Vientiane
Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th January

I left Monday with Aimee on the 12.30 bus to Vientiane, sadly tearing myself away from VV. We went out for dinner to Nazims again - Indian on LP, VV and Vientiane!! All Nazims but it really was good. We then had an early night!

I got up with Aimee the next morning as she had to go to 3 banks in the end trying to get dollars on her mastercard, back to the guesthouse for her ticket to show up. She had a piece of paper that said she needed to see Mr Toe and that was her receipt!! But it worked and I assume she made it all okay. I moved to another guesthouse,PP where the nice but a bit over friendly guy asked me to have dinner with him. I half truthfully said I was to meet friends. We had said we would meet but had made no arrangements and didn't end up meeting. Oh well.

I went out for breakfast and met an English guy Mike who I ended up hanging our with for the next couple days. We went and sussed out whether we could get a boat to Savannakhet but it is the dry season and the river is too low. Also I think buses appear to have taken over this route more. We decided to suss out buses but ended up at the wrong bus station so wandered around the market for a while. One guy told us to go and buy tickets as the bus might be full but at the bus station they told us just to show up. Our day consisted of sussing out methods of transport!

We went back to War Sisaket where I chatted with a couple friendly Lao's, one of them a monk. They both spoke pretty good English. We then went with a couple other people and had a beer Lao while watching the sun setting over the Mekhong and joined the throng taking pictures of the (strategically placed?) boats in the orange sunlight. I had dinner with Mike, good barbecued Lao fish with rice and fresh vegetables. We then went and visited a couple Lao friends he had made when he was in Vientiane 6 weeks before. It was nice to hang out in a Lao home for a while.