Vientiane and more water

Lao New Year is the same time as Thai, so we went from one party to another… that lasted 3 days. After the looong trip from Bangkok by bus in bumper to bumper traffic, because everyman and his dining room table wanted to go back to his home town for New Years (No jokes, 15 people plus all their worldly belongings pile into the tray of utes to travel 4-5 hrs home) (Everyone owns utes) (No one we meet traveling knows what we mean when we say Ute..) , but anyway so we cross the border into Laos and then get to Vientiane which is the capital if you didn’t know, and found exactly the same thing going on there, except more creative… as well as having water thrown at you.. you get food dye, talcum powder, water balloons and some kind of Lao dessert that looks like fish eggs and that you can’t get rid of for days. The guesthouse we choose to stay at ended up being Laos New Years HQ. Everyone congregated on our corner to ambush and attack the passing cars, utes, bicycles, tuktuks, buses (who for some reason left their windows open knowing fully well people would tip water through them, same with cars.. and then they looked indignant when they were soaked). The only people that had amnesty were people with their backpacks on and police.. one Lao boy pretended to throw water at a passing cop, and the cop got of his bike and got all high and mighty and took the boys bucket off him and drove off… when there were 50 people all standing around him with buckets and guns. 20 Lao kids would be in the back of a ute with a big tub of water just spraying it on everyone one that went passed, infact that’s pretty much what the whole population of Vientiane did. And drink Beer Lao and dance to Shakira and 50 cent.

We met a lot of really cool people that first day while mucking about with the water, Lao and travelers, and we all ended up hanging out the rest of our time in Vientiane.