Advertisement
Published: March 17th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Wat Si Saket, Vientiane
Home to over 10,000 Buddhas When it comes to capital cities, Hanoi and Vientiane and like chalk and cheese. After the constant noise of Vietnam, we were suprised to find Vientiane very quiet. So quiet in fact that by 20:00 in the evening we could have laid down in the middle of a main road with no fear of being run over. By 22:00 everywhere is closed and the residents are presumably in bed.
We spent our first day there walking around, from the Laos version of the Arc D'Triomphe back into town. Along the way we went into Vientiane's biggest market where the laid back stall holders didn't hassle us once. One woman showed us an instrument which makes a noise like a frog and was amused as I pretended to hunt for a frog around her stall. We also passed an old stupa, which is now a roundabout, and had a look in Wat Si Saket, a nice quiet temple.
The next day we had planned to hire bikes but it was far too hot (38 degrees if the BBC is to be believed). Instead, given confidence by the quiet city road, we decided to rent a motorbike. All was going
well until we heard an ominous 'flap, flap' and realised that we had a flat tyre. In fact, the tyre had split and we had to find a repair shop. Luckily it was less than five pounds for a new tyre and tube though, and soon we were back on the road. We visited Pha That Luang, a temple and stupa which is Laos'national monument and can be seen on the bank notes here. There we met Hong, a monk who has lived at the temple for ten years and will probably stay for another three years before giving up the monkhood. He was really interested and explained elements of Buddhism to us while asking questions about Christianity to see the similarities and differences between the religions. He also told us of the differences within Buddhism, for example how monks here can not marry but Japanese and Korean monks can. Hong's english was excellent and we stayed and chatted to him for about an hour before it was time to move on.
From there we tried to find a couple of places with no success, eventually finding a restaurant we were looking for ten minutes from closing time. They
A Flower Eating Dragon
Pha That Luang, Vientiane had closed the kitchen but did give us a drink. That night Allee was amazed at how spicy her food was. That was until she realised that the 'green peppers'she had been eating by the forkful were actually green chillis. This can be added to the moment on the plane as we approached Vientiane and I said, Í spy something beginning with L.' Thinking that Laos was the obvious answer I was suprised when Alle enthusiastically cried out 'Land!' Allee likes to call these her malteser moments - brown on the outside, blonde on the inside.
To get from Vientiane to Vang Vieng we decided to take a trip which would include a day kayaking on the way. Transport to the kayaking site was by a public sawngthaew, which stopped en route to pile box after box of pharmaceuticals on the roof. As we set off again the roof was doing plenty of creaking, but another stop was to squeeze some sacks of fruit on top of the boxes and some more people and car tyres on the back. We weren't back on the road long before the load took it's toll and one of the sawngthaew tyres
Hong the Monk
Pha That Luang, Vientiane gave up. This meant another stop to replace the tyre - this time at a small hut where a woman had identical triplets, maybe 2 or 3 years old, who watched us from their room.
When we finally got into the two man kayaks we found that our co-ordination was much better than last time and we were soon gliding(ish) down the river. The setting got better and better as the day went on, and soon we were passing through the jungle, stopping to look at the think trees and listen to the sounds (That's what we pretended anyway, we actually just needed a rest). At one point there was a snake laying on a rock at the side of the river. As we passed it slid down into the water - something to bear in mind when we were swimming later! After four hours kayaking we were glad to see the finish. It was a great day but very tiring. We climbed into a van which took us through villages of waving children to Vang Vieng.
The next day was spent resting - laying in hammocks, drinking fruit shakes and reading. vang Vieng is a very touristy
The Pickup to Kayaking
Laden down with so many drugs and fruit that we got a flat tyre and had to stop for it to be changed. At the stop was a woman with triplets. town but, sitting by the river, surrounded by the mountains, it is easy to see why. Unfortunately, it means that the place is now full of 'Friends Bars', places where rows of people sit like zombies, nobody saying a word, fixated on back to back episodes of the American comedy.
Fully recuperated we decided to spend another day in the water, this time tubing. Tubing involved floating down the river in an inflated tractor inner-tube. Nice and peaceful you might think. In fact it is like a floating pub crawl as bars along the river bank pull you in for a drink, each of them with some kind of swing of zip line to fling yourself into the water from. Some of them are pretty high but the scary part is the climb up onto a rickety, creaking bamboo platform. It's actually a relief to throw yourself off in the end and climbing back down would be worse than any rope swing. We had expected to be tubing for a couple of hours but it was seven hours later before we clambered out of the river, ready for food and bed (and a hot shower). The day was more
tiring than we expected and so this morning we have once again been relaxing and doing nothing. Soon we are going to rent some bikes and cycle out of town to a farm with an organic cafe for something to eat. Tomorrow we get a bus to Phonsavan and after a few days there we'll be moving on to Luang Prabang.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0251s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sue
non-member comment
whey hey....
...just dig those hats - Allee looks as if she's drunk in charge of a rather large tube there???????