LAOS BECOMES THE HOT SPOT FOR DRUGGED-OUT TOURISTS TO GET HIGH

The dealers hang around the edge of an open-air restaurant bustling
with backpacking tourists, most of whom spent two days getting here
over barely passable mountain roads.

They know why the foreigners have come. The least eye contact triggers
a pantomimed puff on a pipe and insistent sales pitch: "Oh-pee-um!
Oh-pee-um!"

Opium, at 50 cents a dose.

One by one, the tourists -- Americans, Canadians, Europeans,
Australians, Japanese -- head off to smoke their fill through a bamboo
pipe under a tree or at a makeshift den.

"I'm doing a drug tour of Southeast Asia," said Gareth, a 21-year-old
Australian whose T-shirt is stained ocher from road dust. "I've been
to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but so far, Laos is tops."

Nestled in the Laotian highlands near China and Myanmar, Muang Sing is
the hottest new stop on an informal but well-trod trail through Asia
for travelers whose main aim isn't a suntan or the sights, but
sampling the various ways of getting high.

The trail stretches as far as India and Nepal, from where hippie
tourists in the 1970s took home stories about turning down cheap,
fist-sized chunks of hashish since marijuana was freely available.

But the core trail for dope-seeking tourists nowadays is Thailand and
Indochina. They arrive in Bangkok on cut-rate air tickets, check in at
seedy guest-houses on Khao San Road, buy cheap tie-dye T- shirts and
cotton trousers, and head out.

One of their stopping places is the $2-a-night Number 9 guesthouse --
formerly the Cloud 9 -- in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Travelers there said a common odyssey can involve cavorting with the
party drug Ecstasy at an all-night "rave" on a Thai island, followed
by a trek through the "Golden Triangle" opium country in northern
Thailand, then crossing into Laos.

For them, "Laos is tops" because opium is cheaper and more openly
available and -- thus far -- police seem unsure how to handle the
drug trekkers.

The trail then shifts to Vietnam, north to south, where narcotics are
more discreet, then crosses into Cambodia, where marijuana can be had
at a Phnom Penh market for $2.25 a pound.

"I heard smoking marijuana was OK and that you can do it in the street
with no problem," said Charlotte, 23, a Frenchwoman puffing a
cigar-sized joint as she lounged in a hammock at the Number 9.

The marijuana is so cheap and plentiful most travelers never smoke all
they buy and leave the leftovers for others.

Relatively few drug travelers do the full circuit, and there are no
statistics on their overall numbers.

Saengdaern Boonlert, president of the Trekking Association of Northern
Thailand, an umbrella group of 100 tour companies, estimates that in
Thailand alone drug travelers account for a fifth of the 150,000
people a year who take organized trips through the northern highlands.

Saengdaern likens the drug tourists to a few rotten fish stinking up
the barrel.

"A group will go to a trekking operator and say, 'We want to do a
trek, but there has to be opium.' If the operator says no, they go
find one who will," Saengdaern said.

"We've been talking with the police about this for 10 years," he
added. "They say the only solution is to completely shut down trekking."

But treks are important to the local economy -- a three-day, two-
night expedition typically runs $50 a person -- and most tourists
never touch opium.

Drug travelers include a small minority of burnouts with thousand-
yard stares. Gareth, the Australian in Muang Sing, was unable to talk
of much besides opium, Ecstasy, speed and marijuana.

Most, however, are kids from affluent families taking a break from
college, or young workers on a fling, indulging in what they see as
adventure in an exotic locale where no one knows them.

They don't give full names to journalists, fearing attention from
authorities when they head home.

Linda, 24, a Canadian, was making the tour after a year of teaching
English in Japan. Wreathed in hill-tribe silver jewelry, she planned
to stay at Muang Sing a week on $5 to $10 a day.

She'd never smoked opium before. The first night, she was violently
ill.

"It wasn't what I'd expected," she said, still pale the next morning.
"I thought it was going to be a much more out-of-body sort of thing. I
just felt like lying there and thinking. Any time I moved around, I
thought I would get sick again."

Laotian communists shut down opium dens and most contact with the
outside world after taking power in 1975. But visa controls have
gradually eased and the government hopes to double the number of
visitors to 1 million during 1999, which has been dubbed "Visit Laos
Year."

One result is an influx of opium-seekers.

In Muang Sing, opium is sold by local addicts -- increasing their
dependency on the drug for income -- but the whole town shares the
prosperity. The tourists are the only source of hard currency.

"Not long ago, there was only one television and one generator in this
town," said Seng Maka, who just opened a 10-room hotel. "Now there are
many. Every year, the number of tourists is growing."

Police in Muang Sing show distaste for the scruffy travelers, but
little sign of hassling them. Arresting tourists wouldn't promote
Visit Laos Year.

Authorities are working on brochures to warn foreigners of Laotian
laws, Sanya said. Smoking opium is punishable by three to 10 years in
jail; possession of less than a kilogram (2.2 pounds) is two to seven
years.

Drug trekkers generally stay away from the countries that are toughest
on drug use -- Singapore and Malaysia, which warn travelers as they
disembark planes with signs announcing the death penalty applies to
narcotics smugglers.

But drugs are illegal everywhere in Southeast Asia. Many travelers
mistake their easy availability and infrequent arrests with official
acceptance.

Thailand's prisons are filled with hundreds of foreigners serving life
terms for drug trafficking in overcrowded cells where, former inmates
say, eating rats and cockroaches is necessary to survive.