Hello Everyone,
Our minibus journey to Vientiane was only 2.5hrs. When we arrived we set off to find ourselves a hostel. Everything seemed to be quite expensive but we found a place for a reasonable price right on the waterfront.
The following day we got up and decided to rent a moped and see the sights. First we set off to the COPE Centre which is a charity that supports all the people in Laos that are affected by scatterbombs. We searched for the centre for about 2hours, we stopped and asked about 6 different people and we still couldn't find it. Eventually we had to pay a tuk-tuk to drive there and we would follow him. It was worth it though. The centre was really good, I don't think either of us realised how many people today are being injured through scatterbombs. We got shown a documentary about family's that are affected and how the COPE Centre has helped them. It was really informative, we donated some money on our way out, doing our bit for charity :)
We then decided to go for some lunch back beside our hostel but.....we got lost. After another hour or so of driving around we didn't have a clue where we were then to make things even better, we got a puncture in our back tire. Luckily there was a mechanic just up the road so he fixed it for us for 35p haha. So we asked him which way to the centre of Vientiane and he pointed left and said 6km, so off we went to get back to our hostel. About 15minutes later we still were nowhere near the centre of the city, so we stopped to ask another lady where the centre of Vientiane was and she laughed and pointed the direction we had just came and said it was 34km, great. So we were completely lost. After another hour we eventually found our hostel and decided we had enough of the moped and both agreed to never rent a moped in the city again.
So it wasn't an overly successful day for sighseeing, but to be honest it didn't seem like there was very much in Vientiane to see. This is our last stop in Laos, we have had an amazing time here, both completely fell in love with Laos. We have noticed that there are no fast food places here, no McDonalds, KFC, Subways or SevenEleven like there is in Thailand. We like it, very undeveloped and a beautiful country.
Goodbye Laos, now we are off to Vietnam.
J+B