News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.
The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:
Horton International is your premier partner for executive search in Southeast Asia. Whether you're a small startup or a global corporation, our reliable and effective recruiting solutions are tailored to meet your unique needs. With extensive experience and offices across the region, we excel at overcoming recruitment challenges and securing top talent for your organization.
Click here to learn how Horton can make your life easier.
The Memo is published weekdays - Cambodia (every Monday), Myanmar (Tuesday), Laos (Wednesday), Vietnam (Thursday) and Thailand (Friday). The Thailand edition is free in its entirety; the others usually abbreviated for non-paid subscribers.
Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.
Headlines:
Beijing Flips the Switch on 500kV Power Line
Hanoi Lays Track While Beijing Watches
Kunming Express Racks Up 66 Million Riders in Three Years
Golden Triangle’s 2,800 Arrests, Zero Illegal Activity
Pre-Approved Candidates Brush Up on Campaigning
Indochina’s Three Amigos Talk Borders and Business
Vietnam Bets $1B on Smelting Mountains Into Metal
Gulf Money Comes Knocking
Three Temples and a Five-Year Plan
Budapest Picks Up Vientiane’s Sewage Tab
Thirteen Hectares Down, Four Thousand Nine Hundred Eighty-Seven to Go
One Minute Flat
Trade Paperwork Still Winning
Beijing Flips the Switch on 500kV Power Line
China connected a new 500kV transmission line to the northern grid on February 5, completing a 177.5km electrical umbilical cord that will allow 3 billion kilowatt-hours to flow north each year starting in April. This new line connects Namor district in Oudomxay straight to Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, with 1.5 million kilowatts of capacity (both ways, but we bet you can guess the real traffic pattern). Construction crews used helicopters and drones to haul materials through elephant habitat, cutting environmental impact by more than 90 percent according to project developers, and the Namor 3 substation is being set up as a northern grid hub to pull in solar and hydro from surrounding areas.
Read more: The Star (Community Initiatives), The Star (Operations Timeline), News CN (Funding Partners), China Daily (Carbon Reduction), Bastille Post (Habitat Protection)
Hanoi Lays Track While Beijing Watches
Vietnam’s Party General Secretary To Lam arrived in Vientiane on February 5 with six cooperation agreements in his briefcase, starting with a railway from Vientiane through Thakhaek to Vung Ang port. The Vientiane-Hanoi expressway is also on the move: 3S Development says its consortium got government approval for a concession agreement in October 2025, machinery is being set along much of the ~200km Section 2, and the consortium says it is expecting a 2029 completion. The railway gives the landlocked Laos a direct shot to the Vietnamese coast, the power line will open up another export market for surplus hydro power, and the expressway ties it all together.
Read more: The Star (Cooperation), The Star (Progress), VNAnet (Trade Metrics), VietnamPlus (Leadership Praise), Meyka (Investment Opportunities)
Kunming Express Racks Up 66 Million Riders in Three Years
The China-Laos Railway has carried 66 million passengers and hauled 77 million tonnes of cargo since opening in December 2021, with more than 12 million of those riders on the Boten-Vientiane section. The line now runs more than 70 trains every day during peak season, including four cross-border services that move more than 1,000 passengers between Kunming and Vientiane daily. Freight has reached 19 countries in 3,800 product categories. The logistics footprint keeps expanding, even as everyone on the sidelines debates the geopolitics.
Read more: People CN (Official stats), Travel and Tour World (Passenger breakdown)
Golden Triangle’s 2,800 Arrests, Zero Illegal Activity
Authorities say they’ve arrested nearly 2,800 suspects from 27 nationalities in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone since 2023 for telecom fraud and cybercrime. The figure was shared during a security meeting on February 3 in Bokeo Province, where police shared some details about operations they’ve run of late. In early December of last year, authorities offered LAK 100 million for tips on fraud networks. Weeks later, they inspected 475 buildings and found full compliance (!) with gaming suspensions and no illegal activity whatsoever. Investigations reportedly continue.
Read more: Laotian Times
Pre-Approved Candidates Brush Up on Campaigning
The country will head to the polls February 22 with 243 candidates jockeying for 175 National Assembly seats and 1,041 vying for 745 provincial council positions. The Party, which has ruled since 1975, is running training sessions to help candidates master the essentials of inspiring patriotism and encouraging citizens to voluntarily exercise their democratic rights. Women make up 35% of the candidate pool, ages range from 36 to 69, and the Public Security Minister spent Monday reviewing fire prevention, traffic management, and discipline in the security forces to make sure that the vote is orderly.
