Vientiane

I'm trying to get caught up here, I'm a bit behind.

We arrived in Vientiane by bus from Vang Vieng yesterday. Vientiane is the capital of Laos, and home to a number of foreign companies and embassies. Right away, I like this city! It may be the capital, but it's very small. Most of Laos is over-run with motorbikes rather than cars, but you can feel the foreign money here. The bars and cars are all western. It honestly feels more like a small suburb of a big city rather than the downtown core. The buildings are beautiful, you can clearly see the French influence in the architecture.

The weather is hot and incredibly humid though, almost unbearably so. We didn't have much planned here, there's not much to see. A quick tuktuk ride to see the golden stupa and a temple and we were done. Today was a visit to the national museum, and now we're waiting for our ride to the airport.

This afternoon we fly from Vientiane to Hanoi, our first city in Vietnam. There we say goodby to 2 girls on our trip, and pick up 9 new travelers. Almost time for part 2 of the trip!
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Current location: still in Vientiane, Laos.
Lesson learned today: Leaving the air conditioning on high overnight leaves you with a rather wicked head cold. I cant stop sniffling and sneezing. Hoping this goes away fast!