At Laos immigration in Vientiane airport I enter with my Australian passport [the visa is 5USD cheaper than if I enter with my UK passport, but this point will become relevant in a later blog entry] and I spill out into the terminal braced for chaos. But there is none.
No tuk-tuks or gramatically-poor-sign-wielding men. Just the quiet hum of a small airport. One has to buy a taxi coupon from a counter at a fixed rate. I'm heading into town in a sedan, one of only two I have been in this entire trip.
The streets are much quieter when compared to the flows of traffic seen in Phnom Penh, but, mind you, it is a city of not even 800,000 people.
I had almost forgotten I am arriving in another country. It still hasn't sunk in.
I'm in Laos – or more correctly, and ironically, Lao People's Democratic Republic. This is only my second land-locked country I've been to (the other being the time-warp that is Belarus), my third nation starting with L, and my first socialist country (of five currently in the world). The yellow-on-red hammer and sickle flag flies here side by side with the LPDR flag, something that surprises me and makes me feel a little ignorant and prompts me to do a little more reading on this country.
This is 'the most bombed country, per capita, in the world', and the U.S. has much to answer for in this matter. "An average of one B-52 bomb-load was dropped on Laos every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973". Many US dropped bombs still lie unexploded in Laotian soil, and the Secret War is still firmly in the collective consciousness of the people here.
I check into my hostel, a wonderful place which I would highly recommend if any of you find yourselves in Vientiane.
What's this...it's cold! It really is chilly here. I hadn't expected this, and by the looks of it, neither did most of the travellers here, wrapping whatever scarf or shall they can find around their shoulders and heading to the night-market to buy jumpers.
I walk to this very same night market, on the promenade which runs along the Laos bank of the Mekong river (the other bank being Thailand). A ten minute walk gets me there, and, when I arrive at the river, I realise that I have not once heard the query “tuk tuk sir?”, or had someone attempt to cajole me into eating at their restaurant or looking in their store. The contrast in this sense with Cambodia is immediately noticeable. I have read that the people of Laos are very laid back, friendly, and not pushy. I'm starting to see, and appreciate, this already.
It's misty here as I walk through the bright night market, stocked with shirts and scarves and handycraft and mobile-phone cases, and all sorts of things aimed at the foreign, and local, buyer, giving the scene a pleasant half-tourist-half-local vibe. And – another shock – there are even listed prices. That is a first. I cannot remember one instance in Cambodia when I saw a printed, listed, clearly-shown price for anything. Everything was negotiable there, this seems much less true here.
To generalise, the locals have softer features, it seems, a softer curve to their noses, when compared to many of the Khmer I saw. Maybe there's a bigger Chinese genetic influence here.
Apart from the night market, which has many tourists browsing its happy-pants and wristbands and souvenir tank-tops, this is supposed to be the centre of town, but its very quiet. I was told there wasn't much to do in Vientiane, and I realise now how quiet and sleepy it must be.
I eat some street food (nothing too different from what I've had in Cambodia), smile and nod at the friendly locals, and go up to a rooftop bar for my first BeerLao in Laos (a beer ubiquitous in this country, and mostly drunk from long-necks). I order and down it fast because I don't like the sex-tourist vibe of this bar.
But I am liking the vibe in general I'm getting from Laos in my first few hours here.
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