son's Problem

Pham Nhat Anh, 33, took over as chairman of VinFast on May 24, replacing Le Thi Thu Thuy, who left the board to focus on her role as vice chairwoman at parent company Vingroup. VinFast reported record revenues of VND90.4 trillion ($3.6 billion) last year with a net loss of more than VND97 trillion, and the company has said that it plans to sell off its manufacturing operations in Vietnam and shift roughly VND182 trillion in debt to a group of buyers that includes his father, Pham Nhat Vuong, Southeast Asia's richest man. Anh joined VinFast in February 2019 after running Vingroup's Vinpearl resort arm as deputy CEO, and joined the board last November. He also runs VinMetal, the group's steel subsidiary. Dad has promised the slimmed-down VinFast will become profitable next year.

Read more: VnExpress

Death Row Birkin Beats Reserve by 482%

A Hermès bag seized from condemned tycoon Truong My Lan received 119 bids and sold for a stunning VND11.7 billion (~$444k!) on Thursday, 482% above its reserve price, while a size 30 companion piece got only four bids and closed 8.5% above reserve at VND2.54 billion. Together the two bags were worth $536,000 at Ho Chi Minh City's Asset Auction Service Center, a contrast to the Reverie Saigon yacht, which has been listed multiple times and remains unsold after an 18% price cut to VND42.5 billion. Lan, sentenced to death for the $27 billion Saigon Commercial Bank fraud, told the court in September 2024 that one bag came from Italy and the other was a gift from a Malaysian billionaire, asking that they be returned as keepsakes for her descendants. Investigators have taken more than 1,200 properties and other assets tied to her Van Thinh Phat empire.

Read more: VnExpress

Novatek Visits Hanoi

Novatek vice chairman Sergey Soloviev has had a busy couple of days pumping hands and chewing ears in Hanoi. He had a May 25 sit-down with EVN deputy CEO Nguyen Tai Anh, then a May 26 meeting at the Ministry of Industry and Trade with deputy minister Nguyen Hoang Long, and officials from MoIT and “provincial authorities.” The Russian company, which put Yamal LNG on the global map in 2017, is now pitching the full stack, including fuel supply, import terminals, regasification, and gas-fired generation. EVN made clear none of it can possibly work in isolation - port geology, grid connectivity, and centralized import hubs all need to be preconditions for any northern deal. Novatek representatives had previously visited Thanh Hoa in April - they’re keen on getting involved with planned LNG power projects there.

Read more: The Investor (EVN energy security), Portnews RU (MoIT meeting)

Hanoi Sets a Price on Wrongthink

A decree that will come into force on July 1 sets out fines of up to VND 30 million for social media users who share fabricated, false, or "distorted" content, post maps that misrepresent the country’s sovereignty, or produce material mimicking journalism (is The Memo in jeopardy?) Vietnamese individuals, foreign nationals, telecom firms, internet providers, domain registrars, and even representative offices of foreign postal operators are all going to fall within the scope of the law. Account administrators who don’t yank flagged content when ordered be subject to the same fines. The decree doesn't make clear who it will be that decides what counts as distortion.

Read more: VnExpress

Born After 2010? No Smokes for You.

Vietnam's Health Ministry has proposed a generational tobacco cutoff that would make it permanently illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone born from 2010 onward. The draft will be read in the National Assembly's second session (October). A deputy chief of office at the Medical Services Administration shared the plan at a World No Tobacco Day workshop on May 22, suggesting the cutoff would produce a generation that never starts smoking instead of one that's told to quit. New Zealand pioneered this model in 2022, then scrapped it two years later when a new government was ushered in. The U.K.'s Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026, which applies to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, is still standing. Vietnam has 15.8 million adult smokers, and 41 percent of its male population enjoys the cancer stick.

Read more: VnExpress

Banks Want More Than Title Deeds

The Ministry of Finance wants to let SMEs pledge digital assets, intellectual property, and future property rights as loan collateral. There’s definitely a need for something to change. Currently less than one in 10 SMEs can get a bank loan (compare with 56.1% of large firms), in a country where SMEs make up 95% of all enterprises but contribute less than 20% of revenue. FiinGroup's 2025 credit outlook explains a little about why banks have kept their distance, as more than 70% of SMEs categoriezed as medium-to-high risk counterparties and the processing of a small loan takes as much work as a large one.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (policy shift), VnEconomy ($5.7T gap)

Landlocked Laos Asks Hanoi for a Ride to the Sea

At the Vietnam-Laos Logistics Business Forum in Vientiane on May 26, Laos laid out a 12-point reform plan with specific targets. The plan would cut customs clearance times at border crossings by at least half, import-export licensing times by at least 40 percent, and get rid of at least half of what the plan calls "unnecessary checkpoints" on domestic routes. The ask to Hanoi is also concrete, namely to share logistics experience, help build out warehousing infrastructure, and give Lao better access to the Vung Ang Port complex in Ha Tinh. Some of the challenges between here and there are incompatible electronic customs documentation, infrastructure bottlenecks, and high cross-border costs. A proposed Vung Ang-Vientiane rail route is also on the table.

Laos 20260527

August Whitcraft — Wed, 27 May 2026 03:32:46 GMT

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Gold Diggers Stuck Behind a 50cm Gap

Seven villagers have been trapped inside a flooded cave in Xaisomboun province since May 19 after flash flooding blocked the exit while they were searching for gold. There has been no contact with them since. An eighth member of the group managed to swim out through rising water and raised the alarm. Rescuers, including Thai cave diver Kengkard Bongkawong and Finnish specialist Mikko Paasi, both veterans of the 2018 Tham Luang operation, have pushed about a hundred meters into the flooded passages and believe the seven are sheltering on an elevated ledge about 30 meters further in, where airflow is continuous. The last physical obstacle is a gap 50 centimeters wide that’s been clogged with sediment. "The route is not complicated but the problem is the space," Kengkard told reporters. Four surface shafts above the cave system are also being look into as a backup route. Authorities had repeatedly warned villagers that the cave was unsafe.

Read more: CNA (air shafts), Straits Times (gold and hunting), The National (meters remaining), Sydney Morning Herald (rescue volunteer leader)

Battle-Tested in Ukraine, Teaching in Vientiane

Russia's Eastern Military District has arrived in Laos to run special units of the Lao People's Army through the Typhoon-2026 training course, with the joint Laros-2026 exercises to follow. The Russian Defense Ministry said the welcoming ceremony unfolded "in an atmosphere of friendship and mutual respect." Lao troops also got a look at some of the latest Russian hardware that the ministry said has been "tested in real combat conditions" in Ukraine.

