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Civilisation, temples, whooping Americans and food poisoning
Our next stop was the Laos capital of Vientiane which was a change of pace from the small villages and basic facilities of the previous week or two and it wasn't long before we made our way to the Scandinavian bakery and cafes. After arriving early in the morning we spent the first day at an interesting nearby temple with possibly the largest collection of Buddhas we had ever seen.
We hired push bikes and went to the main attractions of the Golden Temple and the bizarre Arc de Triomphe replica ("a reminder of the French influence that was prevalent throughout the area, heralding back to the Indochina era" says Paul, steady on bookworm). Both of which were beautiful and well worth the visit, even if Paul did get a bit rowdy on his bicycle, I think it was all the hogging we'd done recently.
After sunset drinks by the river and a burger and chips at a local restuarant (it had been a long long time of just rice and noodles!) we went back to the crappy hostel where Paul proceeded to vomit for 3 days constantly. Upon looking for medical
advice (the first, and worst day of the illness was a sunday and everything was closed) we were told to take him to Bangkok hospital for treatment... So without a helicopter at hand to take take him there and with even the locals advising us not to go to the Laos hospitals we were stuck waiting for it to work itself out of hs system. When we did manage to leave the room what we saw of Vientiane was really nice however with time pressing on and Pauls vomiting decreasing we decided to move on to our next stop of Vang Vieng.
The part with the whooping Americans. Wooh!
We arrived in Vang Vieng after a six hour coach ride a little worse for wear (luckily without any projectile vomiting which was a pleasant surprise) and straight away put our name down for some tubing down the river. 'Tubing' is pretty much the thing to do in Vang Vieng, which is essentially float down a beautiful river in a rubber tube, whilst drinking masses of alcohol and hitting the bars along the sides of the river, all with banging dance music and, you guessed it, hundreds of our
trans-atlantic cousins pretty much just drinking and whooping. With Paul in a fairly sorry state we managed to get through the loud parts and enjoy the more scenic parts of the journey although we both decided that doing tubing on possibly any other river in Laos would have been a better idea but when in Rome!
The next day we visited Luang Prabang in the Northern part of Laos which was to be our last stop in Laos. With Paul feeling a little more human we managed to explore the whole town and were really impressed. The view from the top of the temple overlooking the whole region was spectacular and the night market was excellent, with a huge variety of locally made (and some generic) goods. There was also a decent musum and shed loads of temples, lots of temples... We also made the most of the cosy accomodation, friendly staff and, hammock! Great hammock. Next stop, Thailand!
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