Laos is awesome. Or at least most of it is awesome. After our Vietnam experience, we are enjoying the greenery everywhere around, travels through mountains, pictoresque villages and social life. The Lao architecture is kind to our eyes. In Vietnam, everything was a bit dirty, every meter of a nice building was accompanied by 0.5 metres of wavy sheet metal. Here is more space and less people, that’s perhaps why. (Perhaps, yeah: in Vietnam there are more than 92 million people, in Laos 7. Both countries are similar in size.) So beauty doesn’t need to be destroyed so much. Even the temples are prittier and more decorated (apart from the Chinese temples, or churchies, how Mr. Black calls them, in Hoi An, the temples in Vietnam seemed a bit humble… and their surroundings dirty). Even Vientiane, the capital, seems more like a provincial small town, despite it has about 200 000 inhabitants.

We spent only 2 nights in Vientiane, just to recover after the journey (and most of that time we spent in an real Italian’s restaurant, feeding on italian delicacies), and continued to Vang Vieng soon. You know, the Lonely Planet guide is s bit funny. Nearly no pictures, and they write similar things about everything. If it’s a city, then it is bustling or pulsing, which in fact means busy traffic, neon lights and smog. If it is about a place in nature, then they advice you to take a ride on a motorbike or bike, alternatively to go on some tour. There is a waterfall, here a cave, as in SE Asia it has been so far all cast area. It so reminds me of the city blurbs and region descriptions I used to translate in my last job.
So we were not ready at all for the greatness that was expecting us in Vang Vieng.