I dunno why, but we were underwhelmed with Laos from the start. The places were all nice, the people were friendly enough and all of life's essentials were extremely affordable, so maybe it was just us. It didn't help that we were joined on the flight in by an unidentified, but persistent and irritating microbe which couldn't decide if it wanted to be a flu-causing virus or a headcold bug, so alternated between the two. Vientiane is a pocket sized capital city with a river (the Mekong – but of course), a museum and, lo, an international ATM. The museum provided a sterling shelter from the rain and included a display on the Plain of Jars, including an actual 5ft earthenware jar. Linda felt that this should be sufficient to save us the bother of actually
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