Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Day 133
We had a really long day on the bus to Vientiane with the only breaks being to get something to eat. This didn't start well with a couple of stale, overpriced baguettes from the bus station, moving onto Mark trying to get some snacks at one of our stops, and instead of getting some sticky rice got some sort of banana cake thing in a banana leaf, not quite as filling but very tasty none the less. It wasn't until we stopped late on in the journey and got a feast of BBQ'd sausage and sticky rice that we actually felt as though we had eaten a proper meal! Lao suasage is very tasty.
Arriving in Vientiane we got a tuktuk to the centre of town and found all of the guest houses we had planned to look into already full ... bugger. Not wanting to drag our bags around Mark left Chrissie at a cafe to look after the bags whilst he did the gentlemanly thing and went to find somewhere to stay. This was easier said than done with the first 5 places he went to full, eventually striking it lucky with two beds in
dorm room at the Sabaidy guest house. It was ... an ..... uuuuuummmmmm ..... interesting place, three bunk beds in a small wooden cubicle with no door and no natural light and one of our worst places so far, but in its defence it was pretty clean and really, really cheap.
We checked in for two nights and then went out for dinner down at the riverside with Nat, a Canadian lass we met at the hostel. Here there are a line of outside BBQ restaurants that serve some incredible food. We had a great evening.
On the way back we went back into the hotel of the cafe we had stopped at during our search for somewhere to sleep and booked in there for our last evening in Vientiane. At a pricey $15 US (7 pounds 50) a night it would be a relative extravagance - but it had to be the best hotel in the world for the price. We made our way back to our wooden box to sleep stopping off in the reception to watch a bit of James Bond on TV - Asia loves Bond!
Day 134
We got up fairly
early considering in our room it's night all the time and went to hire some bikes for the day to explore the city's sights. After picking up some brekkie we headed out to Pha That Luang. This stupa is a national monument, pictures and images of which can be found everywhere including many of the bank notes you use everyday. Originally set in the middle of four temples (of which two still exist today) the stupa is covered in gold leaf making it an amazing sight especially when the sun properly shows it off. We had a good walk around before leaving for a refreshing iced lemon on our way back toward town.
We were planning to follow a walking tour in the guide book (adding on a couple of additional sights) and doing it on the bike. The next stop and the start of the planned tour in the book was Patuxai. This is an Arc De Triomphe style monument with a Laos architectural twist. We climbed to the top to get a view of the city stopping off at one of the many t-shirt sales people half way up to buy Chrissie a new T-shirt. Back down
at the base of the monument we found the plaque describing it although i think they need a couple of lessons in marketing referring to it at one point as a "concrete monstrosity".
Back on the bikes and our next stop was the Morning market. We stopped here for an hour or so wondering the stalls picking up a couple of things on the way through.
Once again on the bikes we passed some of the other sights of the city including some other temples and the Presidential Palace before handing the bikes back.
After a rest at our hostel we once again went to the riverside for dinner getting a whole BBQ'd fish which was amazing and washing it down with a couple of Beer Laos.
Wondering back we got chatting to another English lass who had done pretty much exactly the same trip we had, before being told by one of the hostel owners just after 11pm that it was time for bed!
Day 135
Up and packed we left the box room destined for our luxury pad. When we arrived we were not disappointed. The room was really lovely. Before we
could take advantage of the 20 percent off massage, we had some errands we needed to do.
After ticking off a couple of jobs we stopped off at a french bakery for a coffee and pastries for lunch before hitting the internet cafe for the next round of 'things to do' doing! We checked the blog to see if anything had changed. The site was back but due to a crash of some sort we had lost over 40 entries, including all of those we had written but not yet published. It came as a bit of a shock but the guy who runs the site was doing everything possible to get it back up and running and had suggested a couple of ways to locate recent blogs missing. After an hour or so we thought we had found most of our missing entries.
Back at the hotel we booked on for an hour long aromatherapy massage - made quite amusing by the terrible paper pants we were given to wear and the man in the next room who was so relaxed from his massage he was snoring loudly. It was fantastic and really relaxing and we left
'our bed ....
...is so big i can do acrobatics on it!' feeling completely chilled.
We had yet another fantastic meal by the river before we went back to the hotel for a very comfortable night's sleep. Many travellers we have met have said they didn't really like Vientiane but we have really enjoyed our stay here. It's extremely sleepy for a captial city but has a lovely relaxed feel to it.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.277s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 40; qc: 163; dbt: 0.1795s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb