Lani Guest House Vientiane

... area has been cleared and it is safe. Fact: there were more bombs dropped during the Vietnam war than during the whole of World War II, and unfortunately a large number of these actually ended up in Laos. Anyway we booked on a day tour which took us to 3 of the Plain of Jars sights. Site 1 had about 88 jars all made of sandstone and Site 2 had over 100. We also visited a Hmong village and learnt how they make their infamous Laos Laos. We then visited ...

... got a free shot of tiger whiskey anyway. The girsl went of the the next bar as we still had a big beer between us all so we played a few drinking games and the left. Next stop was the Q Bar which was loaded with people and load as hell, this is probably the first bar i've seen where it was really going off in. We stayed in there for a few hours drinking buckets of god knows what and then moved on to another bar on the river ...

... down an empty lane. Hence my top score ever !! Later in the week we also went for a swim in the Vientiane swimming pool.<br><br>Vientiane is full of wats (Buddhist temples) and we toured 7 of them, my favourite is Wat Si Saket, it reminded me of Japanese temples and it was full of Buddha statues - over 7000 ! Lots of wats mean lots of monks around town and they are great to watch wandering around under their umbrellas, taking a nap, we even spotted a cool ...

... from the bus ride so I took it easy. I read the Lonely Planet: Laos book for a while until my eye lids got heavy then passed out for an hour. I woke up to Wes and Savin chatting. I crawled out of bed and went in and met Savin. Beerleo was served and plans were made. It was going to be a great night.<br><br>And it was, it started out with some beers in the kitchen, then we struck out for food. We dominated some papaya salad, fish, dried squid, and of course Beerlao. We walked around town ...

... five days in Si Phan Don we bid farewell to our good friends Roh and Rob as their Laos visa&#8217;s had expired and they were leaving for Cambodia. It was so much fun traveling with them! <br><br>Before leaving Roh and Rob, we picked their brains for the best places to visit in Laos as they had spent the last two months there. Rob was great. She marked up our LP (Lonely Planet) with all of their favourite spots. So Erin and I hit the road again. This time ...

... boring; 3) 6 hours on a speedboat, apparently for crazy masochist only as the so called speedboat is a micro boat, narrow and long where you sit on one line, wearing a helmet and hoping to get to destination in one piece; 4) by bus, a 14 hours trip across the mountains on a so called "VIP" bus. As you can imagine we chose the fourth option as we thought a VIP bus would be quite comfortable and we would have the opportunity to watch the Laotian nature. Well, the bus was a "V.I ...

... nh &#7903; &#272;ài chi&#7871;n<br>th&#7855;ng. &#272;ây là công trình xây d&#7921;ng t&#7915; th&#7901;i Pháp theo ki&#7875;u Kh&#7843;i Hoàn Môn<br>&#7903; Pa-ri, m&#7897;t trong nh&#7919;ng &#273;i&#7875;m du l&#7883;ch c&#7911;a Viêng Ch&#259;n. N&#7871;u là con chiên<br>sùng &#273;&#7841;o &#8216;công nghi&#7879;p hoá, hi&#7879;n &#273;&#7841;i hoá&#8217;, ch&#7855;c h&#7859;n tôi s&#7869; ch&#7841;m n&#7885;c t&#7921;<br>ái ...

On Wednesday we managed to get a bus from Ban Na Hin all the way to Vientiene where we had to take a tuk tuk to the city centre. Most places were full as there was a festival on but we found somewhere decent and headed off to the shops as Ollie wanted to look for trekking shoes. <br><br>We went to the post office and picked up the easter chocolates my mum had sent which were all melted (as she's warned me!) and scoffed ...

... development consultants. The thousands of villagers displaced by these dams, highways and forest clearances are expected to become dutiful members of the New Economy (the whole project is called the New Economic Mechanism or NEM) and will be relocated to specialist built worker suburbs where they will all have TVs and will enjoy a much higher standard of living. Like I said, McWorkers.<br><br>The stakes are now high in Laos. Predatory transnational corporations (TNCs), those eager ...