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Vientiane
View of the cityWe spent three nights in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We didn't arrive until 6pm and thankfully we found somewhere to stay given the later hour, it was a bit more expensive than we have been paying, our room was 100,000 kip a night which is €8 and this got us air con, en-suite and a television- we are living the high life.
Anyway, our first full day was spent getting our visas for Cambodia. We had got our visas for Lao at the border crossing which worked out well for us but we had read that the border crossing between Loa and Cambodia was much more remote and we didn’t want to be stuck in no man’s land with but no visa to enter Cambodia so we decided to make the trip to our embassy to get our visas sorted in advance. We thought it would take about half an hour but it ended up taking up most of the day. We first arrived at the embassy at 11.45am only to find that it was closed for lunch from 11.30am-2.30pm, so off we went and after lunch we arrived back and after a of administration and waiting we
got them at the price of $30 each.
We spent our second day in Vientiane seeing a few of the sights; we visited a few of the more impressive monuments around the city. We saw That Dam which is a tall storied stupa in the shape of a bell, and we walked around Patuxai which is a war memorial. Not far from here was a lovely park we strolled around, we stopped at the world peace gong and were approached by a small group of novice monks looking for a photo with us. We also went to see Pha That Luang which is an historic Gold Stupa and at over 44 metres high is it amazing. It is the most important national monument in Lao and legend has it contains a piece of Buddha’s breastbone.
Our last day in Vientiane was at a little slower pace after our busy day the day before. We planned to get the overnight bus down to Pakse so knowing that we wouldn’t be getting a good night’s sleep we took it easy. We randomly found a bowling alley so spent an hour or so bowling which was fun and after
Vientiane
Some bamboo scaffolding on a hugh construction job. we visited the national museum which was close by. The national museum was very different, it focused mainly on the Vietnam War and the damage that was done to Lao, the anti-American sentiment was strong, and we saw it in nearly everything we read.
Our overnight journey down to Pakse was quite eventful. We booked a sleeper bus, but our beds were ridiculously tiny, even I felt squashed in never mind Stephen. We had resigned ourselves to a long and uncomfortable night, but then the bus driver said that the bus wasn’t full so we could have the flat beds at the back of the bus, we had 5 beds in a row to ourselves, we had that many pillows and blankets there was talk of building our very own fort! Our elation died down pretty soon after we left Vientiane though as the road was long and bumpy and we arrived into Pakse at 5am tired and very weary. We have since read up on the dangers of night time driving on these South East Asian roads and in hindsight maybe getting this overnight bus wasn’t the smartest idea we’ve ever had.
We spent
Vientiane
The monks who asked for our picture in front of the World Peace Gong just two nights in Pakse; while we were there we took a day tour to the Boloven plateau, an elevated region in southern Lao. We went to a tea and coffee plantation and a couple of waterfalls in the morning. The afternoon was spent visiting the villages of local ethnic minorities, and we found this really interesting. Of the many rituals that the villages partook in that we learnt about the sacrifice of a water buffalo every march stood out for us, especially as in the past they used to sacrifice a child to appease their higher deities, we were glad that doesn’t happen anymore. The second village was different again; their death rites are unique in that they build a coffin while the dying person is still alive to fool the spirits into sparing the death of a loved one. Imagine suffering an illness, a coffin next to your bed would make anyone get better.
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