Vientiane © Michel Guntern

In a capital with no street signs, directions are given by the way of traffic lights and various wats. Bicycles have a soft seat over the rear wheel for passengers, and most females wear dark, traditional, wrap-around skirts with a decorative link-belt.

The Vientiane I found was nothing like Paul Theroux's visit, in The Great Railway Bazaar, where 'a naked waitress jumped on to a chair and puffed a cigarette in her vagina by contracting her uterine lungs'. Neither did it seem to be 'raging' like the impression portrayed in the Australian article that I had read at the Laotian Embassy in Canberra. The Vientiane that appeared to me came closer to a Thai provincial town, than a capital city.

The French language of officialdom is only a romantic connection with a former protectorate (1893-1954). Hardly anyone can speak it now, and the older people who might have, claim to have forgotten everything.

Most of the alien faces I came across in the street were paler than the been-around-in-the-sun travellers, and had probably flown in by Aeroflot. There was a bus early in the morning to Ban Hei, which would take about an hour and a half, and then I would have to catch lorries the rest of the way to Savannakhet....