Missing… Presumed Having A Good Time

After a 14 hour train ride from Bangkok, I’ve gone from capital to capital. The first 2 hours were spent sitting in Bangkok for some unknown reason, Thai Time rivals Cuban Time, but for some reason, it’s less annoying. Guess the comfy bed that I had on the train and a couple yummy sandwiches that Lisa made for me made the time go by faster.

So far so good in Lao. I’m staying on the river just on the otherside from Thailand, which is nice because my Thai SIM card still works here. Nice little town that doesn’t seem like a capital city. The main road thru town is little more than a dirt road, but the city has some fine dining restaurants and some good wine. But the best part of Lao so far is Beer Lao. Finally, back in a country where the beer is cheap and good. It’s difficult to beat a 640mL beer for .80 cents, unless of course you’re in the Czech Republic and u get a Staropromen for .15 cents. Besides the food and drink, there’s not much to do in Vientiane (Vin Chan). I didn’t bring my camera out with me tonight so I’ll post pictures later. I went to see the Patuxai – Victory Monument “Arc de Triumph” Lao Style that looks sorta like a cement Rook from a chess game on a massive scale. I also saw That Dam (Black Stupa) and the pride and joy of Vientiane umm…. Big Golden thing, oh ya That Luang (Royal Stupa). Man this Stupa is really Gold! Impressively gold, even! Besides that, there’s not much else to see here. I did go and get a very nice massage at Wat Sok Pa Luang for a mere $3 an hour. Better than the Thai massages that I’ve been getting in Bangkok. So far, I’ve been mostly impressed with how cheap things are here. i.e. internet for .01 cent per minute or .50/hr That’s nuts! I’ve heard there’s even a cheaper place than that, but couldn’t be bothered to look for it. I think I’ve spent about 10 bucks a day here eating and drinking most of the day. I could sure get used to this.

I’ve found the best internet cafe in all of Asia. It has reasonably quick internet speed upto 756MB with some semi new well managed computers. The best part about it is Ta, he has a good knowledge of how computers work and diligently cleans them of Spyware, adware and viruses. I did my normal clean up job I always do before doing any banking and found only a few negligable items in all my scans. If you’re in Vientiane, you should come here for your internet. The best part is that it’s only 100 Kip/min or 5000/hr. Btw Samsenthai Rd and Setthathirath Rd. towards the river from the National Cultural Hall and Xayoh Cafe in the Lonely Bastard. Just down the street at a guesthouse, it’s 150/min no breaks.

Sorry for the dramatics. It’s only worse case for my Blog. Thailand is still intact and holding. Well if you have been following closely to the updates that I had put up on the Military Coup here in Thailand, you know it was pretty exciting around here for a couple days. Things have pretty much calmed down for the moment. If you were really watching closely, before the servers went down, you saw that I even spent a day out at Governement House, where all the tanks and soldiers are, taking pictures of the latest tourist attraction in Bangkok, Tank Row. Unfortunately, as with Murphy’s Law, the last few blogs have been lost forever. The servers at Bootsnall crashed a couple days ago and they lost all the entries that I’ve done all the way back to August 17th. The worst part for me is that since August 17th, I’ve filled in entries that have been missing from about June 15th to August 16th. Hundreds of hours of entries were lost. Fortunately, with the help of Google cache, Yahoo cache and Chris at Bootsnall, I have been able to reassemble most of what was there before their server blowup except for the real time war correspondent entries from the last few days here in Bangkok. That I’m really upset about that because the emotion, sense of urgency, the unknown… was all captured in the entries that came after the coup in near real time. I’m heading out of the country in a few hours and most likely won’t have much time to blog in Lao. Don’t know what the internet connections are like up there. I just know that ATMs are scarce.

I was woken up by a text message from the wife of an AP reporter that tanks were rolling down the street and a state of ... [Continue reading this entry]