Jules and I have been excited about this blog post. For two main reasons: 1. Our trip to Lao(s) was--in a word--weird. And in a phrase, a plethora of things that makes one wonder and question. 2. When we came back, we researched Wikipedia'd more about the country and let me tell you, that explained a lot. But before you read that link, I thought it would be interesting to separate this post into those same two parts: 1. Our experience and observations and 2. Some helpful facts and anecdotes as to why Lao is the way it is.
We'll also be switching off who's doing the writing, so we'll clarify that with an A or a J (And just to clarify everything and make this an even more long-winded intro, we made a friend! on the bus ride from Thailand to Laos, and she makes a few cameos in our stories).
A: Our trip to Lao, or more accurately, Vientiane, was an interesting one. To be perfectly honest, Vientiane is a surprisingly uneventful place to visit. And this is not to say that Lao is not a beautiful and exotic country. I'd like to think Vientiane is to Lao what the Midwest is to the USA (In the same way that Delhi inaccurately represents the whole of India). Nobody goes to Kansas and feels like they know America. (Also so as not to offend anybody I'd like to clarify that I'm not saying the Midwest isn't probably a great place to live, just that it doesn't represent America as a whole, and I'm hoping that Vientiane is the same.)
First of all, we're pretty sure the whole town is populated either by tourists waiting for their Thai visas or locals who were born and raised there. In an almost depressing way, I don't think anybody else is in that town by choice. The Thai consulate won't do same-day visas, not even emergency ones, so everybody is forced to stay there for at least a night. Which seems like a great marketing ploy by the government except that everything closes by 10, and the most happening bar still closes at 11:30. In fact, when asking one of the locals who works a backpacker-friendly dorm hostel about the great eats and night life, he responded with, "no, there's no good food" and "no, there's nothing to do." The town was once under French rule, and the remnants of that mostly lie in the cheap and abundant baguette sandwiches. When we were walking around at night trying to find a place to relax possibly with a Beerlao in hand, we were pointed to the only place where everybody was--a rooftop bar on a lonely street by the river (sorry to interrupt the flow of this story but I'd just like to point out that naming your most popular beer "Beerlao" is exactly equivalent to us having a "BeerUSA," which becomes comical in that context because you know, 'murica and all).
(Side story to my side story, when we were trying to find this bar, we might have already had a few Beerlaos, and we ended up walking to the top floor of what I think was an apartment complex and finding this place:
Haleigh even tried looking around the corner to see if we were missing something. I think Jules' face says it all. J: No, I think it says a lot that these are our only 3 pictures from Lao.)
J: There are a couple perplexing things that stand out in Vientiane. Most prominent are what appear to be the only forms of advertisement: signs for Beerlao, the country's most popular beer (why do you need to advertise your only - and thus very popular - beer?), and communist flags. Taken alone they are a bit odd, but seen together, they're enlightening! Beerlao appears to be the most exciting thing to do in Vientiane. Activities topping the tourist to-do list include, but arenot limited to: drink a Beerlao while watching the sunset on the river. When we finally found a bar, much less one that was open after 9, men attempting to buy us drinks insisted feverishly that we simply must try the Beerlao. Judging from the resounding Laotion appreciation for this cheap little beverage, to them this was probably the equivalent of suavely recommending a medium bodied, reddish brown IPA with a balancing malt backbone. To us, it was more like someone insisting that you really must try the Miller Lite; you won't regret it; nothing is going to top this experience. Imagine our horror when, after coming back from the bathroom, we discovered that they had ordered a 6 liter beer tower of the stuff for us. Luckily, the unspoken Vientiane curfew of 11:30pm cut that night pleasantly short.
Naively, I assumed that a 750ml beer for $1.22 was the cheapest way to forget yourcommunism woes. A quick trip to the minimart proved me earthshatteringly wrong - apparently you can easily pick up a liter of very sketchy looking whisky for $1.10. A country that's willing to drink hard liquor that costs less per liter than its own beloved beer (and not even twice as much as the cost of water) has got to have an interesting story. Turns out Lao has an unbelievably rocky history. Going from a country torn asunder by invaders and rebellions to one dominated by the French (who, as it turned out, were pretty apathetic about the country too), Lao's pre-independence years don't seem all that great. Subjectively speaking, post-independence hasn't been that kind either. After the communist revolution and Laos' subsequent involvement in the Vietnam war, the US launched a bombing campaign that lasted nearly a decade and made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. What with this and what appear to be huge human rights issues, it's interesting that Lao is such an invisible entity to most Americans when we're clearly so entangled in its past, and thereby its present.
