Thai time was running out so we had to leave the country to renew our visa...
To cross from Thailand into Laos, you have to get over the Mekong River on the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge. One of only 2 bridges over the Mekong - the other's somewhere in China. Getting out of Thailand was straightforward, but the entry into Laos involved much form filling, fee paying, gauntlet running and additional fee paying. It seems that there are a number of "voluntary" fees you can pay on the way into Laos. We certainly paid less on the way out when we were a bit wiser! As we only planned to stay in Laos for day, we changed a mere 20 US dollars. Even so, we ended up with 200,000 Laotian Kip! We took a taxi the 20km from the border into the capital Vientiane. Having negotiated a bargain 20,000 kip, we arrived in town to be met by a horde of off-duty taxi drivers insisting we pay 70,000 not 20,000. Much shouting later and threatening to call the police resulted in us getting away with the original 20,000. Turns out we got a really good deal!
We spent the day in Vientiane which was probably longer than is really necessary. For a capital city, it certainly is basic!. There's about 4 streets and they turn to mud tracks a few hundred metres from the epicentre. What seems like the Laos equivalent of The Mall in London - the impossibly wide and ostentatious Lane Xang Road running from the Vientiane Monument to the Presidential Palace across town - is actually a potholed, red dirt track ("Lane" is quite a good name for it). One day it will be a fine boulevard. The Monument itself is surprisingly reminiscent of the Arc de Triumph (maybe not surprising considering the French influence here). The view from the top reveals the whole of Vientiane. That is to say, you can see acres of betel tree with the Mekong in the distance. The occasional Wat pokes out through the trees but really it looks more like a jungle encampment than a capital city. The Mekong runs along the South side of town, but there's none of the waterside bars and restaurants you'd expect, just bare sandy scrub and bushes. We saw a couple of Internet bars and tried one but the Laos server was not working. Just for completeness, Steve tried Laos Beer but it was flat and weak - very poor.
So, Vientiane is a nice quiet town - good to hang out in but there's nothing really to do there except buy the tee shirt - if you can find the one shop in town which sells them. Laos is sure to be the "next big thing" and hopefully a good balance of tourism vs ecology will prevail (unlike in Thailand). Otherwise it's likely that this country's long suffering people will go on being exploited - this time by tour companies. Already, there's an incredible number of travelling types just hanging around here waiting for Landrovers to take them bamboo rafting through "authentic" Laotian villages.
Go back to the Thailand pages.