Sunday night was a bit depressing, on account of SAFC getting hammered 3-0 at home by Man City. Bah. I watched the end of the first half in Luang Prabang, but I had no hope of watching the whole thing because Chelsea v Spurs and Aston Villa v Liverpool got in the way. Premiership football is wildly popular over here; when the locals find out you're English they always want to know if you're from 'Lipoo' or 'Manesta', or even 'Chessee'. I tell them where I'm from and they say 'Aaaahhhh...Sunneran' and I'm not sure if there's actual recognition there or if they're just being polite.
Yesterday I caught the 8am bus south to Vientiane. The total distance is only about 150 miles as the crow flies, but the crow option isn't available, for tourists at least, so I spent 11 hours on that bus. However it was comfortable and the scenery was amazing. The photo on the front page of this blog isn't one of mine but it's exactly the kind of thing I spent all of yesterday looking at. The mountains and vegetation are unlike anything I've ever seen, in both shape and colour, and it was almost like being on another planet. The road was too bendy and irregular (we spent a lot of time in first gear) for me to read, but I was content to swig water and stare out of the window. It was amusing to see how they negotiated all the potholes and mudpits - in many places the road was barely fit for pedestrians, let alone coaches. There were more than a few audible scrapes of metal against tarmac.
Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world. The people in the touristy towns like Luang Prabang are relatively comfortable - shiny new scooters are everywhere, and the Premiership replica shirts worn by the kids look genuine enough. Once the bus was out in the sticks, it was a different story; and so this became my own first encounter, albeit from behind glass, with real poverty. Real, $1-a-day, thatched-hut, subsistence-farming poverty. But the bus kept going.
We also passed a tiny little wooden hut, with an open face to the road, in which there sat a young guy wearing a polo shirt and shorts and holding an AK47. No uniform, no cap, no badge: just an AK47. But the bus kept going.
Anyway, it was 7pm and dark when we got to Vientiane, one of the world's smallest capital cities (only half a million people and not a skyscraper in sight). I got another cheap and cheerful hotel room and then went out for a beer & a bite with Jeff (American diving instructor, living expat in Thailand) and Dita (German university lecturer trekking through South American and Asia).
Today I'm going to wander round Vientiane and then sort out my next destination. Sadly I'm still sweating like a fat lass in a latex leotard, even though I haven't worn anything more than T-shirt and shorts in nearly a month, and I haven't slept under sheets in a week. But at least the Beerlao is nice!
