Leaving Lao
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2005
1
81
103
Trip End
Jun 24, 2006
Vientiane,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Miles travelled: 71777
Today we rode the "chicken bus", as our guide calls it -- the cheapest local bus which stops along the way to pick up people and their cargo. To our disappointment, today nobody got on with chickens (or any other livestock). At one of the stops, merchants selling food hold their items up to the windows. This included such things as skewered barbecued rats and just-hatched chicks. Tempting as those were, we decided to pass on such culinary delights. In general, the food we've had has been quite good and very cheap, and is very similar to the Thai style we had during the last tour.
Vientiane is the capital of Lao, but with only 500,000 people it still seems small and manageable, compared to a place like Bangkok
01 Tuk-tuk driver relaxing
. The National Museum was quite good, incorporating exhibits from Lao history up through the Indochina wars. Some of the propaganda was interesting, as it extolled the accomplishments of the Party, and slanted all US involvement in Indochina as "imperialism". One of the most egregious examples was a display of machine guns, where the caption was "Arms brought by the U.S. imperialists to kill Lao people."We leave Laos tomorrow, having really enjoyed our time in this peaceful, relaxed country. Our group is also splitting up, most people are going on to Vietnam, some are headed back to Bangkok, and we (along with one other person) are flying to Phnom Penh to join up with another group for a week in Cambodia before returning to Bangkok.
