South-East Asia

From Luang Prabang, we went on to Vang Vieng, famous for tubing (you get thrown into the river with a tractor tube, and then spend some hours drifting down-river, while regularly being picked up from one of the bars alongside the river) and its rather liberal availability of everything you can smoke and eat for getting into a good mood, while police is just waiting around the corner to catch you red-handed and cash in 500-700 USD or deport you after a three-months-jail-term.

Buddha didn't smile on us here. Just a few hours after arrival, I caught up with some food poisoning, supposedly from the ice in some fruit shake I drank. So now I have travel diarrhea in my travel diary. It knocked me out for 3 full days with 39 degrees fever, and lead to one more encounter with the health system. With all political correctness, but local health care sucks. I told the "English-speaking" doctor in the night emergency reception 5 times that I got diarrhea, then he asked me whether I have diarrhea, and then diagnosed me with diarrhea. No tests of anything at all, and medication seems to be prescribed by the color of the pills to get a beautiful cocktail. So it was about internet consultation with parents and friends, and self-medication, which somehow worked out...

After being fit again, we booked a one-day trekking-kayaking-caving-tubing-tour for the next day, which we then had to cancel in the morning as it was raining cats and dogs. So we decided to leave the same day for the capital, Vientiane, hoping that the second half of our stay in Laos will be more pleasant. The bus trip was pretty quick and ok this time.

Vientiane is probably one of the smallest capitals in the world with just about 200.000 inhabitants. French influence on architecture and food here is obvious, and you can do most of the things by walking around. Another nice Mekong promenade, more temples, and a smaller copy of Paris' Arc de Triomphe, with a nice park around.

As in other (former) communist countries, they seem to like playing deafening and bad local pop music in such parks, especially before public holidays (May 1st is a big shot here), while the locals up to old age like doing sports of all kind. We saw a granny (I guess 80 years old) doing an impressive stretching session which my 30-year-old body could definitely not repeat.