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Laos, first time.

Well, the LP is correct when its says travellers go, "ahh", when they step across the boader into Laos. What a change from the rest of Asia (well that which I have been to already).

The Capital, Vientene, is about a half hour drive from the boarder with Thailand. The difference is clear to see. It hasn't been that long open to toursim and outside investment and it shows. The roads are in pretty good shape and there is building work going on every where. The centre has been dug up and is having a mains sewer put in. This makes a quiet town even quieter. For a capital city, even for a country with only 5.6million, its dead, or laid back, so laid back its horizontal. 160 NGOs are here at the moment, half that of Nepal. Its about half the size of Vietnam but with the majority of people being subsistance farmers. There are no, or very few ruthless touts here, and all you get is a friendly Sabidee, (hello), and they take no for an answer. Thai culture has a strong influence here in music and films. There does seem to be some money here, there are some very nice pick-ups, (SUV's or Utes, for our forigen friends.) and pricate cars and all of the buses are in pretty good shape, as well as the lorries, they aren't welded togther sheets of metal, put together in random patterns, like in Nepal, most of this seems to come from tourism, mining and foresty. There are very few roads here in Laos and they are slowly getting tarmaced, this being helped with trade routes from China into Thailand via Laos.

I decieded to head further north to Vang Vieng, a hot 4 hour bus ride , as I had heard of some good rivers with some world class white water........

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