Hi,

Just a quick update about our time in Vientiane. We arrived in Laos' capital on Friday, getting a minibus from Vang Vieng. We paid a bit more for this, and expected a bit more luxury and a bit of a quicker journey. Well, it took exactly the same amount of time it would have taken on the bus, and it wasn't very luxurious at all! I don't know what Maggie and Dave thought! It was very cramped on board and the air-con was non-existent. Plus, we were all suffering heavily from our sunburn, particularly Dave. It hurt lots to put our rucksacks on our shoulders!

We arrived mid-afternoon in Vientiane on the Friday, and therefore had a bit more of a relaxed day, touring around a few of the wats on the same road as our hotel in the temple district. We like Vientiane, as it's quite compact as a capital, and there is plenty to see. On Saturday we zipped round various sites on bikes. The major draw is the food! We've eaten really well here...On Friday we all had juicy steaks in a French restaurant (I've been dreaming of steak for some strange reason ever since we set off!), and on Saturday Dave had a steak, Jo a hamburger, and Maggie and I a pizza in an American 'ranch-style' restaurant.

On both Saturday and today we've got up early in an effort to beat the heat. Our afternoons have been dominated by siestas. It's stifling here, 38 degrees centigrade today, and it's too much to walk around in for too long. Yesterday, we first visited Patuxai, the 'Arc de Triomphe' of the east, a big arch at the end of a wide boulevard. It wasn't quite as impressive as its namesake though, and even a sign by it described it as 'a monster of concrete'! We found it fun to climb and get some good views over the city. We watched some goldsmiths using flamethrowers to fashion the metal, and also visited a couple of wats. Wat Si Saket is Vientiane's oldest surviving temple, and all its interior walls were covered with tiny alcoves containing two miniscule Buddha images in each. In all the complex had around 7000 Buddhas in it! The other wat, Haw Pha Kaeo, used to be a royal temple, but is now a national museum of religious art.

Today we went to Buddha Park, 24 kilometres south-east of the city, and full of Buddhist, Hindu, mythology and iconography inspired sculpture. It was brilliant and pretty eccentric. We were able to climb up a monument which had three levels representing hell, earth and heaven, and which gave great views of the park. There was an absolutely huge reclining Buddha there as well, which we had our picture by...We then moved on to Pha That Luang, pictured above, the national image of Laos and its most important monument. It is covered in gilded gold, is 45 metres tall and represents a lotus bud. It was pretty impressive, even though we were wilting in the heat!

Tonight we are catching an overnight bus to Pakse in the south. We're hoping this journey will be slightly more comfortable than the last, and include the amenities we've paid for, like air-con and a toilet!