Day 9, Thursday 27 October - Savannakhet

Savannakhet 1st Day....... After a comfortable night I take a coffee with a baguette and jam brought up from Pakxe. Now I need to get my bearings and find out what there is to do here. So, I pop round to the internet cafe to download some pages. I need a map so I can make my way to the tourist information office to get a map!! Sounds Chinese? Well, that's where I take lunch, duck on rice. I grab a town map from the motorbike rental shop next door and head for the Plaza. Here I find the French old town. Traditional French style architecture greets me but in many cases the buildings are in decay. Thankfully, there are plans to restore some of the old colonial buildings and put them to practical use. It's reassuring that we may soon see similar sights to those at Luang Prabang.
Roads to everywhere....... The tourist office staff are most helpful, and I am pleased to get some respite from the midday sun. The office is well stocked with brochures of local, national and international interest. While tours are offered to Thailand and Vietnam I'm only interested in Savannakhet, so I use the town walks guide to get to some of the more interesting places. One cannot go too much further back in time by visiting the dinosaur museum where a small but interesting collection of fossils recovered from the Savannakhet region are on display. The guide is most helpful but sadly few visitors arrive here and this Franco/Laotian project does not have labels in English. I make my way back past the former President's residence to Savanbanhao for a beer on the terrace before heading for dinner which included a generous helping of Mekong sunset!