Vientiane
10 februari 2010 - Vientiane, Laos
I'm still in Vientiane. I wanted to take a bus to Hanoi, but they were all full because of Tet (chinese new year) in Vietnam, so then I booked a plane ticket and then the next day the buses were no longer full :S You have to book flights three days in advance, so I was doomed to stay in this city for three more days. Been here a week now. Feel like I know every inch of the city. Before I was sharing a room with Nancy, who is a Dutch girl. We would bounce around town doing whatever we could to do to not have to do nothing. Yesterday she left and so did the rest of our group (from the last post). So you'd think I'd be left alone; wrong! wrong! I still have my Pakistani friend down at the coffee / internet shop. He works for Mac / Apple, but has no office, so he sits down in the coffee shop which is on the first floor of their office building. I see him there every day. He's studying a course which he already knew, but has to keep reviewing it until the exam date which is in two weeks, so he's as bored as I am. Goes without saying that I've meditated quite a lot in this period :)
One last observation: I've been in this coffee shop quite a lot. And because of this I have started to notice a bunch of couples that frequent the place. It's ridiculous to see how their emotions will vary. This one couple entered the other day with the girl furiously walking with the guy following, her: "don't fucking talk to me" him "I don't even fucking care", which they repeated over and over again. Now they're laughing their head's off together right behind me. If only we could look at outrselves objectively whilst these things are happening.... oh wait, we can ;)
Ik zal nog proberen het adres te achterhalen van de beste pho tent daar.
Waar ga je hierna heen? Mocht je rondtrekken door Vietnam dan is Hoi An ook een aanrader.
Gewoon compleet negeren, ook al is dat lastig, blijkt het beste te werken.
Cool! Ga je langs de kust afzakken? Hoi An en zeker ook Mui Ne vond ik zelf echt heel tof. Mui Ne is een ideale plek om wat dagen aan het strand rond te brengen, wel enorm rustig.
Ik had zelf heel graag Con Dao bekeken (een archipel ten zuid oosten van het vaste land), maar het bleek qua tijd niet uit te komen. Schijnt vrij lastig te bereiken te zijn, alleen met een helicopter of met een boot die niet erg regelmatig gaat.
http://www.vietnamtraveltour.net/condaotravel.html
http://wikitravel.org/en/Con_Dao
De volgende keer dat ik Vietnam bezoek ga ik daar zeker weten heen.
De pho tent nog niet kunnen vinden, helaas werkt street view niet in Hanoi ;-)
Had nog niet van Con Dao gehoord, maar klinkt wel gaaf, ik wil nog wel ergens een eiland meepikken, dus wellicht is dit een goede optie. Ik heb echter ook niet heel veel tijd meer (om te doen wat ik wil). Thanx voor de tip in ieder geval.
Hier in zijn de mensen overigens al een stuk aardiger :)