vientiane

• well, i'm no longer counting bug bites on my fingers . . . but that's getting ahead of myself. there's not a whole lot to say about vientiane in terms of what we did - we stayed in a nice hotel with air conditioning, went to markets, and attempted to escape the heat with fresh fruit shakes at an assortment of cafes. we stayed through tuesday evening, when we boarded a 'sleeping bus' for the long trip to pakse. but i'll fill you in on that in a minute.
• vientiane is the capital of laos and really the only major city, but that doesn't mean it's anything like i would ordinarily think of as a major city. there are no skyscrapers - the tallest building is probably no more than ten stories, and it's not an office building, it's a luxury hotel by the mekong river. the main roads in town are paved, and there's lots of traffic, but at least half that traffic is motorbikes, usually carrying two or three people each, and not always traveling in the same direction as the rest of the vehicles. otherwise you see all kinds of suvs and other four-wheel drive vehicles, some cars and trucks, and loads of tuk-tuks, a kind of taxi that usually consists of a sort of mini-cab built onto a motorbike. in laos you drive on the right side of the road, but motorbikes making left turns often drive a ways on the left margin of the road until there's a break in the stream of traffic and they can dart across to join the people going their direction. add to this pedestrians, cyclists, and people pushing carts of goods for sale, and you have an idea of what a mess the roads can be. and off the main roads, the smaller more residential streets are often unpaved tracks in the dirt swarming with small children, chickens, dogs, cats, and the occasional goat.
• markets are also unlike anything i've ever seen at home - rows of vendors selling just about anything you can think of: cell phones, small home appliances, pirated movies, jewelry, fresh fruit and vegetables, clothing both made-to-order and off the rack, ready-made snacks, baskets, furniture, toiletries, raw meat, fresh fish, books, spices, cold drinks, school supplies . . . really almost anything you can think of. usually the stalls are laid out under a series of tent-like coverings to shade shoppers and shopkeepers from the sun, but recently a 'mall' was built in vientiane, complete with airconditioning and the country's first set of escalators. the areas surrounding the 'mall' is a market as i've described above, but inside there's an area for performances, a public toilet, and some food stalls and jewelry stands on the first floor. each of the three or so levels has food stalls, coffee stands, and an assortment of tiny shops, many not much bigger than the stalls in the market below. the indoor shops sell most of the same sorts of things as the outdoor stalls, though i don't recall seeing meat or produce indoors - mostly clothing, shoes, electronics, dvds, and jewelry.
• i didn't buy anything but cold drinks, but heidi bought a sin - the skirt most lao women wear around the house. it's a long strip of thin cloth about three and a half feet wide, which you have sewn into a tube, often at the shop where you buy it, but not always. you wear it sort of like a wrap-around skirt, folded over and tucked in at the top. since most lao people bathe outdoors, it's usually long enough to serve as a kind of cover-up. once the person is done washing, a clean one slips over the top, and the wet one drops to be rinsed and worn another day. also, since they're much wider than a western-style skirt, women can comfortably sit cross-legged on the floor without flashing the public.
• frances is home from her babysitter's house now - she goes out to play most of the day - so i'll sign off now and tell you more later.