vientiane, around july 23

so we headed down to vientiane, the capital. it has about half a million people. we got there and found that accommodation is crazy expensive, and mostly full. we wandered for a while (having learned that we can't trust the lonely planet recommendations anyway) and we finally found a room which cost double what the other rooms in laos up until then cost. but...the city was kind of a relief. the second there evening foo got a beer and we went to this fountain to sit and drink it. we sat, and then a lady walked by. and watching her walk, i could tell she was a working girl. only working girls walk like that. then she went and flirted with some lao boys sitting on some benches. then we heard her talk and realized that she was indeed a boy. then some creepy looking kids came and sat near us. something about it just seemed strange. they were all probably between the ages of 11 and 18. then this fat, middle aged white man who looks like he could be somebody's dad walks up and sort of looks around, looks at his watch, looks around again, then is joined by a young lao boy who is maybe like 20 years old. they go sit on a bench and we can see them talking. then we realize a business transaction is taking place. then something happens with the creepy kids sitting next to us and one of them starts wailing. crying and screaming. and we can't figure out why. but something tells me we should not be there. and we shouldn't help this boy, even though he might be hurt. so we get up and walk away, and see the old white man with the boy walking. we walk out of that area, and stop to look at a restaurant menu. then the old white man comes up behind us with a different boy (i guess he changed his mind) and we decide to follow them. we followed them for a while, but then got distracted. so funny. to see a 60 year old white guy with gray hair and a beer belly picking up this small 18 year old lao boy. and the white guy is probably a responsible husband and father, and probably a businessman or something. it made me think about how many people that i know that might have secret other lives.
i got my vietnamese visa in vientiane. $45. again, foo has to pay nothing. i'm so expensive to travel with.
ooohh also, we went to see a place called COPE. it's an amazing program. but first a little history on the country: in the 1960s and early 70s, during the vietnam war, the US bombed the shit out of laos because they were trying to kill vietnamese people staying in laos. they dropped something like 260 million bombs. enough so that something like 1 was dropped every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for several years. and in tests of these bombs (they're carpet bombs) a third of them didn't explode on impact. so all over laos there are these unexploded bombs, called UXOs (unexploded ordinance), or 'bombies'. they're small little bombs, but if you step on it or play with it, it could explode and kill you and anyone else around. so there are potentially 80 million UXOs in laos. since the war ended (which laos wasn't involved in in the first place) 30,000 people have been killed by UXOs. and many more injured. losing limbs or eyes or fingers. often kids are killed because they find the bombies and know that they can make good money buy selling scrap metal, but don't know that what they have is a bomb. and there are tons of these bombs. people all over the country have bomb casings and other parts of bombs around their homes. they reuse the metal to make things like tables and stoves and flower pots. in the more rural parts, we saw all kinds of reused bomb parts as decoration and and functional objects. poor people are very creative and use their resources well. anyway, COPE gives prosthetics to people in laos, many of whom lost limbs from these UXOs. they have an amazing exhibit about it. there are videos of people telling their stories, about how they lost limbs or they lost kids or parents. you can see what all the bombs look like. and they have several home-made prosthetic limbs that were donated to the project by people who received new prosthetic limbs. some people even made their homemade limbs using bomb parts. very creative, i have to say. it was pretty amazing to see. but COPE gives people real, good-quality prosthetic limbs and teaches them how to use them. they even pay for transportation to vientiane and back to their homes.
we also rented bikes there and saw some historic things and such. rode down the river. had dinner on the river and at the markets and some little restaurants. saw a french film. (the french occupied laos for a while, so there are baguettes and words in french everywhere). foo discovered a baguette sandwich, containing pickled veggies, eggs, cheese, mystery sauce. very good. and i had quite a few fruit shakes. i think we used the time in vientiane to chill out and recover from super tourism. then we headed up to phonsavan.