The rumors I'd heard about Vientiane being an average city with nothing too special have held true. I'm not impressed.
After arriving and checking into a Guest House near the Mekong River, we went walking to find a travel agent to schedule a bus to Hanoi. It was a little more difficult than usual because we were trying to pay by credit card and Laos still operates on a cash money system.
We finally booked our tickets, but my friend James and I had get a ride to a nearby hotel to run our credit cards. Everything worked out okay in the end.
Last night we went in search of a night market to eat some cheap ethnic food, but nothing looked very appealing. We ended up eating fried rice in a sidewalk cafe and then walked down the Mekong River and sat in a TexMex restaurant that served BeerLao on draft.
We discovered that Vientiane is the only place in the country that serves BeerLao on draft, so we did a bit of a pub crawl and found a nice beer garden to hang out in, but a massive rain storm blew in and ended our pub crawl very quickly. We got rained in at the bar and stayed there until the owners closed down and asked us to leave.
In the rain we all sprinted back to our Guest House and crossed one street that resembled a small river of rushing water. Needless to say we all got in okay, just soaking wet, and went to bed.
Today we woke up and walked through a morning market that was too dirty and cluttered to be satisfying, so we then went in search of the BeerLao brewery to kill some time before I bus leaves later tonight.
On a hunch we walked to the Arc de Triumph because we were told the brewery was nearby. We circled the Arch in the hot sun, but did not see any BeerLao signs, so we asked a tuk-tuk driver.
He drove us about twenty minutes out town towards the brewery. We almost broke his taxi because we weighed too much for the small cab, but we made it. Unfortunately, the brewery was closed because it was Sunday.
The locked gates of the Beerlao Brewery
Our cabbie drove us back to town and dropped us off at the Lao Bowling Center, so we decided to kill some time in the AC and bowl a game for the fun of it. I came in second place with a 130 only because James rolled three straight strikes on the last frame and beat me with a 150.
Olly throwin' rocks
I'm now trying to gear myself up physically and emotionally for a mammoth 20 hour bus ride from Vientiane to Hanoi. James and I each bought one Valium from an over the counter pharmacy in preparation for the journey. It might help ease the pain a little bit, but no matter how you look at it, this will not be an enjoyable ride.
Hanoi hear I come.
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