Vientiane, Laos

I'm now in Vientiane, the sleepy capital of Laos. The city is preparing itself for the ASEAN Summit being held here at the end of the month, so it looks pretty spiffy. There are pretty severe travel restrictions starting next week (I think they want all the backpackers out of town, so there's room for all the summit people), so I'm lucky that I'm here now.

On Saturday, Dee (the Irish girl) and I rented motorbikes and toured around outside of Pakse. It's almost too easy to rent motorbikes -- all you need is $6 and a passport for a deposit (I used my expired Mastercard as the deposit -- at least I'm getting some use out of carrying it :) ).

Dee had only ridden a bike twice before, so she was the experienced rider between the two of us. Somehow we made it out of Pakse without running over anyone, and we headed along route 13 towards Tad Lo, a waterfall about 90 km north. The traffic doesn't go very fast here -- we rarely exceeded the speed limit of 40 km/h.

There were beautiful views of rural Laos along the way. We stopped at a couple roadside huts for refreshments -- said our Sabadee (Hello) then smiled a lot, out of vocabulary. The people are really friendly.

After two hours and only 50 km out of Pakse, we realized that we wouldn't reach the waterfall with any hope of getting back before dark. Decided that just touring around on bikes was cool enough, and so headed back to Pakse.

Met up with an english guy, Duncan, who was also staying at our guest house, and we headed out for dinner. I still can't believe how cheap everything is here -- I had a Lao noodle soup for dinner, a Pepsi (can't seem to find Coke here), and a large Lao beer -- for $1.80. Dee and I were beat after spending all day biking in the hot sun, so we took it easy on the drinking.

Yesterday caught the flight from Pakse to Vientiane, hopefully my last time leaving the ground on this trip. This is the most I've flown internally -- normally I prefer ground travel because you see more of the country, and meet more locals.

We checked into a really nice guesthouse -- there's a lounge on the 2nd floor overlooking the street, and it's a great place to meet other backpackers.

Had dinner along the banks of the Mekong. There's a whole string of vendors along the riverbank, serving dinner on tables lit by candlelight. It's a very cool setting.

There's a curfew of 10:30 here (which seems to come and go in Laos), so we didn't have much time to bar hop. All the bars kick you out promptly at 10:30 sorry, police come soon.

It's stinking hot here (high of 33C today), so most activity is in the morning and evening, with the mid-day hours reserved for napping and reading (and of course, surfing the web).

Here's some more pics (click on them for a larger image). Unfortunately I cut a CD with all my Angkor Wat pictures which Marissa took home with her, so the Angkor Wat pics will have to wait until I get back:

One of the wats in Vientiane




Inside the wat




A roadside "gas station" along route 13 outside Pakse




Roadside break from biking -- that's Dee with her back to the camera buying a snack