March 7-8, 2010 – Days 437-438 – Hanoi, Vietnam

Though it isn’t much to write home about, we spent a couple of days wandering the streets of Hanoi, doing a spot of shopping along the way. Hanoi is a great place for cheap shopping ranging from handbags to fake watches to decent western clothing and plenty more. Not a great deal of the goods are extremely high quality but depending on what you are looking for it works out alright. Plus, it is fun to have a look anyway.

Hanging out around the lake

March 7, 2010 – Day 436 – Hanoi, Vietnam

A market in Hanoi is a unique place. Like a whirling planet of activity all happening within the confines of a thimble. The aisles are so cramped that a single person can barely squeeze through, and just imagine what happens when someone stops to look at something in one of those tiny aisle shops.

The eye of the storm

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March 6, 2010 – Day 436 – Hanoi, Vietnam

At 6:30am, we pulled into Hanoi. Well, more like 25km outside Hanoi city. It was still dark and we were still kind of asleep when we shared a taxi with someone to downtown to try to find a place to sleep for the night. At least we were getting any early start!

Streets of Hanoi

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March 5, 2010 – Day 435 – Vinh, Vietnam

Between the hours of 5am and 6:30am the next morning, we were on a bus. Correction: 2 buses. Crossing the Vietnamese border was pretty much a piece of cake. It was slower than it needed to be because it seemed like the officials were looking to find any possible reason to hold up someone just for the fun of it. Since everyone on our bus was prepared with a proper visa and everything else, there was nothing they could do but sulk. (It’s a universal border official pastime.)

Waiting around for the bus

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We actually enjoyed Lao. Sure, there isn’t much to do and the transportation is expensive and horribly uncomfortable. But the ease of life and the nice pace of things makes it a great place to be for a while. There isn’t much to say good or bad about Lao; we had a good relaxing time. Not much more to it…

(To see the Lao photo gallery click here)

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March 3-4, 2010 – Day 433-434 – Phonsavan, Laos

First day we arrived and it was freezing!! Of course we were still in shorts since Vientiane was so warm. We rested a bit the first day and checked around to see how exactly we wanted to go about seeing the Plain of Jars.

Jars... on a plain

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March 2, 2010 – Day 432 – Vientiane, Laos

With some early morning negotiation powers we arranged a visa pick up, a stop at the concrete monster called Victory Gate, and then back to where we started for 30,000 Kip/pp. Of course we had to insist that we would only take 5 minutes at the embassy and 10 minutes at Victory Gate, which we did at both places. We scurried up the 7 stories of Victory Gate and back down in record time, much to our tuk tuk driver’s pleasure. Easy money for him, power sightseeing for us.

Victory gate

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March 1, 2010 – Day 431 – Vientiane, Laos

In the back of a tuk tuk we bounced and sped out of Vientiane to Buddha Park. About 26 km outside the city is a small park by the Mekong filled with numerous different styles of Buddha statues.

Budda feeling a bit grey

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February 25-28, 2010 – Day 427-430 – Vientiane, Laos

Very little to tell of these last several days. Funny, this whole traveling around the world thing requires lots of moving around. We took another awful all day bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiane and spent the next couple of days hanging out, walking around the city, and just generally waiting on our Vietnamese visa coming in another couple days.

Warning!

Travel Tip: – Vietnamese Visa in Vientiane, Laos

In case you are heading Vietnam from Laos, you can easily apply for your visa at the Vietnam Embassy, nearby Victory Gate. The application process took maybe 10 minutes to fill out the paper, turn it in, and leave again. From the riverside we caught a tuk tuk to the embassy for 10,000 Kip/pp. The visa (for Americans) cost $45 or 405,000 Kip (about $46-47 depending on the current exchange rate).

February 24, 2010 – Day 426 – Luang Prabang, Laos

At the last minute we decided to jump on a minibus heading for the Khuangsi Waterfall, about 30km outside Luang Prabang. The waterfall is actually a series of different size pools with ice cold, aqua blue water in the middle of the woods.

Backflip into the pool

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