Helloooo Southeast Asia! A very quick drop into Bangkok and the posh city streets that I saw in the brief, brief time I was there:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/092.jpg
The image of the king is sacred by the way, including the frequent, massive billboards and building-sized posters:
Ze flag en panoramae du citie:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/090.jpg
Yes I made that foreignesque up completely.
Littel bit of traffic, those great green-&-yellow taxis etc. :
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/088.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/086.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/085.jpg
Have you ever - and I mean ever; look at the freakin' size of that compared to other stuff - seen a billboard quite so huge? :
And apart from that I mostly only got cityscapes I'm afraid, of Bangkok at least:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/062.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/063.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/064.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/060.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/068.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/069.jpg
The tallest building in Thailand, Bangkok, and possibly this whole part of the world, in varying degrees of proximity:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/071.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/072.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/073.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/070.jpg
Cool city architecture:
Oh and yes, check out the biggest freakin' fashion store you've probably ever seen. Note the scale of the blue lettering in relation to the people, then check THAT in relation to the rest of the pictures:
And I just had to check out this lush internet cafe - pretty sweet in any country but in a place, a continent where you have been used to an 18" by 24" cubicle in which to do all your work with people borrowing your elbow space every 0.25 seconds and an appaling speed of connection that makes you want to hunt down the network engineer and fit the keyboard somewhere it was never designed to enter - sideways.
This, with laz-e-boy chars and super-slick machines was pretty close to paradise to me:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/075.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/074.jpg
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And on to Laos, seeing as Thailand this forst time was only a 20-hour visit...
As you may have guessed, I don;t really have time for all the usual pre-amble. This is in part due to my exasperation with this process unitl I get up to date, and in part to the fact I'm a little woozy from more valium - once you got it it's hard to leave it alone 
but I do have my reasons as well. Some of them more valid than that I just wanna geta little bit high but
remember this is all totally legal here, so don't anyone try to tell I'm doing anything naughty 
In Vientiane, the Laotian capital there are some great buildings thrown up mostly for the tourist trade, such as this great-looking restaurant designed largely with that favourite olde worlde element in English gardens; antique cartwheels:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/175.jpg
This more radionally styled hunk of architecture is the Laos Cultural Hall, actually built in 1998, by French money:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/173.jpg
An older town centre Wat
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/172.jpg
And this sign which, in a nutshell, sums up the difference between Laos and, say, Cambodia and India! :
A metalwork statuee of ... an ant ... cooking.... Yeah, I thought that too. Looks kinda funky though:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/123.jpg
Saw this huge ornate archway to nothing in particlar (as far as I could tell from a moving tuk-tuk) om the way in, fom just over the Thai/Laos border:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/094.jpg
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And the independence monument up the street from my first hotel, on the main drag. It is a copy of the Arc de Triumph back if gay Pareee only made larger by the Laos government, just to piss off the French 
:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/118.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/116.jpg
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Hehe, little sign on a gateway right next to the American embassy:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/115.jpg
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Couple of stupas around the city:
The royal palace:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/110.jpg
The ornamental fountain near the main backpacker area:
A little comparison of the confusing money - just a couple of the notes, please note (ho. ho.) the numbers in Laos at the beginning of the figures... :
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/112.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/113.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/114.jpg
The side of the cultural hall again:
The mekong river, normally mighty as hell; just look at how much space there is now it has gone out at the end of the dry season! :
The black stupa; once the symbol of Laos, now a bit of a relic left in the middle of the city but amid nothing more than a club, a bar some crummy hotels and an electricity substation! :
Another cool pub building - I want THAT barrel of wine in my cellar :
And simply a reath fetching modern yet classically styled hotel:
And that, as I work through it all, is it for just now...