A: One thing that I believe Lao so desperately needs to do is devalue its currency. Currently, $1 is 8,000 kip. What's even worse is that the conversion from Thai Baht to Lao Kip gives us a terrible rate. At one point we were trying to go to the bathroom and a lady was posted up outside charging us 2,000 kip! That's like 10 baht! Which is like being asked to pay $5 in America (I know I'm going on a lot of tangents, but one thing I really miss is being able to be like, "I'm sorry, I thought this was America! I thought this was the land of the free!" because even though that's just me making a joke, I don't get to say that here). We couldn't really find food for less than 20,000 kip although that might have been because we were in the tourist section of Lao. Yes 80 baht is still less than $3, but when living and working in a foreign country it's important to start thinking in that country's standard of living and in that case, paying 100+ baht per meal could get expensive. All of Vientiane lets tourists pay in Baht as well as Kip, however, which makes their exorbitant pricing reasonable. Because I felt like buying their resources and paying in another country's currency is like going to America and being like, "Well I don't have any of those dollar thingies but I've got Euros is that cool?" So rather than having to pay the ($8+) bank fees from pulling out of the wall, we would pay in baht and get kip in return.
This plan went great until our final hours, when our kip quickly dwindled. After a quick meal (a Lao street food sandwich consisting of dried shredded pork, a laughing cow cheese, cilantro, some red stuff, and some brown stuff in a baguette) and an unexpected extra 1,000 kip on the bus fee, we were but 5 baht short of the fee to get to the border, and this included what spare coins we had. Now don't think that we were ill-prepared and broke in a foreign country, just that all we had left was a 1,000 baht bill (which if you still haven't figured it out from all of our comparisons, is like having a fifty) and we weren't about to get a quarter of mil' kip change on our journey back to Thailand. So when the lady came around, we played pleading and desperate foreign tourists and explained that our last few kip and baht coins were all that we had. We were a little afraid of getting kicked off the bus, but India experience has taught us differently, and eventually the lady graciously let us only pay for one of us. Here we thought we had made it without having to break the bank, but Lao really milks the whole "we know you're only here for the visa run and not to tour our country, jerk" and they have a needless exit fee. To our benefit, the way they collected this fee had a loophole, and that was to walk around the lady that was collecting the fee. I see this as one of those moments where a country or government mimics more powerful countries by implementing similar practices, but doesn't quite do it correctly. The lady who made us turn around to buy the "ticket" that was our exit fee (of 9,000 kip each) was sitting at a table after immigration and customs and from what we saw, only ripped your ticket. So Haleigh pointed out that nobody was across the street and we all just made our way casually but quickly to the other side and walked past the point where the woman was sitting. There also happened to be duty free shopping there so we pretended like we had money as I called the minibus service to come pick us up. And, not surprisingly, that worked. Again, we saved ourselves 70 baht, and we were in the clear...
But we had yet to cross the Thai border. So here we are in no-man's land between Lao and Thailand and the bus to cross "Friendship Bridge" (A bridge built as a donation from Australia as a development aid for Lao) is 30 baht each. We asked a few people if we could just walk the distance, and found a guy that told us it was no more than half a kilometer and even gave us a map:
So we foolishly perked up believing half a kilometer's walk was worth 60 more baht in our pocket (J: and we still only had that 1000 baht bill. Sidenote, what currency does an ATM give in no-mans land?). Oh. My. God. Not only did the walk turn out to be 5.5 kilometers (as Jules looked up later on google maps), but the sun was setting, the weight of our backpacks was getting heavier, and it felt like the Thai border would never come. We had to climb over some barricades to pass the "Welcome to Thailand" and "Welcome to Laos" signs on the way too (at least I'm assuming that's what they said, since they were written in Thai and Lao), an indication to me that people don't normally go for strolls on the Friendship Bridge. Still, with the help of Jules', "It's just around the corner, I know it!" we made it to the Thai immigration and happily showed them our shiny new "Non-immigrant B" visas (also known as our "You can now legally work in Thailand" visas). We made it just in time to grab some yummy street food dinner, paid for at a reasonable price with reasonable currency. I missed Thailand. And to think Jules and I were going to originally stay in Vientiane for another day because we thought we might as well explore if we're being forced to travel there, but we quickly called the company the morning we were picking up the visas, because one day and one night in Vientiane is truly more than enough (not trying to sound like a miserable unappreciative white person, just being dramatic and also calling it like I sees it). We did have time the next day after picking up our passports to go to the Lao "Arc de Triomphe," which was actually quite beautiful and had a cute little market and a great view of the city (see pictures at the end).
