Adventures in Vientiane

Vientiane is turning out to be quite the fun place. As soon as I got used to the idea of dripping wet everywhere I went, Carla and I joined in the party. We ventured down to the river where all the locals bathed in their clothes, along with a few brave tourists, and there were food stall set up on the bank. The last day of partying died down around 6pm, and we ventured back to our guesthouse to have a much needed shower and change of clothes, only to be soaked one last time by the staff as we ran up the driveway. We got there only to find there was no water. All the water throwing had drained our tank and we had to wait a couple of hours before going out to our lovely Easter dinner. We found a very popular restaurant and had the closest thing to turkey dinner we could: mashed potatoes, chicken with gravy and vegetables....Delicious.

We had a great night, after ordering a jug of Lao's version of Sangria, Lao Gria which tasted kind of like cough syrup, and met a couple Aussie's, Paul and Andrew on vacation at the bar. We ended up closing the place down and went to bed exited to maximize the offer of a swimming pool from Paul the next day. So nice, the weather here has just started to get hot again after three days of rain, and with perfect timing. Such a great day we had lounging and drinking by the pool, in good company, and having a dip to ward off the heat.

After our first 6 hours of drinking we were still feeling pretty good on our feet, and ventured out to dinner. We ended up closing the bar again, and venturing via tuk tuk to a well hidden, and very popular afterhours bar. Everything closes down at 11:30 here, which is obviously too early for Carla and I, but there is always an afterhours lurking if you look for it. The night before we just happened upon the life of the party at a small pub around the corner from our hotel, and hoped on the back of the bikes of a self described lady-boy, Helen and her two gay-boy friends. So fun, we ended up at a grand hotel afterhours, where everyone was dressed to the nine's and it felt like a unpopular barmitzvah with so few people dancing in the dry ice in such a large room.

Anyhow, this afterhours was quite small and after trying to yell our conversations to each other for a while, we decided to buy the necessary bottle of JD, pepsi, ice, glasses and all, and return to the pool. I felt like such a delinquent sneaking in, but turns out, they actually let adults stay up all night and drink in the pool, no hopping fences for this one. We finally just crawled home after redefining the word prune, and Carla is very intelligently sleeping off her hang over as I try to get on with my day (its about 11am). I should really join her.

So off to the roller rink / bowling alley we go tonight to do it old school style. we are so excited.

later all, R