Laos Mood Travel

Placement organization

Name of organization: Laos Mood Travel
Town/city: Vientiane
Country: Laos
Website: http://laosmood.com

Student

Name of student: Devi Kiezebrink

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2014-2015

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Destination management company
Organization’s activities: The organisation designs tailor made travels for a high end market (mainly Europeans). They sell these travels to both direct consumers and travel agencies is the targeted countries.
Target group of the organization: High end clients
Company culture: The atmosphere is the company is very informal and easygoing. Everyone sits in one office space and almost everything is communicated by face-to-face speech. Every one in the business can gives the intern tasks to do but mainly the intern answers to the big boss. However, both the management and all other colleagues listen to the interns input.
Number of employees: 13
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Some

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? I did things for a lot of different departments, being deployed where needed.
Brief description of your daily activities: Overall, most of my time I spent in making imagery. For example promotion material for the new website (I was also included in the designing stage for the website and logo) and the final design of the programs sent to clients. Also I worked in production, making tours and finding new activities. I also did some translating from French to English and English to French.
Brief description of your company assignment: My task is to write a marketing strategy for the Dutch market, with a focus on the Dutch MICE market. However, this is not seen as the purpose of my stay here. Therefore I am on my own on that one, meaning I don’t get help to write it.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: The people are very nice and helpful. However on any of the schoolwork (placement assignment and orientation tasks) you are own your own with no help whatsoever.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Independent, team player, flexible
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office, photoshop, writing skills, multiple language usage.
English: Advanced
Spanish:
French: Intermediate
German:
Italian:
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? I am living above the office. The office furnished it and I make use of the office kitchen.
How did you go to work every day? Just walk down the stairs, but they also provide a motorbike to get around town.

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? Yes, you’ll get in with a tourist visa. It is no problem doing a visa run every month but the company could arrange a work permit for three months.
Do you need a work permit? No necessary but can be arranged.
How did you arrange the necessary documents: Tourism visa on arrival and work permit was arranged by the office. More documents are not really needed.
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? no extra time except for 2 visa runs. Which take about half a day.
Did you need certain vaccinations? Yes
How long in advance? Well I already had the vaccinations. But you need hepetitis A&B meaning you have to shot once at least one month and a few days before departure.

Language course

Did you take a language course before you started your placement? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? No

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 1000
Accommodation (monthly): € 0/ 250 if you would like to find your own room but it is not that easy to find a good place
Local transport (monthly): € 5 to sometimes refill the motorbik
General costs of living (monthly): € 400 but I live sparingly
Costs of visa: € paid by the company
Costs of work permit: € paid by company
What did the company pay for/to you? The company paid for all of my visas and the transportation needed to get to the border. Also I live in the office so those costs are covered. They usually pay for the gas in the motorbike but sometimes it’s empty in the weekends and I need to fill it myself. I also get financial compensation every month.

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
Not to much, I brought clothes that cover up but that was not very necessary, but turned out to be handy because Lao persons like to turn the air conditioning very cold. If anyone would like to visit the temples in Vientiane I would recommend covering clothes.

The biggest culture difference is the flexibility. Not easy to prepare for that just keep in mind that schedules and timetables are not important. Just as answering an email or phone call in a short amount of time is not considered normal.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? It is sometimes very annoying to wait for a project or answer but after a little time you get used to it.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: devi.kiezebrink@hotmail.com

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Make sure to make some time before or after your placement to travel around a little bit in Laos. It is a stunning country but big and Vientiane is for sure not the most exciting place. Keep in mind you work on Saturdays and therefore you will not have time to visit many other places in the weekends.

Get out as much as possible to meet people. The town is only small and you will run into expats easily who are open and kind and will probably invite you to expats events to make more friends.

Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Vientiane is a small city and ones you know the expats you will know all the places-to-be (for example the gaybar CCC and the happy our restaurant Makphet).

From the office everything in the city center is in a walking distance. Some restaurants where expats meet require the motorbike though but everything is relatively close.

These are some possibilities to hike near Vientiane but it is a few hours away by motorbike and not to easy to reach.

Vang Vieng is only 4 hours by (very bumpy bus) but it is still hard to pay a visit because you only have the Sundays off.

There are a lot of swimming pools in Vientiane. Some from hotels that allow outside guests for a small payment and a national pool just around the corner that is cheaper.

Bowling is considered a popular activity although not a lot of expats do it.

Also people are very open about wedding. Try to get invited to one of those. (you could even go if only your neighbors uncle was invited, as long as you know where and when it is you can just go inside)

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link