March 13th (Friday) - Day 13 - Vientiane

We met Jess at half 9 as he was walking through town.He showed us a few sites and left us at the day market. We had a wander around the market and brought a few things. We wandered up to the Putuxing and walked up to the top. It was built from concreate given to the country by the US to build an airport. Instead they started to build this but never finished it. After a wander around we dumped our shopping at the hotel and got a jumbo to the Beerlao factory. Guiness eat your heart out. I have never laughed so much. We arrived and went to reception- there were no signs or anything. We got taken to a back room and we were given a beerlao. Then she wandered off and left us.We had no idea what was going on. 10 mins later she came back and gave us another beer and left us with the beerlao kareoke. We cracked up and she left us again. 5 mins later some other people turned up. They had no idea what was going on either. After a 3rd beer she took us to the factory. They showed us the Can process but we could not hear a word she was saying.Lisa had to pass on what she could hear. They would not show us anymore than that! She sat us back in the same room and gave us more beer and well as handing out some freebees. A sticker and the 2009 Beerlao pin up girls. Dont get to excited boys these girls are fully clothed. That eveneing we went to Marfet.This is a charity resturant to get kids off the street and trained in a job. We arrived and realised that Jess was hammered. It was really funny and he kept repeating everything he said. After dinner he dragged us to an English pub run by freddy Mercury. He has a local as a waiter who had a book of slang from the people that had visited the pub. Some of it was really nasty and I should not have found it funny.

March 14th (Saturday) - Day 14 - Vientiane

After a long drive north we were a few miles from our home stay. We were going to stay with some locals over night. To get to the village we had opted to go by B52 boats.These are boats made from the shells of B52 bombs dropped by america during the Viet Nam war. They were dropped on Lao because they did not reach their target and could not land with the bomb still attached to the plan. They reckon 2 million bombs where dropped on Lao, more than the whole of WII. I expected the boats to be really fast but in fact they were painfully slow.The village was made up of 43 houses all on pillars to keep them off the ground. We were staying with 2 families. The thing is we hardly saw them as they stayed seperate from us. We had a home cooked meal but we ate seperatly. After dinner we joked around with some local children, making funny noises and using our fingers to communicate our ages. The oldest was 13 and was quite rude,giving us some adult gestures. The family were all in bed by 9 so we jumped into our beds. When I say beds it was a bit of foam on the floor and because we were in the mountains it was freezing. I hardly slept and never wanted morning to come so quick. I enjoyed seeing how the locals live but all in all I am lucky with what I have.