laos

Have you ever got off to the wrong start with someone and then come to regret it? Because that is how I would describe the brief period of time I spent in Vientiane, capital of Laos...

I arrived there on Friday morning after a pleasant and efficient flight from Cambodia, which thankfully hadn't been affected by the torrential rain of the day before. My first impressions were favourable - there were no pushy taxi drivers harassing people at the airport and, thankfully, a driver was waiting to whisk me to my hotel, which meant at last one of my attempted online reservations had worked for this city.

After I checked into my hotel - a decent enough place but with a window overloooking a generator - I went for a stroll. Vientiane is a very, very small place for a capital, but that is supposed to be part of its charm. Billed as a friendly city with old French colonial buildings bustling over the Mekong river, I was looking forward to my weekend here.

After ten minutes or so wandering around - which was enough to walk around a substantial part of the main bit of town - I began to feel very flat. All there seemed to be was the odd non-descript hotel here, a bar there and so on. The grey sky, looking like it was going to dump yet more rain on me, probably didn't help. I had not been here more than an hour and yet I already hated it.

With nothing better to do, I went for a beer by the Mekong. This is supposed to be one of the best things to do in Vietiane, but it was more like having a drink by the Thames Estuary than in South East Asia. The water looked filthy and polluted and I felt miserable.

After about 15 minutes, the inevitable happened and it started to chuck it down. When the rain comes in this part of the world, believe me it comes. Within a short while the bar was practically flooded, and I sat despondent reflecting on the situation. It was Friday afternoon and yet I was not scheduled to leave until Sunday evening. What the fuck was I supposed to do here all weekend? There appeared to be little of any great interest to go and see, and if the weather was going to be this bad I would have to stay inside anyway. At that moment, all the despondency I had felt over the last 48 hours engulfed me and I decided enough was enough. There would be no more moving from place to place every other day, spending ages in internet cafes trying to organise the next trip and fretting about things.

As soon as the rain eased, I marched - or paddled more like - to a travel agent and booked myself on a train to Bangkok leaving Saturday evening. Bollocks to this - I had paid 20 quid for my hotel room that night, but didn't care. I was going back to Thailand and to the beaches.

Having made my decision to leave Vientiane, I felt almost liberated. After the rain finally went away, the sun came out and I went round a few bars. The place then started to grow on me a little. I had dinner in a lovely old French restaurant, and it was a relief to eat different food that, hopefully, wasn't going to send me to the shitter six times a day. I gorged on steak au poivre with frites, washed down with pastis, and felt a million times better in this little corner of France in South East Asia. After dinner, I retired to my bed and watched tv in the comfort of knowing I didn't have to get up early in the morning. Was I, after all, making a mistake leaving here so soon?

I got up at 11.30am on Saturday, and went for a walk. It was a lovely sunny day - utterly different to yesterday - and Vientiane looked a lot better for it. I began to be won over by the place. It is cute and charming in its own way, a mixture of different cultures and with a rich history. I had clearly been a bit too quick to judge it, too hasty to blame it for the rain and my general mood of the last couple of days.

In the afternoon, I was diven to the Thai border to catch my train to Bangkok. As we drove through the streets of Vietiane, which contained some great old buildings, I resolved to come back to Laos. The country is supposed to be the most relaxing to travel round in the region, and I had not done it justice by anyone's stretch of the imagination. The cost of coming here for such a short period of time and leaving so early was not insignificant, either.

After crossing the river into Thailand, I waited for the train in a great little bar opposite Nong Khai station. It was peaceful, the sun was shining brightly and the beer was ice cold. I may have been hasty leaving Laos, but I was not sad to be heading back to Thailand...