In July, two friends and I arrived at an immigration checkpoint in the Thai port of Chiang Saen, duffel bags in tow. We were going to the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (G.T.S.E.Z.), a 7,400-acre plot in Laos’s Bokeo Province. Officers in standard-issue military uniforms accessorized with ornate gold jewelry greeted us warmly.
Getting to the G.T.S.E.Z. requires taking a rickety basket boat across the Mekong River, one of the largest and murkiest in the world. From afar, a casino and its surrounding half-built structures serve as a North Star.
This is no regular border. It is the port of entry to a lawless Chinese crime city, nestled between Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, that has become something of a Laotian Las Vegas—an opulent gambling den for pleasure-seekers from mainland China.
A bronze sculpture of five children in chains looms before the G.T.S.E.Z. border-control office, an ominous reminder that child trafficking is technically forbidden here. The immigration officials are Laotian, but the clocks are on Chinese time, two hours ahead. In addition, the spoken language is strictly Mandarin, and all the prices are in yuan.
In 2007, the Chinese businessman Zhao Wei struck a deal with the Laotian government, giving his Chinese-owned, Hong Kong–registered company, Kings Romans Group, a 99-year lease to the plot of land. He left Macao, where he first built his casino empire, and settled permanently in the G.T.S.E.Z.
Since then, the area has operated as a self-governing enclave outside any country’s legal jurisdiction. Laotian officials have limited access, and the region has its own security forces. In return, the Kings Roman Group has invested hundreds of millions into Laos’s development.
As a result, over the last decade, the unregulated city has emerged as a veritable crime hub, a haven for drug dealers, scam centers, and human and wildlife traffickers. The population is projected to rise from just over 100,000 in 2024 to 300,000 by 2026.
According to Wei himself, the G.T.S.E.Z. is a land of beauty, opportunity, and hope. “Most people,” he has said, “already know that Chinese people have unbounded love for everyone in the world.”
Sin City
From a distance, the city looks like a gaudy re-creation of ancient Rome, and the gold-domed casino presides atop it like a palace. Taxis, malls, and coffee shops give a veneer of normalcy. Still, hundreds of identical apartment buildings—with metal grilles barring the windows—are a stark reminder of the area’s ever present criminal activity.
The trash-laden streets are desolate, bar a few suspicious local guards and migrant workers. Around Chinatown, beauty salons and jewelry stores sit next to wet markets. A Disney-style castle towers over an empty plaza. Monkeys run loose or on leashes, climbing lampposts to avoid their owners’ whips. Tiger-bone wine, gecko meat, and other products from endangered species are distributed openly here.
Stores sell fake goods, including knockoff Balenciaga shoes, Rolex watches, and racks of designer clothes. A counterfeit KFC outpost advertises chicken wings. Other fast-food restaurants display posters of little white rabbits. One bunny stew: 20 yuan.
The city’s criminal epicenter is the casino, where fancy cars—Bentleys, Porsches, and Maseratis—are parked outside. QR codes direct customers to cyber-sex and prostitution services. Business cards advertising sex workers are slipped under hotel-room doors: Chinese prostitutes are most expensive; Laotian prostitutes are cheapest.
When we check into the casino for the night, we are struck by its majesty—the lobby is 100 feet high, and the surfaces are marble. The watchful bellboy confiscates our cameras, and we communicate with staff through an instant translator. The tone, even through the device, is cold. They are not used to Western tourists.
On the casino floor, concentration is paramount—most patrons are dressed in designer T-shirts and flip-flops, and drink nothing but coffee—and many spend days at the table. According to the continent’s largest financial newspaper, Nikkei Asia, 20 yaba—methamphetamine and caffeine tablets—cost only around $13.50 here.
A bronze sculpture of five children in chains looms before the G.T.S.E.Z. border-control office.
Eerily, two of the three floors are shuttered, and only 20 baccarat tables and five roulette tables are in operation—making it hard to believe they generate enough revenue to sustain the enterprise.
At the cashier desk, large, undocumented transactions take place. No IDs or signatures are required. Women in short, schoolgirl-reminiscent skirts with Louis Vuitton bags filled with cash or chips hover around tables, ready to step in when the money runs out. They aren’t worried about being robbed. As one girl tells me: “Everyone knows who our boss is.”
They aren’t peddling small sums. According to the International Crisis Group, an NGO that works to shape policies for a more peaceful world, up to a million dollars in cash is exchanged per night in what is an “open display of money laundering.”
This practice helps to obscure the vast network of illicit operations taking place within the G.T.S.E.Z. In 2014, Thai, Laotian, and Chinese authorities began to trace shipments of narcotics to the casino and linked them to the distribution network of Myanmar’s United Wa State Army, a rebel group renowned for the smuggling of methamphetamines. Then, in 2018, the U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned the Zhao Wei Transnational Criminal Organization for drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, bribery, and wildlife trafficking conducted through the zone.
Over the last four years, an online scamming enterprise has added to the roster of illegal activities. According to Radio Free Asia, women are lured in from Laos, Brazil, Nigeria, and Thailand by fictitious telemarketing-job offers. Upon arrival, their passports are confiscated, and they are forced to work as “chat girls” at one of the 400 scam centers across town.
Using online apps such as Line, WhatsApp, and Facebook, they entice visitors to invest money into the Kings Romans Group. First, they “fatten the pig” by offering small returns. When their target produces a larger sum, they take the money and disappear.
If the women fail to meet impossibly high quotas—and rack up debt for food and housing—they are forced into prostitution. In August, a Bloomberg investigation revealed people were being held in the apartment complexes surrounding the casino and beaten.
Business cards advertising sex workers are slipped under hotel-room doors: Chinese prostitutes are most expensive; Laotian prostitutes are cheapest.
Tensions hit a new high for the zone last February when Laotian authorities seized a shipment of 6.4 million methamphetamine tablets on the Mekong River. According to Inshik Sim, a coordinator for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the area “may be the biggest global meth trafficking spot.”
Given that many of these operations have targeted its nationals, the Chinese government is now reportedly pressuring Laos to initiate a crackdown. On August 9, a meeting between Wei and high-ranking officials from the Laotian Ministry of Public Security resulted in the raid of 16 centers and 771 arrests. But the mogul’s relations with the local government are so entrenched that many believe business will soon return to normal.
As we were checking out of the hotel, a merchant based in Chiang Dao encouraged us not to think of the zone in such black-and-white terms: “Yes, there is crime, trafficking, and deceit, but remember the gold rush in America? That was an era plagued with lawlessness and murder—and just look at what California has become today.”
It’s hard to imagine what the city would look like without its murky undercurrent. On the ferry back to Thailand, we struck up a conversation with a heavily made-up woman from Kazakhstan, who was transporting three baby-blue bags. A stone-faced handler with a Bluetooth earpiece had escorted her to the pier.
“Do you come here often?” we asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “a few times a month.”
“Oh really, what for?”
“Work.”
She put on her sunglasses, and the conversation ended there.
Darius J. Rubin is a New York City–based filmmaker
