Mind you, the first time I arrived in Thailand, it felt the same, so I guess I must gradually be acclimatising myself to less and less 'developed' countries. As we went through the laborious process of getting through immigration Mr. C pointed out the poster on the flaking wall of the office. Coming into Malaysia from Thailand you are greeted by a clean, grass lined 2-lane motorway near the border. We expected the Lao to be doing the same and were a little disappointed to see the road on the other side of the Lao border.
Lao money is great.
I thought smugly about all those people back home who spent years of heartache building up a fortune when all they had to do was come to Laos. We spent our first nights in the southern most town of Pakse on the banks of the Mekong river. Indeed, Pakse is really just a small town. We left the bikes in the room and took a ferry boat down the river to find our festival is actually more of a carnival, and 'Wat Phu' a religious site also dating back to the Khmer empire, was over run with loudspeakers, and carnival rides and women selling barbecued chicken bits, and sticky rice. It was pretty fun and we got to meet some Lao monks and students and chicken sellers, and poke about the monument like everyone else.