i have just returned from a day of riding around laos on a motorbike. this country is absolutley amazing and i'm in love with it already. cant reccomend it highly enough, but i'll get back to that later.
I met a couple of cool people from england while we were waiting for our visas to get done at the border. will who studies tv production in yorkshire and lisa who's returning from from a few weeks in australia.
we got a room for $2US a night at this hotel. she told us to go up to the 4th floor, but the stairs stopped at the 3rd floor. we realised that we had to take the fire escape satirs up onto the roof, and we are sleeping in a room that looked like a shabby home rennovation extension. the door is falling more and more to bits every time we open and close it - a screw fell out of it just before - and we are hoping it doesnt rain as there are plastic bags tied to the cieling to catch the rain. but otherwise it's a funky little place.
Vientiene is such a chilled out city. after bangkok it's heaven. there are practically no tall buildings, mainly tall trees. we hired some motorbikes, which were manual, so we were a bit scared to start off with, but soon got the hang of them. today we went for an epic journey into the unknown. it appears laos does not believe in street signs. or english ones for that matter. the only map that we had was the very basic one that was in my LP. it only had the highway and a few select roads. we turned off the single highway of the country to go to some town, and soon i felt that we weren't heading back the right way. there was no other option than to keep going, as there we no other roads or signs. after a few hours of driving through little villages, the sun was starting to get low in the sky and i was just about to accept the fact that we would have to spend the night in some random village that we didnt know how to get out of, when we rounded the corner to find a cement mile-stone saying 'Capital VT - 36km' . such a relief. we followed them all the way home, and made it back by dark.
we are probably heading north to vang vieng, luang prabang and phonasavan this week. it is all such a beautiful country, full of beautiful and friendly people. nowhere near the rush that thailand pace was.
another funny thing - in thailand, the colour yellow is everywhere because it's the king's favourite colour. in laos, it is everywhere too! except it's in the form of the beerlao logo. flags, umbrellas, signs, crates, this country lives and breathes beerlao.
the internet is agonising slow here, so i proably wont be able to put up any photos until i'm back in bangkok for one last time.
hope all is good out in the big wide world. All you have to worry about here is where your next baguette and beerlao [delicious!!!] will come from.
on the harry potter front, - i finished reading it last night.[dont worry, i wont give away any spoilers] cant really say that i was satisfied with the ending. i dont think that it did it justice after 7 whole books to end like that. it felt like it was all building up really well, then just sort of fizzled out. i think that i was just expecting a bit more. anyway. now its time to try and sell it back for a reasonable good price.
