Utopia

Today we started off slow, around 9-9:30ish. Alex had been awake since 7 so she had already picked out our breakfast place. It was a wonderful French cafe that was known for their croissants. So of course I got the one called Pur Butter Croissant. Delicious. Crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. 

After breakfast we headed to the Utopia bar. It's slogan is "zen by day, party by night". It seemed like a good place to chill, read, and write until lunchtime. 

It's super hard to find through all the side streets, but it's worth it. There's tons of space to lay down, it's right on the Nam Khan, and the food isn't bad either. 

We hung out there for a couple hours, almost fell asleep, but then decided we should see some things so we headed to the National Museum. It was supposed to show us what the royal families lived like until they moved to Vientiane in the 1970's. 

When we got there we realized we needed to cover our upper arms to show respect, and neither of us had sleeves because it was such a hot day (suns out guns out). Distraught, we decided to find a place to plan our next couple days since we are leaving tomorrow morning early. 

We ended up sitting out front of our hostel to make a plan, and actually decided to extend our stay in Vang Vieng and shorten our stay in Vientiane. Vientiane is similar to Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng has more excursion activities that we want to do (swimming holes, caves, etc.). All of the places we pre booked have flexible cancellation policies so we were able to make the changes with no financial penalty!

At any rate, after hanging we hiked up to the top of Phou Si Mountain for the sunset, another amazing suggestion our host made for us. It was packed with people since it was such a clear night, but still worth it. We were able to see every side of the city and the night was a beautiful one for the hike. The mountain is right across from our hostel and it only took about 10-15 minutes to get to the top. 

After working up an appetite we found a new dinner place. We're glad we went here because the server taught us how to actually eat sticky rice! We've eaten it at so many places and struggled to fork the sticky rice only to learn that you use your hands. You pick a chunk of rice up with your hands and smoosh it into a ball. You push it into your opposite hand to really compress it; the rice becomes more of a chewy ball than grains of rice. Once you have the ball you use your thumb to grab the food (veggies, meat, whatever) and push it against the rice ball. We got to eat with our hands in a real restaurant and it was the RIGHT thing to do. Sweet. 

We're currently drinking tea and sitting at our favorite cafe down the street from our hostel. We'll finish up here and head back by 9-9:30 to pack up our freshly laundered clothes so we're ready to go bright and early tomorrow. Off to another Laotian town. 

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

- Ernest Hemingway