It was an exciting time to be in the region.  Governments were enthusiastically signing up to a wide variety of trade agreements.  For example, Laos completed accession procedures to become the 158th member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).  We were in Bhutan for two workshops to support a renewed consideration of joining the WTO.  We also had several training activities in Timor Leste with members of Parliament and across the government to support accession to the WTO in conjunction with plans to become part of ASEAN.  Mongolia, the last WTO member to not have a free trade agreement (FTA), asked for training to complete an FTA with Japan. ASEAN itself was rapidly pursuing greater internal integration, with plans for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) pushed forward from 2020 to 2015.  It was also working on a range of agreements called ASEAN+1s with major powers in the region including Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.  There was also a lot of activity to integrate Asia more closely to the rest of the world.  The first meeting in what would become the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) took place in Singapore on the sidelines of APEC.  The TPP, as regular Talking Trade readers will recall, rapidly expanded and finally concluded in 2014.  The European Union was actively involved in working with members of ASEAN to create an eventual bloc-to-bloc agreement, starting with a bilateral FTA with Singapore.