Day 13

Day 13

We were both sad and excited about leaving Siem Reap, so far it has been our favourite place, but we were going to a new country and looked forward to new experiences & sights. As I think I said previously we weren’t able to book a flight on the Monday so we were limited to 2 nights and one full day in Vientiane.

We thanked Sony (the manager from the GMI) and were surprised to receive a gift from him for staying at his hotel.

The airport at Siem Reap is very modern (more so than Phnom Penh) and very relaxed, it was probably the most relaxed we have ever been checking in and waiting (which we did with a G & T, beer and cigs in an air conditioned bar). We were a little surprised to see the plane, a prop plane that carried about 100 people.

We had a stop off in a regional airport to go through customs etc for entry into Laos and you will love this experience.

On arrival at the tiny little airport, there was a minibus waiting to drive us to the terminal, it only took a few people so the rest of us walked. Then we were ushered in a line into a small room with two desks and 2 very important looking officials.

Man 1 – his job was to check our names on the computer and staple our passport photo to form 1 (application for visa form) and take $1 each from us (no idea what that was for) then he placed our passport and application on the next table, while we waited on the plastic chairs.

Man 2 – his job was to record our name on the visa and then very carefully and precisely stick our visa into our passport.

We then had to go to desk 3, outside the room.

Man 3 – his job was to take our money for the visa (and check our entry form, form 2) and record this somewhere and then pass our passport onto man 4, onto the next desk

Man 4 – he stamped our passports (and removed form 3). Then onto desk 5

Man 5 – he took our health declarations (form 4) stating we didn’t have hog wog symptoms.

Then we had to go through customs, which involved

Man 6 - removing some piece of paper that a previous man had placed in our passport.

And this is all done with a seriousness befitting airport officials; thankfully we are used to travelling and enjoy the experiences, rather than getting upset with the antiquity of it all.

So we were back on the same plane in the same seats for the domestic flight to Vientiane.

Our airport pick up was waiting for us on arrival in Vientiane, and we had a surprising trip to our hotel. We had read that Laos was the poorest country in Asia, yet what we saw in the short trip from the airport was a place more advanced, cleaner, and certainly not poorer than Cambodia. There are more expensive cars and less motorbikes, the traffic is much less chaotic, there are no beggars, and there is a feeling of more wealth in this country than Cambodia, (and we saw overweight school children, which you certainly don’t see in Cambodia). Maybe it is different in the provincial areas?????

Our hotel was lovely (albeit on the 4^th floor with no lift), but it is air conditioned, with twin beds, and a balcony so we were happy.

We dumped our stuff and made our way out to explore what I had read was the riverfront with lots of restaurants and clubs (incidentally you can see Thailand just a short throw across the Mekong). We walked a couple of blocks and found a restaurant and had a reasonable 3-course meal with 2 tall beers and 2 G&Ts, for $13. We are certainly struggling to pay more than $20 for a meal.  The lack of beggars and touts was a welcome change after the constant tugging of heartstrings in Cambodia.

We were tired by this stage so made our way back to the hotel to settle in for the night. We planned an early start the next day as we only had the one day to see what we could of Vientiane.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/ruthymartyc/CambodiaToLaosDay1314#

video: http://picasaweb.google.com/ruthymartyc/CambodiaToLaosDay1314#5392394722579863106