When going from Siem Reap to Vientiane you have two options. You can either spend two days on the bus and going via Thailand or you can spend around $160 to take a flight that involves a brief layover in Pakse. The thing is $160 is really a lot of money - especially when you're unemployed. But the real thing is that there is no way I could ever spend 2 days straight on the bus. So Lao airlines it was!
We boarded the plane and were able to spread out a bit and each got our own row. It was a small plane - some where around 20ish rows with sets of two seats on either side. There were two guys (early 20s) who were traveling together who were still drunk from the night before and were hilarious. My favorite move was when one of them had to sneeze and purposefully did in the other guy's lap. "Dude, how mad would you be at me if I just did that?" I asked Doug. We agreed - it would be grounds for the ending of a friendship.
As we took off, it was a bit bumpy but certainly nothing I hadn't experienced before. However, it was not long before it became quite clear that the plane was not flying on Auto-Pilot. Perhaps the gene I am most gratefully to my father for is my infinitely solid stomach - but after an hour and a half when we landed in Pakse, Doug and I both clamored off the plane a little greener than when we started. We had a small respite of 40 minutes when we got to Pakse and got our Laos visas and then it was same same from Pakse to Vientiane.
We took a $6 cab from the airport to "downtown" Vientiane and started to look for a hotel. We started with the one right across from us, which had room only for one night, and then headed to the hotel next door. I went up to see the room while Doug stayed downstairs with our stuff. The man took me upstairs and I took a quick look inside - 2 beds, air conditioning, and hot water in the showers seemed fine. But the best part was we had a balcony. The way the balcony is set up you actually share it with the whole floor, but our room was right on, which allows us to sit on the balcony with the window open and easily get stuff out of the room. We had a similar set up in Cat Ba and it was ideal. We'll take it!
After dropping our stuff in the room, we headed out. There isn't really too much to Vientiane, so it didn't take long to get a feel for the city. We decided to check out some of the eco-trekking options and quickly realized that the better place for it was north of the country, so we decided to pass it that for now. We headed back to the room to bust open the Lonely Planet and see what there was to do.
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