To Laos

It was time to leave Malaysia behind and travel a couple of thousand kilometers north to Laos. We used the smaller LCCT airport in Kuala Lumpur as we were flying with Air Asia. Everything was pretty normal at the airport with a few exceptions. Firstly, there was McDonald's at the airport and it was by far the cheapest place to eat there. Usually I never eat anything at airports but this time it was actually affordable. Secondly, the airport worker at the check-in started asking us for flight tickets from Vientiane to Bangkok and from Bangkok to Kiev. I can't understand why a random worker would ask things like that. After showing the tickets everything went smoothly though.

The flight was nothing out of ordinary although some steam flowed inside the plane before it took off. Before landing the crew gave us a few papers to fill in for getting Laos visa. We had passport photos with us so getting visa was easy. Inna got a special Ukrainian discount and paid $5 less!

The airport of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is small, and from above it looked like we were going to land in the middle of rice fields! We took a taxi to the center with a Spanish guy who had been living in Vietnam for quite a while. It was his first time in Laos too though and we ended up searching for a nice guest house together. At first glance Vientiane didn't look too special, just as I had heard, and it was already getting dark anyway so we just took a room from the first reasonable guest house. Before sleeping we visited a small café where a nice old lady served us with pizza and potato salad. It looked like it was also the house she lived in, and she had a small business downstairs :). With full stomachs we walked back to our guest house and rested to be ready for the next day.

Steam in the plane!

The visa forms. No swine flu!

This is what we saw just before landing.