The next day I got up and checked out of my hostel and went to the cafe. It was my last day in Laos. My train woud leave around 6. Boua said she would hang out with me and take me for some food and show me a book store to trade in my Lonely Planet books at. I met her in the cafe next to my hotel where I kept going for the internet and the tumeric tea (that might have been helping). We walked up to Talat Sao market, the unimpressive "largest" mall of Laos, where there was a food court on the top floor. This looked cool. Lots of food, from all over, even Indian. Boua had never had Indian, so I got some Samosas and some Parantha. Then we got some soup that was like Pho, but maybe a bit more Laos style. The indian Parantha was different, and tasted like it had condensed milk in it. It was still good though, so I let Boua eat the majority. I bought some tshirts for some friends at home. They were so colorful that I just got some for my female friends. I got a few sizes, even though all the shirts said they were the same size on their labels. After this Boua showed me a book store owned by here friend, an eclectice elderly man who dresses like Tom Sellic from the 80s. I felt like he needed an eye patch, then we could refer to him as Captain Bookstorm, or something. He took my Vietnam Lonely Planet and let me pick one book in exchange. Sweet deal! I picked a Ken Follet book that I have since read 2 pages of.
After this, me and Boua went to the cafe and hung out until I had to go catch my train. She told me about how it would be a good investment to buy land in Laos because a railroad was being built through Laos that would connect China and Bangkok. I agreed that it seemed like the completion of this railway would cause a lot of people to be coming through Laos. Still, I wasn't down for buying some land, not yet. We said goodbye and I walked to the travel agent I got my train ticket from. On the way I stopped at an MPoint market to pick up some snacks: peanuts, mulberry tea, and toothpaste. Then I waited for my taxi next to some unfriendly Australian or British girls. Well, they didn't seem down for chit-chat and seemed to pretend they didn't even speak English. We got on our taxis for the train station. We had to take 2 trains--one to cross the border, to Nong Khai, then another one from Nong Khai to Bangkok. The first train took about 10 minutes. I sat on it and filled out my immigration stuff, and chatted wih a French guy a bit. We were both a bit confused by the fact that our tickets said our seat was supposed to be in train car 3, yet the train only had 2 cars that we were on. Whatever. We got to Nong Khai and I went through immigration ok. They didn't even seem to care that I was just staying on "Khaosan Road", which was only a little bit more specific than the "Bangkok" I used, and was denied with, at the Thai consulate.
I got on my train--it was pretty nice, not as amazing as Vietnam, but a little better than China. I opted for the Fan car instead of Air/Con since it really wasn't that how out. The Thai trains were laid out a bit differently tho. There is on aisle in the middle of the train with 1 seat on either side, but the seats are arranged in pairs, facing eachother. So you get to sit and look directly at a stranger. At bed time the seats slide down and form a bottom bed. On top of the seats is a hinged shelf that holds the upper bed. I liked this better than the Chinese trains because both beds get a seat--on the Chinese trains there are no seats but instead just the beds, so if you are on top you have to make friends with your neighbor from below.
There were 2 younger people sitting in the chairs next to me, across the aisle, who had a giant golden retriever with them. He looked so happy to be traveling. He was also very well behaved and only got scared when the train started up for the first time. Occasionally they would let him stick his head out the window and get some air.
Showing posts with label Vientiane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vientiane. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Vientiane: Another Surprise Meetup
1/12
I took another tuk tuk taxi back to Vientiane, but this time it was filled with foreigners who had all just taken a kayak trek from Vang Vien. It seems like that would be really far, since a bus took 4-5 hours, but they had that fresh out of a wormhole smell, which explains it. I got back to Vientiane, dropped off right across from the hostel I had been staying at, so I checked back in for another 3 nights, until my train to Bangkok. Some people from my tuk tuk taxi followed me because I had recommended it. But is it really worth a mention, because I never saw them again after checking in, except once at a breakfast place as I walked by from the street, and I just waved. I got to my room and unpacked, then checked my email and found a message from Luke and Jo--they were in Vientiane and were looking for me, but the email was from two days before, so I hurriedly emailed back and told them I would be in the cafe at my hostel for the next hour, but I had no idea if they would get it. It can be tough communicating on the road, without phones, in cities where most hostels don't have internet (the one I was at had internet but it was terrible so I had to use the wifi from the bar across the road). I sat in the cafe, drank some tumeric tea, and tried to learn the Lao language by listening to the people working there gossip--at least it seemed like gossip. After an hour, no sign from Luke and Jo, so I went back to my room to drop off my stuff and go out for some dinner. As I got to the lobby I saw the curly hair of a gorgeous foreigner--Joanna, and behind her stood Luke. They were surprised to see me because they had read my email wrong and thought I would be waiting at a different cafe and they were just coming back to their hotel room, which curiously was the room next door to mine. We are getting used to the lack of likely events becomming common, but this was a bit of a behemoth on the scale of coincidences, since there are hundreds of guesthouses in Vientiane, what is the chance that we would have rooms next door to eachother. Outrageous. I mentioned that I was on my way to get some food at a night market I had found and they joined.
