Day 113: Vientiane

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From Ho Chi Minh City, we flew to Bangkok in the morning of January 6th, spent the day there, then got on an overnight train north to the border of Thailand. By 11 am the next day we had made it to Vientiane, Laos.

We had originally planned on a few days in Vientiane, but after one day we decided to move on. It's not that it isn't a nice city, though. For being the capital of Laos, it had a very small town feel. The touristy area is one block from the Mekong river, which has some nice areas to walk along. There are lots of nice, trendy bars and restaurants, mostly french.

But what turned us off was that everything was overpriced. We ended up spending more on a clean but no frills hotel room there than we had spent on an awesome place in Vietnam with an ocean view balcony. The food was very good, but also much more expensive that we had come to expect from Vietnam. Isn't Laos supposed to be a third world country, with a much worse economy than vietnam? The only explanation I have for it is that the temples and french influence probably draws in an older crowd, more willing to spend money on fancy meals and accomodation. We saw lots of tour groups with 60 somethings walking around the city taking pictures of just about everything. So after one day there we decided to move on to Vang Vieng.

For all my badmouthing of vientiane, we did have a nice time while we were there. One of the highlights was actually the local market, which is huge. They had all kinds of stuff there; it must be where the entire country comes for appliances, electronics, clothes and just about everything else (check out the picture of the "taco maker" below). After searching the whole trip, steph finally found a cross-stitching kit. I found a pad of white paper with no lines, which somehow is very rare here as well.

Besides the market, we basically just ate really good but expensive food, and checked out some of the local pagodas and temples (well one pagoda and one temple). We didn't take too many pictures while we were there, but here they are:

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Comments

[Matt Potterton]

mmmm tacos.....
Wonder what their meatball and poached egg maker looks like...

[Rahn]

Great Blog
Greetings - I enjoy your great reports....what a trip!