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We actually went to Vang Vieng after leaving Phonovan but for a number of reasons we only stayed here one night and left the following day. The 2 main reasons for this being a flying visit are that a) this is THE main backpacker place in Laos and therefore is nothing like the real Laos. The streets are lined with bars playing Friends on repeat with lots of stoned teenagers lounging around inside dressed in their bikinis.. not our cup of tea, and reason b) is because Sophie was still very sick at this point and stayed in bed the whole time so was not up to the main activity of tubing and getting smashed out her tree so we moved on the next day to Vientiene...
As with most of the places we'd been to in Laos we had no idea what to expect from the capital city. We kind of guessed it would be a bit more built up than Luang Prabang but were happy again that the old part of town has retained it's charm and is full of low rise colonial buildings with the only more modern buildings being found a short walk away. Prices in
Vientiene are very high compared to what we were used to but we decided to make the best of it even though by this point both of us were feeling pretty ill, this wasn't helped by the temperature hovering at around 40 degrees for our stay there so heat + bad stomachs = no enthuasium for doing a lot of sightseeing.
Day one was spent trying and failing to find the Thai embassy, exploring the old town and going up to see the main landmark of Laos, the golden stupa of Pha That Luang. Our first mission to find the embassy and get our Thai visas was very unsuccessful after finding the embassy ok, then being directed to the consulate which is where you get the visas from and finding it had moved addresses from the LP map so getting totally lost for the best part of 2 hours wandering the streets in the soaring heat getting more and more hot and bothered as the time wore on. We gave up in the end and headed for Pha That Luang which we could see in the distance passing Patuxai, the poor mans version of the Arc d'Triumph in the
process!
As we said Pha That Luang is the famous landmark for Laos and is seen on their banknotes and various other advertising. It is quite impressive but didn't really take our breath away and by this time we were pretty exhausted so had a bit of a walk around, said hi to some monks as you do in these kind of places, sheltered in the shade then started on the walk back to our guesthouse to have a lie down as the day had really taken it out of us.
The one good thing about here was that with our dodgy tums we'd decided to just eat in clean restaurants for a week or so until things improved to try and reduce the amount of bad bacteria that had obviously built up in us. Vientiene has lots of nice restaurants so we did enjoy nice meals of curry, pizza and bagels while we were there so we didn't complain on that front at all!
The following day we weren't feeling that much better but were determined to get out and about so headed to the bus station to catch a bus to the Budda Park which
was about 23km outside the city centre. Again it was a soaring hot day but we had fun in the park seeing all the Buddhas here and exploring inside the big tomato (not the official name but it looked like one). This tomato is supposed to represent the journey from earth to heaven and to hell and you can go up the very dangerous steps inside in the pitch black to be greeted with a whole room of various statues which are actually quite frightening when you can't see properly! It also provides great views from the top of the whole park including the enormous reclining buddha in front. After a while though the heat just got too much so we caught the bus back to town to shelter in our room under the fan and decide what to do the next day. Vientiene really didn't excite us enough to warrant staying another day so we'd already decided to leave... We really wanted to go to a small village just outside the city to see the elephant salt lick but were torn when we found out it as quite a mission to get to... fine if we were feeling 100%
but not when we weren't.
Oh the other big event here was that Dale had finally had enough of his unruly 1 year old hair length and went for the big chop.. photos from here on in will be with the new look Dale!
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