There wasn' t quite as much selection as the previous night market in Luang Prabang, but there was a lady who made spring rolls for 1000 kip each, or 8 for a dollar. I ordered 10 and ate 9 of them. I choked badly on one because I was looking at a ferris wheel and hit a pepper, but I recovered without people noticing. There was a super old, possibly also crazy, Laos lady sitting on a stool, kind of in the middle of the sidewalk, who kept saying stuff in Laos and then laughing manically, almost hysterically, as if she had swallowed a hyena and absorbed its essence, at us. We didn't think we were doing anything that was funny, but it could have just been the situation, of 3 White people sitting next to a ferris wheel on plastic stools eating spring rolls. It was an infectious laugh and we didn't mind. In fact we waved at her and then she laughed even more.
After the spring rolls I led us to the bowling alley, which was basically across the street. Crossing the street in Laos is much less scary than in Vietnam since there is less traffic, but you actually have to wait for a break in the traffic wheras in Vietnam you can just go and dodge traffic as it comes. I started to miss the Vietnamese way because you don't have to wait. If you are an impatient person who needs stress reduction, you should definitely consider relocating to Vietnam. The bowling alley was again mostly empty. We bowled 3 games, but kept getting distracted by this super low budget tv show that had biker ninjas, business wizards, concubines, and old men with eyebrow extensions. It felt on par with those Hindu Myth shows from India, but this was more in the style of Laos, Thais, or Vietnam. This was my fourth time being in this bowling alley too, so I had started to get to know some of the people working there.
After bowling we went back to our hostel, picked up some snacks (Laos Yogurt) from the M Point Mart, which was a Laos equivalent to 7-11 and went to our respective rooms for bed. The street around our hostel was pretty empty, a few locals hanging out and some foreigners eating out in front of a Japanese restaurant with a sign advertising the best coffee in Laos, but when I got to my room, who's window faced that same street, it sounded like Mardis Gras out there. Audio Wormhole? I don't know. It was strange, so I put on some Futurama to help me sleep--it always makes me tired.
I hung out with Luke and Jo for the next 2 days, until their flight to Thailand. One of the days I showed them the US Embassy that yelled at me (for taking a picture of a wall) and led them back to the Laotian Arc De Triumph. After that I showed them the Vegetarian restaraunt, but the food was less good that day and I felt bad because I had kind of talked it up. My allergies were still not too good so I was eating HEAPS of pineapple, which I had read about online as being good for it. Shake after shake was consumed, but then I started to realize that these shake places were adding a lot of sugar, so I switched to the street pineapple in a bag, which was cheaper and tastier.
We had some terrible Japanese food, but were lured in by the promise of Japanese pizza from their billboard. It was really just Okonomoyaki, and not even a very good version, and it cost more than Okonomoyaki in Japan. So we went and cheered our saddened stomachs up at a kind of foreigner bar, but it was full of probably prostitutes, a few of which were obvious ladyboys, the rest of which we could have guessed either way. They were hanging out playing pool and Luke went over and schooled them all, winning so much that they were getting obviously frustrated. Eventually they started cheating and one of them finally beat him. While Luke was playing pool I sat at the bar with Jo and a friend we had made on the street named Boua. She was a local who had been hanging out at the waterfront, laying on her motorcycle, that we started to talk to. Eventually we asked her if she knew of any bars with pool and she took us. After some time a foreigner came in who seemed to know a bunch of people in the bar. He was Australian and not much of a listener, except when I told him that I thought Lao Lap would be good on pizza, to which he agreed to start doing at his restaurant. He kept talking about how the pool women were all Ladyboys too, and it seemed to really excite him. Eventually we got tired of this bar and moved to a small british pub that was playing live football matches. It had a really cute logo of a beagle in a rabbit with a sherlock holmes style coat and a monocle, but I can't remember the name--probably "Hare of the" something. After a few drinks we all went back and I said goodbye, but we knew we would meet up in Thailand (as I would be 2 days behind them).
