At 16000 Kip to the pound cashing your travellers cheques is an amusing process in the Laos People's Democratic Republic. Converting $100 makes you literally a millionaire, and with 5000 Kip the most common denomination, you're lumbered with a wedge of notes about 3 inches thick. It goes quicker than you would think but that is not to say Laos is expensive. On the contrary, at 7000 Kip the pleasantly palatable 'Beer Lao' makes Thailand's 'Beer Chang' seem as reasonably priced as that rank excuse of a lager they call Stella Artois. And a bottle of Lao whiskey equates to about 40p a bottle. What majesty the Mekong! A wide murky brown deluge of water breaching China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Nam, and not compromising in mass, so it appears, along the way. Almost as wide
... read more