MF² Worldtour

Our first destination was Laos. After a long flight from Zurich with a stopover in Bangkok, we finally arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. During our stopover in Bangkok, we had a special encounter. There were monks sitting in a lounge and reading books. While reading, people came and prayed to them. We have never seen such a thing before, but it seemed to be normal to other people around.
We stayed a total of three nights at the S2 Modern hotel (http://www.s-2hotel.com/) in Vientiane. It is a modernly furnished hotel in a quiet place a bit outside of the city centre, and we can definitely recommend it.
On our first day, we mainly worked on recovering from our jet lag and spent most of the day in our hotel. We went out in the evening and our first stop was a food market, where we were introduced to the more adventurous side of Lao cuisine. Here, stalls offered everything from fried insects like crickets and worms to living crabs which were tossed into fresh salads. We were not brave enough to eat something like that at the market, that's why we have chosen another place. In our uploaded pictures, you can find a few good places where we have been eating or drinking something. The following day, we did some easy sightseeing by foot and tuk tuk. We visited Patuxai, often called the Victory Gate, and Pha That Luang, the iconic golden stupa and a symbol of Laos. We also passed by the Presidential Palace, an impressive colonial-style building and we strolled along the Mekong River. While walking around the streets and doing some sightseeing, we realized that there was a huge amount of trash scattered around the city, accompanied by unpleasant smells.
In general, Vientiane can easily be explored in just 1-2 days, as there aren’t many major attractions and it isn’t packed with activities compared to other destinations. If you plan on visiting Laos, we even recommend skipping Vientiane and directly going to more interesting places that Laos has to offer.
From Vientiane, we took the train to our next destination. The train, built by the Chinese, runs all the way from China, through northern Laos, to Vientiane. It’s a modern setup, and the station feels like an airport because they have scanners and security checks. As we went through security, they took away the Swiss army knife of Matthias. You are not allowed to bring knives exceeding a certain length and there is no such thing as checked luggage as on planes. Besides that minor frustration, traveling by train in Laos was very efficient and we met a very kind and funny Laotian guy who was very communicative and knew English relatively well, which enabled the first proper conversation with a local person. So let’s see and hope that we have some more wonderful encounters like that at our next destination, Luang Prabang!Read more