I took another tuk tuk taxi back to Vientiane, but this time it was filled with foreigners who had all just taken a kayak trek from Vang Vien. It seems like that would be really far, since a bus took 4-5 hours, but they had that fresh out of a wormhole smell, which explains it. I got back to Vientiane, dropped off right across from the hostel I had been staying at, so I checked back in for another 3 nights, until my train to Bangkok. Some people from my tuk tuk taxi followed me because I had recommended it. But is it really worth a mention, because I never saw them again after checking in, except once at a breakfast place as I walked by from the street, and I just waved. I got to my room and unpacked, then checked my email and found a message from Luke and Jo--they were in Vientiane and were looking for me, but the email was from two days before, so I hurriedly emailed back and told them I would be in the cafe at my hostel for the next hour, but I had no idea if they would get it. It can be tough communicating on the road, without phones, in cities where most hostels don't have internet (the one I was at had internet but it was terrible so I had to use the wifi from the bar across the road). I sat in the cafe, drank some tumeric tea, and tried to learn the Lao language by listening to the people working there gossip--at least it seemed like gossip. After an hour, no sign from Luke and Jo, so I went back to my room to drop off my stuff and go out for some dinner. As I got to the lobby I saw the curly hair of a gorgeous foreigner--Joanna, and behind her stood Luke. They were surprised to see me because they had read my email wrong and thought I would be waiting at a different cafe and they were just coming back to their hotel room, which curiously was the room next door to mine. We are getting used to the lack of likely events becomming common, but this was a bit of a behemoth on the scale of coincidences, since there are hundreds of guesthouses in Vientiane, what is the chance that we would have rooms next door to eachother. Outrageous. I mentioned that I was on my way to get some food at a night market I had found and they joined.
There wasn' t quite as much selection as the previous night market in Luang Prabang, but there was a lady who made spring rolls for 1000 kip each, or 8 for a dollar. I ordered 10 and ate 9 of them. I choked badly on one because I was looking at a ferris wheel and hit a pepper, but I recovered without people noticing. There was a super old, possibly also crazy, Laos lady sitting on a stool, kind of in the middle of the sidewalk, who kept saying stuff in Laos and then laughing manically, almost hysterically, as if she had swallowed a hyena and absorbed its essence, at us. We didn't think we were doing anything that was funny, but it could have just been the situation, of 3 White people sitting next to a ferris wheel on plastic stools eating spring rolls. It was an infectious laugh and we didn't mind. In fact we waved at her and then she laughed even more.
After the spring rolls I led us to the bowling alley, which was basically across the street. Crossing the street in Laos is much less scary than in Vietnam since there is less traffic, but you actually have to wait for a break in the traffic wheras in Vietnam you can just go and dodge traffic as it comes. I started to miss the Vietnamese way because you don't have to wait. If you are an impatient person who needs stress reduction, you should definitely consider relocating to Vietnam. The bowling alley was again mostly empty. We bowled 3 games, but kept getting distracted by this super low budget tv show that had biker ninjas, business wizards, concubines, and old men with eyebrow extensions. It felt on par with those Hindu Myth shows from India, but this was more in the style of Laos, Thais, or Vietnam. This was my fourth time being in this bowling alley too, so I had started to get to know some of the people working there.
After bowling we went back to our hostel, picked up some snacks (Laos Yogurt) from the M Point Mart, which was a Laos equivalent to 7-11 and went to our respective rooms for bed. The street around our hostel was pretty empty, a few locals hanging out and some foreigners eating out in front of a Japanese restaurant with a sign advertising the best coffee in Laos, but when I got to my room, who's window faced that same street, it sounded like Mardis Gras out there. Audio Wormhole? I don't know. It was strange, so I put on some Futurama to help me sleep--it always makes me tired.
I hung out with Luke and Jo for the next 2 days, until their flight to Thailand. One of the days I showed them the US Embassy that yelled at me (for taking a picture of a wall) and led them back to the Laotian Arc De Triumph. After that I showed them the Vegetarian restaraunt, but the food was less good that day and I felt bad because I had kind of talked it up. My allergies were still not too good so I was eating HEAPS of pineapple, which I had read about online as being good for it. Shake after shake was consumed, but then I started to realize that these shake places were adding a lot of sugar, so I switched to the street pineapple in a bag, which was cheaper and tastier.