Phu My Plants Its Flag on the Bolaven

PVFCCo, Vietnam's state fertilizer giant, spent a few days last week running technical workshops in Attapeu and Sekong's Bolaven Plateau, tying together fertilizer sales with soil evaluations, cultivation seminars, and demonstration plots. Sugarcane fields at TTC Attapeu's Station No. 1 using the full PVFCCo package were able to muster 75 tons of output per hectare last year, and that’s the highest average yield in the region, according to the company. The fields currently in production will stay on PVFCCo's nutrition program through this year. It’s another foothold for Vietnamese agribusiness on a plateau that’s increasingly being farmed by Lao neighbors.

Princess Aiko Returns to Laos in Tokyo

Laos Festival 2026, in its 14th edition, ran May 23 and 24 in Tokyo, bringing thousands of celebrants to two days of traditional dance, food, and handicrafts. The headliner was Princess Aiko, however, who attended for the first time since her November 2025 trip to Vientiane, which was itself her first official overseas visit as an adult imperial. The gesture is an indication of how seriously Tokyo is about investing in Laos as a soft-power foothold. Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Thongsavanh Phomvihane went to Tokyo from Vientiane for the opening, meeting on the sidelines with Shinako Tsuchiya of the Japan-Laos Parliamentary Friendship Association and Susumu Takahashi of the Saitama-Laos Friendship Association.

Read more: The Star, Travel and Tour World

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Myanmar 20260526

August Whitcraft — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:52:35 GMT

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Junta Goes Shopping for Dysprosium

New military chief Ye Win Oo is running a three-front war in the borderlands, and the prize on the northern shelf is worth more than the territory. The army retook Tonzang in Chin State on May 21 after ten days and Mawtaung near the Thai border a day earlier after two weeks of effort. Regime forces are pushing into northern Kachin toward the clay deposits around Chipwi and Pangwa townships that produce roughly half the world's heavy rare earths, including the dysprosium and terbium needed for EV motors and wind turbines. The Kachin Independence Army, which took the mining belts in October 2024, isn't moving. "We will welcome them with the barrels of our guns," spokesperson Naw Bu said. On the highway front, fighting continues along the Mandalay-Myitkyina corridor despite the military's May 5 claim of control. Resistance forces have lost 24 of the 104 towns they held since the coup; 80 remain in rebel control.

Read more: AP News (Tonzang, Mawtaung timeline), Nation Thailand (Chin State capture), The Irrawaddy (highway ambushes, civilians), Daily Sabah (three-front scope), Rare Earth Exchanges (China's rare earth role)

Delhi Toasts the Generals While Chin State Burns

Indian Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi spent four days in Naypyidaw, meeting the junta's new Commander-in-Chief Ye Win Oo, Defense Minister Htun Aung, and Chief of the General Staff Ko Ko Oo to pencil in joint naval exercises and hydrographic surveys in the Bay of Bengal. Two Indian warships pulled in at Yangon's Thilawa Port with more than 500 personnel aboard for what New Delhi billed as a goodwill mission. Delhi also opened a two-week U.N. peacekeeping course for 30 junta officers for civilian protection and convoy security, even though the military continues to pound Chin State with what local monitors say are cluster munitions and indiscriminate carpet-bombing. Tens of thousands of Chin civilians have fled into Mizoram, India already.

Read more: DVB (civilian casualties), Narinjara (fuel ban)

Beijing Calls Time on the Brotherhood

At Kunming talks on May 12-13, China leaned on the TNLA to hand back four towns, including Nam Kham and Mong Long, and shrink back to the two-township footprint it last held in 2008 within the next month. It was the 11th meeting of the type since Operation 1027 began, and the TNLA arrived having already tried to soften the junta up with a public statement recognizing the Min Aung Hlaing regime, plus the handover of more than 100 POWs in Kyaukme at the beginning of this month. The junta seems to be seeing the overtures as weakness, not goodwill. The Three Brotherhood Alliance, once the war's most effective fighting coalition, isn’t what it used to be, and the Arakan Army is now the only member still gaining territory with any authority.

ASEAN Chooses Not to Notice

The 48th ASEAN Summit's May 8 statement described the junta's December-to-January vote as "the conclusion of the three phases of Myanmar's general elections." This despite the fact(s) that an estimated 10.5 million people were excluded completely, another 11 million boycotted, and the military's proxy party swept the civilian seats as the generals kept their constitutionally guaranteed 25 percent of unelected slots. The number of votes cast came to roughly half of the number counted in the 2020 election the military spent five years trying to overturn. The summit also welcomed the release of more than 4,000 "prisoners," of whom 292 were confirmed political detainees. On the Five-Point Consensus the junta signed in April 2021 and has ignored ever since, ASEAN said "minimal progress" had been found.

Read more: Mizzima

Twenty Million in Need but No New Resolutions

UN OCHA's latest access snapshot puts about 20 million people in need. That’s about one in three Myanmar residents. The report also counts 3.6 million displaced (1.7 million of them in the Northwest, Rakhine, and Southeast). The Security Council's last action was UNSCR 2669, a non-binding resolution that was adopted in December 2022 with China, Russia, and India abstaining. That resolution demanded an end to all violence and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint. None of that has happened, and there’s been approximately no real progress on the ground since.

Read more: ReliefWeb (scale-up urgency), Modern Diplomacy (food insecurity)

Photo by Sébastien Goldberg on Unsplash

Junta's Preferred Target Features a Red Cross

Regime forces account for more than 70 percent of nearly 2,000 attacks on healthcare facilities in Myanmar since the coup, according to an Insecurity Insight tally. The report also counts 173 health workers killed, 930 arrested, and more than 500 facilities damaged. The remaining 30 percent is spread between ethnic armed groups, PDFs, criminals, and other “unidentified” actors. The biggest threat is the almost daily airstrikes, according to a CDM doctor in Mindat who has managed to survive two strikes on his own hospitals. The parallel National Unity Government says there are currently 106 hospitals, 808 clinics, and 192 mobile clinics running in resistance-held areas, staffed by about 5,000 workers.

Fertilizer Famine Before the Monsoon

The EU is sending EUR 8 million to the World Food Programme as one in four people (more than 12 million), are staring down acute food insecurity. Farmers are cutting back on fertilizer in advance of this year’s monsoon planting season. Fuel prices have tripled since late February, forcing the cost of a basic food basket up almost 40 percent in Magway Region, the steepest rise in the country. A 50 percent reduction in fertilizer use could shave up to 15 percent off national agricultural output, with the pain continuing well into 2027.

Year Nine, $710 Million

The UN and Bangladesh say the price tag for another year of the Rohingya crisis is $710.5 million. That’s what they think it will cost to reach about a million and a half people in Cox's Bazar, Bhasan Char, and the host communities of Ukhiya and Teknaf. The 2025-26 Joint Response Plan, launched in March 2025 as a two-year plan with a one-year budget cycle, unites 98 partner organizations, half of them Bangladeshi national groups, to deal with the problem. Early, voluntary, and lasting repatriation to Myanmar stays at the top of the five objectives. The $710.5 million needed is expected to cover costs for the full 12 month 2026 calendar year.

