Vientiane

I meant to catch the local bus from Luang Prabang. So I set my alarm for five thirty am Monday. It didn't go off - maybe because it was Tuesday. So I rushed to the bus station only to find that all the local busses had gone. I could catch a VIP bus for double the price if I wanted. OK, I thought, against my better judgement - I'll give it a try. VIP is a misnomer. It's a huge double decker thing with filthy windows that you can hardly see out of, which, because it is air conditioned, don't open. It has soft suspension, which, because the roads are so auful, make it bounce up and down like a yoyo. And because the road twists and turns up and down mountains all the way to Viang Veng (which is almost all the way) the combined effect is to churn the passengers like cream, making them into butter - or rather, because the contents of the passengers' stomachs is not cream but a mixture of other things, bringing their breakfast, last night's supper and maybe even meals long forgotten, back up their throats. I have seldom felt so ill. Ten hours later we finally arrived in Vientiane, utterly wrecked. I was not the only one who vowed never to take a VIP bus again. Clattery old local busses from now on. And short journeys.

Too exhausted to treck round Vientiane for hours looking for a cheap room, I settled for a bunk bed in a dorm full of young men who, fortunately, were completely exhausted from their visit to Viang Veng. Most of them went to sleep with the light on at nine oclock.

This morning, on venturing out, I was assailed by the sweet smell of freshly baked croissants. The only cafe open in the street was serving breakfast to people, who, like me, couldn't resist the smell of freshly baked croissants and good coffee. Vientiane is a quiet place with wide, tree-lined streets and lovely restaurants serving every kind of food.

I have just been to the national museum, a rather scruffy place exhibiting all sorts of prehistoric pots (mostly stuck together with glue), bronze drums and other artifacts dug up by Swedish archeologists. Upstairs there are lots of photos of members of the Lao resistance - first resistance to the French, then later to the Americans, who installed a puppet government after the French left. I didn't get to the end of the exhibition because they shut for lunch at twelve o'clock. I could go back there if I wanted, using the same entrance ticket I paid for this morning.

There are lots of hippies and freaks here in Vientiane, some quite old. There is even a ninety one year old women from north Wales. "Anywhere," she said "is better than north Wales, at any time of the year". "So why don't you move?" I asked her. "Well," she said "would you live in Thailand?" I failed to follow the logic of this non-sequiteur, so left it at that. "I'm going to catch a local bus to Luang Prabang tomorrow" she announced, after telling me stories of forgetting which hotel she had left her rucksack in, getting the police involved in looking for it, getting sick in Thailand and being nursed by kind local people. I reckon she gets by because people are so amazed that she is travelling at her age that they take pity on her and look after her.

I met other people who I had spent time with in Muang Gnoi, who had saved themselves the trauma of the bus by flying from Luang Prabang to Vientiane.