mmm… Swedish Pizza in Laos!

What an exciting day… After three prompts to get out of bed by Philippa, we were nearly too late for breakfast (Scrambled or “Sunny”); We than headed to the Laos version of the Arc de Triomphe, described as a “…big lump of concrete” (on it’s official plaque!!) – it was a little better than that, with great views from the top!

The most exciting part however was the discovery of a Swedish Pizza Shop for lunch! For those who haven’t tried one,… well,… let me put it this way – it’s almost worth flying to Sweden for! I will have to give you all a bite-by-bite account of the experiance some other time!

Off to the travel agent now, we are going to book some tix up north. Starting to miss some of you now! Oh, we managed to get a local SIM, however nobody has replied, so we don’t know if it works! Probably not!

Hotel Reception was “up a tree!”

After transisting in Bangkok, we have finally arrived in humid Laos (pronounced Lao, we confirmed it!!).

Unfortunately we don’t have a great deal to report, as we only arrived this morning (and spent most of today sleeping); Briefly though – the weather is great, the food is cheap (and we haven’t been sick yet) and the locals are SUPER friendly.

The hotel we ended up at is simple, but nice. We had trouble checking in though as we were told the “reception staff are up a tree”. Philippa tricked me however, this place doesn’t have a TV (let alone satellite TV which was my stipulation) !!

Better run, this is 300kip a minute, and we’re not sure how much that is in Aussie dollars – don’t miss any of you yet!

Another adventure begins…

We’re off to Melbourne Airport for our 14 hour flight to Vientiane, via Bangkok. I am glad to be writing this entry because I have had many conversations over the preceding weeks about how to pronounce Laos… a friend who has it on good authority from a guy that is from there believes that it is said “Layos”. These and many other mysteries should be solved over the coming weeks. I think that the Yanzi is off the itinerary which is sad, as it was the one big thing that I wanted to see, but it is sadder for the 100,000 people that have been displaced due to the spring floods. It is more like a humanitarian disaster than a tourist destination at the moment. We’ll get to see the scummy end of the Yanzi in Shanghai.

So travel with us as we blog our way around Laos (Layos) and Southern China.