I’m in Laos and…

Yesturday morning I was woken up buy “bang, bang, bang” from the builders next door, 2 dogs barking at each other and around 5 kids screaming. I thought sod this, tomorrow morning I want to wake up by myself. So, I decided to head to Laos, which is around 2 hours drive to the Friendship Bridge that connects the 2 countries from the house in Essarn where I stay.

Last night I returned to one of my favourite resturants called “IndoChine” - Laos food in nice souroundings and the prices are great. Tonight (After I have completed this post) I’m heading to a French resturant but worry it’s not going to be as good as the IndoChine, however my guests don’t want to eat at the same resturant 2 nights on the trot, however I would happily! We came to an agreement that we can eat there tomorrow so it’s not all that bad.

Today I hired a 100cc Moped and drove around the whole of Vientaine, the capitol of Laos. Within 20 minutes a Policeman sounded his whistle and pulled me over, he was sitting in a little hut with another Policeman and said that as myself and my guest did not have helmets on we had to pay a fine. We asked where the Police station was and he said it’s very difficult to find…. a long pause…. you can pay here however we don’t have a recipt book. 3 pounds later we drove on. On our way back to the shop to ask for some helmets (The shop didn’t tell or give us some when we hired the bike) another Policeman pulled us over… Another 3 pounds, we moved on.

We went to the Market and bought some Sarongs, had lunch and decided to head over to the Shopping Plaza. Upon arriving, it didn’t look like a normal shopping centre. There was a road ramp going up to the main doors so I thought I would drive up there to double check it was what I thought it was. There was a barrier, however my motobike could fit through so I started to drive up the ramp. All of the sudden a Secruity Guard signalled me over and said we had done very wrong, even through we were cars on the ramp. He asked us to park the motobike and follow him. At this point I was getting a little worried. I asked what was happening and he just kept telling me to follow him. At the end of the ramp was a table where he sat me down. He asked for my passport and wrote down my name with other things in Lao. He said he could make this paper go (Even though it was a scrap piece of paper) if I paid him 2pounds. At this point I thought about telling him to bugger of, after all he was only a secruity guard however my guest informed me it was easier. I didn’t rally want to give it to him however I thought it could get alot worse easily so I did.

I’m going to go now as I’m getting hungry!