Tatmadaw's Minsk Errand

Myanmar's defense minister, Htun Aung, landed in Belarus for meetings with his Belarusian counterparts, a tour of the Military Academy, and visits to military units and "enterprises with various specializations," according to the Belarusian Ministry of Defense. Few other details are available at the present time.

Cambodia 20260525

August Whitcraft — Mon, 25 May 2026 04:25:23 GMT

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Phnom Penh's Perfect Storm Cuts the Forecast

Stephen Higgins of Mekong Strategic Capital had been expecting 4% GDP growth for this year, but he now thinks 2% will be closer to the mark. The revision results partly from a policy dialogue hosted by Sok Siphana, where Higgins and Baker Tilly Cambodia's Tan Khee Meng walked through the intersection of the border dispute, the forced shutdown of scam compounds, energy market volatility, and a property sector that’s sitting on about a decades worth of unsold inventory. The last point is doing particular damage to the banks. Loans in the sector are almost exclusively backed by property, and there’s no real secondary market to clear distressed assets. As a result, NPLs have risen past 9% of total loans, up from 5.4% during 2023. The panel's word for the current business climate was "paralysis." Under normal conditions, Higgins said, the country should be seeing 6 or 7% annual growth.

Read more: Cambodia Investment Review (panel recommendations), Cambodia Investment Review (microfinance NPLs)

Chen Zhi's Empire Gets a House Call

Cambodian police hit buildings connected to jailed Chinese tycoon Chen Zhi on Saturday, nabbing 104 people of six nationalities and taking 800 mobile phones, more than a hundred computers, and what investigators said is “the hardware of a fake investment scheme” that’s been targeting victims worldwide. The same morning, a flight left Techo International Airport carrying 165 Chinese nationals who were deported in coordination with the Chinese Embassy, on orders from Deputy Prime Minister Sar Sokha. The two moves are some of the most aggressive against Chen's network since his arrest earlier this year, and come alongside other actions including a crackdown in which the gambling regulator has revoked at least eight casino licenses since April. You may be surprise to read, however, that no criminal charges have been announced against any casino owner.

Read more: SCMP (raid inventory), Khmer Times (deportation logistics), CamboJA News (casino license revocations)

Garment Workers Pay for their Commute in Blood

Two traffic accidents on Saturday left 14 Cambodian garment factory workers dead and 79 more injured. In Kampong Chhnang, a cargo truck slammed into an open-top truck that was ferrying workers to their factory, killing nine and injuring 44. In a separate incident, a bus veered off the road and overturned in a Svay Rieng accident that killed five and injured 35. Flatbed trucks are still a standard mode of transport to work, and they usually lack seatbelts (and sometimes don’t even have seats). The sector employs up to a million people on salaries of $200 to $300 a month and was responsible for more than $15.5 billion of exports last year.

Strait of Hormuz Hits the Paddy

Ou Puy, a 74-year-old farmer in Battambang's Brakieb village, has cut back his dry-season rice planting because his cost of fertilizer has nearly doubled. Across his 60-hectare rented plot, at five to six sacks per hectare, fertilizer alone could cost him as much as $15,000 that he just can’t afford. He has converted half of his land to higher-value jasmine rice, which needs less fertilizer but won't harvest until November (which is going to cut his expected output in half). Cambodia imported about $420 million of fertilizer last year, $26 million more than the year before.

Read more: CamboJA News

Hainan or Bust

International arrivals were down by almost half in Q1 to a hair north of one million visitors. Angkor Enterprise is reporting a 32 percent drop of foreign ticket sales. The government's answer is Tourism Minister Huot Hak, who spent the week of May 20-24 working through Hainan like a man with a quota to fill, signing MoUs with Haikou and Sanya, headlining a 150-person roadshow in Haikou, and promoting the four-month visa-free pilot for Chinese nationals that will run from June 15 to October 15. The target is to get half a million Chinese souls to show up this year, from last year’s 300,000 or so. EuroCham has put forward a proposal for 15-to-45-day visa-free access for European travelers; officials say they'll consider it after seeing how the China pilot goes.

Read more: Travel and Tour World (Sanya MoU), Travel and Tour World (EuroCham proposal), Khmer Times (decline causes), Travel and Tour World (Angkor revenue), Travel and Tour World (European arrivals baseline)

Photo by Ryan Chan on Unsplash

36 Months, $36 Million and an Oknha on Bail

About 250 plaintiffs came from all over Cambodia to show up at a Phnom Penh court on Wednesday where they demanded repayment from former oknha Hy Kimhong's Piphup Deimeas Investment in a fraud case that’s nearing its third year. Lawyers for the victims want $26 million in compensation plus about $10 million in moral damages, as well as prison terms of two to five years for Kimhong and 18 associates. Many complainants, most of them from Kampot province, took out bank and microfinance loans to invest and now find themselves unable to keep up with repayments. Kimhong was arrested in August 2023, charged with fraud, and released on bail two months later. A verdict is expected within 30 days.

Read more: CamboJA News

Kem Sokha's 60-Minute Furlough

Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutors let Kem Sokha out of house arrest for exactly an hour on May 20 to visit his ailing mother at a Borey compound. Interior Ministry officials went along for the ride. Co-defendant Pheng Heng posted 29 seconds of the reunion to Facebook, showing the former opposition leader stepping out of a police car to embrace his weakening mother. "Mom, you know that I have never persecuted anyone," he told her. Three weeks earlier, on April 30, the Court of Appeals upheld his 27-year sentence for conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity and added another five-year ban on his foreign travel.

Fake News! Says the Ministry

Cambodia's Defence Ministry dismissed Thai army claims of five more gunshots near Samraong town on May 22 as "false information and slander," the third denial in ten days. Earlier Thai reports alleged 11 shots near the O'Smach border checkpoint on May 13 and M79 grenades launched at Thai positions in Preah Vihear on May 14. Both of those claims were similarly rejected by Phnom Penh. Spokesperson Maly Socheata wants Bangkok to honor the fake-news cooperation clause in their December 27, 2025 joint ceasefire statement.

Read more: Phnom Penh Post ("incite confusion"), Cambodianess (ceasefire clause)

Beer and Bandwidth Pay the Bills

Cambodia's tax haul totaled $6.77 billion in 2025, beating targets on both branches of the collection apparatus. Customs ran 24.5% over budget and the General Department of Taxation doubled its domestic revenue target. Hun Manet gave out Letters of Appreciation to the top ten contributors, and the list is like a map of where formal-economy money moves: Viettel's Metfone at the top, Heineken second, Smart Axiata third, then Honda, ABA Bank, ACLEDA, Amret, KB Prasac, Cambrew, and JTI rounding out the list.

