laos, first 3 weeks

Please forgive us for the very short post on the last two weeks. we were not in a writing mood, maynly due to Laos being very touristic.
Another reason is Tom, who joined our team for the last two weeks.
but we hope youll enjoy the pictures and remarks.

03/02/07
Were 3 weeks in Laos, back in Vientiane, sitting in our local coffee shop, drinking excellent Lao-coffee, all excited about Gals’ first solid --------- in 5 days.
Our new plans: when Gal regains here health (in two days, we hope) we’ll start cycling east towards the beaches of Vietnam, to Ha-Long bay and maybe stop at Hanoi, on the way north, to china.
Yesterday, we got our visa to Vietnam and we extended our Laos visa in 15 days. A visa to china we already have.

The visa to China

Two months ago, as we arrived to Bangkok, we went to the Chinese embassy, to get a visa. We wanted a 6 months visa.
The nice lady in the embassy explained that we need a LOI (Letter-Of-Invitation) from a tourist agency in China. To get that, we need the service of a local tourist agency. The nice lady referred us to an agency. We went there, and after a long and tiresome explanation, we were told that the visas will be ready in 4 working days.
We set out to Kanchanaburi, to give our new bicycle a test drive.
A week later Rami went to the embassy to get our passports. As expected, we didn’t get the visa we wanted. Instead of a single-entry, 6-month visa, valid for 3 months, we got a double-entry, 1-month visa, valid for 6 months…(after paying twice the coast of a regular 2-month visa.
Rami got very-very-very-very angry (it made the right impression), and after along argument we got half the money back. We decided to deal with it later, in China, when trying to extend the visa.
Today, two months later, with our new plans (two more weeks in Laos and one month in Vietnam), we’re grateful for having this visa.

Last evening in Thailand