had an eye-opening visa trip to vientiane this past week. last there in '05, lets just say the place hasnt realized the potential it once had.
- im fairly picky, but the food was disgracefully bad at the same places i had gone to 7 yrs ago. went to 6 different restaurants and not once did i leave satisfied. perhaps due to gradual laziness or just general disregard for quality now that tourism has taken off.
- really poor development in the city center. a couple sois of wannabe-hiso bars/cafes and tons of copycat boutique places. the big chains have now landed as well: pizza company, swensens, fuji, and a host of others in the mall, shopping district. lots of billboards promoting high-end development -- a new mall, boutiques around the fountain, etc.
- all in all, the charm is long gone, replaced by a pretentious, self-absorbed and fake aura that makes you want to leave as fast as possible.
- last but certainly not least, whores. maybe my memory blurs the past, but the handful of times id been to vientiane from 03-05 i came away struck by how conservative the place was compared to thailand. there were a few discos and the tuk tuk guys always mentioned sao lao suay at various "massage" joints but the seediness was not accessible unless you sought it out. not the case anymore. at 7 pm i ate dinner next to a 45 yr old whore in a very populated riverfront restaurant. she was trying to pick up tourists who walked by
. driving through the town a couple hrs later there were at least 6-7 girls on corners dressed in nana outfits. they flirted with seemingly every unattached passerby. most places close at 10-11 pm but i was hungry and went out for some food at 12 only to find the streets littered with whores. every street had a group camping out by a minimart, by the intersection. it felt like pattaya walking street at 2 am. and no one else is around, just the whores and random lao guys going home from the pubs. so its a ghost town with whores walking around like zombies. think i am legend.
scary landing in such a small plane.
place where i stayed. went cheap and regretted it
the guy on the right had been there a while...
stopped by the lao zoo after seeing a sign on my way to nam ngum.
2012 or 1850?
road 10 to nam ngum is incredible. lets explore...
nam ngum. rarely mentioned hidden treasure of laos.
dinner near dam. best moo ga tiem ive ever had.
road 13 to vang vieng.
after stopping for a beer.
some of the villages are straight out of the 1800s.
Great pics!
I only stayed a day in Vientiane last July or August so didn't really see the development there.
I thought it still looked pretty rundown.
I stayed at a place along the river and the road was under construction, it didn't have wireless as advertised, and I couldn't find a decent place to party at night. It felt like a ghost-town...and I didn't see any whores.
I went up to Vang Vieng and it was beautiful.
I think the charm of Laos is probably mostly outside the capital...
Alex
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nice. only been once. and stayed in the safety of that bar nearly the entire time
Same, same here and I knew it would end badly.Originally Posted by samsara
The only hope for Lao is it's communist government; but if it's corrupt, fagedaboudit...
Oh, and great pics, thanks!
Frederick Douglass: Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask
anything of them.”
Thanks Sam... what was your transport? Was it yours or rented or taxi,bus,camel?...
Nice pics...only been there twice for visa and never got adventurous...but in future would like to ride a bike around the country...
"You really want to save the planet?...the next time you see a hybrid car with a childseat... smash the window, remove the childseat and replace it with a box of condoms..." Doug Stanhope
---------------------------------------------------------
nice pics, i like laos. and look forward to going back
fred
Moon Lander Champion!yeh, great pix. I've done a visa in vientiane 6 times or so but never got "on it" like you. Well done.
Couple of questions.
How do you know whore was 45 years old?
I see you flew Nok Air. How cheap was the fare?
Moon Lander Champion!a couple of probable answers:
she either told him or he was guesstimating.
nokair.com = 1,800 baht(ish) each way
How funny! I stayed at the same place when I went there last year on a VISA run, and regretted it.
That's one thing I really don't like about the place. But luckily, I had a couple "cigarettes" to help pass the time.
Enjoying my "cigarettes" out on the patio, I killed time watching the tuktuks, whores, and cats as they all made their rounds.
"Thailand is way past the days of tuna, pineapples, and bargirls." - Sharky
that sound you hear in the background? it's me, sobbing.
---Update---
"Vang Vieng" and "beautiful" are not things i'd lump together all that often, unless i really enjoyed opium tea or chavettes.
Imodium can't stop me.
^ You'd have to be either blind, or totally devoid of any aesthetic sense to say that Vang Vieng is not beautiful. The people who go there may not be, but the place itself is stunning. I find your hipster sensibilities very conformist, Mr. Z.
What a crap sunset. I've seen better in Scunthorpe.
This looks totally shit. I'm glad I'm not there.
There's probably some chavettes in that river. Best to stay away.
Last edited by Bubba; 22nd July 2012 at 00:07.
Nuts In A Blender
rented a bike. put 600+ km on it in 2 days. rental place was shocked
guesstimate.
4k rt. can get it for 3k if u book early.
looks like u were in 401 or 501...i was in 401...didnt have running water 1 night and the next morning
Ok, I'm going to find a couple pics I have somewhere and learn how to post them again.
What is not beautiful about low but spectacular mountains that rise up into hovering clouds. And the muddy river...
...again...
...beautiful.
Not everyones idea of beautiful. A "different" kind of beautiful. But I found it beautiful, nevertheless.
IA
ps. I much preferred the mushrooms! They "plasticized" everything and made the crickets sound the size of chickens...
Actually, it does. The other two pics are gorgeous, though.
---Update---
How are prices in Laos compared to Thailand? Examples?
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