Big city life!! We dont think so. This is Vientiene

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So we headed to the bus station in Vang Vieng, for our expected 9:00am bus. The bus station was in fact was an old airstrip that the Americans used when they were doing their bombing raids back in the 70s.
The bus ride to the capital city of Laos was rather uneventful really, the scenery not as nice as our last one. Needless to say it was still nice viewing as we steadily headed down to Vientiene.

As we arrived we did the usual trick of trying to escape the bus station and touts, but to our shock there were hardly any there and the ones that were there, were really placid and quiet. This seems to be thing with Laos, so laid back and chilled, very different to Thailand.

After checking into our Guesthouse that we managed to get money knocked off without even trying, we had a walk around the 'City'. For a capital city we were really quite surprised, they still had a few dirt tracks for roads, but there seemed to be lots of road works going on.
We had been told that the city is rather uninspiring, but our 'first'' impressions was that it wasn't all that bad.
That evening Andy went to do a spot of fishing on the Mekong. He caught a little fish which a local kid bagged up in a plastic bag and later offered it to Andy to take home!! Andy didn't fancy fish that evening so he let the boys take it. (It wasn't big enough!! Hahaha)
After a walk and some tea we went back and relaxed in our aircon room with cable tv.

30.06.06
After breakfast we were up and ready for a day of sight seeing and to book a bus for tomorrow (little did we know how much stress this would cause between us!).
Our first stop was the morning market and the bus station,where we looked at buses south to a town called Savanakhet, but we had no luck. So it started looking like we may now go south to Pakse instead and get an over night bus on the same day.

We went to the Patuxai, the vertical runway/ Arc de Triumph. It's called this because the Americans gave Laos money for cement to build a new runway, but instead they built this massive concrete structure that supposedly resembles the Arc de Triumph.
After a lot of walking we went to the same place as yesterday for a late lunch, which was a really nice French cafe.
Our next spot of sightseeing took us to the oldest temple in Vientiene, the Wat Si saket, it is the oldest because lots of other temples in the city were destroyed in the war. The Wat was really nice and tranquil, lot's of buddha statues and other 'temply' looking stuff.

After relaxing in our room we decided we WOULD get the bus south to the town of Pakse and what the Lonely Planet describes as basically 'boring'. (We were heading south to Si phan don, the 4 thousand islands as we had heard so much about them.)

Our pickup arrived at 7:15pm, another sawngthaew and were pleased to see lots of other travellers in the truck.
Ten minutes into our journey to the bus station, the heavens opened up and WE GOT SOAKED as did our bags. NIGHTMARE!! For the first time in ages we were cold and wet.
We got to the bus station and were pleased to see our transport south was a nice big posh bus, like the one on the picture (we have read and heard stories of people not getting what they have paid for)

WE BOTH GOT STRIPPED OFF ON THE BUS, but kept ourselves well and truly covered to keep warm. We had our food, listened to the dodgey kareoke on the tv and then tried to sleep.

Vientiene was ok, but only for a day or two.

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Photos

Tuk Tuk?
How many times have we heard this?!

The vertical runway
Nice, not.

Buddhas
These were all damaged statues from the war.