Vientiane and The Rest

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Capitol city! Capitol town? Yes, town. A slightly overgrown town. We barely left the couple blocks around where we stayed in Vientiane. Oh well. It was the expensive expat portion of town. Oh well. We saw only the two major sites in the city. We were at least obligated to see the temple because it's the big temple on all the money. The arch was on the way back. Oh well. I think Lao people and their lazy communist ways infect your soul and turn your will to jelly. Anyway one large town is much like another and Luang Prabang is prettier by far. Thus concluded the juggernaut of activity that northern Laos was for us.

From here on south we're taking it easy and burning off the rest of our Kip. You can't convert kip into anything else. You can't even buy U.S. dollars with baht here. The Laos government's stance is to do nothing but buy dollars. Dumb if you ask me. They could have made some money at least trading my baht for dollars. No ATMs in Laos. No ATMs in Cambodia. I hope we make it to Vietnam. We went to Tha Khaek after Vientiane but it's a weird town where you can't rent a scooter unless it's bright and early in the morning. I have no idea why. I wanted to see the 7km long cave, but it's the wrong time of year and it would've been a huge pain in the ass. We opted to shoot straight down to Pakse. We're staying in an enormous old royal palace. It's fantastic. We were going to go to some lazy island place in the middle of the Mekong, but it's an 11 hour boat ride away or something and staying in a palace is nicer. We wanted to relax before Cambodia so we're doing it in style! I mean style. Hot water so hot you can't touch it. Little soap and shampoo bottles. Maids. A great bed. And the hotel and grounds are beautiful. We're 2 of maybe 4 people staying in the place and it's at least a couple hundred rooms. All for the princely sum of $30 a night. That's more than 300,000 kip a night. Hey we had to burn the kip anyway. Stop judging me. We leave for Cambodia tomorrow. Wish us luck at the exotic non-internationally recognized border crossing. Ooooooooooo.

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Photos

Vertical Runway
The government purchased this genuine American concrete to build a runway, but instead go this turd.