Read more: The Star (Candidate Demographics), News Az (Security Emphasis)
Indochina’s Three Amigos Talk Borders and Business
The prime ministers of all three Indochinese nations met in Phnom Penh last Friday to discuss cross-border infrastructure. Roads, rail, and energy cooperation topped the agenda. The trilateral summit zeroed in on border province development as the economic sweet spot. Better transport routes and logistics systems are expected to juice trade, investment, and tourism where the three countries meet. The emphasis on upgrading physical connections and creating favorable border policies suggests the three are figuring out economic integration on their own terms, rather than waiting for larger regional frameworks to do the heavy lifting.
Read more: The Star
Vietnam Bets $1B on Smelting Mountains Into Metal
Vietnam is planning a $1 billion aluminum smelter in Sekong Province. The project would tap bauxite reserves (thought to be in excess of 200 million tonnes), and the hydropower surplus that comes with being Southeast Asia’s largest hydroelectric exporter. The site sits 300 or 400km from Vietnamese alumina refineries, close enough to integrate them with downstream facilities and to get finished metal to China’s industrial belt without crossing too many borders.
Read more: Discoveryalert
Gulf Money Comes Knocking
Two deals have landed during Deputy PM Saleumxay Kommasith’s visit to the UAE: Gulftainer has signed an MoU with PTL Holding to explore dry port operations, and Sharjah’s chamber of commerce has inked a trade agreement with the Lao national chamber. The port operator is looking at logistics corridors tied to investments in Vietnam’s Vung Ang Port, the nearest deepwater access for a landlocked country. PTL Holding controls the dry port network connecting to that Vietnamese gateway, making it the natural chokepoint for anyone who wants to move cargo without sending it through Thailand or China.
Read more: Port Technology (Port Logistics), Zawya (Trade Expansion)
Three Temples and a Five-Year Plan
Vientiane has introduced a cultural tourism strategy through 2031 that leans hard on three UNESCO World Heritage sites: Luang Prabang’s colonial-meets-Lao architecture, the Khmer ruins at Vat Phou, and the prehistoric Plain of Jars. The pitch is to develop “controlled” tourism that will be to the benefit of local communities rather than the mass-market flood that others in the region are still dealing with. With more than 2,400 attractions and nearly 3,500 accommodation facilities already in place, the test is whether governance frameworks can manage visitor numbers without either strangling growth or allowing sites to get trampled.
Read more: Traveldailynews Asia (UNESCO Site Management), Travel and Tour World (Community Tourism Strategy), Travel and Tour World (Tourism Visitor Stats), Travel and Tour World (Cultural Identity Framework)
Budapest Picks Up Vientiane’s Sewage Tab
Hungary is dropping $105 million on a wastewater treatment plant in Vientiane that will double capacity to 52,000 cubic metres daily by 2027, enough for 160,000 residents. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó showed up for the handover ceremony on February 4, part of $213 million in interest-free loans Hungary has quietly extended. The two sides are now talking about a shift toward market-rate financing, though official talks won’t start until after the February elections and a new government forms in March.
Read more: Laotian Times
Thirteen Hectares Down, Four Thousand Nine Hundred Eighty-Seven to Go
Authorities torched poppy fields in three northern provinces in late January and early February, destroying more than 13 hectares of crop in Phongsaly, Luang Namtha, and Xieng Khouang. The UNODC thinks the total national cultivation is around 5,000 hectares (at least that’s what it was as of 2023). Teams reportedly hiked nearly three hours through mountains and over streams to get to remote plots in Long district. Phongsaly keeps turning up in reports despite decades of “enforcement.”
Read more: Laotian Times
One Minute Flat
China’s Mohan railway border crossing with Laos is celebrating the clearance of all its passengers in under a single minute on February 5 by way of the use of facial recognition and e-passport kiosks. Each automated gate took about seven seconds to process each individual traveler. Beijing’s National Immigration Administration is collecting performance data to help it decide whether to replicate the system at crossings into Vietnam and Myanmar. If they go ahead, fully paperless processing is expected to be rolled out sometime in 2028.
Read more: VisaHQ
Trade Paperwork Still Winning
Vientiane was host to a seminar last week to support full implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement. This is on the one hand, encouraging, but on the other hand, the Department of Foreign Trade admits it still needs development help to fully roll out some of the specific measures. The agreement was ratified all the way back in September 2015 and has since produced a Trade Facilitation Committee, an action plan, and several laws to cut border crossing times and costs, but customs paperwork is still a notorious bottleneck. The seminar also saw the presentation of a readiness assessment for cross-border paperless trade, which probably tells you all you need to know about roughly where things stand.
Read more: The Star
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
If you value the Mekong Memo, please consider buying (or gifting!) a paid subscription, sharing it on social media or forwarding this email to someone who might enjoy it. Please also “like” this newsletter by clicking the ❤️ below (or sometimes above, depending on the platform), which helps us get visibility on the Substack network.