Read more: Cambodia Investment Review (top 10 taxpayers)

Phnom Penh Floats the Atom

Cambodia is openly weighing nuclear power, including small modular reactors, as an answer to an energy noose that keeps tightening. About two-thirds of total energy consumption depends on imports, and demand is climbing fast as the country continues to industrialize and urbanize. Installed capacity was reported at 5,044 MW in 2024, but coal, much of which is imported, still anchors generation.

One Lawyer, Ten Centuries of Missing Gods

A Harvard-trained expat from Connecticut who was running a small Phnom Penh firm read a 2012 op-ed about a DOJ case against Sotheby's over a looted 10th-century Khmer warrior statue, the Duryodhana, and decided to chase down the whole network. The five-foot sandstone figure had been set to headline Asia Week in New York before federal prosecutors intervened, saying that it was stolen property owed to the Cambodian people. Bradley Gordon knew nothing about the international artifact trade, but he'd taught English to Cambodian refugees in the late 1980s and had spent years awed by what the Khmer Rouge and other civil-war combatants had stripped from the temples. Read the whole tale - it’s a good one.

Thailand 20260522

August Whitcraft — Fri, 22 May 2026 04:19:23 GMT

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Cabinet Calls Time on the 60-Day Holiday

The cabinet voted to scrap the 60-day visa-free scheme it introduced in July 2024 for 93 countries, sending most nationalities back to a 30 day allowance and a handful to 15. The official line is that it’s because of crime - drug trafficking, sex trafficking, foreigners running hotels and language schools without permits, and transnational scam networks using tourist stamps as cover. The land-border visa run, long beloved by the Khao San Road set, is getting capped to once per calendar year. Extensions beyond 30 days are still possible a single time, but now at an immigration officer's discretion rather than automatically. Tourism minister Surasak Phancharoenworakul, maybe seeing the optics of this change at a time of declining numbers, said the focus was shifting from visitor numbers to "quality tourists." The new rules will come into force 15 days after publication in the Royal Gazette, a date yet to be set.

Read more: Nation Thailand (quality tourists), Al Jazeera (foreign minister quotes), Abc Net (Australian tourists), BBC (UK focus), The Guardian (arrival drops)

Volvo's EX30 Keeps Catching Fire

Thursday's meeting between Volvo and Thai EX30 owners ended without a deal, and the Office of the Consumer Protection Board walked out with a mandate to sue. The OCPB is expected to bring civil suits case-by-case for 45 complainants who want refunds (and interest), after two more EX30 battery fires this month pushed things past the breaking point. Customers rejected Volvo's offer of battery replacements and loaner vehicles for 90% of affected owners (partial replacements for the others). Most buyers just want their money back. A Volvo spokesperson blamed parts delays partly on the Iran war and put the fire rate at 0.1% of the 37,802 vehicles still under the global recall, trimmed from an initial 40,323. About 1,600 EX30s are on Thai roads; repairs are expected to begin May 23.

Read more: Bangkok Post (OCPB adviser), News AZ (Severinson)

One Family, Five Depots, Six Hundred Lies

The Industry Ministry has filed a DSI complaint against Trillion Petrotrading, an Ang Thong fuel trader accused of hoarding and faking records during March's fuel crisis. The company missed six daily fuel movement reports in March and 14 in April, twenty violations that can bring up to 10 years in prison each. Transport manifests for Trillion's deals with Global Well Oil 1985 were issued by a different company altogether (Pan Asia Storage and Terminal), which shares directors and shareholders with Trillion Oil Co Ltd. In Chiang Rai, investigators found another related/ connected company had issued 662 incomplete fuel transport documents.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Anutin Throws the First Charter Punch

Bhumjaithai became the first major party to properly put forward a constitutional amendment bill to parliament on May 21, with Anutin personally handing the draft to House Speaker Sophon Zarum, three months after 58.6% of voters backed the writing of a new constitution. The opposition People's Party answered by resubmitting six bills the cabinet had declined to carry over after December's dissolution of parliament. The bills are for labor protection, military court reform, pollutant reporting, and an amnesty for people prosecuted for forest encroachment under NCPO-era rules.

Read more: Bangkok Post (Anutin), Bangkok Post (six stalled bills), Bangkok Post (Senate voting dispute)

Jet Fuel Keeps the China Charter Boom Grounded

More than 200 Chinese charter flights to Thailand have been cancelled as jet fuel costs bite, leaving the Tourism Authority of Thailand sitting on 70 million baht in unspent Summer Blast subsidies after operators gave back their quotas. The TAT was offering 350,000 baht per flight, but (unnamed) rival destinations are offering rebates of as much as a million baht. Chinese arrivals were 2.1 million in the first quarter of this year. TAT is now trying to figure out if it can legally redirect the leftover funds to long-haul markets and stretch the campaign from June to September.

Rice Exporters Bet on a Quieter Hormuz

White paddy prices in Ayutthaya rose to 8,500 baht a tonne on May 15, up from 7,700-8,100 a week prior, as global buyers moved to stock up. The story is what's missing, though since Iraq, normally a buyer of up to a million tonne a year, hasn't put in any orders yet. Any price recovery for Thai 5% broken white, now at $429 FOB, is expected to get capped at $10-15 per tonne, the Philippines is still hoovering up roughly 300,000 tonnes a month of Vietnamese rice.

The Kidnappers Wore Uniforms

Four police officers and a civilian have been arrested for (allegedly) kidnapping and extorting five Chinese nationals in Sa Kaeo province. A fifth suspect, a commissioned officer named Prayoon, has been charged but remains at large. National police spokesman Pol Lt Gen Trairong Phiwphan said investigators have found communications pointing to affiliates across the border, and are tracing phone records, financial transactions, and vehicles used in the operation. The four arrested officers, who worked in multiple police units, have been suspended, and the case has been sent to be dealt with at the national level. Authorities haven't ruled out applying the forced disappearance law.

Read more: Bangkok Post

An SEC Date with Bitcoin

The SEC is putting a hard date on single-asset Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, which are now expected to launch in Q3 2026. Tokenized deposits and e-money tokens will follow as digital assets get folded into the regulated investment universe. SEC director Butree Vongsiriroongruang made the call at Southeast Asia Blockchain Week (yesterday and the day before) at Bangkok's Iconsiam, saying the push is part of a three-year strategy more than a “just” a pilot. Indonesia also showed up at the same event with its own pitch - Jakarta's Ministry of Creative Economy talked IP tokenization and one of their local projects (Tahilalats) as proof of concept.

