Vientianne Visitations

8th Jan 2008.

Today is my fourth day in Vientianne, the capital city of Laos. My first two nights were spent in a ‘country residence’ guest house just out of town. For 14 USD per night I had a room with fan, hard double bed and many mosquitoes. Oddly, they weren’t biting me. The operation was run by a Kiwi. A young man who’s every second word was f**king but no one seemed to mind. He was hard working and friendly despite the blunt edge to his vocabulary.
The house had an intriguing historic feel to it and was decorated in places by colorful embroidered material draped and hung in a variety of locations and directions to add an attractive kind of portable vibrance to the sturdy old dwelling.
The gardens made me smile. One could eat breakfast, and other meals come to that, at a variety of locations throughout the gardens. Tucked away in little detours off the main path were tables and chairs set out for garden dining in the privacy of Laos foliage. Neat!!

In Vientianne I have discovered that the only people that speak English are the English. Oddly there seem to be a fair number of those. My impression is that they are mostly long stay and probably somehow attempting to exploit the projected growth of a country that must be a good ten tourism years behind Thailand.
The Laos language has rings of Thai and I think the numbers for instance are the same in both languages. However my attempts at basic conversation using the little Thai I know fall mostly on stoney ground and turn up some shrugs and in general have little social impact.

Yesterday I moved house. I have found a ‘Riverside’ Hotel with rooms for 18 USD per night inclusive of breakfast. I will do that for two nights. The rooms are clean, with aircon, a fridge, own bathroom and wifi. On the downside my room is far enough away from the wifi transmitter for the signal to be weak and the connection intermittent. Which actually doesn’t matter that much because even when you get connected the download speed is so slow it makes reading mail a more laborious task than watching paint dry. Even deeper on the downside is that my room has the cleaners store directly opposite it. Hence this morning I was woken abruptly at 7am by the clatter of mops, buckets and whatever other paraphernalia Laos cleaners are required to assemble in preparation for their daily cleansing challenge.

The river is famous but invisible. It is called the Mekong. One can see where it should be and one can see how it’s bed is shaped. It would be massive if it were there. Nevertheless even in it’s absence it still draws a considerable number of people to eat and drink at haunts alongside it’s imaginery self. Late afternoon, early evening, the surreal riverside presents a unique ambience that is dominated by the setting sun and daubed by the haze of barbeque smoke. One can eat most things that once walked, swam or flew after being braziered. There is no serious contender for Beerlao as the drink choice. Roll them on in!

My header snapshot gives a hint of the riverside culinery experience on offer and provides a glimpse of the missing Mekong.

Today I have rented a bicycle. It will cost me 10,000kip for 24hrs. Kip is the national currency. 10,000kip is 50p. It is devoid of style (the bicycle not the kip). It is only functional and robust. For example it has a front basket and a stand you could watch football from. With the saddle post raised to it’s extreme I still need to employ that factory worker pose (120 degrees knee to knee angle) to avoid knee elbow collision. I have spent an hour or two cycling the city roads. The traffic is gentle and I feel comfortable navigating my way around the city on the machine. There is something akin to the arc d’triomphe in the centre of the administration district. I have done a lap of it on the new steed earlier today and attracted a few waves from mischievous school children. The mood is light!

On friday I have a plan to go to Luang Prabang which apparently and for reasons I still have to understand is a must. Unfortunately it’s a nine hour bus ride. So I am going to investigate a little further before committing myself to an 18hr return bus journey.