2nd – Haggling but not haggling

We left the guesthouse at 0800 and departed on a fairly unremarkable drive to the Lao capital, Vientiane. Here we stopped at a small restaurant for lunch before checking in at a very nice hotel.

The elevator here is weird; the elevator has buttons 1-12, but the screen says G-11. So when you press for 9^th floor you have to get off when it says 8^th. The doors are weird, too; as a key you get a small wireless dongle to scan but only one on the floor managed to get in when they tried – the rest of us just saw a number pad materialize where you scanned your dongle. After returning to the reception for assistance we were shown that you scan, pull the door making sure it’s shut and then it unlocks. Good to know! On a Lao scale the beds are odd, too. They are actually really soft and comfortable!

The rest of the afternoon we were free to do what we wanted. On needed a new pair of shoes so two of us joined him into the city centre at a mall. He found a pair he wanted and the vendor told him they cost 240.000 kip. He was a bit skeptical so she quickly dropped her price to 200.000. He said he had to find an ATM first; 180.000! He checked his wallet to see how much he had right there and when she saw he had 160.000 that was the new price. He reiterated several times he had to get to an ATM first and every time she decided just to drop the price. Without even haggling (in our minds, at least) or commenting on the price he ended up getting the price dropped to 100.000 and at that point we convinced him to just pay her for the shoes on principle. Walking around afterwards and seeing other shoe shops, these with price tags, we concluded both parties could let themselves be happy with the final price.

We walked past the presidential palace and saw the nearby Sisaket temple before returning to the hotel. Despite the temple being alongside a nearby main road the walls and vegetation almost completely blocked off the traffic noise. And because it was just an “ordinary” temple it wasn’t crowded as many of the other more high-profile ones we have visited. It was overall quite a nice break.

The presidential palace.

Sisaket temple.

At 1830 we left the hotel, ordered lunch for pickup tomorrow at a café, had dinner, had a short walk in the night market before returning to the hotel around 2200, ending a fairly quiet and relaxing day.