Post-cycle Tour Day 2. Slept well despite the solid bed and pillow, must be getting used to the Lao design. Fried eggs, fruit, baguette and Lao coffee (very black & strong) for brekky. The dogs on the chairs and around our legs while eating was a bit disconcerting, when you consider what they might be carrying. However they were real friendly and just about the healthiest looking dogs we'd seen on this trip. At 9am we walked into the city and visited the Palace (ex) and Royal Temple. Very humble really, except for the OTT reception room which is lined with very bright class and shinny rock mosaics. The royal bedrooms were austere, but huge. The royal fleet of cars was a trip back to the 1960/70s. No photos inside. Surprisingly the Communists did not execute the Royal Family but sent them to a "re-education centre" soon after they took over in about 1975. The country shows no overt signs that it's still a communist based system. I can't remember seeing a gun the whole trip. After having a fresh coconut water drink, Phil and I walked back to the motel to be out by midday, or as the sign says, "full day charge will be made". We then took our bags back to The Dream, who were very generously were going to shuttle us to the airport at 3:30pm. In the meantime we wandered down the road to Dyen Sabai Bar Restaurant for a lovely fried rice chicken, iced tea with lemon followed by sticky rice and mango pudding; US$9 each. Dyen Sabai is another lay-back hippie type place overlooking the river. It's green, leafy and very peaceful. We had a few games of backgammon to fill the time on a set from their games/book library. Back to The Dream to say our sad farewells to the remaining members of the tour gang, who were lounging beside the pool. Tough life. They are a great bunch of people and I do hope I am able to tour with them again one day. Even though we had only stayed at the motel two nights the staff were all there to farewell us and wish us a safe journey. 10 minutes to the airport on the shuttle bus and about 15 minutes after arriving we had checked in and cleared customs and security. We were in a very clean and neat airport. The flight to Hanoi couldn't have been better; (Lao Air Dash 8 bug smasher prop, on Air Vietnam ticket) comfy, on time, great staff and nice snack on the hour journey. Immigration and customs were over in no time and we were checked in with stacks of time to spare. A Qantas Club would have been nice. A little over an hour later we were in the air on our way to Saigon on a Vietnam Airlines Airbus A321, which is just a big bus. Arrived at 10:50pm, US$11 taxi to the Rex Hotel. In bed just after midnight.