Capital to Capital

Thu 14th 7:30am.

Stupid name for a blog 'avoiding winter'. Arrived in Hanoi last night and it is cold. Not even a debate as to whether I should be wearing shorts. They are consigned to the bag for a few days and the fleece is out.

Hanoi is chaos personified. Traffic drives on both sides of the road and red lights are optional. No-one stops at all at intersections or pedestrian crossings and road death is the biggest source of tourist deaths!! I'll put more in the blog next post as we are here for 2 days.

Vientiane was pretty for a capital city but emphasised how poor Laos was. Lots of the larger and more beautiful monuments and Wats really needed a lick of paint and someone to pick up the litter. We arrived there late on Tuesday and only had 3 or 4 hours there but as capital cities go it was dirty and grimey.

However, the overall impression of Laos was very good. It is a beautiful country with some fantastic scenery . The people are very friendly and calm, they drive calmly around the roads. If I returned I would trek or cycle around the country. the downside , for the people, is that it is so poor and has little resources. So the only way of making money is to allow the chinese to move in and build HE dams all over the place - thus flooding more and more of the beautiful countryside.

Oh and we went to a 'happy cafe' on Monday night. The food in Laos is very good but extremely cheap - 1 quid is high for a meal with a beer'. A couple of us went to a local cafe and were presented with the happy menu - happy cheeseburger, happy pizza all 3 or 4 times the price. Reading down the menu revealed the reason for the increase. Bag of opium, bag of weed, spliff, etc all available. Didn't have anything but just sitting in there for a few hours has given me THE wackiest dreams for the last 2 nights - makes noggers seem positively calm. Woke up at 3am the other night and jumped straight up as I tought I was being attacked by bats!

Experiences, experiences...