I Went All the Way to Vientiane, and All I Got Was This Lao T-Shirt!

Yes, it’s taken us a while to get our second installment together and posted here. Our excuse: we’ve been really busy! Jen and I have been in Laos for a fortnight (a coupla weeks, you Yanks) and have been engaged in many important activities, most of them undertaken in debilitating heat and humidity. This is the first country where I’ve been forced to use my umbrella for protection from the sun…and it’s not even the hottest part of the year (can’t wait for April). Yikes!

We spent our first ten days in the lovely Hotel Khamvongsa, which is right in the center of Vientiane’s “scene”, near the Mekong River. Most of our time was spent wandering from café to restaurant, from bar to “minimart” - anywhere that air conditioning was installed and running on high. Luckily, the coffee, fresh fruit shakes, local cuisine and Beer Lao are shockingly delicious. (A dedicated entry on food and drink will follow soon). Actually, while living at the hotel, we started getting up at 6:00 AM and walking for an hour before the sun became a fireball. It is relatively cool at that hour, but we still returned dripping with sweat.

Our “official” status in Laos was, unfortunately, still in flux when we arrived, and we had to participate in a series of diplomatic meetings with various local functionaries to try and iron out the wrinkles in our visa and work situations. We sat, smiled, and sipped tea a lot. Oh, and collected a lot of business cards. Allegedly, our long-term visas and identification cards are now in the works and should come thru in the next week or two. Fingers crossed.

On the non-official front, although living in the Hotel Khamvongsa was pretty sweet, house-hunting was high on our agenda. We hit it hard for three days on our first weekend in Vientiane, driving around with our real estate agent/bartender, the inimitable Wong (see photo). We looked at a dozen or more places in our price range, from one bedroom apartments to four bedroom houses. We actually ended up choosing the place we looked at first, which also happened to be the cheapest. Our pad is a brand-new, townhouse style apartment in a complex of four. Two stories, it has two upstairs bedrooms, two bathrooms and tile throughout. It wasn’t furnished, so we had to meet with the owner to negotiate the furnishings. She is a doctor at the local hospital and speaks very good English, luckily for us. Nice lady. We agreed to pay her an extra 50 bucks a month if she bought a bunch of stuff we wanted. Consequently, we have a new washing machine, fridge, small range, microwave, kingsize bed, nice wardrobes, etc. Most importantly, we have new A/C units in every room. AHHHH…We’ve been living here for six days and have been busy buying small items for the house each day, trudging about town in the heat. Actually, for long hauls, we have been riding in the modified motorcycle thingies known as tuk-tuks (see photo).

Anyway, we’re happy to be in our new place. Our neighborhood is maybe 3 kilometres out from the center of town. We live on a small, partially paved street, near an immense, beautiful Buddhist temple (Wat Sisangvone). We have identified a handful of good restaurants within five minutes walk, and we continue to eat very well and very cheaply. I finally go to work at the university next week (so the rumor goes) and am anxious to get back in the classroom. (Photos courtesy of J.M. Herrin).