Our next stop was to be Vientiane. Capital of Laos, but like no other capital I’ve ever seen before, this city has a very laid back, chilled atmosphere.
The bus ride down was one of the better rides we’ve had. It only takes about 4 hours from Vang Vieng to Vientiane and I was sitting next to a hippy girl called Danielle who I chatted to about snowboarding for about 3 of those hours. She and her group were due to get on another bus, half an hour after arriving in Vientiane, to Hanoi, which takes something like 28 hours on the bus. I can’t say I envied them the 32 hour bus ride.
We checked in to the Mixay guesthouse on a recommendation that the breakfasts were amazing. Sadly it turned out that the menu had changed. While Cat had been offered curries and other goodies when she was there a few months before, all that was on offer now were badly fried eggs and toast. Still, the breakfast was included in the price of the dorm, so that was something at least!
This was also to be our first time staying in a dormitory. The idea was initially exciting – this was meant to be a good way of meeting people, but I got into mine to find one guy in bed, looking pretty grumpy that I’d woken him up. I never saw the other guy except when I woke up in the night.
We met a Liverpudlian girl called Sonia, whose accent sounded like no Liverpudlian I’ve ever met. Still, she was very chatty. The three of us went out for an Indian meal, laughed at the photocopied Lonely Planets in the Minimart which apparently had been published in March 2010, and headed back because, like Luang Prabang, the Lao curfew is observed in Vientiane. An early night was in order after my late one the night before.
On the second day, we’d booked a sleeper bus for that evening to go to Pakse. We spent the day looking at the sights around the city. We saw the outside of Wat Si Saket, which is the oldest temple in Laos, but it didn’t seem worth the 5000kip (for foreigners) entry fee. Looking back on it, that’s only 50 US cents. It’s funny how your sense of prices gets a little warped in these places. We also walked up a street that looks very much like the Champs Élysées in Paris, at the end of which is the Patuxay monument that seems very reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe. The differences are that they made it a little bit higher, with four gates instead of two, and it’s made out of concrete. The placard at the bottom describes it as a “concrete monster”. The concrete used to construct it was actually given to Laos by the US to build a runway, which leads to it’s other nickname of “the vertical runway”. Finally we stopped by the revolutionary monument, which is outside the front of the national assembly (I always wonder what function a national assembly has in a communist country) and visited Wat That, where the Pha That Luang stupa is. The stupa is the national symbol of Laos – it’s very big, golden and impressive. We paid the 5000kip (again only for foreigners) entry fee here to walk around inside, but there wasn’t a huge amount to see inside.
A quick Tuk-tuk back to the hostel, then we spent the rest of the day in coffee shops until our bus was due to go. I picked up a dodgy-looking cold pizza slice from the Minimart, since I had 20 minutes to get dinner. It turned out to be so tasty a couple of other guys in our hostel went and bought some. The tuk-tuk picked us up about an hour before the bus was due to go and proceeded to do laps of our hostel for about 45 minutes. We actually passed the same coffee shop, where we’d spent most of the day, just at the end of the street where the hostel was, 5 times. Eventually we arrived at the bus station and our bus.
usually in a communist country there is a “National” or “People’s” assembly. Its main function is to endorse the decisions already made by the “Great Leader”. Those not endorsing are shot.
You can also guarantee that anything with “People’s” in its name (eg the “People’s Assembly”) is for anyone but the people.