Khampiane Hotel Vientiane

... on things to drink than we do on food, that's how hot it is! And there's so much sun that Pierre's feet are suntanned according to the straps of his sandals so his feet now look like tigers. He won't let me put sunscreen on them, so he can show them to Liem, who's a big fan of tigers.<br><br>At night, we went for a lovely dinner in a beautiful restaurant with an outside terrace under lanterns hanging from gently swaying trees. It was very ...

... China or the DMZ in South Korea, it didn&#8217;t compete. But still glad we saw it.<br><br>Adil went quad biking which if the amount of mud on him when he came back is a good guide &#8211; he had lots of fun. They also took him to an orphanage which I&#8217;m still very jealous over!<br><br>Adil also went to a shooting range where he fired 30 bullets in an AK47 at a target (not bazuka&#8217;s into Cows which you can do here but I told him it would be grounds for divorce!)<br><br ...

Tom:<br><br>We arrived two days ago. And we are both suffering from a tummy bug. Horrible! I was up all night sweating and dreaming very odd things.<br><br>The capital is what you would expect; big and expensive. I dont really know what to say, as we are both too ill to ...

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... so phoned someone who could translate where we wanted dropping off. In the end, we just got him to drop us off in the centre.<br> <br> I was quite excited upon seeing the centre, in that it had proper buildings and shops and was clean and tidy. Not something I had seen for quite a few months. We went out for dinner and settled on a little cafe that didn't look like much, but the food turned out to be incredible. We had duck Laap ...

... watch the sunset. had another beerlao and then went with marly, suze, kirsty and laptop dave to an amazing bar where we had very unique cocktails and tapas. Alice even thought it was a good idea to try a chilli and ginger cocktail...maybe it wasn't the best idea ever but it was interesting! a little more pricey than we ususally pay but totally worth it!

... all I bet there were 50 young people out there with ages ranging from 8 to 18 playing either vball or soccer before the wind picked up and everyone saw what was heading our way, a big dark cloud dumping water on some unfortunate town across the river in Thailand. Seeing all of those kids playing sports was great, made even better by the fact that there was no adult supervision, they didn't need it. It kind of reminded me of my childhood when kids used to play outside more. I remember a ...

... es hier einfach gar nicht so viele Menschen gibt, die Fahrzeuge fahren in der Einbahnstrasse nur in eine Richtung, auf der rechten Seite, bremsen, wenn irgendwas im Weg ist, sehr ungewohnt. Aber trotzdem fuehlt man sich nicht unbedingt willkommen hier. <br>Naja, ich habe dann erstmal eine extrem teure Elefantentour gebucht, bei der man eine Nacht in einem Turm im Naturschutzgebiet uebernachtet und Nachts die Change hat, Elefanten zu sehen. Das ...

... bed broke and we both ended up on the floor! That was it, they owner had another room free so we reluctenly went down stairs to that one. It was the worst nights sleep i have ever had, the bed was horrible. I also woke up covered in bites, i just hope they arn't from bed bugs!! We checked out of the hotel that morning and into another, just a little more expensive, but soooo much nicer!

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