Laos Day Two: New Year's Day, Still Vientiane

This is part two of Arie's trip to Laos. You may want to read part one.

I woke up excited to be in 2007, went downstairs fairly early, and saw on CNN that someone had set off a bunch of bombs in Bangkok. Great. It looks like the bombs were set off by guys pissed about the coup last September, but it got us thinking about our next steps. We were supposed to take a train from Bangkok to Malaysia, but it stopped in Hat Yai, a city where there have been daily assaults and murders by an Islamic insurgency. We decided it might be a bit smarter to fly.

Like Cambodia and Viet Nam, Laos was a colony of France. The French influence in Laos is very evident, from the cuisine to the streets (some inappropriately wide boulevards) to the Arc du Triumphe, a Lao version of the one in Paris. I climbed to the top of it (the inside is filled with souvenir stands, of course) to look at the view. Nice, I guess. It's called Patyu Xai, which more or less means "Gate of Triumph". Lonely Planet reports that it was built in the 1960s using cement that the U.S. purchased, intending it to be used for an airport.

Then I walked to the Lao central market. Much like the market I visited yesterday, it wasn't crowded at all. It had a surprising amount of electronics, much more so than was available in Cambodia. I'm not sure why it was so empty--maybe because it was New Year's Day, maybe because it's just how Laos is. We bought a few things, and the bargaining was suspiciously easy-going--maybe it's just that Laos is more laid back.

Lunch by the Mekong again, then we walked around a bit. Supporting the theory that Laos is a relaxed country was the phenomenon of many stores taking three days off for New Year's. Most stores were closed on New Year's Day, of course, but a lot of them had signs on their doors announcing they wouldn't be open for a few days. We booked a taxi to take us back to Thailand, and the agency had trouble finding someone who wasn't drunk.

Our border crossing back into Thailand was much easier--Thailand doesn't require Americans to have visas, and we didn't even have to get out of the van (our driver handled it all). The Udon Thani airport was very close to the border.

We got to the airport very early, and sadly, the food at the airport was horrible. Our Thai Airways flight was excellent, though, especially when the pilot announced, "I have a wish for you. I wish you a happy 2007 forever." We arrived at Chiang Mai at midnight, took a taxi to our hotel, and went to sleep.

My overall impression of Vientiane is that it's probably a great place to live if you're a westerner. Life is laid back, there's good food, and the weather's nice. There are a lot of NGOs, I hear, although they're located just outside Vientiane. It's not especially polluted, there's a fairly active community of westerners, and it's pretty. Unlike Cambodia and Thailand, there's virtually no prostitution (a foreigner who wishes to have sex with a Lao citizen must first obtain a government permit), and so there aren't any sex tourists or sexpats (except the ones who bring their Thai "girlfriends" here on vacation). It's not a great place to be a tourist because there's just not that much to do, but it's perfect if you just want to relax for a few days.

That's it for Arie's Laos adventure. Chiang Mai coming soon.