We had some terrible Japanese food, but were lured in by the promise of Japanese pizza from their billboard. It was really just Okonomoyaki, and not even a very good version, and it cost more than Okonomoyaki in Japan. So we went and cheered our saddened stomachs up at a kind of foreigner bar, but it was full of probably prostitutes, a few of which were obvious ladyboys, the rest of which we could have guessed either way. They were hanging out playing pool and Luke went over and schooled them all, winning so much that they were getting obviously frustrated. Eventually they started cheating and one of them finally beat him. While Luke was playing pool I sat at the bar with Jo and a friend we had made on the street named Boua. She was a local who had been hanging out at the waterfront, laying on her motorcycle, that we started to talk to. Eventually we asked her if she knew of any bars with pool and she took us. After some time a foreigner came in who seemed to know a bunch of people in the bar. He was Australian and not much of a listener, except when I told him that I thought Lao Lap would be good on pizza, to which he agreed to start doing at his restaurant. He kept talking about how the pool women were all Ladyboys too, and it seemed to really excite him. Eventually we got tired of this bar and moved to a small british pub that was playing live football matches. It had a really cute logo of a beagle in a rabbit with a sherlock holmes style coat and a monocle, but I can't remember the name--probably "Hare of the" something. After a few drinks we all went back and I said goodbye, but we knew we would meet up in Thailand (as I would be 2 days behind them).
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Vientiane: Part II
1/6-1/10 Vientiane Part II
Got back to Vientiane in the middle of the afternoon. As the bus was making its final turns towards the drop off point I spotted a bowling pin totem; clearly a bowling alley. I marked this spot for later. The bus dropped us off right in the backpacker district. I recognized where I was, which was only 4 blocks away and ignored the scabbly tuk tuk drivers and started walking. I got about a block away when I spotted 2 backpackers that look a bit familiar: Alex and Nikola! They had their packs with them because they were getting on the train to Bangkok in a few hours, so I hung out with them until they left. They had been to Bangkok before and were really selling me on it. Given what I had heard from a couple other travelers, Bangkok didn't sound very appealing, but Alex and Nikola changed that. Alex even drew me a little map with his points of interest. I saw them off and took a breather in my hostel.
After resting a bit I decided to walk over to the bowling alley. It wasn't very far. I got there and it was pretty empty--maybe 2 or 3 of the 15 lanes were in use. The price was 10,000 kip per game, which is about 1.25. I started with 4 games. I was so excited. I ended up bowling 6 total games that night. While I was bowling I realized that the other people bowling around me were very, very good. In fact, my scores, averaging 130-150, were the lowest in the room. But when you consider how inexpensive a game is, a person could get in quite a bit of practice. I bowled more in 4 days in Vientiane than I have bowled in the last 10 years.
I walked around looking for some food after bowling. I had a tough time. Most of the street food that I was finding was desert stuff. So I had some Taro Milk tea, which was served out of Apothecary jars on an aluminum wagon and some steamed buns that were similar, or identical, to the ones from Vietnam. I got back to the hostel and discovered that I couldn't use the internet because they turn it off after 9PM. This is entirely ridiculous. The evening is an important time to use the internet--especially for people who are traveling from locations with large time differences. I had paid for 2 nights already, so I decided to switch after my 2nd night.
My next few days in Vientiane were kind of lazy. I discovered that if I took the train to Bangkok, I would only get 15 days there, and I had already booked my flight out of Bangkok for the 31st, so unless I got a visa in advance, I couldn't leave Vientiane until the 17th. This wasn't so bad, as I had come to like Vientiane , and it was pretty inexpensive. I did a lot of bowling, of course. One day I was browsing around the supposed, largest shopping center in Laos, Talat Sao--if Laos was in China, though, it would be the 10,000th largest shopping center--when I bumped into a group of guys I had met in Dalat, Vietnam. I ended up meeting them later that evening and took them, and some people they had met in their hostel, to the bowling alley. It was sort of scary for the poor girls who worked there, to have a rowdy group of 12 foreigners coming in like we did. They handled it fine though.
My 2nd hostel was a little better than the first--at least the internet didn't shut off at night. I stayed there for 3 days and then switched to another place that had a cafe at the bottom. The internet at my 3rd place also stayed on all night but it was terrible, so I had to start using the free wifi from the bar across the street.
