From the Cambodian capital we flew on to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. With only about 30 hours or so in town there was only so much we could see, but luckily for us…there is only so much to see. We arrived after dark on a Wednesday night, between Christmas and NYE, aka the best time to see any city at its peak. However, we lucked out (read: meticulously researched) and booked a hotel right over the mighty Mekong and next to pretty much all the nightlife the town has to offer.

We had a brief intro to the waterfront markets and street food on the first night, including a few drinks with some random Aussies at MAGIES BAR!! But 25000 steps the next day took us to all the sites…at an average of about 25000 steps per sight. Only (slightly) joking, it was well worth the stop over, but it was really at night where things came alive. Cool, derelicte style pubs, where we met our NBF’s including a local who thought James was sooo smooth that we had to join them. He never confirmed if the smoothness he witnessed was from the engineering hands or the slow winks to get the waiter’s attention. It was a real treat to hang out with these generous strangers, and even learn how he loved to raise cocks. And don’t worry, nothing dodgy, they’re raised for fighting. The best cock tip we got was that they grow harder in the sun…

After a number of drinks, we tried deciding between the very touristy but still delicious looking street food on offer. We settled down at a poorly named establishment called Tumouur…but after reading the menu, it hadn’t grown on us so we moved on. So it was back to proper street food. So far we’d mainly stuck to street food where possible, however, this was broken earlier in the day on our one sight seeing walk of Vientiane, where, ironically, the impact of street food made us rush for an early lunch at what turned out to be a lovely restaurant.

From Vientiane we had planned to travel by train to Luang Prabang, but as it’s only possible to plan 3 days in advance…once in country, we opted to fly. A good choice, as by the time we turned up in Laos all the tickets were sold and given the amount of documentation required, most people’s identities were already potentially stolen. Something we couldn’t afford, given the precarious credit card situation we somehow found ourselves in.

Luang Prabang was beautiful. We feel lucky to have been there on what seems to be the brink of its transformation into a full tourist town. Kind of the perfect moment in time for us. The ideal mix of local food, a quick sprint from your known hotel toilet, Ma and Pa shops selling beers at water prices, dingy bars over looking the Mekong and newer wine bars in an architecturally French inspired row of buildings next to the night markets. The latter of which we may have sadly caught just too late to be for locals anymore. But, I guess there’s a fine line between made in Laos and made in the PRC…I believe it’s called a border.

As well as some amazing experiences such as a tuk tuk food tour out of the main touristy area and a sunset cruise on the Mekong, we had some interesting ones as well. We’re pretty sure James will have ended up in the background of at least one Tik Tok video carrying our 2 bags of dirty laundry, possibly inspiring some sort of “what’s in those sacks?” trend; ‘one of us’ also left the safe wide open with passports and all our cash on full display (and the wardrobe door where the safe was too) just as we were leaving and the cleaners were entering (there’s no way these lovely people would steal anything, but I…sorry I mean ‘one of us’ is worried they may have thought they were being tested); and ended up with the odd occasion where that “known toilet” wasn’t quite as close as hoped.

We also ended up with two classic Lea quotes:

“I just don’t think my body likes anything other than wine” (which may or may not have been in relation to the previous mention of toilet proximity) and,

“On the hole, the loos have been better than Italy”…the choice of spelling is my interpretation of the intended meaning.

To conclude our time in Laos, we sweated through a car ride to the airport, with the heater on. Much to our discontent. After all, it is winter, now.

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