A quick stop for some good food

---

And so, we left Vang Vieng in a tuk-tuk over a very bumpy road at great speeds. We arrived, an hour later, by the river where we met up with our guides and began our paddle downstream. It wasn't so hard, the kayak (which both Mike & I were in together) was light and the flow of the water did alot of the work. The weather was good, the scenery was nice - all in all very enjoyable. We went over a couple of exciting rapids, big enough to capsise if you weren't careful, but small enough to avoid doing so even with our limited kayaking skills!
We stopped for lunch, which was chicked & veg kebabs, baguettes & vegetable rice, cooked by our guides over charcoal lit on the rocks. It was pretty tasty and rather nice watching them cooking up outr lunch as we relaxed! Nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We also had a little jump off a big rock into deep water, to round off our Vang Vieng experience.

Not long after lunch we finished the kayaking. At the shore was our tuk-tuk complete with our bags waiting! Unfortunately it wouldn't start and it's passengers, i.e. us, had to pus start it up a hill. Ah, Laos. Along the ride to Vientiene the tuk-tuk stopped constantly, like a public bus. Amongst it's passengers were a monk and a TV. It was constantly slowing down to swerve around farm animals in the road, and this was the main road to the capital we were on! It was also chucking it down with rain and made for an interesting, if not comfortable, journey.

Vientiene was a funny place. It was like no capital city I've ever seen before. Or even any city, for that matter - more of a big town. We had to stop in a relatively expensive place, which had a shared bathroom - our first for quite a while.

On the upside, Vientiene had some really good food. Not cheap though. On one occasion we spent nearly a day's budget on a meal, and over half on another. But God, it was worth it! I must admit, the food situation has been getting us down abit. It seemed that all the local food was either very watery or very greasy. Either way, you end up feeling like crap at the end of the meal. Rice Noodle Soup is incredibly popular, but when you get it, it is like they have boiled the noodles, then just not bothered to drain them. It comes in a massive bowl filled with the liquid, and it you're lucky they throw in some raw cabbage on the side. Often there is inedible things like lemongrass floating in the murky soup that you have to watch out for too. It's not so fun. In Thailand we enjoyed the Thai curries at first, but after a while I got sick of being served bowls of watery soup. I don't even especially like soup! What's wrong with solid food? Even spring rolls aren't a safe bet because they tend to chop them up and THEN deep fry them. And stir-frys are always soggy, bland and greasy. I guess we were spoilt with the array and quality of food available to us in the UK. (I will say, however, that Laap, a Lao invention, is rather marvelous as is sticky rice. And those pancakes you get from street vendors. And iced Ovaltine.)

So yeah, Vientiene had fancy French restaurants which we patronised twice. We went and ate steaks and drank red wine! It was so good we didn't care that we just spent the day's budget, we just smiled all the way home. The next night I ate a cheese platter!! I can't tell you how much I miss cheese. At home we ate it constantly, on everything. Going cold Turkey on cheese is not good. (Sidenote: despite the lack of cheese & milk in our diets we both appear to be putting on weight. I attribute this to all the fried foods, as I have been much more active than at home too)

Other than eating, we also visited a weird concrete replica of the Arc De Triomphe and took a bus to Buddha Park. Alas, it is not an Alton Towers with Buddha themed rides but a park with heaps of random statues of Buddha and all the Hindu Gods too. It was pretty cool. Realising that our Laos visas were running short, we only spent 2 nights in Vientiene and took a sleeper bus down to Pakse in the far south.

We had wanted to explore some of central Laos, it sounds cool, but time was not in our favour. Will save that for the next trip!

---