We’re in Laos! That’s because our Thai visas expire today and we had to go somewhere else. We’ll return later to give our passports to the Indian Visa Application Centre in Bangkok… hopefully. We’re not so sure they’ll let us back in after such a short time away. But I’m crossing my fingers.

After breakfast at our hotel in Bangkok, we went to the airport, mailed some postcards, and waited in the Thai/Star Alliance lounge until we had to flaunt our boarding passes at Gate D1. Our plane to Vientiane, Laos, was tiny (comparatively) and was in the air for about one hour. We landed in Vientiane, applied for and received our visas, and met the man from Vayakorn Guest House. Dad got 1,000,000 Lao kip (about US$125) at the ATM and we piled into the van with our four suitcases, four backpacks, four people, and one hat.

Vayakorn Guest House is nice enough, but my main issue with it is that, because the floor is wood, you have to take off your shoes before continuing upstairs to your room. This can be very uncomfortable when you have multiple pairs of shoes and you’re packing up to leave, forgetting the pair of shoes you left waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

We went out around four o’clock for water and shampoo and to look at the Mekong River and Thailand, which is about 1/4 mile away from where I sit typing this. (The Thai-Lao border is, like the one between Washington and Oregon, down the middle of the river for most of the way.) There, people were setting up their booths for the Friday night market. We finally found a little store (NOT a 7-Eleven. In fact, we haven’t seen a single one!) and bought our shampoo and 12 liters of water (eight 1.5 liter bottles). We also saw the Mirinda soda bottles. I wanted to get some of that and a chocolate truffle Magnum bar, but we needed to get back in an air-conditioned place. However, we need to come back soon as Ethan is dying to get his hands on Mirinda (for those of you who don’t know, Mirinda is the name of my best friend).

We returned to my parents’ room to look at the kip bills. Lao money is so worthless that the government quit making coins. The largest bill is K$50,000, or about US$6. In the lobby of Vayakorn, there is a framed two-dollar bill, which was surprising on so many levels.

For supper, we went to Makphet, which is a restaurant that gives poor people jobs. Our food was pretty bland, but our kips went towards a good cause (see it here at http://www.tree-alliance.org/our-restaurants/makphet.asp?mm=or&sm=mp). We returned home, ate some more strawberry creme Oreos, and typed this up. It’s getting “late.” Ciao!