September 10th-11th
I was very curious to see what was awaiting us in Laos: the country which has been most heavily bombed, on a per capita basis, in the history of warfare (according to the Lonely Planet, the USA had, by 1973, been dropping an average of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years), where the people are said to be so laid-back they are horizontal and where jumping on inflatable tyres and floating down rivers whilst drinking alcohol is not only allowed but encouraged.
Vientiane, the capital of Laos, immediately confirmed impressions we had been given from travellers we met in Vietnam fresh from Laos: people in Laos like to take life easy. In fact, if I had been dropped in Vientiane from a helicopter, I would have had no idea that it was the country's capital. Firstly, there didn't seem to be enough people around for it to be given capital status and, secondly, we were not quite sure where the centre of the city actually was. There was a square but it seemed extremely quiet and then a string of restaurants down by the Mekong River, which look over to Thailand. On our first night we opted for drinking a beer down at the river. It was beautiful to watch the sun go down but, again, we seemed to be one of few people around and the atmosphere never seemed to really get going (everything shut at 11pm). The next day we tried to orientate ourselves a bit by doing our own walking tour of the city but this ended up in Vientiane's hopsital as a pain Robbie woke up with in his groin was getting worse and he felt it should be checked out. Despite our guidebook's suggestion that you should really seek medical care in Thailand if you have a problem in Laos, we managed to find an English speaking doctor who diagnosed that Robbie had probably picked up an infection from a small cut on his toe that must have travelled up his leg. He gave him a prescription for some tablets and I am sure Robbie started feeling better even before he had taken the first one. Still, he decided to rest that afternoon and it was the perfect excuse for me to go and check out the massages on offer all over the place. I found a place just up the road from our hotel and, after the aggressive foot massage in Saigon, decided to opt for a more soothing oil massage. It was a good choice - an hour of pampering where just about every part of my body was worked on (a stomach massage is a first for me!) for about $5. Back at the hotel Robbie wasn't looking too good. I think along with the groin pain, he had picked up the fever I had had a couple of days before. Still, he managed to tell me that he fancied a pizza so, listening to the patient, we went out for pizza. I was a little worried when he couldn't finish his and had the leftovers wrapped up but my concerns were put at ease again when, on returning to our guesthouse and resting for an hour, he then sat bolt up out of bed and reached for the pizza. He was on the road to recovery and we could move on to Vang Vieng.
