Get Connected!

Several internet service providers are well-placed to spotlight all sorts of information about the goings-on in the greater Mekong region. Maybe you are a business traveler flying Lao Aviation to/from Laos? Or a tourist flying Lao Aviation to/from Laos? Perhaps you live in, or nearby, the Mekong region? If so, you will be impressed with the amount of data that is already online. You can even learn an Asian language if you are that much of an outsider. Read on.

Need a database?

In a world where the estimates for the number of internet users will rise to one billion by 2010, it is easy to see why businesses need to have a presence on the internet. But with 50 million web pages already available and the number growing at 10,000 pages a day, the question has to arise: How do you find them?

http://www.inasia.com (this appears to be no longer available 8/98) is a one-stop pan-Asian trade and business information service providing North America and European buyers a fast, cost-effective means of sourcing suppliers and identifying business opportunities in Asia. At the same time, it provides a unique, low-cost opportunity for Asian companies to promote their products and services worldwide via the internet.

Launched on 25 June, inasia.com's new internet database has listings exceeding 600,000 companies in 22 Asian countries. By year's end there will be over one million companies listed.

"Users can search by company name, product or service, and by country. It's like having telephone, fax and email directories of 22 countries in one place with instant electronic search," says Edward Milward-Oliver, Director, Intermedia Corporation.

Need Asian news via a Western site?

The Bangkok Post internet edition has moved to a site in the United States to provide better service and lower costs. The new site will provide faster access to 95 percent of its internationally-based readers as well as for those Thai-based readers not directly connected to Internet Thailand. The new URL is: http://www.bangkokpost.net.

Need a language course?

Free foreign language courses are available on the world wide web at: http://www.travlang.com. Thirty languages are covered--the usual subjects, and the pages are divided by subject--at the restaurant, or at the bus station. Sound files provide spoken pronunciation, but you have to have an internet browser that can handle these, such as Netscape or Microsoft Explorer, plus a sound card in your own computer.

Need Asian news via an Asian site?

This is a great source of information for those interested in Asia. The website provides daily online updates of some of the top business new stories in Asia from its base in Hong Kong. Asian readers will appreciate that the service is updated in local time, so news appears first each week on Monday morning, rather than late Monday evening when US wakes up: http://www.asiatimes.com.

Need a raincoat?

Receive the latest weather reports for Laos and its five neighbors--China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar--from the web page championed by the University of Tokyo and the University of Hawaii: http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/Gif/nwp.latest.gif.

Great for typhoon watchers! Most of the images are updated on a hourly basis. Be sure to click the Reload button on your browser to get the latest pictures. Also featured, besides tropical storms tracking, are: global surface composites, numerical weather predictions, Intellicast's World Weather, CNN's Weather Page and AccuWeather.

The same site can be visited through NECTEC (www.nectec.or.th) although this link appears to be broken as of 5 JAN 1999.

Mekong Express Home	- Laos Home -	Editor for Mekong Express