V is for Vientiane

Had a quiet couple of days. I had a killer migraine and spent Sunday in bed groaning into my pillow and feeling mighty sorry for myself. Think the heat and change of lifestyle caught up with me. Saved by Martine's Migraleve and was well enough to watch Game of Thrones in the evening. 

The heat has been incredible. 42c+ and sweat is my constant companion. Cycled round the corner with Ruairí on Monday to meet Martine at their local, the Mosquito Bar, which is a nice Thai restaurant which usually has live music. Very yummy food.

Delicious uncooked spring rolls.

Chicken watching the band.

Band watching the chicken.

In an attempt to cool down, Martine put her water in the fridge, but a little too long...

How they function in this heat, I have no idea. It's the end of the dry season and even the locals are complaining about the temperature. There's nothing much to do but turn on the air conditioning and sit on the porch drinking beer and smoking menthols.

I'm an intermittent smoker, but it's hard not to here. With no tax on cigarettes, they are insanely cheap. A box of 200 for... well, take a guess. £50? £20? £15?... try £2.50! Although they've recently gone up to the extortionate price of £3. I never truly appreciated the UK taxation rate in the fight against smoking before, and a large bottle of beer is less than £1.

Life here is truly rather pleasurable.

Yesterday I was feeling much better and decided to tackle town.

It takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to cycle there from the house, so I followed Ruairí in around one o'clock and we had lunch at a nice café opposite the national museum. Then Ruairí headed off to do some chores and I was flying solo in Vientiane. 

I headed over the road for a look round the museum, which seems as though it's seen better days. It reminded me of one I visited in Uganda a few years back: lots of cardboard signs stuck to the walls, papier mache reconstructions of sites like the Plain of Jars, a vast array of American and Pathet Lao guns from the late 60s, early 70s. Most of them just sitting there on open racks with signs saying 'do not touch'! And a cabinet full of gold and silver Buddhas which was so heavily barred you could hardly see them.

Upstairs, the floorboards were so old that they creaked loudly whenever you stepped on them. There were about five westerners in the entire building, but you knew exactly where they were at any given time just by listening. Lots of grainy black and white pictures of 'French people enslaving the Lao people' and 'the American imperialist invadors', and even more of prominent communist party members with no explanation at all. It was a shame, as there were quite a few interesting items, but the museum felt as though it could use a makeover to bring those items to life. Still, it passed a bit of time - mostly standing in front of the air conditioning with my arms out.

Lao National Museum

After dripping my sweaty self around the exhibits, it was time to meet M where she helps to teaches English to Lao and ex-pat adults.

Ruairí had given me cycling instructions, but I went wrong at the first turn and ended up completely lost. Most of the roads are one-way, but being English (and a little bit nervous) I kept drifting onto the wrong side of the traffic (because we drive on the other side) and had to pull up a couple of times to figure out how to get back across the busy streets and into the right lane. Despite that, Vientiane is a cyclist's paradise. It's completely flat, and drivers are very courteous to cyclists.

Ruairí told me this is partly because if there is a traffic accident, the person with the most powerful vehicle is automatically at fault. So if a cyclist hits a pedestrian, it's the cyclist's fault, if a car hits a cyclist, it's the car's faults etc. So people are generally quite cautious, plus there are a lot of bicycles, so they're used to avoiding them.

I had a map with me, but you take for granted that everyone can read a map, when actually you were taught how to do that in school, and many people here weren't. So showing someone a map doesn't always help. Thankfully, the map had nice big illustrations of important buildings, and when I pointed to the presidential palace, a nice lady selling lottery tickets - and later a tuk tuk driver - confirmed that it was just around the corner. Vientiane isn't that big, so on a bicycle it's hard to go too far wrong.

I arrived at exactly the same time M was pulling up.

Result! 

She showed me around, and we sat and had ice-cream at the cafe before the lesson started.

I can now add teaching English to my CV, as she roped me in to help! It was a lot of fun, and an opportunity for her students to practise with a native English speaker. We had a lot of giggles with a questions and answers session, where they had to ask me questions, and then answer mine. 

One of the most interesting was when one student asked me how old I was. I was allowed to tell the truth or lie, and they had to guess... 15? No. 85? No. 27 - yes! Everybody unanimously agreed that I was more than five years younger than I am, and when I gave my true age they shook their heads in disbelief. So, vanity satisfied, we moved on to a game of charades, where I put my five years of drama training to good use.

It was great fun. Then I adjourned to the café again for the last hour to read my book and wait for M to finish. We cycled the long road home in the dark for a well deserved beer. Ruairí was waiting at the gate with two cold glasses, and it was the best beer I'd ever tasted.

Later, there was fun and games as Martine evicted a spider from the kitchen!

This may be the last post from Vientiane for a while.

I've been here a week and a half now, and I have about the same amount of time left. Ever since I arrived, Martine and Ruairí have been saying that I should go north to see the Plain of Jars. I love standing stones, and this is a unique opportunity.

I've e-mailed every local tour operator I can find, and the price for a three-day tour from Vientiane to the Plain of Jars ranged between $900-$1,500/(£533-£888)! I was prepared to pay about £300, but that's a lot more than I was expecting, so I've decided to try my luck at public transport instead.

I'm going to attempt to catch a bus north tomorrow, stopping over in Vang Vieng on the way. I have absolutely no idea whether this will work, but I want to go now so that I can get back with enough time to recover before I leave Laos. Ruairí has looked up the bus times and there's one leaving outside the museum at 10:00 tomorrow morning. It costs about 50,000 kip (£4) and should take about three hours to reach Vang Vieng. From there, I should be able to figure out my route to Phonsavan, which is the town near the jars. Wish me luck!