Vientiane in all its glory!! (or a 4hr stop on our way through)

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01/26/10 - 01/27/10

Oh Vientiane... the great capital of Laos. Or maybe just the capital of Laos. For the capital of a country, Vientiane is one of the least visited capital cities. There is not a whole lot to attract tourists to the city except for the excellent ambiance and beautiful French colonial buildings and cafes. We had originally intended to spend only one day in Vientiane but the more we talked to fellow travelers along the trail, the more we discovered really how little Vientiane had (unless you have days and days to really explore the city and get a feel for it, which we didn't!) and so in the end we spent about 4 hours in the city, on foot, and we saw all the main sights and had breakfast!

But first, our trip to the capital city! When we left you last we were leaving Don Det island on a small ferry boat that brought us to the mainland, where we would get a minibus to the main road. There, we were to wait for the bus to come by and pick us up. Ironically, we would be getting on the same bus we got off of 2 days before! That bus would take us to Pakse then we transfer to a sleep bus for the 10 hour bus ride to Vientiane.

When we got off the boat on the mainland, there were no minibuses to be seen, so we figured we'd be waiting for a while. But, as we should well know by now, things are never as they would appear. So when a motorcycle pulls up, we should have figured out that this would be our transport to the main road. Now, I should say that I have never in my life been on a motorcycle, so my very first time on a motorcycle is with a complete stranger who doesn't speak any English! I was a little nervous, especially when the cows started crossing the road right in front of us while driving, but I made it to the road safely! Our friend Cookie had recently been burned on her leg by getting off a moto on the wrong side, so the entire ride to the main road I just kept saying to myself "Get off on the left, left, left, left" ahha. The driver dropped me off, then went back for Mike. Together Mike and I waiting on a small bench just outside a local family's home until it was almost time to catch the bus. We were told the bus would come at 4:30, but having been dropped off this bus 2 days before, we knew that the real time would be closer to 6:00, so we waited, and waited, and waited on the side of the road, and finally the bus arrived just before 6:00!

On another note, we had brought some toothbrushes and toothpaste with us for the family that we did our homestay with but since we were alone in the homestay we still had the supplies with us. So while we were waiting for the bus, we gave them to our moto driver, and he smiled and took them and put them in his jacket, and that was all. Once we had boarded the bus, we saw him standing with one of his friends and he took the toothbrushes out to show him (maybe brag to him?!?!) and after what appeared to be a minor argument/friendly scruff, the moto driver gave a couple toothbrushes to his friend! Seeing this made us happy that we were able to help them and give them something that they can use and need.

After a mostly uneventful 2 hour drive (uneventful except for some minor panic that we wouldn't arrive in time to make our connecting bus) we arrived in Pakse just in time to run around the block and hop on the sleeper bus before it took off on the long overnight journey to Vientiane. We had read before our trip that they didn't allow men and woman to share bunks on the sleeper bus and were very happy when we found that that this was not true and that we wouldn't have to sleep beside total strangers for 10 hours! We don't have any pics of the sleeper bus, but basically it was two layers to beds (we were on the top) and there were two people on each side of the aisle in beds that were barely wide enough for Mike and I to lay shoulder to shoulder and that were not long enough for his poor long legs! Despite the small cramped beds and the curvy, hilly road, we managed to get a few hours of shut eye that night and arrived in Vientiane just as the sun was peaking it's head over the horizon.

We got a group tuk tuk ride into the city and stopped at a French cafe (Le Banneton) just as it was opening, for a delicious breakfast of fried eggs and fresh croissants. It definitely brought me back to my days in France and I savoured that moment as long as possible! We decided to walk for as much as possible to save some money so we loaded up with our packs and map in hand and set out on the street in search of a temple, a market, and two monuments. We found them with relative ease and we didn't spend much time at any one place.

Vientiane was a nice, clean, developed city. We had expected Laos to be more impoverished than Cambodia, but it was actually quite the opposite. While we were eating breakfast, we saw a garbage truck go by collecting garbage and they were actually separating recycling from trash! The streets were mostly clean and there were many more cars compared to Cambodia. Vientiane had recently (Dec '09) hosted the SE Asia Games so I suspect much work was done for that. The roads were nicely paved, tree lined and the buildings were clean, bright and many of them were new.

We quickly toured a temple we walked by because it caught our eye since it was new and everything was gold!! It was beautiful and different from the temples we had seen in Cambodia. The next temple we went to was the oldest temple in Laos, one of the few to have survived the wars and invasions on the country. It was interesting to see the difference between the two temples, old and new. The old temple had one spot with all the statues of Buddha (mostly missing heads or other parts) that had been found all over the city after the wars, as well as 10,136 full Buddha statues! That's a lot of Buddha! We decided to skip the market because it looked like more of a food market and we had been told that the market in Luang Prabang was amazing, so we continued on and saw the Victory Monument, which looks like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. At this point the bags were getting heavy and I had a sunburn on my shoulders from the day before, so Mike climbed up to the top of the tower, while I rested my sore shoulders on a bench at the bottom.

Finally we went to the National Monument, which was not as impressive as we were lead to believe, but it was large and gold. It was nearly 11:00 at this point and we decided we had had enough of this city and were anxious to get to Vang Vieng for the adventures that awaited us there! We got a tuktuk to the bus station only to find out that we just missed the 11:00 bus to Vang Vieng by 5 minutes and the next bus wasn't until 1:00! So with 2 hours to kill at a bus station on the outskirts of town, we split a baguette and cheese for lunch then went to an internet cafe (where we had the slowest internet Ihave experienced in a lonngggg time!).

After waiting and waiting, we finally boarded our "VIP" (which was not so much of a VIP bus, more of a regular bus) bus just before 1:00, and good thing too, because the bus left the station 7 minutes early! It was a 4 hour bus ride to Vang Vieng, which seemed so short after the many 10+ hour bus rides we'd been on recently!

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Photos

"VIP" bus to Vang Vieng
The bus had "A/C", which means that if you open the windows, you get cool air! haha