Lao Orchid Hotel Vientiane

... Site 16, which our guide had told us was just newly opened and he was very excited about because the jars here were made from granite. We didn&#8217;t find Special Sight 16 particularly exciting but we had a laugh about it.<br><br>Then it was time for some fun and I headed South to Vang Vieng, which is famous for one thing only, tubing! Tubing involves the Mekong river, lots of bars, some mud pools, trapeze swings and an inner tyre tube. Put the 3 ...

... in sunglasses.<br> <br>We went to the interesting national museum, an odd collection of dinosaur remains, ethnic minority groups and war memorabilia. It used to be called the revolutionary museum and we could tell - it was a little anti-French.<br><br>Vientiane has a huge concrete arc du tripmphe style building, a big landmark and from the top there were good views of the little city and the musical fountain below. We came back at night to watch the ...

... order to find an ATM for me and scoped out a couple more bars. Nothing worth going into. The ATM experience was kind of cool. They charge ridiculous fees to withdraw money and the limit is somewhere around $200, so it's best to go ahead and pull out the maximum. It gave me 2,000,000 Kip. I've heard if you go to a bank to exchange money, they sometimes hand your money back to you in a plastic sack bc there's so much.<br><br>We picked up some balut, not real sure if I spelled that right. But ...

... was a nine hour bus ride north to Tha Khaek. Once there, we rented a motorbike again and toured around to the many caves in the area. The surrounding landscape was spectacular! It is very similar to Vietnam with respect to the limestone rock formations and mountains, but much greener. A highlight of our Tha Khaek visit was hanging out with a group of locals for the day on their family picnic outing. We had just surfaced from one cave we&#8217;d been ...

... bus (very important CARGO!), half filled with carton boxes with 5 rows of hard plastic seats without any sort of regulation for the back. We saw a lot of Laotian nature, even too much! We got to Huay Xay late at night after a trip we will remember for a while (together with the one made in Bolivia), ready to cross the Mekong river to Thailand the morning after and take another seven hours bus ride to Chiang Mai. Soon coming, M&amp;M's around the world, the last stop in Thailand

... th&#7845;y nhi&#7873;u khách tây &#273;&#7871;n &#273;ây, và trách m&#7855;ng h&#7885; c&#7909;c b&#7897;, b&#7843;n v&#7883;.<br>T&#7841;i sao dân t&#432; b&#7843;n giãy ch&#7871;t không ch&#7883;u &#273;&#7871;n th&#259;m, h&#7885;c h&#7887;i các công<br>trình xã h&#7897;i ch&#7911; ngh&#297;a hi&#7879;n &#273;&#7841;i, mà l&#7841;i ngó nghiêng, ch&#7909;p &#7843;nh &#7903; nh&#7919;ng<br>di s&#7843;n th&#7921;c dân phong ki&#7871;n ...