fatvegan

Libby and I are sitting for the day in Nong Khai. It's a hot little town in Thailand just south of Vientiane.

At the border, we crossed paths with an efficient-looking Canadian biker tourist. He ended up well in front of us during the usual passport/visa/departure-card shenanigans but as we walked out the other side we saw him walking assertively back towards us with a can of Pepsi in his hand. He smiled at us and said that Thai Pepsi did not taste as good as Lao Pepsi. Abandoning your plans to travel through Thailand for that sort of reason might seem a little drastic, but I can think of several friends who probably understand the same sort of sentiment if not the precise complaint.

We have mostly hidden out from the heat in this nice internet/ice-cream cafe. It's about 35 cents per hour which is damn cheap. Libby especially has utilitised its excellent ice cream facilities to the full. We interrupted our internet revelries to commence a bold search for pad thai which sadly ended at a grill bar run by an Australian fellow where we had a pizza.

We ate some pre-lunch snack vegetables and rice at a little street stall. The woman was a little shocked when I realised that my hard-won knowledge of Lao counting was transferable to Thailand. I probably repeated sii-sip-haa baht to her a little loudly and enthusiastically. I'm worried she just assumed that I thought that 45 baht for pre-lunch snacks was such an unbelievable bargain that I had to yell ou the price. It is a pretty good bargain, but when bargain hunting amongst people with a fraction of my income I generally try to be more discrete.

I have also drunk a fair bit of beer. Nice beer, but not Lao beer. Beer Lao vanished the moment we crossed the border. I fear that my short-lived love affair is over.

We're also about to head off on a 12 hour train journey half way across the country. What's even more fun is that we're in third-class. Hurray. Twelve hours of sweaty pain for the price of a Sydney beer.