A rare "normal" wake-up and a leisurely breakfast. The hotel in Vientiane is French run and very pleasant. Our flight is not until 1:40pm so we had time to walk around town a bit. Walked down to what was the Morning Market but it has been eclipsed by multi-storey malls on either side and looks ready to be demolished. All the silver and jewellery stalls have moved into the slick new buildings but still sell the same stuff they sold 20 years ago. The big difference...

Today we met T who we had known in Laos 20 years ago and spent most of the day just driving around town seeing what had and what hadn't changed. Good and bad changes and some things just don't change. Again, we heard the story about how the Chinese are investing so heavily in this country. A theme which we had heard earlier in both Myanmar and Vietnam. They come bearing gifts and build some grand edifices which are more or less "presents". Of course, there is a p...

Left the hotel in Hanoi at our usual 6:30 departure. Streets were already very busy with commuters and kids cycling to school. It was a dreary wet morning so we were glad to be away. Our driver seemed to be conducting some extra business of his own on the way to the airport so we had a couple of brief stops and numerous calls on his mobile phone. The hotel had very kindly made us up some breakfast boxes so we scoffed that down with a coffee at the airport. The fl...