Blargh equals how I felt. My biggest concern this day was that I had an overnight bus ride to Luang Prabang and I was still not fully recovered from the day before. I was worried that I’d still be pooping water and I’d have to poop on the bus. Every 30 minutes. Around 11am, I ventured a walk around the city to test how I felt. I walked around for about 3 hours feeling okay. Not great, but good enough to not cancel the bus ride. Let’s power on.

The rest of my afternoon was spent hanging out in Backpackers Garden lobby just resting and planning other parts of the trip. At this point, I was running on only water and a couple bowls of rice. I didn’t want to risk eating anything else before the upcoming bus ride. At 7pm, a truck came to take us to the bus station. There weren’t enough seats in the truck bed for us all, so some of us, including me, had to sit on the edge. It didn’t seem like safety was a huge concern.

Regardless, made it safely to the bus. Below’s a pretty cool drawing of the Power Puff Girls and Optimus Prime at Backpackers Garden. Also, there are two people sleeping in the bottom right picture.

I stayed in a 4 person room the first night in Vientiane. It was a couple plus another person and myself. I met the couple, Pegite and Neela, the night before but all three of us had never met the fourth person. The couple said the only time they saw him was when he was passed out on the bed in the morning and had never seen him awake. I laughed at this statement, but woke up to find this mysterious fourth roommate passed out. I didn’t even hear him come in. Nor did I see him ever again.

The only tour I went on in this city was to Buddha Park. It’s exactly that… a park filled with Buddha statues. I thought it was an ancient site but no, it was made to attract tourists. Got me, damn it. I do not recommend going to the park. It’s not that interesting, unless you love Buddha statues. Then you should definitely go… maybe.

Anyways, since the middle of the night, my stomach was feeling a bit odd. I thought I’d be able to walk it off, but during the Buddha Park tour, I didn’t think this was something that’d be going away anytime soon. Thinking back, I did think that the watermelon drink did taste a bit odd. I remembered there was some type of milk that went into the shake. I should have just thrown it away after my first instinct of “huh, this tastes weird”, but instead drank it. Thus began my first real food poisoning experience while traveling. Normally, during stomach aches, I just drink a lot of gatorade, eat apple sauce and plain rice, take some medicine, watch TV, and pray to God to let this pain go away.

So I did exactly that, except I just drank water and ate plain white rice that I found at a local Asian Market. No apple sauce overseas, I guess. I holed up in my room and didn’t leave for the next 21 hours. Curse you watermelon drink, but stupid me for drinking it.

I’m sorry to start with this, but Vientiane was the least interesting city I visited. There was not tons to do there in my opinion. Maybe others would have loved it. I think it should be worthwhile to visit in a few decades though. Also, it’s nice to fly into if you’re headed up to Van Vieng to go tubing down the Nam Song River. I didn’t get to visit there and in hindsight, I wish I did. There’s always next time, right?

Anyways, Vientiane is the capital of Laos. During the colonial period, this city was a French trading post, so there’s a lot of French architecture around the city. Let me be honest and say that I don’t actually remember this. All I remember is that the city did have a non-asian feel at times, but I couldn’t really tell if it was French or Australian buildings. If you’re into old French architecture, go visit this city. Or Paris.

My first night in Vientiane was normal as any other city. I checked in, ate, walked around, ate some more, and then went to the local Night Market. I don’t know why, but I always go to Night Markets. Maybe it’s cause there’s not much else to do if you don’t want to go sit in a bar, but also because I feel that I get a better understanding of their culture this way. I’m glad I went cause I saw something that really shocked me. There was this man drinking beer on the street, which is not shocking at all. What got me was when he let his toddler kid drink some beer! What the heck? I’m not looking down on this at all, and if this is fine, that’s fine. But man, that caught me off guard. I had to take a picture.

Also, I got a watermelon smoothie from one of those stands. I love watermelon drinks. This becomes an important fact tomorrow.