This time we tried a new hotel, a Chinese hotel managed by a Luang Namtha manager. The hotel is located in a condo building that was built and sold as individual rooms. These Chinese entrepreneurs then turned the rooms into a hotel or bought entire floors of rooms to operate as a business, in a similar manner.

The hotel we stayed in was in two buildings. The ground floor of these buildings was opened as various shops, including a restaurant, a hair salon, a shipping center, and a gift shop selling cosmetics, accessories, and sleepwear. From talking to the owner, we learned that she was from Hubei and had only been here a month. She used to farm flowers in China, but her husband came to work in Boten, so she intended to open a fresh flower shop here. However, after looking at the situation, it seemed unlikely that it would be successful, so she switched to selling gift items shipped from China. The area is mostly residential, and it is not a zone where tourists come to shop. About two blocks away is a street that can be called Boten's economic district, which at night is full of tourists and night owls, and there are many types of shops and services welcoming you. If you walk to the end of the street, there will be stalls along the way, selling everything from vegetables, fruits, fresh food to clothes, bags, and mobile phone cases. We understand that this is a move to move the market that used to be a street market in the alleys of buildings to a stall to create order instead.

At noon the next day, after exploring the city again, it was very quiet during the day, with hardly any people walking on the streets. Returning to the main street, we decided to have lunch at a newly opened Pho Lao restaurant, which was larger than two shop houses. Although the name of the restaurant was Pho Lao, the owner was a middle-aged Chinese woman originally from Hunan. After talking, she said that she had previously worked for a salaried job, and had never opened a restaurant like this. She chose to open here because her husband worked for Haicheng Company in Boten.

Opposite the Pho Lao restaurant is Khao Ram Fuen Restaurant, one of the few restaurants still open since our last visit. The owner is a middle-aged Chinese woman. She said that she moved to Laos in 2015, initially from Luang Prabang, then moved to Vientiane, and opened this restaurant earlier this year. Her family owns an excavator business, which her husband and son are in charge of, and is currently constructing a highway in Laos. She intended to open this restaurant for her daughter to manage and take care of, but her daughter is now back in Kunming, and she will soon be going back to China due to illness, as it is difficult to get a doctor there. The restaurant did quite well before. She used to use three adjacent rooms to sell food, earning over 10,000 yuan a day, but now she can’t make that much money. She said that this is because trains now run directly into China, so there aren’t as many customers as before. Another Chinese restaurant, owned by a Hunanese owner, sells fried fish and other Chinese dishes, and said that there aren’t many customers these days, and sales aren’t good because “no cars are coming in.”