Vientiane may be the capital of Laos, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a small town with a limited number of things to see. So today I took a bus northward, to the even smaller town Vang Vieng. I was quite annoyed that it is next to impossible to book accommodation online in Laos - walking around town with my backpack, I seem to be unable to make sensible housing decisions. I'm definitely not the kind of backpacker who is comfortable lugging a pack through town while comparing guesthouses.
To make up for the stress of having to find a guesthouse, I treated myself to a traditional Lao massage in the evening. Massages are incredibly cheap in Laos: I paid 70.000 Kip (about 7 euro) for a 90-minute massage. On the scale of painfulness, Lao massages range somewhere between Swedish and Thai massages. A very nice touch was that the massage included the application of hot herbal stamps that further relaxed the muscles after the painful bit ;-)