I did a lot of walking while I was in Vientiane. It isn't a very big city anyway--plus there really isn't much public transportation, and the weather was generally really nice. And it had nice wide sidewalks. The only danger was the ocassional missing sidewalk tile, which if missed, could land ones leg in a few feet of water or sewage, or a mixture--my smell wasn't too great so I couldn't tell really. I think it was better not to know. I found a monument that was like the Arc De Triumph in France. I haven't been to the one in France but this one was cool--you could walk up inside it and come out on top--great views and lots of ladies selling cheap Tshirts. One day I took a trek to a fitness center and used their gym for about 4 dollars. It was full of mostly ex-pats though.
Finally after a few days of doing nothing touristy I decided to try and challenge myself and make a trip outside the city to a place called "Buddha Park", which was a small area with artistic scultpures of Hindu and Buddhist icons. Getting there required taking a bus from the public bus station. I found the bus, got on, and showed the driver the name of the place I wanted to go in Laos (to which he nodded). It took about 45 minutes. The bus got incredibly crowded--mostly full of older women with bags of food. They would scream out whenever they wanted to get off, crawl over the heaps of people, and throw some money at the driver. By the time I got off, the bus was practically empty. The park was beautiful, but a bit small. There was a wierd pumpkin like cave in the center that you could enter (through a dragon like sculpted mouth). It was kind of interesting in there, like spelunking a bit. The scultpures weren't as artistic as I was imagining though--I had expected to see something that would stand out as being unique, but what was there would fit in at any temple or palace. I caught a bus back and chatted with a thai ladyboy, who had just crossed the border and kept showing me pictures of "her" baby. I was really getting excited to go to Thailand now. I thought maybe I would attempt to get a visa at the Thai consulate instead of waiting out another week in Vientiane. My journey to the Thai consulate was less than enjoyable--far less. On my first attempt, arriving there a little after lunchtime, I discovered that they only accept Visa applications for a 3 hour window in the morning; the window had just expired mere minutes ago. No big deal--I can come back the next day. I got an application to pre-fill out anyway. The next day I went back and found the counter open and got a numbered ticket from the machine. They had a display above the line listing numbers, but they would call out 10-20 numbers at a time and everyone would queue up. This started confusing people, so they instead just started to line up before their numbers were called, which then caused other people to complain and yell because they were being jumped in position. I finally got the counter but they told me I needed to glue my pictures to my application and photocopy my passport--requirements which werent actually listed anywhere. I did that and lined back up, go to the counter again, and was told now I needed to put in a better address than just "Bangkok". I was annoyed. I gave up. Boy are they picky. I convinced myself on my long walk back that it was better to stay in Laos anyway and give them more of my tourst dollars, because they are nicer and more helpful.
Got back to Vientiane in the middle of the afternoon. As the bus was making its final turns towards the drop off point I spotted a bowling pin totem; clearly a bowling alley. I marked this spot for later. The bus dropped us off right in the backpacker district. I recognized where I was, which was only 4 blocks away and ignored the scabbly tuk tuk drivers and started walking. I got about a block away when I spotted 2 backpackers that look a bit familiar: Alex and Nikola! They had their packs with them because they were getting on the train to Bangkok in a few hours, so I hung out with them until they left. They had been to Bangkok before and were really selling me on it. Given what I had heard from a couple other travelers, Bangkok didn't sound very appealing, but Alex and Nikola changed that. Alex even drew me a little map with his points of interest. I saw them off and took a breather in my hostel.
After resting a bit I decided to walk over to the bowling alley. It wasn't very far. I got there and it was pretty empty--maybe 2 or 3 of the 15 lanes were in use. The price was 10,000 kip per game, which is about 1.25. I started with 4 games. I was so excited. I ended up bowling 6 total games that night. While I was bowling I realized that the other people bowling around me were very, very good. In fact, my scores, averaging 130-150, were the lowest in the room. But when you consider how inexpensive a game is, a person could get in quite a bit of practice. I bowled more in 4 days in Vientiane than I have bowled in the last 10 years.
I walked around looking for some food after bowling. I had a tough time. Most of the street food that I was finding was desert stuff. So I had some Taro Milk tea, which was served out of Apothecary jars on an aluminum wagon and some steamed buns that were similar, or identical, to the ones from Vietnam. I got back to the hostel and discovered that I couldn't use the internet because they turn it off after 9PM. This is entirely ridiculous. The evening is an important time to use the internet--especially for people who are traveling from locations with large time differences. I had paid for 2 nights already, so I decided to switch after my 2nd night.
