There’s no option to fly direct from Myanmar to Laos, so going through Bangkok made it an easy choice to do 24 hour stopover there to regroup at Jeff and Ply’s and grab Jeff so he could come to the next city with us. From Bangkok we flew to Vientiane which rests in the south of Laos, right on border with Thailand. Many ex-pats living in Thailand actually use this city as a visa-run city aka they leave Thailand in order to officially leave the country then come back in a few days later and get a new 60 or 90-day visa.
Jeff had been to Laos before so he quickly got us up to speed on the basics and most importantly the amazingness that is Laos sausage. This delicious food paired with sticky rice is a must for all people visiting. You can find it just about everywhere throughout the country.
We spent our few days wandering the city, enjoying the night markets, hanging by the pool and taking in the Laotian culture. The locals are really warm people and we had some fun interactions. One hilarious interaction was with a small teenager I met in the hotel gym. He barely spoke a word of English but through charades asked to teach him how to lift to get stronger. I thought it was funny as he couldn’t have been more than 5’2” and 110lbs. Nonetheless, I put him through a workout (again without using words) until a point he finally fell to the floor in exhaustion and called it quits.
