Vientiane

Thirty two hours bus journey, bored to death but constantly enjoying the scenery whilst Ari sleeping away we finally arrived in Laos.

Everything seemed to be at slower pace here. People are immune to inconvenience and aggression of any sort. In fact there is rarely a voice raised in anger. In a world of such little structure and seemingly with so few rules, things somehow just work. If we ever tried to live this way in the West the rivers would run with blood. We just seem so angry compared to the Thai's, Lao's and Vietnamese.

Vientiane as a capital was a lot different than all others we had been to so far. It was very laid back, not much traffic, not that built up and no touts hasting tourists, it had a small town feel to it.

The country seemed very poor and the few sights or monuments they had, seemed to have been built or donated by neighboring countries, such as the Laos version of the Arc De Triumph in the centre and the peace gong. Few other sights included the Golden Temple and Presidential Palace.

The city had a ring of influence left over from the French colonial days, as there were small patisserie and french style cafe's dotted around the city. As always there was plenty of street and food markets to keep us entertained.

We hired a bike and decided to find a place called Buddha Park. The roads half hour out the city all turned to dirt tracks which made the ride a bit bumpy on a moped and signs were non existent. We drove for hours in blistering heat through village after village and got totally lost. We had driven almost to the Thai border (friendship bridge) and could see Thailand across the river. We did our best to ask locals where Buddha Park was, not sure if they understood us they pointed so we went that direction and eventually we found the park, full of Buddha statues of all sizes. It was quite late by the time we got there and the park was getting really spooky, especially as we were the only two people there with 100's of Buddha's. The drive back was even more of a challenge in the pitch black with no working lights and on a road full of pot holes and pits.