Covert footage obtained by the Guardian reveals how organised crime networks in Laos are using front souvenir shops to hide a booming wildlife trade targeted at a new influx of Chinese tourists. The shops, often disguised as cultural centres or tea and cigarette stores, sell highly illegal products including pangolin scales, bear bile, and tiger bones.
Front shops hide illegal wildlife products
In one shop, which appeared deserted, shelves displayed large bags of specialist tea, local coffee, trinkets, and cigarettes. However, photographs of wild animals on the walls hinted at the true merchandise. Upstairs, glass cases contained products banned worldwide: ivory bracelets and chopsticks, a crocodile hide, reptile-skin belts, and bowls filled with pangolin scales. Another shop, seemingly a cigarette store, held a large section of a pangolin tail alongside jars of snakes in fluid.
Many of these businesses are traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) shops selling a mix of legal and illegal items. Others are heavily guarded cultural centres with electric gates and CCTV. Videos on Chinese social media show tourists flaunting illegal purchases and even eating pangolin meat.
Pangolin crisis and the scale of trafficking
More than 1 million pangolins have been poached in the past decade—more than rhinos, elephants, and tigers combined—driven by demand for their scales in TCM and their meat as a status symbol. Pangolins are the only mammals covered in keratin scales and curl into a ball when threatened, making them easy to capture. Conservationists estimate one is poached every three minutes, leading to critically endangered status for some species.
Jeremy Phan, director of the Lao Conservation Trust for Wildlife, notes that pangolins are increasingly found in Vientiane, far from their natural habitat. Two years ago, finding a pangolin in the city was "very unusual," but recently his team has rescued more, including a three-week-old infant sold by a restaurant. Its mother was likely killed in the illegal trade.
Belt and road initiative fuels tourism surge
The Laos-China railway, completed in 2021, stretches over 600 miles from Kunming to Vientiane and has carried more than 73 million passengers. It enables quick, cheap travel, opening Laos as a destination for Chinese tourists and boosting low-budget tour groups that prop up the illegal trade. Brother Nut, a Chinese activist and performance artist, went undercover on one such tour and shared footage with the Guardian. He describes being taken to a shop selling rice noodles that actually sold rhino horn, bear bile, and pangolin parts.
His hidden camera footage shows stalls with whole dead pangolins and bowls of scales, with salespeople claiming medicinal benefits like curing cancer—claims unsupported by science. Tiger bones were also sold, banned globally under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites).
Coercion and financial exploitation of tourists
Brother Nut explains that tourists, many elderly, paid as little as 100 yuan (£11) for a four-night trip. He suspects tour operators price trips low to profit from forced spending at front shops. "During the tour there were two times when the guide forced the gates of the store shut, and we did feel a bit scared," he says. Tour leaders falsely claim the products are legal in Laos and urge visitors to buy to support the struggling economy. "Actually, none of the money went to local Lao people," Brother Nut says. "All payments were made through WeChat Pay or Alipay, and the money ended up in the hands of the people running the scam." He estimates his group spent about 100,000 yuan (over £11,000) at these businesses.
Although Phan has released one rescued pangolin back into the wild, criminal networks continue to profit from pushing vulnerable species toward extinction. Additional research by Lillian Yang and Yu-chen Li.
