Vientiane - Ang Nam Ngum

On our last morning in Vang Vieng (or so we thought!) we waited at our guest house for our bus to pick us up... Once again we paid for VIP air-conditioned and once again what we got was a mini-bus with broken air-conditioning. Each isle seat had a fold out chair that took up the isle space and every single one of these was in use. We kept our fingers crossed that the bus didn't crash, set on fire etc as the chance of escaping looked pretty slim.

Luckily this journey was a bit shorter than our previous one, and lasted about four hours. We arrived in Vientiane around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and headed straight for a guest house recommended in the Lonely Planet. We 'd been warned that Vientiane was expensive compared to everywhere else so we weren't too surprised that we had to pay $8 per night at 'Jo Guest House'. It was the nicest place we've stayed in, with very clean (shared) shower rooms and toilets, and big attractive bedrooms with a cafe downstairs. We'd also been warned by other backpackers in Vang Vieng, who were doing the trail in the opposite direction to us, that Vientiane is very boring... this turned out to be true, so unfortunately, the 'luxury' of Jo Guest House was quite a highlight of our visit!

We attempted to do a walking tour but after an hour of walking around and seeing the Patuxai, a market for the locals and the American Embassy, we were hot and bothered, bored and were not enjoying ourselves so we gave up on our tour and headed back for a shower.

That night we went with Kev and Emily to find food in an area of the city that we'd passed on our walk which looked like it might be lively at night. We ended up sitting parallel to a couple of Dutch guys who we chatted with for the evening. We told them that we were heading to Vietnam having seen Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng and Vientiane and they ended up convincing us that we shouldn't leave without seeing more of Northern Laos including Nong Khiaw. We decided to take there advice as we had felt that we hadn't seen much of Laos... Unfortunately, what we didn't realise at the time was this would mean completely retracing our steps! Oblivious, we set about arranging a visa extension for Laos the following day. Determined not to have to spend three more days in Vientiane waiting for the return of our passports, we arranged a Kayaking trip with the same people who were organising our visa extension. This meant that we'd leave our passports with them, go Kayaking in a place that was conveniently halfway between Vientiane and Vang Vieng (and very near Nam Ngum lake which we wanted to visit), get dropped at the lake then make our way to Vang Vieng to pick up our passports at there other branch. Vang Vieng was also on the way to Nong Khiaw and we'd have to pass through anyway which wasn't ideal, but unavoidable never-the-less.

With one day still to wait before our Kayaking trip we decided to visit the Buddha Park which was about an hour outside of town. After getting a quote from a tour company for $30 or $40 per person to go there we opted to catch the public bus for 30 cents each and paid an entrance fee of 30 cents each. There were many different statues which were interesting to see but after half an hour or so we'd walked round twice and wished we'd brought a book and a picnic to relax under a tree with, so we just caught the bus back.

The following day we met outside the tour office at 8am to embark on our Kayaking adventure. Fortunately, this was more of an adventure than our tubing experience and for the first part of the journey the two of us (we shared a kayak) were star pupils, paddling downstream with no problems. We had to stop so our guide could explain to our group how to handle the rapids ahead without getting thrown overboard, and everyone managed except for our Mexican friend Jose who flew off the back. He managed to get back on, and their stranded kayak was rescued and brought to safety, and a short while later we stopped on some rocks for a BBQ lunch. The second part of the journey didn't go quite to plan... Our gift for kayaking had vanished at lunchtime and the two of us spent the best part of an hour spinning around, floating backwards downstream and getting marooned on rocks. We eventually made it to the finish (last) and caught a ride to Nam Ngum Lake.

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