Steady Insurance Premium Growth

Muang Thai Life reported 6% premium growth in January-April, pushed by renewals and steady demand for health insurance, even as there was a pullback from high-yield endowment products. US bond yields are near 5% compared against Thailand's 2%, making domestic long-duration plays a hard sell. New business premiums are expected to contract slightly this year against a high 2025 base.

Read more: Bangkok Post

Welcome Mat Gets a Price Tag

The tourism minister says the long-discussed tourist landing fee will run higher than the previously floated 300 baht, with the extra meant to fund premium insurance covering treatment at private hospitals when visitors' personal policies fall short. Two collection routes are still on the table, either bundling the fee into airline tickets or collecting it through an e-payment system before immigration. Since airlines can't easily separate Thai passengers from foreign arrivals, the government is ~~ham-fistedly~~ building a refund app for Thai nationals and other exempt travelers. Part of the revenue is also expected to be allocated to tourism development projects.

Ebola Triggers Lockdown Drills

Thailand has doubled down on airport screening after the WHO declared Ebola outbreaks in the DRC and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The Public Health Ministry designated both countries as dangerous communicable disease zones on Wednesday, and the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand brought together airlines, airport operators, and the quarantine division for a round of planning. Travelers who are going to the affected regions are expected to register through the Thai Health Pass; airlines on those routes are required to screen passengers at origin and pass seating and travel data to disease control officers.

Read more: Nepal News (unified health framework), Az (Digital Arrival Card)

Opposition Wants Macron to Pass Via BKK

People's Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut told parliament Thursday that PM Anutin Charnvirakul should use his Paris trip, running through May 27, to invite Macron to stop in Bangkok before the French president heads to Phnom Penh in November for the Francophonie summit. A visit, Natthaphong argued, would open space for dialogue on the Thai-Cambodian border dispute that's been simmering for months.

Read more: Bangkok Post

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Vietnam 20260521

August Whitcraft — Thu, 21 May 2026 02:44:12 GMT

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Two Million Barrels, Five Days, One Letter

The Agios Fanourios I, a Malta-flagged supertanker carrying about 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude, reversed course in the Gulf of Oman on May 11 after US Central Command redirected it as part of enforcement against Iran, then sat in position, waiting, for five days. PetroVietnam Oil told US authorities that any more delay would force a stop to operations at the Nghi Son refinery and cut fuel supply to consumers, businesses, and public services throughout Vietnam, and the move seems to have worked. The ship restarted its journey on May 16 and is expected at Nghi Son by May 30.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (Hormuz shipping confidence), Marineinsight (departure timeline)

Nvidia's Second Home Gets the Good Stuff

Foxconn is becoming Nvidia's assembly partner in Vietnam for SXM modules, the chipmaker's top-tier data-center GPU platform that powers systems running large-scale AI workloads. A current job listing for an "SXM Manufacturing Test Engineer" specifies that the hire would spend most of their time at Foxconn factories, building and validating next-generation GPU boards. It's a step up from the consumer electronics work Vietnam is traditionally known for. Nvidia is recruiting for dozens of positions - factory planners to senior operations managers, with several requiring Chinese fluency in addition to English. The push follows on Jensen Huang's December 2024 trip to Hanoi, where he signed deals on an AI research center and data infrastructure and called Vietnam Nvidia's "second home." In February, Trump removed Vietnam from the export control list it had shared with China and Russia since the Cold War, clearing the legal path for this sort of transfer.

Read more: The Investor (job posting, headcounts), Lowy Institute (export control removal)

A $1.5 Trillion Bill and a Better Class of Foreigner

Vietnam's newly approved 2026-2030 socio-economic plan has Hanoi's ambitions get a price tag of VND38,500 trillion (a staggering $1.48 trillion), of which well more than a trillion of that will need to come from the private sector, investment funds, and foreign companies. The qualitative shift is probably more than the big number, however. A soon-to-be-released Politburo resolution will reposition FDI from its current role of “capital to be attracted” to an integral part of the domestic growth model. After nearly four decades of rolling out the welcome mat, only 15 percent of Vietnamese companies can supply goods or services to foreign-invested enterprises (compare with 40 percent in Thailand and almost half in Malaysia). The FDI sector is responsible for nearly three-quarters of total trade turnover and makes up almost a quarter of GDP. It’s a bit of a "transit pipeline" problem where components come in, assembly gets done, and profits get sent back out by way of dividends, royalties, and transfer pricing.

Read more: VnEconomy (Top 30 GDP target), VnEconomy (Politburo FII expansion), VnEconomy (Top 3 ASEAN timeline), VnEconomy (70 priority technologies), VnEconomy (42-indicator gaps)

Vietnam Writes the AI Rulebook

Vietnam has enacted a binding AI law, putting it among the first countries anywhere to set wide-ranging rules on the technology that will apply to generative tools from OpenAI, Anthropic, and the like. Companies will be required to classify their products by risk level and label AI-generated content, including deepfakes, before it gets to Vietnamese users. The authorities are going to get the power to enforce compliance.

Hanoi Tears Itself Down to Rebuild Itself Up

A draft resolution published May 20 would ban private vehicles from central Hanoi streets starting January 1, 2035, a date that’s been chosen with a metro network that mostly doesn't exist in mind. The city ~~hopes for~~ plans 96.8 km of metro track by 2030 and wants to finish the full network by 2035. The motorbike restrictions will kick in once public transport can absorb displaced trips. Central Hanoi is already a construction site. The $606 million Tran Hung Dao bridge is clearing homes along Van Kiep Street, the $759 million Tu Lien bridge will reclaim nearly 294,000 square meters in Hong Ha Ward, and Ring Road 1 crews are racing to finish the roadbed before September 2. Things are on the move.

Read more: VnExpress (vehicle restrictions), VnExpress (bridge & road)

Photo by Helga Christina on Unsplash

Seoul and Tokyo Bring Batteries to the Bike Fight

Hanoi signed an MOU with LG Energy Solution and Honda on May 19 to build out a battery-swapping network for electric motorbikes, starting with 50 pilot stations near Hoan Kiem ward in Q3 2026. The ambition is to scale to 1,000 stations citywide from Q3 2027. Honda, which owned nearly nine-tenths of Vietnam's motorcycle market in 2025, will provide the bikes and develop the battery packs/ swapping units; LG will provide its cylindrical 2170 batteries and run the safety management system. The pilot will put 500 electric motorcycles on the road. An LG representative called Vietnam "the most critical country in Southeast Asia for the transition to electric two-wheelers."