The visa process--the whole reason we made this trip to Lao--was actually somewhat smooth. Anybody who wants a Thai visa has to go to the consulate and submit their paperwork sometime between 9 and noon. So that means grabbing a number and doing our best to check the correct boxes and answer unclear questions on the form as numbers are electronically called out in Thai and in English over the speakers. I was inexplicably nervous as it came closer to our number, but of course they ended up skipping us. And as the numbers continued upwards, I decided to just get up and go to the window, which turned out fine since they just took my paperwork and gave me a receipt. We then went inside and waited for our number to be called again so we could pay the 2,000 baht. This time Haleigh and Julia's number were called one after the other...and mine was skipped. But I think the guy entering the numbers saw how I reacted and figured out I must have been next so he went back and let me pay so we could leave. I'm probably going into too much detail on this part, but my reasoning is that you who are reading this might have been curious about the process and I didn't want to give more attention to the ridiculous 2,000 kip bathroom fee than the more important life-relevant visa run.
Then we had to go to the consulate the next day between 1 and 3 to pick up our passports. And that's about it. It went smoothly for us because our school thankfully provided all the proper paperwork, but I overheard some people getting rejected at the window. Though they won't refund you if you are denied a visa, they are nice enough to usually reject you before you pay. That way you don't end up thinking you're in the clear for your visa and finding your passport empty. All in all, mission accomplished right?
J: Now we're back in the comfort of our little home, regularly making batches of thai tea and nommin' on bananas and longans and mandarins. We missed Thailand.
We'll also be switching off who's doing the writing, so we'll clarify that with an A or a J (And just to clarify everything and make this an even more long-winded intro, we made a friend! on the bus ride from Thailand to Laos, and she makes a few cameos in our stories).
A: Our trip to Lao, or more accurately, Vientiane, was an interesting one. To be perfectly honest, Vientiane is a surprisingly uneventful place to visit. And this is not to say that Lao is not a beautiful and exotic country. I'd like to think Vientiane is to Lao what the Midwest is to the USA (In the same way that Delhi inaccurately represents the whole of India). Nobody goes to Kansas and feels like they know America. (Also so as not to offend anybody I'd like to clarify that I'm not saying the Midwest isn't probably a great place to live, just that it doesn't represent America as a whole, and I'm hoping that Vientiane is the same.)
First of all, we're pretty sure the whole town is populated either by tourists waiting for their Thai visas or locals who were born and raised there. In an almost depressing way, I don't think anybody else is in that town by choice. The Thai consulate won't do same-day visas, not even emergency ones, so everybody is forced to stay there for at least a night. Which seems like a great marketing ploy by the government except that everything closes by 10, and the most happening bar still closes at 11:30. In fact, when asking one of the locals who works a backpacker-friendly dorm hostel about the great eats and night life, he responded with, "no, there's no good food" and "no, there's nothing to do." The town was once under French rule, and the remnants of that mostly lie in the cheap and abundant baguette sandwiches. When we were walking around at night trying to find a place to relax possibly with a Beerlao in hand, we were pointed to the only place where everybody was--a rooftop bar on a lonely street by the river (sorry to interrupt the flow of this story but I'd just like to point out that naming your most popular beer "Beerlao" is exactly equivalent to us having a "BeerUSA," which becomes comical in that context because you know, 'murica and all).
(Side story to my side story, when we were trying to find this bar, we might have already had a few Beerlaos, and we ended up walking to the top floor of what I think was an apartment complex and finding this place:
J: There are a couple perplexing things that stand out in Vientiane. Most prominent are what appear to be the only forms of advertisement: signs for Beerlao, the country's most popular beer (why do you need to advertise your only - and thus very popular - beer?), and communist flags. Taken alone they are a bit odd, but seen together, they're enlightening! Beerlao appears to be the most exciting thing to do in Vientiane. Activities topping the tourist to-do list include, but are
Naively, I assumed that a 750ml beer for $1.22 was the cheapest way to forget your
A: One thing that I believe Lao so desperately needs to do is devalue its currency. Currently, $1 is 8,000 kip. What's even worse is that the conversion from Thai Baht to Lao Kip gives us a terrible rate. At one point we were trying to go to the bathroom and a lady was posted up outside charging us 2,000 kip! That's like 10 baht! Which is like being asked to pay $5 in America (I know I'm going on a lot of tangents, but one thing I really miss is being able to be like, "I'm sorry, I thought this was America! I thought this was the land of the free!" because even though that's just me making a joke, I don't get to say that here). We couldn't really find food for less than 20,000 kip although that might have been because we were in the tourist section of Lao. Yes 80 baht is still less than $3, but when living and working in a foreign country it's important to start thinking in that country's standard of living and in that case, paying 100+ baht per meal could get expensive. All of Vientiane lets tourists pay in Baht as well as Kip, however, which makes their exorbitant pricing reasonable. Because I felt like buying their resources and paying in another country's currency is like going to America and being like, "Well I don't have any of those dollar thingies but I've got Euros is that cool?" So rather than having to pay the ($8+) bank fees from pulling out of the wall, we would pay in baht and get kip in return.
