Beerlao is the nicest beer in southeast Asia; it tastes nice, is 5 percent, is cheap and comes in 640ml bottles - that's a fucking big bottle let me tell you. And after a 24-hour (that's not a typo, TWENTY-FOUR HOUR) bus journey from Hanoi to Vientianne I was ready for a few. The thing with the bus journey is they pick you up at 5pm on a scooter (along with all of your luggage), drop you at a random corner the other side of town, where a minibus picks you up and takes you to a bigger bus (they call it reverse Russian doll transportation), which doesn't leave for another hour. So you sit on the fucker sweating your rocks off (they promised me at the travel agent it had air-conditioning, they didn't promise me it would actually be turned on at any point), then it leaves and stops every 20 minutes to pick someone up, drop someone off, pick up some cargo, drop off some cargo, piss-break, food-break, drink-break, smoke-break, food-with-drink-break, drink-with-smoke-break, drink-with-food-with-smoke-break, drink-with-food-with-smoke-with-cargo-drop-off-break (I think you get the picture) and then, after all the fucking around, arrives at the Vietnam-Laos border 2-hours before the cunt opens. Why? WHY? WWWWHHHYYY!!??!??!? You then spend an hour fighting your way to the front of the queue to get let out of the country, they look at your passport and send you to another window, then you pay some money (varying on where you're from, who serves you and what the weather's like) and get sent back to the first window, where they look at your passport and send you to another window to get a stamp, then back to the first window just to make sure they didn't miss you, and eventually across the border (a piece of rope) to the Laos side. Here you fight your way to the front of the queue, where they send you to another window to confirm that the first window is open and that the weather's still shit so they know how much to charge you, back to the first window, on to a third window, back again, stamped, somersault, out the door and across another piece of rope (this one is about a foot off the ground though so it's a bit trickier than the Vietnam side). Anyway, my point is why doesn't the bus set off two hours later? Why doesn't anyone who wants to get the bus make their own way to the bus station? Why don't people use couriers to send cargo? And why don't they do away with the retard redeployment law where anyone who was dropped on their head as a baby has to work on border control. Just suggestions of course.
Like I say, after all of that I was ready for a few Beerlao's, so last night I had a 'few' and then I ordered a really hot curry and Kaori ordered something not so hot but dropped half a ton of chilli powder in there just for fun. This morning I have taught Kaori the finer points of what 'ring sting' means.
Okay, photo's...
