Discovering Vientiane-Sunday January 16th

Garden Orchids

Hammer and Sickle

Learning about International Relations

At work on Sunday on the Mekong Shore

Jesse and his new friend playing "ying pai"

Jesse the monkey prince

Greetings--Here are some of the photos from our prowl around Vientiane today. We are looking forward to going back down to the Mekong River shoreline (a block from our guesthouse) this evening for sunset to play the new game we discovered..."Ying Pai". It is a Chinese game like hackie sack that was introduced to us when we met a Dutch fellow playing in the main square by the fountain today. We are finding the weather warmer here. We enjoyed the "National Museum" which someone has put a tremendous amount of work into. The artifacts and the building itself were quite impressive in that they have a wonderful collection of old photos and an excellent series of displays detailing their rather current history and independence in 1975. But it was quite down-trodden overall. I was sadly intrigued by a map of Laos showing the density of areas bombed by the US during the Vietnam war--?#$%@&*?!!!--what a senseless initiative! and we still haven't learned from our mistakes it seems. We find the people mostly content with their way of government at this point but the degree of poverty is striking overall. There is a lot of development here in the capital and it appears that along the waterfront they are making a huge effort to create a gathering spot to attract visitors. Very interesting here and Jesse intrigued with "Ying Pai". We also found a public pool so we are considering a swim this afternoon. I am still recovering from my green papaya salad which was wicked spicy. BTM