Information and Orientation
The fairly unhelpful Lao National Tourism Authority (NTAL) operates out of an imposing building on Lane Xang Avenue, near the Morning Market (Mon-Fri 8am-5pm; tel 021/212248 or 212251). Phimphone minimarkets, Scandinavian Bakery and Le Croissant d'Or maintain more useful noticeboards, displaying information on everything from language classes to motorbikes for sale. Two widely available city maps are The Vientiane Tourist Map, and the newer hand-drawn Map of Vientiane, which gives a detailed and accurate 3-D perspective of the city. Finding an address in Vientiane can be something of a challenge, as street signs are confined to the centre, road names can bleed into one another and house numbers are generally useless. As elsewhere in Laos, local inhabitants often use monasteries as landmarks to identify parts of town: for example, Ban Wat Phaxai ("Wat Phaxai district") refers to the area around Wat Phaxai. When showing addresses, we have given the road name, but have omitted the house number, using landmarks instead.
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