Vientiane

-Forgot one note from Tat Lo, when i was walking back to the room one evening, there was a cluster of kids the oldest probably 15 giving themselves remarkable tattoos with a home made needle. I spent almost an hour watching this, some of the work was incredible, geometric designs, and the oldest kid was giving himself a chest piece, with two beautiful dragons, they offered to give me one, i was tempted but they were sharing the needle and dipping it in the river water.
3/10/11
-Arrived in Vientiane at 6:30 AM, took a shared Tuk-tuk to the center, most of the guest houses were either full or absurdly expensive, wound up finding a sort of dumpy room with my own bathroom for 60,000 not bad.
-left my shit and went to have a tea.
-took a walk around town, weird scene, lots of pricey western restaurants and cafes, and tons of Vang Vieng tubing shirts on euro clubber looking folks.
-went to the American embassy to deal with replacing my passport, very odd place, massive walls around the whole complex and a major road running in between, that was essentially closed to the the Lao people. the complex was right off and overlooking the black Stupa a beautiful and ancient crumbling stupa. couldn't go in because they only dealt with citizen affairs from 1-4, so wandered around until it was time to go back.
-Interspersed with the gov't buildings and western style cafes in Vientiane were beautiful monastaries.
-Back to the embassy, got the forms for the passport replacement, oddly, it costs $110 to get a whole new passport, but to get pages added to an existing passport, its $85 per page, explain that one to me...
-ate some wonderful Duck Lap (Lao meat salad, finely sliced duck served on a bed of spices and lightly cooked, traditionally the meat is served raw, but they cook it for falongs) for dinner, and hung out on the balcony.
3/11/11
-After breakfast wandered some more, walked through some beautiful monastaries, apparently the proliferation of monastaries here serves the population in the sense that rather then compulsory military service most kids spend 2-3 years in monastical service when they reach a certain age, which probably contributes to the wonderful chill energy of most people here.
-some pictures from various Wats:

 Huge beehive on the building, there were women selling fresh honey from the hive.

-spent a while at a different Wat then the one pictured watching stone carvers working on beautiful Filigree window covers.
-dinner, then balcony chilling, was interupted by an middle aged austrialian man with a deaf girl who couldn't have been more then 15 years old. He complained about all the sex tourism, then proceeded to take the deaf girl to bed. hard thing to deal with.


More soon, in Luang Probang now, want to go explore the city.