you have reached
mekongexpress
laos
hotels
Anonymity (as of 15 December 2000) (applicable until revised)
Who are you, and is your credit good?
These questions may surprise you. Yet when you enter a restaurant, a travel agency, a department store, a car rental office or drive into a gas station or enter a selection on Amazon dot com you produce ID when making a purchase. So it is with this website: making a booking is making a purchase (you're promising to show up--at least we assume you are). To book is to buy.
It costs US$1,000 per year to host Mekong Express. Its owner, Mekong Express Ltd., is incorporated offshore; that's another thousand dollars in annual fees. PAII membership comes on top of that (I subscribed to prove our reliability). One purpose of making it possible to book hotel rooms and airline seats using Mekong Express is to recover such costs through agreements with hotels and airlines.
Laos is plagued with no shows. No shows tend to be people who double- or triple-book hotel rooms. Just today I listened to a hotel manager complaining in Luang Prabang. Somebody booked 15 rooms; 5 people showed up. Who misrepresented himself? It's also true that people who over book are people who want assurance of a room but are unsure which hotel they really want--they seek anonymity to get away with it.
Dated last week, you've probably noticed three subjects above this one (booking suggestions, how to book, Internet rates). The messages have spawned a small amount of hate mail. This is because I've made a few not-so-trustworthy people angry? The public thinks website fraud abounds. I'm here to tell you that it's the other way around in Laos.
By the way, we do get compliments. Here's one from somebody (29) who has seen the best and worst a city can offer--he was raised in New York and attended perhaps the finest Jesuit university in the United States. His message arrived two days ago.
"Thank you for everything, in particular the nominal fee you have
charged me for my stay at Villa Dara and all of your hospitality. (You can feel
free to use that quote with my name on your website!)"
See you in Laos,
James Michener (aka Mekong Jim)
