Being bored in Vientiene

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After our horrendous bus ride from Sayoboury we arrived, a little worse for wear, in Vientiene. We were expecting good things from Laos' French influenced capital but it failed to impress us.

Our room was very overpriced, it's walls were made of cardboard, it was sweaty and it was full of mosquitoes. The city itself lacked anything of real interest unless you wanted to spend your time eating cakes in expensive bakery's.

We decided to make our stay as brief as possible but we had to get our Cambodian visas sorted which meant staying for a couple of days.

We went to bed early the first night as we felt pretty horrid after our bus ride. The following morning we got up bright and early and headed straight to the Cambodian embassy to apply for our visas. This kept us busy for a while but afterward we struggled to find anything to do, i think we might have had a fruit shake or something...exciting times. In the afternoon, after retuning to the embassy to collect our visas, we visited Patouxay, Vientiane's major sight and it's answer to the Arc de Triomphe. It is a dismal imitation. From a distance the monument looked OK but up close it revealed itself to be an utter monstrosity. It was unfinished and was essentially a lump of grey concrete with metal support rods sticking out of it. It was possible to climb to the top of the monument for views over the city...No thanks. It really doesn't compare to it's Parisian counterpart. A scar on the face of Vientiane? Well not really as the rest of the city is equally displeasing and aesthetically drab. The roads are busy, the streets are dirty and the whole place is utterly dull. They have tried to cater for well-to-do foreigners by opening lots of classy restaurants and boutiques but the city lacks the charm that Luang Prabang was so full of and we were left feeling very uninspired.

The next day we killed time until it was time to catch our night bus to 4000 islands in the far south of the country. Obviously we struggled to entertain oursleves. We decided to spend the afternoon having drinks at one of restaurant/bars which lined the river. It wasn't as nice as it might sound as the river was dry and the there were rats everywhere.

Needless to say we were delighted to leave Vientiane and we actually looked forward to spending 14 hours on the bus. It was a sleeper bus which actually had bunk beds on it so we could we get a proper nights sleep. The beds were tiny and no-where near long enough for a westerner and it was two people per bed. People who were traveling alone had to share and snuggle up with strangers. We managed to get comfy though and managed to sleep most of the way down to the south.

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