I choose this image as the "title" image for the galleries because for me it typifies the sense of a country in transition. Here street vendors in their cone hats with baskets of vegetables stand in front of an internet cafe. While most of the customers in the internet cafes I used, seemed to be tourists, the internet is making its way into the country. Our guide has an email address. It was also apparent how much the opening of Laos to tourists seemed to be influencing the economy and life style. Many signs were in English and some people in our group who had traveled several times to Laos noted the improvements in housing in some of the remote villages we visited. There was a lot of new building going on in the country.