Mar 12, 2025
Breakfast was on the top floor of the hotel, overlooking the town and the picturesque hills surrounding it.
We declined the invitation to hire a motor cycle to head out to the bungy jumping over the gorge, and instead settled for a more sedate wander down to the river and along the various roads of the town.
Gotta love Asian shop signs. Along with the various spelling issues, today’s winner was the fast food shop selling ‘originally chicken’ which presumably is now pork.
Vang Vieng has traditionally been the uninhibited party destination in the country, until the authorities decided that the deaths and poisonings were giving the country a bad name and cleaned it up. Now there seems to be a whole stack of young females traveling in pairs, so it must be fairly safe. However, if you look hard enough you’ll still see some remnants, such as the store spruiking that ‘we sell all the fun stuff – snoop dog cigarettes and fungi burgers’.
Needed to get more cash out of the ATM, which in itself was no issue. However pressing the button to withdraw one million kip does require a second thought. There are no coins, so you end up with a wad of 1000 kip notes, each of which are worth 7 cents. And you don’t want to be left with a pocket full at the end of the holiday as you can’t exchange it back. Paying for our coffee this morning set me back 100,000 kip and lightened my pocket by a kilo. Have only been able to use a credit card a couple of times at big restaurants, and that can only be done in US dollars, so you get an approximate (convenient) shop rate to convert Kip into US dollars, they add 3% for the bank fee, and your Australian bank then views it as an international transaction with another fee and conversion rate. Handy in an emergency, but it’s easier just to learn to deal with 7c notes.
It became rather hot and humid in the middle of the day, so we retired to our room and pondered all kinds of useless trivia, such as “why is Australia the only country that has switches on their powerpoints?” Well, actually, they aren’t. If you discount New Zealand who buy all of their powerpoints at Bunnings, the UK has switches too, but why so few countries is still an unanswered question.
Of course, that led us down a rabbit hole. One internet source said – “Several adjacent regions, including New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Argentina also use the same plug type”. If you discount New Zealand who are still trying to find the electrical aisle at Bunnings, you could possibly argue that PNG and Fiji are in the same region, but Argentina!!!
Then, of course, the inevitable question – why does China use the same plug? The official answer is “To utilise China’s limited copper in order to produce many electrical plugs at low cost, China standards organisations adopted the plug that used the least copper.” And now, in a delicious irony, they export them all to Bunnings.
Decided to treat our stomachs to an asian free evening meal. Had hamburgers and pasta at a local restaurant which was lovely, but the Lao Iced Tea was a bit of a mystery.
The view at breakfast
The way across the river
The town
The temple