Not the best start to my birthday as a suicide at my station meant I had to take a detour in getting to the Airport but no missed flights for me ths time although I did play safe and upgrade my ticket to the faster rapid train. My 5.5 hours transit in Bangkok Airport wasn’t so bad due to a good book, my PSP, Burger King and the Olympics opening ceremony on TV. Richard and Mizuki were on hand to meet me at the Airport in Vientiane (once I’d coughed up $35 for an instant Laos visa) and whisked me off in a ‘jumbo’ to the $6 per night KPP Guesthouse and then out for a couple of Beerlaos to celebrate my birthday.

         

Patuxai, faintly resembling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, provided the starting point for the following days walking tour of the riverside city. A few wats (a.k.a. temples) and far more “that is a wat/what?” lines proceeded Talat Sao market where a guy even offered to sell me viagra but I wasn’t up for buying that!! All of the above were fairly pleasant but nothing too special but it was nice to be able to walk around such a peaceful capital city with almost no hassle whatsoever.

It didn’t take so long to walk around the place and so we filled the time drinking the unbelievably cheap ($1.25 for a big bottle) and very tasty beer lao by the Mekong before moving on to our next destination the day after. Just as we were waiting in reception I had one of those ‘Its a small world’ experiences when I met a girl I knew from Tokyo called Stacie who I thought was travelling somewhere in India. Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise and we were to bump into each other a couple more times in our next destination.