La Vie en Vientiane (Part 1): Getting There and First Glimpses

Painting the sky red onboard AirAsia flight AK609, KLO-KUL.

Barely recovering from my 2 month staycation in Brisbane, down under, the muse of wanderlust came hovering again. Pisay is currently undergoing a calendar shift, which means my travel plans of Melaka and Phnom Penh made last year will go down the drain. Usually we have downtime in the last week of October due to the school's Sports Fest and the Nov. 1 & 2 holidays, but that was before calendar shift, this year that's gone.

Mulling over this misfortune led me to give a second look at my calendar, and lo and behold, there was the window at the tail-end of August, two successive 3-day weekends and a local holiday (Iloilo City Charter Day) sandwiched in between! Woohoo, travel here I come!
I immediately checked airline websites and I checked AirAsia first, true enough they still had some seats left-over from their 300-seat sale. That was their promotion in celebration of their 300-millionth passenger. This was to be my most spontaneous travel plan ever. Usually it takes me 3 to 6 months to prepare for a trip, especially if it's abroad, this record cut that down to less than 4-weeks!

I ditched a Manila outbound flight to AirAsia's KL hub, instead I got the Kalibo, Aklan to KL route. First, it was on sale, and second, I only needed to board the Ceres Bus from Iloilo to Kalibo, compare the cost of that to getting a domestic flight from Iloilo to Manila!

The choice of where to go from KL was more difficult to make though! I had to mull over between (A) going around Malaysia for a little over a week, which meant Melaka, Kuala Terengganu and probably Langkawi, or (B) go back to Myanmar, this time through Mandalay and exiting through Yangon, or (C) tick-off one of my entries in my bucket list and go to Lao PDR. The little over a week I had, I felt, was not enough to do a rounds in Malaysia, meanwhile I would rather want to visit Myanmar after their elections in October and see what difference will that make to their country than visit it now. These left only one choice, go to Lao PDR!

So how to get there:

1. KLO (Kalibo) to KUL (Kuala Lumpur) - approx. 3 hrs 45 min flight;
2. Approximately 12-hr lay-over in KLIA 2; and
3. KUL to VTE (Vientiane) - approx. 2 hrs 45 min flight.

Total travel time - 18.5-hrs, 1-connection with lay-over

The choice was made, I went to Lao PDR!

Arriving in Vientiane

First glimpses of the Laotian planes.

The mighty Mekong seen from our airplane about to land at Vientiane.

Wattay International Airport is Vientiane's only airport, although it has two terminals, one for domestic and another for international flights. Only sections of it are air-conditioned, and do not expect to go down in glitzy style using a passenger boarding bridge, nope you aint in New York kid, you have to get off the plane and walk to the terminal, which mean climbing 2 flights of stairs afterwards because somehow, their arrival gates are at the second floor. The excitement of being in Lao PDR for the first time however will make you forget these considerations, trust me.

View of a Lao Airlines service from my cabin window.

Some of my fellow passengers alighting our aircraft and walking towards the arrival ramp.

Wattay International Airport (VTE)

The Airbus A-320 AirAsia service that brought me to Vientiane, Lao PDR

Being a Filipino-passport holder, we do not need a visa to enter Laos as a tourist, and we are granted 28-days, quite longer than the 14-days Myanmar gave me last year.

Visa-free for Filipinos, Lao PDR gives 28-days for tourism activities.

After clearing immigration, the first thing you would want to do is exchange your money. The Lao Kip (LAK) or simply Kip, is quite difficult to come by, so much unlike the Ringgit (MYR) which I usually get whilst still here in Iloilo. At the time of my arrival, Google valued the Kip at 8,171 to a dollar. Right after the immigrations desk, the money exchange of the Banque pour le Commerce Exterieur Lao (BCEL) could be found, they offered 8,157 Kip to a dollar. Apparently, and I found this really good for them, BCEL had uniform rates whether inside the airport or in downtown Vientiane. If you exchange, say $100, the difference of 1,400LAK between Google rate and the going rate wasn't really that bad. A bottle of mineral water in Laos is somewhere around 2,000 - 3,000 LAK, so that won't even buy you a bottle of water.

Money Exchange Tips:

• Before crossing borders, always check Google rates, that would usually be the present money market rate, and which would be the best you could get: all money changers will offer lower than this. How much lower you could go, that's your call, but of course you would like it to stay as close as possible to the market rate.
• Do not exchange everything at the airport, in most countries, airport rates are one of the most expensive. Although, as I've said already, in the case of Laos, BCEL offered uniform rates in Vientiane, whether at the airport or downtown.

Wattay Airport does have a lot of ATM's so if you prefer withdrawing from your ATM to get local currencies, I think it won't be difficult.

 
Going to Downtown Vientiane

Wattay airport is 4-km. away from downtown Vientiane. The most common way to go downtown is by buying a taxi-coupon worth $8 to $10 (65,000 to 80,000 Kip) depending on where your hotel or guest house is, which I found quite expensive.

If you're scrimping a little bit on the budget, what you could do is to go out of the airport immediately and be prepared to walk about 500-m to the airport entrance off the street. In my experience as I was walking, I had two empty hotel vans who asked me how much I would give for the trip downtown. The first one offered me 60,000 for the ride, which I turned down, of course, we haggled and his last price was at 50,000. I firmly said no. Not more than a minute later, a second van stopped, he asked how much the first van offered me, I said, "50,000", then he asked how much am I willing to pay, I said "30,000, not a Kip more", he said, "hop in"! Lesson, don't be afraid to turn down and walk away. Apparently these vans are operated by hotels and guest houses, they send-off passengers to the airport, but usually they will be empty going back downtown, so instead of going back empty-handed, they would settle for less.

If you won't be as lucky, you can still do the entire 500-m walk, at the airport entrance, you can hail a tuktuk back to the city for about the same price of 30,000 Kip.

A very quaint street in old Vientiane, the French signages hark back to the colonial days of France en Indochine.

Some of my first glimpses of Vientiane

Vientiane Accommodation

Vientiane is a growing tourism-driven city since it reopened to tourism in the 1990's. The city offers accommodation from the luxurious 5-star hotels to the budget backpacking type dorm inns. It is very easy to shop for accommodation through booking websites like Agoda, Booking or Expedia. There is even a wider choice once you're in the city. What you could do is book for your first night, that saves you the hassle of looking for a bed on your first hour or two in the city. Besides, the arrival card for Laos will ask you for your address whilst in the country, which unless you have a local sponsor, means the address of your hotel. After your first night, you can go around and check other places. In reality, internet prices are usually 10-15% higher than rack rates, so if you transfer hotel after your first night, you may actually save up.

Fortunately, my choice of accommodation was really good, it was clean, comfortable, excellently located and had good value for money. I would really recommend the New Lao Paris Hotel to anyone going to Vientiane.
 

My room at the New Lao Paris Hotel

Very comfy bed!

To be continued...