Trip

6/5/02 Vientiene, Laos (Phillip)

6/5/02 Vientiene, Laos (Phillip)

Well, we leave on a bus for Hanoi, Vietnam in under an hour. I'm just burning up the last of my Laos money. The exchange rate here is 10,000 kip to $1. As you can imagine this means that everything costs thousands of kip. A coke is 4,000.

The funny thing is that I changed money on the black market the other day $20 gave me 200,000kip. Except the largest bill they have here is a 5,000 kip note. Well, the black market guy only had thousands and I walked out of the market with pocket full of bills. I took a picture. You can become a millionaire here just by changing $100, quite strange. Kelly and I were arguing over a bill the other day and then we realized that we were arguing over 50cents.... Kind of put it in perspective.... :)

We managed to cram 4 of us into a little room for the past two days to save a few bucks. Really we don't have to be doing this since I know that I'm pretty far under budget and Kel thinks she is too. However, when it's possible to save some money we might as well since we both know that Europe will suck our money dry fast. The money thing is still a bit strange, for example, the other day I didn't have enough kip for dinner or lunch and the banks weren’t open until the following day so I just didn't eat. It wasn't until late that I actually realized that I had only saved $2 by starving myself all day! Not exactly worth it...

We're off to Vietnam tonight. Everything should go smoothly, we have our visas in our passports and the $1 bribe we're required to offer at the border. Communism hasn't been so bad, the streets here are very clean and everyone seems quite happy. Obviously they're leading a pretty simple life, but simple isn't necessarily bad. There's little visible limitation to freedom, perhaps just a lacking of western goods. I've noticed that coke and Pepsi really aren't cheap by comparison to everything else. They cost about the same as beer but contain far more sugar here.

What other observations can I bore you with? :) Oh yeah, I bought a book on the US and Vietnam's involvement with the Laos/cambodia bombings. Should be an interesting read, AND, I'm pretty sure this is the first non-school/computer book I've bought.... There's a sad thought!

Posted by Admin at May 6, 2002 12:58 AM