My next few days in Vientiane were kind of lazy. I discovered that if I took the train to Bangkok, I would only get 15 days there, and I had already booked my flight out of Bangkok for the 31st, so unless I got a visa in advance, I couldn't leave Vientiane until the 17th. This wasn't so bad, as I had come to like Vientiane , and it was pretty inexpensive. I did a lot of bowling, of course. One day I was browsing around the supposed, largest shopping center in Laos, Talat Sao--if Laos was in China, though, it would be the 10,000th largest shopping center--when I bumped into a group of guys I had met in Dalat, Vietnam. I ended up meeting them later that evening and took them, and some people they had met in their hostel, to the bowling alley. It was sort of scary for the poor girls who worked there, to have a rowdy group of 12 foreigners coming in like we did. They handled it fine though.
My 2nd hostel was a little better than the first--at least the internet didn't shut off at night. I stayed there for 3 days and then switched to another place that had a cafe at the bottom. The internet at my 3rd place also stayed on all night but it was terrible, so I had to start using the free wifi from the bar across the street.
I did a lot of walking while I was in Vientiane. It isn't a very big city anyway--plus there really isn't much public transportation, and the weather was generally really nice. And it had nice wide sidewalks. The only danger was the ocassional missing sidewalk tile, which if missed, could land ones leg in a few feet of water or sewage, or a mixture--my smell wasn't too great so I couldn't tell really. I think it was better not to know. I found a monument that was like the Arc De Triumph in France. I haven't been to the one in France but this one was cool--you could walk up inside it and come out on top--great views and lots of ladies selling cheap Tshirts. One day I took a trek to a fitness center and used their gym for about 4 dollars. It was full of mostly ex-pats though.
Finally after a few days of doing nothing touristy I decided to try and challenge myself and make a trip outside the city to a place called "Buddha Park", which was a small area with artistic scultpures of Hindu and Buddhist icons. Getting there required taking a bus from the public bus station. I found the bus, got on, and showed the driver the name of the place I wanted to go in Laos (to which he nodded). It took about 45 minutes. The bus got incredibly crowded--mostly full of older women with bags of food. They would scream out whenever they wanted to get off, crawl over the heaps of people, and throw some money at the driver. By the time I got off, the bus was practically empty. The park was beautiful, but a bit small. There was a wierd pumpkin like cave in the center that you could enter (through a dragon like sculpted mouth). It was kind of interesting in there, like spelunking a bit. The scultpures weren't as artistic as I was imagining though--I had expected to see something that would stand out as being unique, but what was there would fit in at any temple or palace. I caught a bus back and chatted with a thai ladyboy, who had just crossed the border and kept showing me pictures of "her" baby. I was really getting excited to go to Thailand now. I thought maybe I would attempt to get a visa at the Thai consulate instead of waiting out another week in Vientiane. My journey to the Thai consulate was less than enjoyable--far less. On my first attempt, arriving there a little after lunchtime, I discovered that they only accept Visa applications for a 3 hour window in the morning; the window had just expired mere minutes ago. No big deal--I can come back the next day. I got an application to pre-fill out anyway. The next day I went back and found the counter open and got a numbered ticket from the machine. They had a display above the line listing numbers, but they would call out 10-20 numbers at a time and everyone would queue up. This started confusing people, so they instead just started to line up before their numbers were called, which then caused other people to complain and yell because they were being jumped in position. I finally got the counter but they told me I needed to glue my pictures to my application and photocopy my passport--requirements which werent actually listed anywhere. I did that and lined back up, go to the counter again, and was told now I needed to put in a better address than just "Bangkok". I was annoyed. I gave up. Boy are they picky. I convinced myself on my long walk back that it was better to stay in Laos anyway and give them more of my tourst dollars, because they are nicer and more helpful.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Vientiane: Welcome to Laos
The next morning I got a taxi through my hotel to the airport. Even though I prepaid at the hotel he still tried to get me to pay as I left, even though he stopped for smokes along the way when he knew i barely had enough time to make my flight. I got to the airport 30 minutes before my flight left but somehow made it through immigration and security to get on the plane. I'm not sure why the hotel thought I would have "plenty" of time to make my flight. The flight was quick and in a blink I was in a country I didn't think I was going to make, Laos
I stupidly packed my passport photos and US dollars in my checked bags, which I was not supposed to see until after getting the Visa on Arrival. The people at the airport were really nice though, and they kindly escorted me to the baggage area to get my bad and retrieve the needed items from it, then back to customs. I took a taxi and got dropped off in the center of the backpacker district in Vientiane, the sleepiest capital city of a country I have seen. The traffic was calm and casual--quite a contrast from Vietnam. I decided that I would first check to see if I could get a night bus to Luang Prabang for the same day, since Luke and Jo are already there and tomorrow would be the 30th. Otherwise I would have to stay a night in Vietntian and arrive late on the 30th or early on the 31st. The first place I went into said it wasn't availble, but then I tried another and they made a quick call and said it was, so I got the ticket, left my bag and had a half day of hanging out in Coffee shops in Vientiane.
