Novotel Vientiane

... le sentier.
Mae Cot est la plus vielle du troupeau. Elle est nee en 1946.
La suite du programme ??? Sitot debarque du panier, nous allons donner des bananes a nos elephants, pour les remercier. Facile...pas 10 minutes plus tard, ils nous demandent deja d<embarquer sur les elephants (mais pas avant d<avoir memorise les mots magiques a dire a nos elephants qui ne comprennent que le Lao (Sai, Kwoi, How, Pai ... et le memorable Boun ! - soit: gauche, droite ...

... taken from tied up boxes, large boxes, maybe appliances. A peg in each corner of the court with the string stretched around them. Very basic, but extremely practical.

So there were two courts, one had 2 on 2 and was really serious, the other had 5 on 5 being played and they were just having fun. There were also two sand soccer fields with goals fashioned out of sticks in the sand, I didn't watch them enough to be able to tell if there were a difference in the competition. But all ...

... towards, right now my vision is too broad.

I was walking along the Mekong yesterday after I had finally typed up my time log for school and done some reading for VFI. It is so much hotter here than in Chiang Mai, maybe there is just not as much tree cover along the river. I learned this week that the government in Vientiane is working on tearing down all the shops, riverside eateries and little food stands along the Mekong river. They want to bulldoze the ...

... going on loop all the day. We have to admit that we've enjoyed a couple of hours of "Friends" doing nothing at a bar...not too bad in the end! We rented a beautiful bungalow on the riverside for 12 dollars a night. Our pride for the good deal went away as the night came: we were right beside the two noisiest disco bars of the village, with  music playing ridicoulously high till late...there and then we realised we're getting old! The key activity in Vang Vieng is called "tubing ...

... manner; partially because the high level administrator in charge of said visa issues gave birth during Songkran and is on leave; but mainly due to the lazy s.o.b in the office who was left in charge while she is away. He apparently arranges all the matters normally but without constant oversight he appears to me to be a rude effing waste of space. At least Tomas and I trying to communicate our anxieties about visa issues is a colossal waste of time ...

... back again (over an hour). In addition to the purple colouring we were also hit with pink and black. Another fun thing is getting your face smeared with talcum powder. Luckily we did not get talcum powder in the eyes, but it really does not taste good at all. When we got back into the city people were all over the riverfront and we got really doused again. Today people are even lined up down our dirt road and we got drenched at the ...

... up an army of Lao civilians, Hmong hilltribesmen (particularly useful as they felt little allegiance to the nation of Laos, were brave fighters and in need of money) and Thais. By this stage eastern Laos was overrun with Vietcong, some of whom were being hidden in villages by sympathetic, but in all likelihood ignorant, villagers. So began America's Secret War, which was so secret that the very term 'Laos' was to be replaced by the sinister term 'The Other Theatre'. The facts ...