Southeast Asia is poised to increase its growing share of the world trade market. The countries of Southeast Asia realize that trade can be a powerful engine for accelerating economic growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. Improving the movement of people, goods, and ideas is integral to improving the economic situation throughout Southeast Asia.

In 2004, the World Bank conducted a study to analyze how world trade could be expanded to help all countries – particularly the developing nations, including those in Southeast Asia. The study determined that gains in port efficiency, improvements in the customs environment, improvements in the regulatory environment, and improvements in the infrastructure of the service sector, particularly in the increased use of information technology, would result in a 9.7% rise in global trade – about $377 billion.
In Asia, the World Bank has been trying to address the problems of some of the developing nations by helping them grow their global trade footprint. In Asia, the issues of a developing nation are further hindered by being landlocked with no easy access to a port. The World Bank chose to help establish a corridor that linked landlocked Laos with Bangkok and support clusters were set up in Vientiane (Laos), the border region between Thailand and Laos, and Laem Chabang ports. The World Bank is studying the results of this project and will hopefully be able to use some of the successes in other countries in the region to help them build their global trade presence.

   

People from all over the world travel to Southeast Asia for all different reasons. For the most part, it is relatively easy to arrive by air to most of these places. The cost once you arrive is generally reasonable – some might even say cheap! People arrive for sightseeing, to enjoy the natural beauty, get a taste of another culture, or just to relax on a beautiful beach.

In many ways, countries like Laos and Cambodia, who have been late to the tourist scene, have the opportunity to benefit from learning from the mistakes made by countries like Thailand during the 1980s and 1990s. Although Thailand's vast Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand coastlines still attract the majority of tourist visitors to the region, the negative impacts of overbuilding and congestion in parts of Koh Samui and Phuket have served as important lessons on how not to develop natural attractions. Even the citizens of Thailand seized upon the Tsunami of 2004 as an opportunity to rebuild tourist attractions in a more sustainable way with less detrimental impact on the environment. Following the tsunami, tourist traffic came to a complete stop for almost a year, but the country made the most of funds available for rebuilding.

Other downsides to tourism include the fact that very often, although it looks as if big spenders are spending a lot of money on their vacations, very often most of this money is never seen by the local people. Big spenders – also known as high yield tourists – often want air conditioned hotels with English-speaking staff and imported food from their home country. Almost all of their tourist dollar is spent outside the country and very little, if any, benefits the local community. Some nations are realizing that the best tourists for the region are the budget conscious traveler looking to get an authentic experience in a new country for little money. These tourists are not in search of air-conditioning or imported food from their home country. These tourists are willing to spend money in the community for food, lodging, and handmade goods.