Vientiane

The Palm Pilot and the portable keyboard are working out well, now that I have figured out the finer points of uploading our files to a computer at an internet cafe. It's so much nicer to be able to whip out the keyboard anywhere during a quiet moment to write these blog entries than to always be doing them in a noisy internet place days later.



We spent a couple of nights in Vientiane, which seemed a bit sleepy, and were kept awake on our last night by a very heavy rat thumping about in the false ceiling above our bed.



The Pha Tat Luang monument was a bit souless in my opinion, but we had a great time visiting Wat Sok Pa Luang where we had a herbal sauna and massage in the forest surrounding the temple. It was early evening by the time our massages started, and every minute or so, my masseur would pause for a couple of seconds, I would hear a loud slap as he swatted a mosquito on his leg, then the massage would continue.

After much hand-wringing and poking around on Lonely Planet's website, we have decided to try and cross into Vietnam from Northern Laos - border crossings that have opened relatively recently to westerners and they are not served by any reliable transportation. So it will be an adventure and a half getting there.