We have been reading our LP guidebook 6th edition and the Inter City Hotel is an "our pick"! That is where the choice came from as initially we had been trying for the the Hotel Beau Rivage Mekong but it was fully booked. In the morning we browsed through antique and textile shops, tried to change our departure date to the 26th instead of the 27th but Loa airways does not fly daily to Chiang Mai at this time of the year. After a lunch of quiche and salad at Le Banneton we headed back to our hotel to escape the heat. One of us also ended up with tummy troubles from the salads we suspect.
The city's name, Vientiane, comes courtesy of a bastardized French transliteration of Wiang Jan and is translated as Fort of Sandalwood, but by all accounts it mustn't have been much of a stronghold, as the original city was overrun on a number of occasions by the Burmese and Chinese, and absolutely flattened by the Siamese in 1828, after which the city was abandoned and left to the jungle.
This is one reason why many of the wats in the city are of a relatively young age, and the road layout was designed by the French when they oversaw the rebuilding of the city from the turn of the 19th to early 20th centuries. We have strolled by many of the wats but have not been going in and reading our guidebook at each one. Hopefully tomorrow David will feel better and be able to venture out.
We had invited for dinner, our friend Victoria's guide (www.tribalmusicasia.com) from Phongsali. We were delighted when Phonexay could join us. We went to Ban Vilayac restaurant and had an excellent Lao dinner of which the steamed fish and chicken laab were very tasty and not too spicy. We enjoyed meeting Phonexay and hope that we will see him again as our tour guide in Phongsali. He is currently with his family working here outside of Vientiane with the immigration police. Vientiane has a river border crossing with Thailand.
David was still not comfortable leaving the room to go touring so Sinday was a quiet day with lunch at Loa Kitchen and dinner at the rated French restaurant, Le Vendome. We had soup, a main course, dessert (a yummy chocolate soufflé ), and a couple of wines each for a total of $34. There are several second hand book stores here so we both have been reading much of the day, with David reading "TheRavens" about the "secret" war in Laos.
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