Off we headed to be reunited with our passports (see Luang Prabang). Imagine our joy when we were told that they had not been received till Saturday, and that the Cambodian embassy woudl not be open till Wednesday to process our applications!

We head off to the 'Four Thousand Islands' tonight much further south, so some passport pick up logistics have been arranged (fingers crossed) and we should be in possession of them by Thursday morning.

We spent the rest of the day doing a walking tour of Vientiane. The Patuxai monument is based on the Arc D' Triomphe, and is quite nice to look at. From the top you get to see that Vientiane is flat and that there is not much going on. There's a good story on it's erection (quoted from Lonely Planet): 'it was built in the 1960s with US purchased cement that was supposed to have been used for the construction of a new airport. Hence foreign residents sometimes refer to it as 'the vertical runway'.

Mid-afternoon we stopped for a zesty homemade Lemonade and a shake. Lush. Tonight we catch an overnight bus towards the Islands; they have no electricity and so we probably won't be on-line again till Cambodia....