Vientiane, Laos

We stayed in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, for 6 nights which is one more than Tonsai and only a few nights less than Niseko. This extended stint was the result of multiple coinciding factors, some more fun than others.
First of all, we had to organise our Vietnamese visa as unlike every other country so far, they do not issue them on the border. That would have been fine, apart from the fact that we arrived on saturday and therefore, couldn't get anything started until monday morning. The process of getting a visa was very much as one would expect : boring, expensive and a waste of time. For what seemed like an inflated price, we could come pick it up two days later, just before Laos New Year celebration kicked in, the second reason for staying a few extra days.

When I asked one of the staff at our guesthouse how to say "Happy New Year" in Laos, he looked at me blankly, then his face lit up and he declared "water! water!" and indeed, water was the main event for the 3 days of celebrations that ensued. All over the streets, people of all ages started running around armed with anything that can contain water and release it promptly, namely water-guns, buckets, bottles etc... and everybody went to war, ourselves included. Armed with decapitated water bottles, Chris was my first victim but not my last. We attacked children, mothers, Falangs (westerners), people on scooters, people inside cars, people on the back of trucks. You name it, we splashed it! It was awesome fun and oh, so refreshing after weeks of exhausting heat.

We had planned to join in for one day and then hit the road but that was not to be. On the morning of our departure, as we hung around the internet place waiting for a free computer, a very familiar looking falang, tall and blond followed by another one, with dark hair and glasses came strolling down the street. Marcin and Rose were in town! In order to celebrate properly, we changed our ticket to the next day and promptly got into more water fighting, followed by many a beer Lao and a good noodle dinner in town. That was the life. By complete coincidence, we managed to meet up with them in a third country (after Cambodia and Thailand) and are now planning a fourth by adding Beijing as a potential meeting point in a few weeks.
That evening, a huge storm broke out and it rained all night. The sound of rain was something we had forgotten in these dry times and the cool air it brought with it was so delicious, we just wanted to go dance in the early morning light. It rained for the whole morning as well, and the electricity supply for our area must have been struck by lighting as the whole neighbourhood was deprived of water and power for most of the day which caused a slight shortage of fresh baguettes and some not so clean toilets.

Finally, after a final day in town, there was no escaping it and around 5 pm, we started a long and reasonnably painful journey to Hue in Vietnam. We waved goodbye to Laos, a country we enjoyed throughly, and once again to our friends who we will see again and continued our adventure toward Vietnam with mixed feelings of fear and anticipation.