Vientiane, Laos

Our stay in the wonderfully atmospheric and scenic town of Luang Prubang was extended a few days due to ahem...John's first round in the ring with the nether gods of the belly. Who knows what I ate wrong this time, but it was nice to have Lori to keep me company as I convalesced during my 36 hrs of misery!. Luckily, I seemed to recover pretty quickly and so we went on our way again....a 10 hr bus ride south through Laos to the capital city Ventiane.

This was an amazingly winding journey up and down 1500m mountains crawling along hairpin turns ... not for the faint of heart in a full-size bus. The road was recently temporarily repaired in many places from washouts from landslides which must have occurred in the previous rainy season.

As we began to move down out of the mountains, the road in fact got worse and we in fact only covered 360km in the 10.5 hrs we were moving on the bus. Hard to say if the poor condition was from recent washouts or just the general state of disrepair. We went through innumerable villages along the side of the road, very basic, bamboo walled huts, single common water source, no apparent sanitation. Although there was electicity (thanks to power lines running along the road). Many of the villages had wells with World Vision written on the cement wall.

Lots of fun watching the activities of the villages as we were travelling through...lots of kids playing, people washing around the well, mothers cutting children's hair, occasionally villages with schools and lots of kids going to/from school along the road, and of course everywhere, chili's out drying in the sun. All in all, it looked as if it could be an image of Africa in that it looked pretty basic and undeveloped.

Of course once we were within a couple of hours of Vientiane (pop 500,000), things started looking more developed, lots of cars and motos, bamboo style homes giving way to teak wood on top of concrete pillars, then giving way to full concrete homes nicely painted, then to the scene below which is one of the main streets in Ventiane. Easy to find the french influences here with baguette everywhere and wine available as well.

What you see below is the highest profile monument in the city/country....a gold painted (brick and cement construction) chedi... It is ringed by several large buddhist Wats with a few new even larger ones under construction.

So we rented a pair of bikes and biked around town for the day. It's a nice way to see the city and the level of traffic here is not too bad...being 50% 125cc motorcycles (which aren't too intimidating to a cyclist) and the other 50% a mix of cars/pickups...mostly Toyotas and mostly very new looking. The traffic also moves at a more relaxed pace. In fact the whole place feels quite relaxed, even though there is lots of construction going on all over. It does give one pause to think that a slightly more communist style restrained form of free enterprise might actually lead to an overall nicer quality of life....but who knows...we have no idea what the real picture is here.

Well the day ended with a relaxing Lao beer reclining in a cafe on the bank of Mekong river, watching some locals gathering their fishing nets.

...and watching....and watching some more...as the sun slowly slid down to the horizon to visit all the rest of you sleepers back in Europe / North America. We're very sorry to hear about Ottawa's 'situation' of 20cm of new snow coupled with a transit strike. The forecast here for tomorrow is for 29 C. I can't remember the last time we had a cloudy day and regarding rain, I've forgotten what that looks like.

We'll spend another day here and then take a flight on Vietnam Air to Phonm Phenh. We're expecting quite a different experience there as we're told the begging on the streets etc (which is non-existent here) will be a constant aggravation.

Jolo