This plan went great until our final hours, when our kip quickly dwindled. After a quick meal (a Lao street food sandwich consisting of dried shredded pork, a laughing cow cheese, cilantro, some red stuff, and some brown stuff in a baguette) and an unexpected extra 1,000 kip on the bus fee, we were but 5 baht short of the fee to get to the border, and this included what spare coins we had. Now don't think that we were ill-prepared and broke in a foreign country, just that all we had left was a 1,000 baht bill (which if you still haven't figured it out from all of our comparisons, is like having a fifty) and we weren't about to get a quarter of mil' kip change on our journey back to Thailand. So when the lady came around, we played pleading and desperate foreign tourists and explained that our last few kip and baht coins were all that we had. We were a little afraid of getting kicked off the bus, but India experience has taught us differently, and eventually the lady graciously let us only pay for one of us. Here we thought we had made it without having to break the bank, but Lao really milks the whole "we know you're only here for the visa run and not to tour our country, jerk" and they have a needless exit fee. To our benefit, the way they collected this fee had a loophole, and that was to walk around the lady that was collecting the fee. I see this as one of those moments where a country or government mimics more powerful countries by implementing similar practices, but doesn't quite do it correctly. The lady who made us turn around to buy the "ticket" that was our exit fee (of 9,000 kip each) was sitting at a table after immigration and customs and from what we saw, only ripped your ticket. So Haleigh pointed out that nobody was across the street and we all just made our way casually but quickly to the other side and walked past the point where the woman was sitting. There also happened to be duty free shopping there so we pretended like we had money as I called the minibus service to come pick us up. And, not surprisingly, that worked. Again, we saved ourselves 70 baht, and we were in the clear...
But we had yet to cross the Thai border. So here we are in no-man's land between Lao and Thailand and the bus to cross "Friendship Bridge" (A bridge built as a donation from Australia as a development aid for Lao) is 30 baht each. We asked a few people if we could just walk the distance, and found a guy that told us it was no more than half a kilometer and even gave us a map:
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| Man I wish I had a better quality picture, but this was all I could get at the time. Jules put it well when she said that as soon as he drew a circle and wrote "Laos," we knew this map wasn't winning any cartography awards. The thing is, he took SO long and was SO careful to add all the arrows and the lines in the road. I'm seriously still laughing as I upload the picture now (also the title of this blog entry was inspired by this map). |
The visa process--the whole reason we made this trip to Lao--was actually somewhat smooth. Anybody who wants a Thai visa has to go to the consulate and submit their paperwork sometime between 9 and noon. So that means grabbing a number and doing our best to check the correct boxes and answer unclear questions on the form as numbers are electronically called out in Thai and in English over the speakers. I was inexplicably nervous as it came closer to our number, but of course they ended up skipping us. And as the numbers continued upwards, I decided to just get up and go to the window, which turned out fine since they just took my paperwork and gave me a receipt. We then went inside and waited for our number to be called again so we could pay the 2,000 baht. This time Haleigh and Julia's number were called one after the other...and mine was skipped. But I think the guy entering the numbers saw how I reacted and figured out I must have been next so he went back and let me pay so we could leave. I'm probably going into too much detail on this part, but my reasoning is that you who are reading this might have been curious about the process and I didn't want to give more attention to the ridiculous 2,000 kip bathroom fee than the more important life-relevant visa run.
Then we had to go to the consulate the next day between 1 and 3 to pick up our passports. And that's about it. It went smoothly for us because our school thankfully provided all the proper paperwork, but I overheard some people getting rejected at the window. Though they won't refund you if you are denied a visa, they are nice enough to usually reject you before you pay. That way you don't end up thinking you're in the clear for your visa and finding your passport empty. All in all, mission accomplished right?
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| From the top of Vientiane's Patuxai |
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| The delicious street food sammich |
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| What'd I tell ya, mysterious red stuff and mysterious brown stuff |
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| Some interesting old coins that every vendor seemed to have. Jules and I suspect they are fake, especially since one of them was an "old" American coin that we're pretty sure was never actually circulating currency |
J: Now we're back in the comfort of our little home, regularly making batches of thai tea and nommin' on bananas and longans and mandarins. We missed Thailand.
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