preparing to go

[amw]

This time tomorrow i hope i will be at the airport, which is likely to be an absolute shitshow. Chinese New Year is just as big of a deal here as it is in China, which is to say for the past week or so you can sense that everything has been winding down. Shops are open, but they're missing product, i guess because people are buying in bulk, or the

Comments

[olamina]

I'm going to South Africa tomorrow and doing quite the same things. Will change my sheets tomorrow morning. I'm pretty confused about how things work in SA but I always say if I have my passport and money and my phone I can figure everything else out upon arrival.
Bon voyage!

[amw]

I feel the same way that normally i can just show up with passport, money and phone and the rest can be solved. I'm not sure why i felt the need to do more for Laos, maybe because the online guides are written by tourists who went to Thailand first, which by all accounts is a very easy and welcoming place for tourists, so they got culture-shocked going somewhere that didn't roll out the red carpet? Who knows. I guess i'll find out soon, since before i get to Laos i am going to be stuck in Bangkok airport for something like 8 hours overnight.

Have fun in South Africa! 一帆風順 one sail favorable wind, as they say in Chinese.

[fauxklore]

They really do use US dollars a lot in Laos, except for things like cheap food in the markets. Similarly in Cambodia, by the way.

There are a few places in Latin America where dollars are widely used too. I was just in Costa Rica and many vendors preferred dollars to colones. And Ecuador even made the US dollar its official currency.

As for being warm, it depends on where you go. I remember being cold in Phonsavan (where the Plain of Jars is).

[amw]

It's strange, so far the only place i paid in dollars was my original guesthouse which i booked beforehand via Booking.com so i had already been quoted in dollars. Nowhere else has even mentioned it as an option.

I have to concur on the cold thing. At night up in the more mountain areas it gets down to around 5 degrees at the moment, and it's not much warmer when you get up for the morning market! Fortunately during the day (except today) it's been very nice weather.

[fauxklore]

I think I used dollars mostly for a couple of day tours. Also an option for taxi from airport to hotel in Vientiane. Definitely not for the sort of cheap in touristy places to eat, though.

[notte0]

In Cantonese, we have a phrase that goes 年廿八，洗邋遢 which basically means “on the 28th, we clean up”…. Basically it just means Spring Cleaning or something to that effect. I don’t know if it translates to Mandarin as 邋遢 is a very Cantonese 口語 noun meaning “dirtied things.” So your cleaning stuff yesterday (which was the 27th according to the Lunar Calendar) was just in time for the cleaning.

Absolutely no cleaning, sweeping, throwing out trash on the first 3 days of the New Years!

Hope you have an enjoyable trip! Have fun! 恭喜發財!