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (2170 battery role), TechNode Global (vice chairman), VnEconomy (subsidy tiers)

862,000 Residents Shown the Door

Hanoi People's Committee Chairman Tran Sy Thanh signed off on a plan to move 862,000 residents out of the historic city core by 2045, with the first 442,000 to be pulled from Red River flood plains, West Lake and several inner-city streets between 2026 and 2035, and the remaining 420,000 from the Old Quarter and other areas inside Ring Road 3 over the decade following. The receiving zones, Dong Anh, Gia Lam and the Hoa Lac science and technology hub to the west, are being built up around metro stations, with the city aiming for at least 45 square meters of floor space per person to be available by 2035. The Old Quarter's resident population has already fallen between 30 and 50 percent over the past 20 years on its own, according to the Hanoi Association of Architects.

Read more: VnExpress (housing targets, GDP)

Vietnamese Banks Pay Up, or Skip the Bond Market Entirely

Vietnamese banks that managed to raise capital through bonds in April are paying 8.4 to 8.9 percent APR, nearly double the 5.2 to 5.3 percent the same gang was willing to accept a year earlier. Rates have risen close enough to lending yields that issuing bonds barely makes sense, and the market has noticed. Banks made up 100 percent of corporate bond issuance in Q1 2025 and only 30 percent in Q1 2026; real estate issuers took the top slot at nearly two-thirds. Rather than lock in those tepid yields, banks spent the quarter patching liquidity by way of taking deposits, interbank borrowing, and open market operations. Average lending rates at commercial banks were 7.4 to 9.7 percent in March, up 0.7 points since the end of 2025.

MoMo Lends Faster, Scammers Move Faster Still

MoMo and VCBNeo signed a Pay Later deal this week. The deal will see artificial intelligence agents approving credit lines up to VND20 million instantly, with no paperwork, based on spending history. Vietnamese users lost VND8 trillion ($304 million) to online scams in 2025 - MoMo's CEO Nguyen Manh Tuong told a recent forum that the problem isn't “fraudulent” transactions, it's users willingly authorizing transfers while being psychologically manipulated. MoMo says its AI catches nearly 29,000 abnormal transactions and sends warnings more than 10,000 users every day.

Read more: Vietnam News (CEO quotes), Tipranks (Pay Later terms)

Gold, Hidden in Plain Circuits

Hanoi police have charged seven people, five of them Chinese nationals, in what investigators are calling the capital's largest-ever gold smuggling bust. Roughly 300 kg of gold worth VND1.2 trillion (about $47 million) moved in from Hong Kong hidden inside electronic equipment. The ringleader, a Chinese national, hired a local, to take delivery and pass the metal up the chain. The local man told investigators he knew the gold was smuggled and took the job anyway for VND150-200 million a month (a handy $6,000-$8,000 in his pocket). Once melted and recast into bullion, the proceeds cycled back through the same man, who then converted the earnings into cryptocurrency and sent the funds to accounts the ringleader specified. Police caught the gang trading in Bo De Ward six months after the investigation began, seizing five kilograms on the spot along with other evidence.

Read more: VnExpress

The Dissent Now Fits in an Emoji

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese Facebook users have settled on a censorship workaround that needs no words. The Haha reaction, dropped en masse beneath official government posts, now shows anything from sarcasm to outright disbelief. The trend has been on the rise for the past six months as authorities worked on better enforcement of content that they considered to be false or “harmful to public order.” Direct comment wars and political meme threads have largely given way to private groups, deleted posts, and a reaction that both says nothing, and everything. Haha!

$76 for the Second Baby

A new mandate that goes into effect on the first day of July will provide some women VND2 million (~$76), for having two children. Local government budgets will be picking up the tab. The payment applies to ethnic minority women from very small population groups, residents of provinces with below-replacement fertility, and anyone hitting the two-child mark before age 35. The decree also expands prenatal screening to four conditions including Down syndrome and Thalassemia, and newborns will now get routinely checked for a handful of congenital issues.

Read more: VnExpress

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Laos 20260520

August Whitcraft — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:09:30 GMT

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Dysprosium Doesn't Stop at the Border

Satellite mapping published in December 2025 picked out 517 sites that are suspected to be involved with rare earth mining along Lao rivers. That figure is up from 27 mines counted in a previous effort by the Stimson Center. Civil conflict in Myanmar's Kachin and Shan states has disrupted the feedstock corridors that Chinese refiners spent years depending on, and the China-Laos Railway now offers an alternative route north. The geology is also helping as ion-adsorption clay deposits in Xieng Khouang and Houaphanh provinces carry rare earth concentrations of 400 to 700 parts per million. That’s a very similar environmental formation to that which has made southern China's highlands worth fighting over. Chinese-connected operators have moved into the space quickly, partly because there is no institutional force pushing back. Vientiane's debt position toward Beijing is well documented, and enforcement capacity (to say nothing of appetite) in the northern provinces is thin. Dysprosium and terbium have no meaningful separation or refining infrastructure outside China, which still controls the downstream chemistry that turns clay into magnets.

Read more: Eurasia Review (Laos debt figure), Rare Earth Exchanges (Myanmar disruption)

Swapping Notes on Scam Compounds

Security ministers from Laos and Cambodia convened in Phnom Penh to sign a cooperation deal in which they agree to share intelligence across their shared border. The meetup follows crackdowns in Bokeo and Savannakhet that resulted in 1,347 arrests during April and May. The new pact will work toward closer coordination between border provinces and investment in checkpoints and crossing infrastructure. Cambodia's interior minister Sar Sokha also briefed his Lao counterpart on the Thailand border situation and thanked Vientiane for supporting the Asean Observer Team that’s monitoring the dispute.

Vientiane Trades Landlocked for Land-Linked

Laos and Thailand signed an MOU in Bangkok standardizing Mekong navigation safety and pollution rules. The two waterway departments agreed on five regulations for traffic management, inspections, emergency response, search-and-rescue, and crew certification. A Bilateral Steering Committee will be given half a year to stand up, and eight more regulations will come into force by 2035. The deal is coming as a follow-on to the 1995 Mekong Agreement, and officials were careful to flag freedom of navigation alongside the safety rules. The Lao delegation also took a tour of Thai port infrastructure, traffic control centers, and maritime training facilities.

Read more: Nation Thailand (crew competency certifications), The Star (signing officials)

Vientiane Bets on Hainan as Saltwater Workaround

Viengsavang Thipphavong, at the Lao Institute for Industry, told China Daily that Hainan's seaports could give landlocked Laos a maritime gateway under RCEP. Agricultural products like bananas, cassava, and rubber are front-of-mind. The pitch is that good will be able to move north by rail through Boten to Chinese ports, then out from there to third-country markets. The Laos-China Railway already handles the first bit, and it’s expected that Hainan's Free Trade Port, with its simplified customs and expanded trade access, would cover the ocean leg.

Vientiane Bets on Wrenches Over Diplomas

A nationwide vocational education campaign was launched at Vientiane Secondary School, sending educators and successful alumni into school assemblies to make the case that tourism, agriculture, and hospitality jobs remain unfilled even as graduates chase academic credentials that the labor market doesn't want. The Ministry of Education and Sports hopes to reach 150,000 people in at least nine provinces through 2026 and 2027.

