One Year Away

Joseph

For most travelers, Vientiane – the capital of Laos, is a one night stop on the way between north and south Laos.  We’ve happily spent the last four nights here doing two things; eating and re-planning our trip. 

Laos is a former French colony so we decided to splurge and go out to a nice French restaurant on our first night here.  While traveling through Cambodia and southern Laos we’d eaten rice based dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  And although they were often delicious, I was ready for a change; specifically, I craved a nice steak. 

We found our way to Le Silapa, a nice place with plaster walls and exposed wood beams.  Penny ordered the duck and I had steak frites with tarragon butter.  For dessert we had a silky smooth chocolate creme brulee and a couple of Bailey’s on ice. 

After dinner we sat and talked with the owner Frederic, over a couple of drinks.  It turns out he is not a leftover from the colonialist days but moved here 12 years ago from Quebec City.  We truthfully told him that the food was as good as anything we’ve had back home.  And it was made
all the more impressive by the logistical difficulties of getting all
the ingredients to Laos.  As he put it; in a country where you often can’t buy cream it is a real challenge to run a French restaurant.  Our bill for dinner was less than half what one would pay in Canada for a similar meal.  However, it still came out to over six times as much as our hotel for the night!

Other than enjoying the variety and selection of food, the rest of our time in Vientiane has been spent recreating our trip itinerary.  Some keen followers of our trip have noted that we are already about a month behind schedule despite being only 3 months into the trip.  This fact caused us to reevaluate our itinerary and cut out some destinations in order to spend more time in others.

We’ve spent much of the last few days in Internet cafes researching, planning flights and making bookings.  We will post our updated itinerary sometime in the next few days.  It feels good to have a better (more realistic) plan.  As part of our new itinerary we’ve decided to leave Laos today and unfortunately skip the northern part of the country.  We will be taking an overnight bus to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and will post again when we’re there.