Mekong River used to traffic drugs to and from Laos and Myanmar

From the banks of the Mekong River in the tiny port of Xieng Kok in northwestern Laos, it is just a couple of hundred metres to Shan state in eastern Myanmar. There, heroin refineries and methamphetamine labs buried deep in the jungle-covered hills supply the addicts of China and Southeast Asia.

Come nightfall and wooden long-tail speedboats travel between the two countries, transporting opium grown in Laos one way while the methamphetamine pills known as yaba move in the opposite direction.

Flowing through the heart of the Golden Triangle, the Mekong is a conduit for all manner of criminal operations. Drug smuggling is the major illicit industry, but other contraband moves along the river too.

"We concentrate mainly on stopping yaba, but guns, cigarettes and petrol are also smuggled from Myanmar," said one 19-year-old Laotian soldier based in Xieng Kok.

Laos does not have the resources to stop the growing of opium in the nearby hills, let alone staunch the flow of drugs in and out of its territory.

"One time last year, they sent a helicopter up and found some fields," said a local farmer named La Te from one of the hill villages. "Then, the government sent soldiers to cut down the poppy. But they only got a little bit."