Phongsali
Much of the population of Phongsali is Chinese, and we found that the girls at the hotel didn't speak Lao -- to order food we basically had to point at the menu. To make things worse they didn't seem to have any food other than plain fried rice, which we subsisted on for a couple of days. We stayed in Phongsali for two nights, hoping that the weather would improve so that we could go trekking to some nearby villages, but the storm persisted, dumping a large amount of rain on us. We ended up venturing out a couple of times to take photographs, but got soaking wet; it took the better part of the day for our clothes to dry (wearing them of course!)