Originally written on November 24, 2004

At 7:00 am our taxi picked us up from our guesthouse. We started our three hour journey to Siem Reap. We decided to pay the extra money for a taxi over the bus to save time both on the road and in line ups at the border. The first 45 minutes was as we expected, a paved road full of bicycles, motos, trucks, pedestrians, carts, cows, etc and our driver weaving in and out of each obstacle while honking the horn. This is the norm, and the expected, albeit a taxi goes much faster than the bus (ranges from 40 to 110 km/hr through these conditions). Fourty five minutes out of town the trip changed dramatically, the paved road ended, and was replaced with a super potholed dirt road with all of the obstacless of the first road. This is where the fun began! Add many swear words!

To be continued…

Originally written on October 25, 2004

The bus ride to Vientiane was uneventful, and a little longer than the ride to Vang Viang some 8? days earlier. In Vientiane, we stumbled upon a great buffet in a nice resturant for lunch. All you can eat Lao and sushi food, with chocolate milk too. The place was rammed, so we knew it was the right thing to do. After lunch we went to the Lao History museum.

The museum started out as a history of the ethnicity of the peoples, some dinosaur talk, geology and other typical museum stuff. Then it quickly turned into Communist propaganda and with displays on the workers, Lenin, and various ‘famous’ lao revolutionaries and the fight against the evil forces of the west and the ‘american puppets’ (boo capitalism). When we came out I didn’t know if I should call the guards ‘comrade’ or not. » Read the rest of the entry..