Last week I was up near the Vietnam-China border, in Lao Cai, a town better known as the entry point for the mountainous old hill station town of Sapa than for being anything whatsoever on its own. Lao Cai isn’t a tourist town. Most travelers pass through on the bus or train and go no further than the station parking lots, there only long enough to scuttle from one air-conditioned mode of transportation to the next. I was there for a grueling two days, battling bad weather and shifty-eyed smugglers and unhelpful border guards. All for a story on border trade between locals in Vietnam and China for The New York Times. You can read the story in the link. And here are some image outtakes.
from swerve of shore 
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I wondered about this very thing –border trade, legal and illegal– when I sat there for a few hours waiting for a train. Nice work.
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