http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , Laos , West , Vientiane en-us Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:22:03 +0000 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:22:03 +0000 We get dropped off at the bus station in Vientiane the capital of Laos. Driving through town in our open air shared taxi we were thinking this is more Little Snoring than London. As capital cities go this has to be the quietest most laid back one on the planet. Even the taxi drivers don't toot their horns or tell you their life story.We landed on our feet with the Mixay Guesthouse as breakfas http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-456647.html the international team unite more on that story later first lets go to financeso for 35bucks you get a visa for laos at the airport which was ideal as i hadnt arranged one due to the fact before i left i had never even heard of the place let alone knew where it was and wanted to go there. because of this though i had a great time the lack of guide book and a clue for that matter i decided just t http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-454953.html Hi allThanks for all your lovely messages its really good to hear from you all. It feels like we've had an eventful time since last writing. We crossed the Thai border and took the slow boat down the Mekong river for 2 days to Louang prabang it was a lovely way to travel becasue of the scenery howeverthe overnight stop wasn't great we arrived in the dark had to drag our luggage up a rocky st http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-454558.html One of the things I appreciate about Laos and much of SE Asia is the amount of freedom and responsibility you are granted. You personally appraise the situation and based on that and perhaps advice from other travellers you 'do' or 'do not.' There isn't always this looming figure in the background making sure that you don't overextend youselfwe have been given the wherewithal and innate http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-454332.html We hated to leave Luang Prabang but there are more adventures ahead for us. The choices for transportation between LP and Vientiane the capital are a 45minute plane ride or a 12hour more or less trip by public bus. Let's guess which one we opted for.... Were we backpackers we would have opted for the latter because about 23 of the way we would come to their favorite place in the whole http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-452562.html Yesterday I finally turned the corner. I woke up feeling human again. So we tried to make up for a couple of lost days. In the morning we took on the ldquomustdordquo event of climbing Mount Phousi. This the only elevation on the peninsula of Luang Prabangrsquo is the sacred mountain. A daunting 360 stairs take you from street level across from the Royal Palace to the summit. It is co http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Luang-Prabang/blog-452082.html 12 bus ride I think i could put up with anything for 12.We were ready at our hotel by 5pm got picked up a lil late and taken out of the town to the Hanoi or one of the Hanoi bus depots. well kind of. We were dropped off on the side of the road next to a bar. and a tree. Rude NOT to have a beer while we waited so we had a beer. It was while drinking the beer that we spotted the bus depot http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-448153.html Vientiane is a like a small bangkok with some French influence. Only spent the night there before doing a a one day jungle tour between Vientiane and Vang Viene Nice thing is after the tour I went directly to Vang Viene on the last bus. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-447968.html After a very long sleep i proceeded my Vientiane explorations and till early evening all main tourist attractions in the city were covered. For diner i went to kind of expensive restaurant that serve the food in localmusicanddancing sauce. In my opinion the dances look very much like in Thailand and Nepal....you think i am missing something very basic and important Btw i made today a stoc http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-447528.html Yesterday at the evening i got a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai small town on LaoThai border so today at 6 o'clock at the morning i checked out from Thailand and entered Laos. Probably due to the fact that i already had a valid visa the whole bureaucracy procedure lasted less than 10 minutes. Vientiane Laos capital city is half on hour far from the border so already at about 9 o'clock i was http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-447249.html Heute mchte ich meinen Blog mal mit mehr Fotos als Text fllen. Hier also nur 23 kurze Bemerkungen zu den letzten Tagen wunderschne aber lange Fahrt nach Luang Prabang Bus hat einige Schwierigkeiten resp. der Fahrer hat keine Ahnung was es mit den Gngen auf sich hat hellip Bei einem Stopp werden 2 Passagiere vergessen und so wendet der riesige Bus inmitten der Berge auf einer kleinen St http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-447188.html Day 8 VientianeWe checked out of our hotel at 415am and headed to the airport. Our taxi driver was running red lights like no other and when he missed a turn he simply reversed about 300 metres to make it. He was Malaysias version of SchumacherWe had a whole 2.5 hours sleep due to the early start so I had about 43 micro sleeps between KL and Vientiane. We landed in Vientiane around lunchtime. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-446988.html When most people hear the word ldquoLaosrdquo they think of a backwater country with no running water no electricity and no trace of Western culture. They arenrsquot alltogether wrong. Large swaths of the country are like this albeit without the lack of Westerninfluence as riggedup satellite dishes have brought our culture in to even the most remote villages. But quite a few of the b http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-444936.html Don DetNach dem ich einige Tage mit dem lteren franzsischen Herr auf Don Det und seinen Nachbarinseln verbracht habe ist dann am letzten Sonntag der junge Franzose Jrme ebenfalls eingetroffen. Wir haben uns in einem kleinen Guesthouse 2km weg von Don Det City niedergelassen. Wir waren die einzige Gste und es war sehr ruhig und schn. Die beiden darauf folgenden Tage habe ich Jrme dann http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-444339.html The journey to Vang Vieng proved to be quite an ordeal especially for Ilse. Normally I'm the one who has trouble with travel sickness but this time it was Ilse's turn. In the end the trip can be summarized as 8 hours of more twist and turns than one can count and the driver running out of plastic bags. Sadly this made her largely oblivious to the beautiful countryside we were passing. Finally af http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-444284.html Delhi Belly ATTACKS Luckily I was just a witness to it as two of the group were hit with the awful illness. One of them was really bad she looked like death warmed up. Today was probably not the most convenient day to get the bug either as we had to fly from Luang Prabang LP to Vientiane. It was only an hour flight but when yoursquore sick any length of flight is bad as all you want to http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-443516.html Hi there badgersBlog time again now in Vientiane. Happy to report that Slime has stopped scratching he's now sniffing instead caught a cold from the fan in our room hence you're hearing from me again sigh Slime only busts out when he gets attacked by wild creatures so here's hoping he never blogs againIt's been donkeys since i last scribbled so I'm going to have to limit this here http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-442516.html We are currently in Vientiane the capital of Laos which is completely different to Luang Prabang but not in a bad way. Although it too has an AsianFrench feel to it and the customary Wats and markets that we become accustom to visiting it is more developed with a lot more infrastructure in place. The French connection comes from the start of the nineteenth century when Laos became a French pr http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-441199.html After Ilsquod been working at the bar for a month my bosses decided they needed to concentrate on finishing construction of the business. The bar is on the first floor of a threestory building they had rented and the plan was to make the secondfloor a barber shop and tattoo parlor and the thirdfloor and rooftop a restaurant. The construction of the entire business was to be finished in Ja http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-441055.html I find it sad that America dropped over 2 million tons of bombs on this beautiful country in a decade... Laos is easily overshadowed by Thailand and Vietnam but there is so much natural beauty to be seen in this country. I only get to pass through a few cities but it will definitely be on my list of places to return to. Vientiane is a quiet capital city on the other side of the Mekong River via th http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/West/Vientiane/blog-440917.html