New Apollo Hotel Vientiane

... peu. La premiere que je vois un elephant de ma vie ! Et ils sont plusiseurs en plus !!
Et...je vais embarquer la-dessus....,moi ? Plus j<approche, plus ils sont gros.
Premiere etape: facile. On nous fait monter dans une tour et puis monter dans un panier d<osier installe sur la bete. AVec un gentil conducteur (mahout, on les nomme). Et on va sa ballader dans le bois, comme ca, tranquillement. C<est drole a voir aller, tout ballourds... jusqu<a ce que notre ...

... become alive with lots of people wearing tight dresses, make up and high heels. What surprised us most was the very, very deep voice most had!

We spent our three days visiting different Wats (temples), a park filled with statues of hundreds of Buddha’s and watching the sunset over the Mekong River, that divides Laos and Thailand. One of the highlights was talking to the Buddhist monks at the Buddha park as they were keen to ...

Sitting in the sand watching Laos kids play volleyball, wanting to get in the game but not really knowing how. The wind has picked up and is blowing trash around the sandy beach that runs along side the Mekong. The string used as the vball net is screaming in the wind and is bowed out almost to the point of snapping. The string used as a net on the court behind me is violently whipping in the wind, I don't know if the kids that were just playing on it broke it or the wind. The net, or string ...

... rights and activist field so much so that I could never actually be apart of it. It was this arena for geniuses who always met with other geniuses in their fields and sat around with coffee debating about how to save the world. Or they were in some dingy bar smoking and drinking cheap beer with safari clothes on and in some third world country, passionate but jaded with their world view. I have never been apart of either of these groups, but I think sometimes I ...

... a disco.
The challenge there was to make sure not to get confused by the "lady boys", apparently a Lao specialty, which we did successfully.

The following morning, convinced that 1 day/ 1 night was enough for Ventiane we quickly (--let's say: what sounded quick after a night partying) decided to make it to Vang Vieng on our way to Luang Prabang.

... in pretty good conditions and traffic quite ordered with people behaving while driving...so we could say that Vientiane looked to us like the Swizerland of south east Asia, we felt almost at home! The only thing that was exactly the same as in Cambodia was the heat: 40 degrees and 90% humidity which made almost impossible staying out in the middle of the day. We didn't find a lot to see in Vientiane: a couple of temples, a "golden stupa" said to contain few bones from the ...

... course in the morning after I was slightly woozy and managed to lose one contact of two pairs effectively leaving me with one day of use if I was the kind of person who followed the recommended usage instructions. However, I have a distubing tendency to throw the manual out immediately after I rip through the pretty cellophane packaging and have decided to just throw what little caution I've managed to retain to the monsoon winds. I can't find a ...

... The current structure was constructed by the French in 1900, but no one liked it, so was rebuilt in 1931. It took us over an hour to get to Xieng Khuan ( Buddha Park), 25 kms away. Along the way we saw the Friendship bridge that connects Laos and Thailand. People were lined up all along the highway for our journey. Since our driver was the slowest vehicle on the road, each and every person along the way dumped water on us. I ...

... we go to visit a big temple, Pha That Luang.
Second is the History of Laos museum. It was interesting because I didn't really know anything about Laos. It seemed like there was constant war in Laos' past.
Next we went to a large market. It's mostly contained in a large multi-level building.
Finally we go to eat a restaurant in town, complete with ice cream for ...

... endorsing 'development', as I have. That would at least be something.

Normally when going to countries and researchingt their histories it is, to a greater or lesser extent, difficult to relate to much of it; usually history happened well before we were born. But in Laos there was a Secret War (from our point of view) that was fought partly during my own lifetime. From 1964 to 1973 Laos had the misfortune to be geographically located next to Vietnam, China and Thailand ...