Vientiane: Party Time, Excellent!

The past few days I have been hanging out with Sara, my cousin, who conveniently works in Vientiane, Laos. Well, the convinence is no coincidences. In fact, the decision to travel in this part of the world was largely based on the fact that I have family living here.

Over the weekend I got a glimpse of the 'boring' life that Sara has to deal with here as a UN worker. Although Lonely Planet might pass Vientiane as a sleepy little capital, let me tell you something else - it is happening with parties! I'll tell you.. these people here can put UGA students on a winning football game weekend against Alabama to shame with their party skills.

In fact, as I am sitting here in the Internet cafe, trying to recall the details - I am drawing a blank. This might or might not have to do with the amount of Lao Beer consumed in 24 hours.

Ok - Friday night was a goodbye party for a colleague of Sara's. The night started pretty tame with some Buddhist string tying ceremony. But then the wine began to be poured and poured and ( well not exactly poured.. what do you call it when you pour wine from a box, tapped?). Well, you get the point.

On Saturday, while Sara and I were on our way for a late Brunch (you could say lunch, as it was that time of day, but the breakfast menu was still available and you bet we were going to hit that up!) Sara got a phone call asking where she was and why she was not at the party! Party? Yes, apparently her Laos boss was throwing a party for his department and she was invited. Well we finished our Western Breakfast (again, we were not going to pass up that good food!) we headed over to the boss's house.

As the boss is a Laos government official, it was a traditional Laos party. Meaning LOTs of food and LOTs of beer laos and LOTs of singing! Sara is vegetarian so they cooked a variety of egg dishes especially for her. I jumped on that band wagon too since the other food dishes were a bit harder to recognize, and pork is as readily available as water. Now in Laos it is rude to say no - and there is this tradition of being handed a drink and you need to finish it all at once. You can imagine the damage of drinking 5 cups of beer in about 10 min. Well, it made it easier when I was handed over the microphone to sing! Yes, we were forced to sing!!! Laos gov't forced singing event. Thank god for the lao beer....

So imagine with me about say 25 lao people, including 1 high gov't official. Everyone is stuffed with food and drink and they are belting out Laos traditional songs. Then the mic comes to me. What do I do? Sing 'Am Israel Chai' of course! I got a few of them to come up with me and sing as well as keyboard accompaniment! Yes Lao people - Am Israel Chai!

And that was just Sat. afternoon. Sat. night there was a big party that just about every Ex-Pat in Vientiane attended. It was a benefit concert with some quite good local bands doing cover songs. It is a good thing the music was good, because it gave me a chance to dance and sweat out the beer still in my system.

Now I know you all are aware that Sat. night was ALSO the final world cup rugby match! Yes, South Africa vs. England. You might be thinking.. why in the world would you be at a concert when the BIG game was going on? Well, no worries. The match started at 2 am, giving us just the right amount of time to get from the concert to the place where the match was being shown. Oh yes, I watched a whole rugby match at 2 am without falling asleep! It was the final after all. South Africa won, if you are interested, although I do think they got more bloody and bruised then the English.

On Sunday, Sara and I decided to take it easy. Sara took me around to all of the important sites in the Capital, and we managed to fit in some shopping too! Laos apparently has some very nice silver jewellery at great prices. Sara, in fact, bought me a beautiful silver ring that I was admiring. I must get her something nice in return.

And oh... after talking with bunches of people I decided to scratch my China plan. I am going to Vietnam instead. I was really undecided on which one to do, but someone made a very very good point. Vietnam is a smaller country, therefore you can see more in a shorter period of time. Very good point. So this morning (monday), I made my way to the Vietnam embassy. Got my visa via the 'rush service' (ie paying them $20 extra dollars). And jumped on the a/c bus to Vang Vieng. What they mean by a/c here is it works for the first 30 min and last 30 min. Apparently it is not needed during the hottest and longest stretch of the trip. Oh well.

So now I am in Vang Vieng. I will stay here for a few days and then head up to Luang Prabang, where I will probably meet up with Sara again. More parties..? We'll see, with Sara you never know...