Tourist Attraction In Laos Is Opium -- Indochina Becomes Latest Drug Haven

MUANG SING, Laos - The dealers hang around the edge of an open-air restaurant bustling with backpacking tourists, most of whom spent two days getting here over barely passable mountain roads.

They know why the foreigners have come. The least eye contact triggers a pantomimed puff on a pipe and insistent sales pitch: "Oh-pee-um! Oh-pee-um!"

Opium, at 50 cents a dose.

One by one, the tourists - Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Australians, Japanese - head off to smoke their fill under a tree or at a makeshift den.

"I'm doing a drug tour of Southeast Asia," said Gareth, a 21-year-old Australian. "I've been to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but so far, Laos is tops."

Nestled in the Laotian highlands near China and Myanmar, Muang Sing is the hottest new stop on an informal but well-trod trail through Asia for travelers whose main aim isn't a suntan or the sights, but getting high.

The trail stretches as far as India and Nepal, from where hippie tourists in the 1970s took home stories about turning down cheap, fist-sized chunks of hashish since marijuana was freely available.

But the core trail for dope-seeking tourists nowadays is Thailand and Indochina. They arrive in Bangkok and head out to places like the $2-a-night Number 9 guesthouse in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Travelers there said a common odyssey can involve cavorting with the party drug Ecstasy at an all-night "rave" on a Thai island, followed by a trek through the "Golden Triangle" opium country in northern Thailand, then crossing into Laos.

For them, "Laos is tops" because opium is cheaper and more openly available and - thus far - police seem unsure how to handle the drug trekkers.

The trail then shifts to Vietnam, north to south, where narcotics are more discreet, then crosses into Cambodia, where marijuana can be had at a Phnom Penh market for $2.25 a pound.

"I heard smoking marijuana was OK and that you can do it in the street with no problem," said Charlotte, 23, a Frenchwoman puffing a cigar-sized joint at the Number 9.

Saengdaern Boonlert, president of the Trekking Association of Northern Thailand, an umbrella group of 100 tour companies, estimates that in Thailand alone drug travelers account for a fifth of the 150,000 people a year who take organized trips through the northern highlands.

"A group will go to a trekking operator and say, `We want to do a trek, but there has to be opium.' If the operator says no, they go find one who will," Saengdaern said.

"We've been talking with the police about this for 10 years," he added. "They say the only solution is to completely shut down trekking."

But treks are important to the local economy - a three-day, two-night expedition typically runs $50 a person - and most tourists never touch opium.

Linda, 24, a Canadian, was making a tour after a year of teaching English in Japan. Wreathed in hill-tribe silver, she planned to stay at Muang Sing a week on $5 to $10 a day.

She'd never smoked opium before. The first night, she was violently ill.

"It wasn't what I'd expected," she said, still pale the next morning. "I thought it was going to be a much more out-of-body sort of thing. I just felt like laying there and thinking. Any time I moved around, I thought I would get sick again."

Laotian communists shut down opium dens and most contact with the outside world after taking power in 1975. But visa controls have gradually eased and the government hopes to double the number of visitors to 1 million during 1999, which has been dubbed "Visit Laos Year."

One result is an influx of opium-seekers.

In Muang Sing, the whole town has shared in the prosperity of the drug trade. Tourists are the only source of hard currency.

"Not long ago, there was only one television and one generator in this town," said Seng Maka, who just opened a 10-room hotel. "Now there are many. Every year, the number of tourists is growing."

Muang Sing police show distaste for the scruffy travelers, but little sign of hassling them. Arresting tourists wouldn't promote Visit Laos Year.

Authorities are working on brochures to warn foreigners of Laotian laws, Sanya said. Smoking opium is punishable by three to 10 years in jail; possession is two to seven years.

But many travelers mistake drugs' easy availability and infrequent arrests with acceptance. Even Cambodian police Gen. Skadavy Math Lyroun, deputy secretary general of the National Authority for Combatting Drugs, says drug-using backpackers are a low priority.