Read more: The Star (COVID enrollment decline), The Star (deputy minister quotes)

Photo by Vivu Vietnam on Unsplash

Three Countries With One Brochure

Laos and Vietnam signed a five-year culture and tourism cooperation plan in Vientiane on May 12 to try and keep Vietnam among its top inbound markets. Inked by ministers Suanesavanh Vignaket and Lam Thi Phuong Thanh, the deal sets up a coordination committee for the newly-listed transboundary World Heritage Site that covers both of Laos's Hin Nam No and Vietnam's Phong Nha-Ke Bang national parks, and will run technical cooperation in film, publishing, and libraries through 2030. Both sides also agreed to push the "three countries, one destination" pitch along with Cambodia. Hanoi is hosting a trilateral tourism ministers' meeting at the Ho Chi Minh City International Tourism Expo.

Plain of Jars Gives Up Its Tenants

A stone jug a little over two meters across at Site 75 on the Xieng Khouang Plateau has settled a century-old argument. The Plain of Jars was, in fact, a burial complex. The jar held the remains of at least 37 people, placed there at intervals between 890 and 1160, along with multicolored glass beads that were made in India. Skulls were arranged along the edges; arm and leg bones bunched together, suggesting that the jar was a final stop rather than the first one, with bodies likely "distilled" in smaller jars nearby before the bones were moved in.

Read more: Sciencenews (ancestor worship), Livescience (researcher attribution)

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Myanmar 20260519

August Whitcraft — Tue, 19 May 2026 01:49:02 GMT

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Forty Days of the President's Peace

Since Min Aung Hlaing's April 10 inauguration, the military has carried out 219 attacks by air over the country, killing at least 122 people and wounding 240 more, according to DVB's tally. On May 11 and 12, warplanes hit Mindat in southern Chin State more than a dozen times, killing four people including a prisoner of war and destroying 15 homes. In Kani Township, a junta column looted every house in Thamin Chan village, taking away rice, cooking oil, and furniture on 18 commandeered carts and burning four homes to the ground before moving on toward Sone Chaung. Sagaing Region saw 62 of the 219 attacks and 34 of the dead.

Read more: The Irrawaddy (Mizoram refugees), Mizzima (15,000 displaced), BNI Online (Kanpetlet strikes), Mizzima (500 factory troops), DVB (cumulative toll)

Hormuz to the Rice Paddy

Fuel prices have tripled in Myanmar since late February, the direct knock-on from Iran's Strait of Hormuz closure to a country that imports more than 90% of its fuel and nearly all of its fertilizer. Magway region’s basic food prices are 38% higher than the national baseline, the biggest increase in the country. The Karenni Human Rights Group is saying that there’s a risk of famine for more than 200,000, as junta troops have been arresting farmers, deliberately flooding fields, and cutting off the flow of goods. The group first raised famine warnings in November 2025, and by its own account the situation has become worse since then.

Read more: Narinjara (WFP representative), ReliefWeb (kyat depreciation), CNN (farmer-level cost), Mizzima (Karenni IDP famine)

Thirteen Million Names in the Crosshairs

In his first act after appearing at the Central Body for Conscription in Naypyitaw on Thursday, Defense Minister General Tun Aung told immigration offices in every township to put together conscription lists for about 13 million eligible citizens. The regime's target is 50,000 recruits yearly in groups of 5,000, and it has already pulled in nearly 120,000 people in 24 batches since the law came into force in February 2024. Defectors and resistance groups say conscripts are being used as cannon fodder, with some shot by officers for retreating, which may explain an appetite for better paperwork.

The Junta's Best Export Is Its Own Workers

Migrant remittances were $5.6 billion in 2025, which is the single largest source of foreign currency flowing into Myanmar. Compare that with the $670 million received in 2022. Behind that increase is a 2024 rule that forces workers abroad to send a quarter of their earnings back home by way of official banking channels; passport renewals and the right to work overseas are held as collateral in exchange for compliance. Foreign direct investment, by contrast, was $83 million last year, so the regime pulls roughly 67 times more from its own diaspora than it can get from outside investors. Inflation is about 30 percent, reserves are about $8.5 billion as of March 2024, and sanctions have choked most of the usual capital channels, so the generals need every dollar they can get for fuel, medicine, and food.

Proof of Life Still Needed

Speaking outside the UK Parliament yesterday, Kim Aris said there is "still no credible, independently verified proof" that his 81-year-old mother is alive. The junta's April 30 state media photo, showing Aung San Suu Kyi seated on a wooden bench with two officials, hasn't convinced him. "Moving my mother, an 81-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, from one secret place to another is not freedom. She remains a hostage," Aris wrote on Facebook, more than five years after the coup that put her there.

Death Sentences Compound Bosses

The junta's first bill under Min Aung Hlaing's new "civilian" government proposes the death penalty for anyone who tortures or unlawfully detains victims in order to force them into scam work. Life in prison is now on the table for the crime of running a compound or crypto fraud schemes. Parliament will come together in early June. The legislation also relaunches the central anti-scam committee, whose predecessor collapsed after its chair, then-Home Affairs Minister Tun Tun Naung, was fired because of kickbacks from the operations he was supposed to be shutting down. In China, eleven members of the Ming family were hanged on January 29 after a Wenzhou court convicted them last September.

Read more: CNA ($20B US losses), The Irrawaddy (bank/telecom integration), Cryptopolitan (Ming family sentences)

Stitch and Ditch

Kings Rich Fashion, an H&M supplier operating for a decade in Shwepyithar Township, is going to shut down at the end of June, putting more than 1,000 workers out work. Management blames dried-up orders; workers say it’s because foreign brands have been quietly abandoning Myanmar since the 2021 coup. Nearby at Nay Shwe Win factory, management gave pink slips to 19 union organizers on May 9, then sacked 103 more when their colleagues complained the next day, a sequence the Solidarity Trade Union of Myanmar says is textbook union-busting. The factory supplies ONLY, Terranova, Pimkie, and LC Waikiki. The minimum daily wage for garment workers is currently 7,800 kyats; for context, two kilograms (4 and a half pounds) of rice now costs 5,000.

Read more: The Irrawaddy (sector headcount), DVB (ILO Convention 87)

Sagaing Fault Clears Its Throat Again

A 5.2 earthquake struck 35 kilometers southeast of Yangon at 8:35am local time on Monday, shallow enough at a depth of 10 kilometers to set some Bangkok high-rises swaying. A second, smaller tremor came thirteen minutes later. Buildings were evacuated in Yangon and neighboring towns as a precaution. Shaking rolled as far as Chiang Mai and Lampang (both in Thailand) with no reported casualties or notable damage. The USGS figures that up to 42,000 people in the zone of strong shaking and another 238,000 in moderate shaking. The epicenter was about 23 kilometers from the Sagaing Fault, the same system that caused March 2025's 7.7 disaster.

