And then there was this...

Walking around the back streets of Vientiane, you can see some interesting things.

Monkeys riding dogs comes to mind.

Today we were driving down a small street near our beloved LV City and drove past this...

Sitting wedged between trees in someone's front yard, the fuselage of an old Lao Air jet with what appears to be cyrillic writing on the front. It looks to be an old, Russian-built YAK 40. The Lao Air Force had two of them at some point. I guess this is where one ended up.

"Honey, I like the new house, but I feel like our yard is missing something..."

"Say no more. I know just the thing!"

I asked our friends at LV City why there was an airplane parked down the street. They didn't have a good answer for me.

Update:

Did a little research. Yes, it's a slow Sunday.

Two Yakovlev Yak-40 Codlings were delivered in 1978, for use as VIP transports. As with the An-24RVs/An-26s, the pair of Yak-40s may have been used by Lao Aviation as well. The Yak-40s were supplemented in early 1998 by an Antonov An-74TK-100 Coaler. The STOL jet, registered as RPDL-34018, is most probably operated solely by the LPLAAF. It was noted at Wattay on April 14, 1998. A heavy blow to the LPLAAF occurred just one and a half month later, on May 25, 1998, when a Yak-40, (RPDL-34001) crashed into the jungle while on a flight from Vientiane to Xiang Khouang. All 26 onboard, including a Vietnamese military delegation, were killed. Apparently, at the time of its crash the call-sign was ZPX-001.

So it seems that one of the Yak 40s crashed somewhere between Vientiane and Xieng Khuang in 1998. It seems that the other one is currently parked in someone's front yard.