Phongsali, Laos - "We're from Spain"

We arrived after two days of travel on the Nam Ou River and by bus to Phongsali, the capital of the north of Laos.

We found very few things to like about poor Phongsali, a depressed town overrun with Chinese investors.

This market is the center of activity in Phongsali.

Highlights include:

- We failed to find a single guesthouse that wasn't completely filthy (like, BIG fresh stains on the sheets) so we finally had to opt for the largest hotel in the town (4 stories!) which is owned by a Chinese man who made his fortune elephant poaching! Even that was filthy, but the big brown stains were on the walls, not the sheets. 

- The bathroom in our hotel had white tile walls, except for one tile next to the toilet which displayed the picture of a naked Chinese woman. Sexy!

- We entered a restaurant where many other people were eating to escape the rain and have a bite and the owner, an elderly woman, refused to serve us, presumably because we were from the West. 

- Our diet for the 2 nights we spent there consisted of primarily instant noodles and hot dogs which a shop owner cooked on a tiny BBQ each night across the street from our hotel. 

- The most well reviewed restaurant in town was in our hotel. We brought our hot dogs in there one night to eat and noticed the doors were bicycle locked shut, the tables were dusty, and half of the dining room was being used for storage. 

- We went for a hike and Lauren cried the whole way up the mountain and it rained on us when we were coming back down.

There are plenty of "restaurants," but they all serve the EXACT same noodle soup- only. 

While walking around town we saw an old lady selling Lao Lao (homemade rice whiskey) and decided to buy a small bottle. The old woman's husband was sitting there so we offered him a drink and immediately realized he had already been enjoying Lao Lao for some time. 

He asked us where we were from and, after we said America (big mistake), he said "America!" and gestured with his hands planes flying over head dropping bombs. Again he said "America!" and pointed an imaginary assault rifle at Chris and made bang bang bang noises with his mouth. (yikes) Then he started naming cities in Vietnam (presumably where he was stationed?) and counting off numbers (1, 2, 3, 4) and gestured the assault rifle again. 

We suddenly felt an urgent need to remove ourselves and hide in the guesthouse. We decided at that point that when talking to drunk old men it was much safer to say we are from Canada or Spain. 

This was the only thing good about Phongsali.