I just stayed in the touristy portion of Vientiane. It was really cute and kind of quiet. There were a lot of Western like shops, but nothing that was actually from the West. Like True Coffee, a hip modern-ish cafe with "Turbo" in front of most of the coffee names, a nice variety of frozen drinks (to complement the warm climate), and fast internet that was worth the price. I found a lot of the restaurants offered Korean food, so I stopped in one with the intention of getting Bi Bim Bop, but the pictures of the Laos garlic and chicken rice made me change my mind. I saw some people from my flight, Korean, and gave them an "Anyoung Haseyo".
I got to the bus station with a lot of time to spare so I had a beer in the lobby. Then I went outside to load my luggage and met a girl from the Phillipines, Cristina. I soon found out she was a huge fan of Supernatural, which we agreed to watch on my laptop during the ride, but once we got on, we found out we had assigned seats. I had to sit next to a very effeminate Laotian Micheal Jackson who seemed to be trying to cuddle a bit with me in his sleep. The bus was so crowded that some people had to sit on stools in the aisle. It was easily the worse bus ride of my life. 13 hours in a seat that I couldn't fit my legs properly in, but was boxed in on my left by a cuddling pop sensation and on my right by an old man who was swirling like water going through a drain in a stool. The old man probably had it worse though--I mean, he did have leg room, but I don't see how he could sleep.
I stupidly packed my passport photos and US dollars in my checked bags, which I was not supposed to see until after getting the Visa on Arrival. The people at the airport were really nice though, and they kindly escorted me to the baggage area to get my bad and retrieve the needed items from it, then back to customs. I took a taxi and got dropped off in the center of the backpacker district in Vientiane, the sleepiest capital city of a country I have seen. The traffic was calm and casual--quite a contrast from Vietnam. I decided that I would first check to see if I could get a night bus to Luang Prabang for the same day, since Luke and Jo are already there and tomorrow would be the 30th. Otherwise I would have to stay a night in Vietntian and arrive late on the 30th or early on the 31st. The first place I went into said it wasn't availble, but then I tried another and they made a quick call and said it was, so I got the ticket, left my bag and had a half day of hanging out in Coffee shops in Vientiane.
I just stayed in the touristy portion of Vientiane. It was really cute and kind of quiet. There were a lot of Western like shops, but nothing that was actually from the West. Like True Coffee, a hip modern-ish cafe with "Turbo" in front of most of the coffee names, a nice variety of frozen drinks (to complement the warm climate), and fast internet that was worth the price. I found a lot of the restaurants offered Korean food, so I stopped in one with the intention of getting Bi Bim Bop, but the pictures of the Laos garlic and chicken rice made me change my mind. I saw some people from my flight, Korean, and gave them an "Anyoung Haseyo".
I got to the bus station with a lot of time to spare so I had a beer in the lobby. Then I went outside to load my luggage and met a girl from the Phillipines, Cristina. I soon found out she was a huge fan of Supernatural, which we agreed to watch on my laptop during the ride, but once we got on, we found out we had assigned seats. I had to sit next to a very effeminate Laotian Micheal Jackson who seemed to be trying to cuddle a bit with me in his sleep. The bus was so crowded that some people had to sit on stools in the aisle. It was easily the worse bus ride of my life. 13 hours in a seat that I couldn't fit my legs properly in, but was boxed in on my left by a cuddling pop sensation and on my right by an old man who was swirling like water going through a drain in a stool. The old man probably had it worse though--I mean, he did have leg room, but I don't see how he could sleep.
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