Vientiane

We crossed the friendship bridge across the Mekong into Laos late on Friday evening. It was dusk when we crossed over, but by the time we had done all of the border crossing paperwork it was night when we arrived in Laos. As we drove the 1/2 hour from the border to our friends' house in Vientiane, the capital, we noticed store after store with stacks of yellow crates. We soon found out that these were cases of Beer Lao. Being a communist country, you don't see as much in the way of thriving businesses but all day, every day you see Beer Lao trucks making deliveries to little shops. It seems that even if there are 5 shops per block selling Beer Lao each shop is still able to making a living by selling it. The shops don't even bother to put the beer on the shelves it is sold so quickly.

The next day we went to visit Patuxai (Baht-du-sai) one of the few tourist sites in Vientiane. In the 60's America gave Laos some money to build an airport. They used the money to build Patuxai instead as a memorial to those who had fought in the struggle for Laotian independence against France. It looks very impressive from afar but up close you can see that it's still not finished. This is kind of theme in Laos. We saw many unfinished projects. However, they have finished the park around it in recent years and we enjoyed our time there. On the upper floors of patuxai numerous vendors are selling the usual t-shirts and post-cards.

Thankfully, we found that Lao and Thai are very closely related. I was able to communicate very easily with Lao people who are familiar with Thai from watching Thai TV. They were very friendly and eager to speak with us.

Most of the time in Vientiane we spent hanging out with our friends which Gabe enjoyed very much. They have three girls and one boy and a large yard. Gabe would've been happy to spend the whole vacation playing in their yard. We also spent a lot of time going out to eat. We ate a lot of delicious food there. They have a great variety thanks to influences from France, Vietnam and China.