Read more: The Nation (China quake casualties), ReliefWeb (USGS PAGER estimates)

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Cambodia 20260518

August Whitcraft — Mon, 18 May 2026 02:36:31 GMT

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Two Years in Uniform, Three Temples in Dispute

All 114 members of the National Assembly voted unanimously on Tuesday to extend mandatory military service from 18 months to two years, lower the conscription age ceiling from 30 to 25, and double peacetime jail terms for refusal to two years. “Wartime evasion” now means five years. Hun Manet told lawmakers that sovereignty was "being threatened" and that Cambodia needed troops who were "energized." Off the battlefield, the Culture Ministry sent another protest Saturday after a Thai subdistrict organization brought more than 200 dancers to Khnar Temple for a Buddhist ceremony “honoring Thai soldiers killed along the border.”

Read more: CNA (conscription penalties), Cambodianess (three temples), Khmer Times (200 dancers ceremony), Cambodianess (MoU termination, UNCLOS), CamboJA News (M79 denial, O'Smach)

Frozen Mansions Free Ministers

Mu Sochua was in Westminster putting the heat on the UK to move past asset freezes and to physically seize London properties tied to figures sanctioned over Cambodia's scam center networks. The 71-year-old opposition activist, in self-exile in the US since 2017, wants the proceeds made available to scam victims. The frozen portfolio already includes a £12 million mansion on Avenue Road and a £100 million office building on Fenchurch Street, as well as several flats, much of the property is held through British Virgin Islands shell corporations. She also reported that close family members of deputy prime minister Neth Savoeun reportedly own luxury London real estate that has (until now) dodged sanction. Not a single Cambodian government official has been sanctioned by the UK or US, despite an estimated 100,000 people forcibly working in the country's scam compounds.

Raids Big on Suspects and Light on Masterminds

Police raided scam compounds in several provinces, nabbing more than 150 people, as well as hundreds of mobile phones and computers from Prince Plaza along. The Phnom Penh office complex is connected to Prince Bank founder Chen Zhi, who was arrested and deported to China in January. The Tbong Khmum Provincial Court charged 40 suspects over the "7 House Condo" operation, but the alleged site owner, Xu Liang Cai, a Chinese national with Cambodian citizenship, has so far been able to stay at large on charges of organizing a cyber scam center and money laundering. The government says it has closed more than 250 scam locations and deported more than 13,000 people since July.

Read more: The Star (Prince Plaza seizures), Asian News Network (Xu Liang Cai fugitive), CamboJA News (masterminds uninvestigated)

Munna's Recruits Cost Two Grand Apiece

India's National Investigation Agency has charged five men with running a trafficking ring that brought young Indians to Cambodia with fake job offers before taking their passports on arrival and selling them to scam compounds for $2,000 to $3,000 a head. Alleged kingpin Anand Kumar Singh, alias Munna, is still on the run; three co-accused were picked up in February when they flew into Delhi from Cambodia. Workers who pushed back got electric shocks, forced confinement, and were denied food and water.

Read more: The Hindu (accused identities), Hindustan Times (Singh's sub-agents)

Sign Here and Stop Talking

Lom Sae, a representative of the Russey Srok Land Community in Preah Vihear, says Rovieng District police called him in on Wednesday and walked him through his options, which were to sign a document promising to stop organizing protests OR face a lawsuit from Global Green (Cambodia) Energy Development, a company tied to tycoon Try Pheap's network that has been clearing land farmed by more than 140 families since September. Sae decided to put pen to paper and signed. Police deny coercion.

Read more: CamboJA News (Licadho, Try Pheap sanctions), CamboJA News (Yang Sophorn dissent)

Phnom Penh Marks Down Its Forecast

Cambodia has cut its 2026 GDP growth forecast to 4.2% from 5.5%. Next year’s also going to be trimmed to 5% from the same starting point. Hun Manet's medium-term fiscal outlook puts the blame on Trump's tariffs, the border dispute with Thailand, and Middle East turmoil that’s promoting an energy crisis. Phnom Penh still foresees a rebound to 5.5%(-ish) growth for 2028 and 2029, provided that socio-economic activities return to what the document calls “pre-crisis conditions.”

Read more: VnExpress

Earning More but Worth Less

ACLEDA Bank's Q1 2026 net profit was $45.9 million, (up 7.2%), but its share price is 55% below where it sat at the 2020 IPO. The gap between earnings and market confidence is manifested in the bank’s NPL ratio, which is now 6.18% vs 5.5% a year ago. Impairment losses were $21.7 million vs $18.1 million a year earlier. Management plans to bring the ratio back below 6% by year-end. Total assets were reported to be $12.06 billion as of March 31.

Angkor Empties Out, Cargo Holds Fill Up

South Korean arrivals at Angkor Wat are down an astonishing 96 percent from pre-pandemic levels, and Malaysian visitors are. off 87 percent. Cambodia pulled in 5.57 million tourists in 2025, ~17% less than 2024, but revenue edged up 6.6 percent (to $3.878 billion) on higher-spending visitors. The government's response is a handful of pivots, from green-season marketing to ASEAN diplomacy. Air cargo through the three international airports was up more than a third in Q1, now 30,448 tons.

Read more: The Star (air passenger, cargo), Cambodia Investment Review (visa reform, $30M campaign), Khmer Times (green season campaign)

Pearl of Asia Gets a Glass-and-Steel Makeover

The $2 billion Foster + Partners airport that opened last October, with latticed ceilings nodding to traditional basketry and a satellite city-to-be connected to town by way of the newly christened Xi Jinping Boulevard, is an indication that Phnom Penh is being rebuilt for a different kind of traveler. The Shangri-La hotel has now joined the Rosewood in the city’s skyline. Cranes bristle over Koh Pich (which was swampland until the early 2000s), and Chinese-language investment banners now compete with gilded temple spires for street-corner real estate. The Vattanac Capital Tower was the tallest building in the country in 2022; a dozen new ones have topped it since. The French-colonial villas and art deco shop-fronts that earned the city its "Pearl of Asia" name keep coming down to make room for blocks of glass and steel. Progress?

Thai Sugar By Any Other Name

Kampot provincial governor Mao Thonin led a Wednesday raid on a workshop in Kampong Tnaot village where workers were pulling Thai-labeled sugar out of its original bags and resealing it into Vietnamese-labeled sacks, in an attempt to slip past Cambodia's consumer boycott of Thai products. Several tons were seized. Buyers found at the site have been ordered to give statements as investigators work backward to find out who was running the network.