Vientiane
Trip Start
May 15, 2007
1
8
19
Trip End
Jun 15, 2007
Vientiane,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Another early morning for another long bus ride... As there's not much to do in Savannekhet we decide to push on to Vientiane - the capital of Laos - the next day. We go to the local bus station and there's a bus leaving in half an hour, so we get our tickets and get some supplies from the market stalls surrounding the bus station. The ticket itself is just a small piece of paper, but attached to it is a rather large piece of paper that turns out to be travel insurance and has all the different injuries and corresponding amounts of insurance money neatly listed. Good to know, I guess, but not very assuring. :D
The local bus is actually not that bad and as it's cloudy and rainy all day it doesn't get very stuffy so that makes the journey rather comfortable, and the food we got at the market stalls entertains us for quite a while
Me at the bus station
. Selmer found some potato chips with the flavours 'Mexican Barbeque' and 'Korean Pork Bulgogi'. I always like discovering new flavours in potato chips when travelling, but these must be among the oddest I've ever seen. Still, they're very tasty. The busride is long and fairly uneventful and we get to Vientiane around 5 pm. We take a tuk tuk to the guesthouse we had in mind, which turns out to be rather nice - only one dead cockroach in the room. If you ask me, that's an big improvement over a live cockroach in the bathroom! After settling in we go into the city and stroll to the riverside (the Mekong again) to have a fruitshake. They have some really nice places along the river with low tables and pillows to sit on, with fairy lights and relaxing music - a very nice setting. We decide to have dinner here too, and I order something called 'spicy pickled pork with rice and herbs'. When I get my food I assume the red crispy bits are pork so I happily take a big bite and it turns out to be a dried red pepper, causing me to break out in a sweat and to drink half my beer (and these are big bottles, 640 ml!) and I try to fan my tongue with my hands for about half an hour. Selmer is just terribly amused of course. Anyway, apart from that the rice and herbs are very nice, so I just eat that and shove the peppers to the side.
The Lao currency is quite funny to us, by the way
Me and our bus ticket
. The money is called kip, which means 'chicken' in Dutch. We have lots of jokes about paying with chickens which I will refrain from telling you - as you had to be there, I suppose. :D Trust me though, it's funny! After dinner we walk to the night market but it's not very exciting, just some food stalls, so we go back to the guesthouse where I promptly fall asleep.
Day 15: Vientiane - Laos
We have a bit of a lie in as we're not going anywhere today, and then have breakfast at the Scandinavian Bakery around the corner. Apparently it's a place owned by a Swedish guy - it also has lots of Swedish newspapers, which I'm sure are very handy in Laos. They have a very nice breakfast though with nice bread, fresh fruit and eggs. The omelet even has some cheese in it, my first cheese in two weeks! It's a glorious moment. :D
After breakfast we head out to the morning market, where I buy a pair of Scholl sandals for 19$, as the strap on one of my own sandals has broken. I'm quite peeved about that actually as I had these sandals for years and I had grown quite attached to them! Though a pair of Scholls for less than 20$ brightened my mood quite a bit. :D
After the market we go to Wat Sisaket (a wat is a temple, or a few temples in one area) and the National Museum.
After these cultural visits we get another fruitshake and then go to a secondhand bookstore because Selmer needs new books. I don't, but once I'm in a bookstore there's no helping me, so I walk out with three books. :D We go back to the hotel for a bit of siesta and at night we have dinner at the riverside again. We both brought our books, so we spend most of the night lounging on the pillows, drinking beer and looking out over the Mekong and Thailand on the other side.
