Walking down Phothisarat street in the centre of the old town of Luang Prabang is an odd experience. Every second person is a tourist and every second building a restaurant, shop, bakery or guest house, interspaced with a spattering of Internet cafes.

The town is still very charming, but no one is sure for how long.

For how long can a small geographic area that has been isolated for decades deal with a large and sudden influx of thousands of tourists, critics ask. At the same time, it has to cope with the waste the tourism industry generates, the new construction it spurs, the new economy it creates, and a conflict of different cultural values and monetary habits it fuels.

One of the tourist industry's new 'hot' spots in the region since it was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in 1995, and accessible with new airline routes, boat tours from Thailand and planned road links, Luang Prabang is all set to become a 'super' destination point.

''Since October last year you can see a real explosion in the number of tourists here,'' says a French expatriate married to a Lao woman in Luang Prabang who did not want to be named. ''It's all these new transport links. Luang Prabang is now starting to look like any other tourist town, and this may change the way of life of the local people forever,'' he warns.

Luang Prabang was the ancient capital of the Lan Xang kingdom, before it was transferred to the current capital Vientiane in 1560. It is known as the seat of Lao culture, rich with monasteries and monuments. Laos now gets nearly 1.5 million tourists a year, according to government statistics.

The opening up of Luang Prabang and many other 'new' destinations in the region for tourism is not an unplanned phenomenon.

Tourism development

Other than having the advantage of being declared a World Heritage site, Luang Prabang is also the target of larger, much more powerful international and regional initiates and lobbies.

Most importantly tourism development, especially in more recent times ecotourism and community development, are central to the plans of the powerful and influential Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) scheme.

This is why, say critics, Luang Prabang will ultimately have little choice in deciding its pace of development.

Initiated by the Asian Development Bank, one of the major donor institutions in the region, together with the big tourism players including the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and the national tourism organisations of the six Mekong countries, there is going to be little to stop this 'development' initiative.

The six Mekong subregion countries are Thailand, China, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

''Tourism is the best way to get income to the people of Luang Prabang,'' explains Laurent Rampon, who is coordinating many of Unesco projects in Luang Prabang. ''We must use it for the population and the population must in turn understand that tourists want to see the heritage of the town.''

Unesco is one of a number of specialised UN agencies, other than the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap), that are also part of the AsDB-initiated GMS scheme.

Rampon admits however that despite Unesco's presence and the declaration of the town as a heritage site, unplanned illegal constructions, mainly guest houses, are propping up all over the town and spoiling its historical beauty.

Catch-22 situation

''Unesco's WHC (World Heritage Committee) is an advisory body and has no powers to restrict development, pollution or even destruction of heritage sites,'' says Sarah Marriott in the Irish Times .

''It is in something of a Catch-22 situation, since inscription of a site onto the list can encourage tourists to visit; then governments and entrepreneurs, particularly in developing countries, take advantage of this, and the site becomes increasingly commercialised.''

Other than the GMS scheme, other regional tourism initiatives include the Association of Southeast Asian Nation's (Asean) 'growth triangle' projects and the Quadrangle for Economic Cooperation formed in 1993 by a group of Thai businesspeople, covering tourism projects in the border areas of Burma, Thailand, Laos and Yunnan.

Since 1992, more than 100 projects have been endorsed by the GMS in a number of fields including transportation, energy and tourism.

However, the AsDB, increasingly sensitive to criticism from activists for its mega-projects, has decided to clean up its image.

Its new ''poverty reduction'' drive includes new plans — to focus on the importance of ''well-managed and well-developed'' tourism, especially in the light of the industry's growth potential in Asia.

Ecotourism is ''an area where there is a direct link between the potential for economic development and the conservation of natural resources,'' Arjun Thapan, manager of the AsDB's water supply, urban development and housing unit, said in an interview at a meeting of the GMS tourism working group last year.

However, the bank's programmes, such as its conservation management in watershed areas, clearly identifies poor communities as the main obstacle to development and argues for the relocation of some 60 million mountain people in the Mekong subregion. Thus, critics argue it is not clear what the bank's over-arching goals on tourism development are.

''What is clear however, is that tourism is promoted as the biggest growth industry in the region,'' says Anita Pleumarom from the Tourism Investigation and Monitoring Team based in Bangkok.

''The AsDB initiated GMS Tourism Programme demands of local communities to abandon their traditional self-reliant lifestyles and economic activities and turn to ecotourism as an alternative source of income,'' she argues in a recent report on Mekong Tourism by the Malaysia-based Third World Network.

Was beautiful

In the long term, the goals are to see more tourist arrivals — a far cry from the ideas of small-scale and controlled development nurtured by ecotourism, despite the fact that according to critics little of the money generated from tourism projects reaches local people or communities.

''Once the major infrastructure bottlenecks are removed, the shift will undoubtedly be from alternative to mainstream mass tourism'' says Pleumarom. ''But in the time being new, virgin territories will be opened and then finally turned into yet another tourism disaster like Phuket and Pattaya.''

There are fears that Luang Prabang will become just another 'was beautiful' destination, boring and without exotic appeal.

''We must be certain that the government applies certain restrictions. Otherwise we will have the same problems as Thailand has with tourism,'' says Phet Thongsa, a translator with the Diethelm travel office based in Luang Prabang,

Already, plastic bottles and bags and other garbage are piling up along the banks of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers surrounding the old town. Travelling upstream to the famous Tam Ting caves at Pak Ou, visitors can all along the way see shreds of plastic clinging on to tall weeds lining the river bank.

In the town itself, tensions are rising — between those who are making the tourism bucks, and those like the farmers on the other side of the river who are not, but who provide the valuable vegetables and food which sustains this new economy. (IPS)