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Published: February 6th 2011
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Our trip from Vang Vieng to Vientiane was one of our shortest trips so far, a mere 4 hours to the country's capital. We had booked ourselves on a minivan leaving at 9am to get into the city at a reasonable time for us to still explore the capital's main sights before hopefully taking our next trip the next day back to Bangkok. We had been instructed to wait at the tour agency at 8.30 am so we were there right on time. We know that Lao time is not incredibly strict, but when we were still waiting at 9.15, having seen many minivans pass us, we were wondering what was wrong. At 9.30 a small bus (yes, a bus. NOT a minivan) pulled up, and knowing our luck with transport, we knew this was ours. We managed to score the last two chairs together - unfortunately they were also the 2 seats with the least leg space, but hey, it was only 4 hours.
The trip was a lot smoother than the trip to Vang Vieng, pretty good roads and we were only a little late in arriving to town. And for once we weren't dropped off at a
bus station outside of town, instead we were dropped in the city centre, walking distance from the hostels. We looked at a few guesthouses and were shocked at how expensive they were. OK - relatively expensive - because compared to European prices they were obviously reasonable. We checked in at Youth Inn where prices were good. However it was hot and we later noticed our room had at least 30 mosquitoes flying around in it. This may have had something to do with the broken window and a missing piece of roof. We decided to rent out some bikes and visit Wat That Luang, the temple that every guidebook raved about. After a nice short bike ride through town and a few wrong turns we arrived at the temple complex, which was pretty large. We paid to get into the complex and whilst it was certainly impressive we didn't think it was that different from Doi Suthep, the nice temple up on the hill overlooking Chiang Mai. Maybe we had just had our share of temples.
The heat was also getting to us and at that point, I (Floor) was not feeling that great. We headed back for our
hostel which, when we entered our room, made us even more miserable. We asked the reception whether there was maybe another room available with fewer mosquitoes, and we checked that out. It was at least 32 degrees in that room with just 1 fan. At that point all I wanted was a room with a clean bathroom and a bed without suspicious stains on it, and of course no mosquitoes! So I went to the reception and asked whether we could change our mind about checking in. I felt awful and I felt a bit ashamed, but explained that I wasn't feeling well. He seemed OK about it and returned our money. I left Jorn with the bags and walked around to find another guesthouse. This took some time as it was a few hours later and plenty more backpackers had arrived. Eventually we went for a more expensive option (200,000 kip for a room & breakfast) at the Duang Duaene hotel (sp?). This was a real hotel! The first with a bath, and we had cable, breakfast buffet and everything. After showering and cooling down we instantly felt a little more healthy. For dinner we went to the Indian
restaurant which had some tables set up along the river road, and we enjoyed our delicious appetizers (pakora?) and curries.
The next day we decided to take it easy. We had a few things to plan transport-wise (Jorn had to book a flight back home to attend his 1,5-weeklong training in February, and we needed to book our train to Bangkok). This took quite some time, so when we had finished breakfast, checked out, we spent a few hours online (writing blogs too 😊 and booked our train tickets. Booking Jorn's KLM ticket through the Thai website proved problematic as our credit cards didn't seem to work. We reserved the ticket in the end and opted for the 'Pay later at a ticket office' option.
We were being picked up between 3-3.30 so there was little time to buy some food and get ready to go to the train station. It was another late pick-up and not entirely to our surprise, our ride was also a 'pick-up truck taxi'. Another comfortable start to our trip! We drove in the pick up taxi along some dusty streets to the border crossing. We paid our $1 departure tax and waited
for the train to take us across the Thai-Lao Friendship bridge. A comfortable ride of a few minutes, then another border crossing and then we boarded our overnight train to Bangkok. The train was great; comfortable seats in 2nd class that folded into beds. The train crew come into your carriage to make the beds, give you pillows etc and put up curtains. This gives each passenger a comfortable little bed and some privacy. We managed to get quite a few hours of sleep so we were relatively rested when we arrived to Bangkok the next morning.
By then we had decided we would spend just 1 day in Bangkok to sort some things for the rest of our trip, before enjoying a few days of relaxation in Ko Chang.
*Quite a bit of blogging to catch up on as I'm currently in Myanmar and Jorn is already back in NL...I'll add photos when I have a normal internet connection!!*
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