Vientiane!
Hmm these are the only two photos I have of Vientiane thus far! The first is the view from Sticky Fingers - an great little Western cafe run by an aussie. After spending so long eating really bad Lao food in the north we have eaten nothing but wedges, salads, vegemite toast, cookies and Indian food since Friday.

In more exciting news we have met up with Raz! for those non-CSUites out there, Raz is a friend from Mudgee who went to CSU and graduated a few years above us. He has been living in Vientiane for the past two years and basically runs rugby in Laos. He's the one with the ball in this photo. Not the best Action Shot but hey.

Yesterday Chris and I went and watched Raz's English speaking expat rugby team play the French speaking expat team and both teams play some local teams (made up of teenagers half their size) in a Sevens tournament. It was actually pretty entertaining, even for a non rugby nut like myself. However it is so dry and hot here that each time someone was tackled i'd have to ask what happened cos all you could see was a cloud of dust.

A Kiwi player called Jeremy had his last day in Laos yesterday after living here for 10 months so last night we went out with all the expats for a strange evening that included eating Indian in a corrugated iron shed, hanging out at a completely empty bright yellow bar called Bananas whilst local gangs rode past on their motos (slight sense of panic when the waitress sprinted inside and all the guys stood up and moved in front of us all! apparenlty it is a regular weekend occurence) and ended at a nightclub on the 3rd floor of a really out of place, massive river-front hotel built because Laos hosted ASEAN last year.


:(

We leave Laos on Wednesday for Thailand (which we can actually see, across the river, if we walk two blocks from our hotel). On Thursday the awesome threesome split and on Friday i head to Nepal! Then of course comes India and in early April we should all be meeting up again in Bangkok to travel to Greece and Turkey.

Alas the First Bit of My Trip is coming to an end! I will be online a fair bit this week though so check back for more pics and email me!