15/11/09 Don Det to Vientiane

We woke up and packed our bags for the journey to Vientiane the capital of Laos. We went off for breakfast at a resturant overlooking the Mekong but the girls were so grumpy we left and went to another with much happier staff. We ate our now staple breakfast of bread and cow cheese and a fresh pineapple juice before we collected our bags and went to the tour office. We waited there for an hour using up some free internet time we had accrued from booking tours. Then we went to catch the longtail to the other side to meet the bus to VIentiane We boarded our VIP bus with about 5 other people and then waited for ages before the bus finally pulled out along the bumpy road for the last time thankfully. We drove for abut three hours and stopped in the town of Dondet where we were to wait 6 hours before boarding the night bus for the rest of the journey. We left our bags at the bus station and got a tuk tuk to the town. Ther ereally wasn't alot to see there and we were glad we had decided not to stay there afterall. We had lunch and moochaed about for a bit. We saw some really smart buses and a lovely cruise boat along the mekong, visited a monk school thenwent back to the bus station to wait. We sat in a little cafe having drinks while Liz wrote the diary and Phil read the Lonely Planet. At 7.30 we were able to board the bus and Liz jumped on blagging some good beds well away from the back where we were always stuck before. Unfotunately, we didn't realise our tickets had seat numbers on them and guess where ours were? You got it, right up the back over the wheels again!! Phil nearly blew a gasket and was not a happy bunny as he clambered up to his spot. Things got slightly worse when the non English speaking steward kept pointing at us and gesturing us to move. We had the right seats but it seems they had allocated Lizzies twice. After a bit of shifting we were all in a bed for the night. The steward then bought round water, apples, drinks and wafer bars which softened the atmosphere. We settled to try and get a good nights sleep. We stopped in a service stop at midnight and poor Phil thought we had arrived in Vientiane only to realise he'd only been on the bus for 3 hours out of 9!!!! We tried to settle down again for the night after a quick bite of bread and cow cheese!!!

16/11/09 Vientiane

We arrived in Laos capital at about 6am after managing to get quite a bit of sleep on the night bus. We caught a tuk tuk to town and set off into town. On the way the tuk tuk kept cutting out until eventually it completely died as it was out of fuel. While we waited for some fuel to be delivered a group of Buddhist monks came along the street collecting ALms from the local people. The monks collect rice and other offerings from the local people and take it back to the temple to feed all the monks living there. We finallty drove off and stopped on a street with many guesthouses. A few were really bad with no windows, wonky stairs and walls, smelly drains etc. We went to one and it semed nice enough but there was no room free until "maybe later" so we left our bags there and went off to sort out our Thailand visa at the consulate a little out of town. When we got to the consulate we were approached by some men with clip boards to fill out forms at a desk. We paid a small fee at this stage "to speed up the process inside" We could see a huge queue outside the consulate so thought it would be worth the extra fee of a few dollars. Once through the gates of the consulate we got a ticket with a number on it then sat to wait for our number to show on the screens. We were number 276/7 and the number was on about 12 when we got in so we were expecting a really long wait. Many people were getting there numbers then filling out the paperwork while they waited which we should have done .We actually only waited for about 2 hours as the two desks were really efficient and got through everyone really quickly. We left our passports and were given a new number to collect them again the next day. It was really a very smooth process adn if the same thing were to happen at home it would be a total fiasco. Fortunately for us the Thai government is giving out free two month visas for a limited time to encourage tourists back so we have a nice freebie!! We went back into town and called into a few other guesthouses but ended up back at the first one which did have a room for us. We checked into a nice ensuite room and then went to a nearby coffee shop for a drink then went to a local bar for a meal before writing the blog and bed.

17/11/09 Vientiane (Happy Birthday Richard)

We woke at about 9am and got up, went to the ATM then bought some toiletries, then went to get some brunch at the Full Moon bar round the corner from our hotel. Next we got a tuk tuk to the consulate to collect our passports and arrives to find a massive queue outside. Once the gates opened we went inside and waited only about half an hour before our numbers came up and we were given our passports...happy days!!. We headed back into town and arranged a sight seeing tour round the town fo the next day with our tuk tuk driver . We dropped our passports at the hotel and went back to the Full Moon where we spent a few hours while Liz wrote the diary and Phil researched Thailand hotels and islands. We both had afew cocktails as it was happy hour and then went o the internet to check all our banking. Phil discovered that the bank had registered three withdrawals from his bank account when he only made one so we had to call the bank. Depite being a capital city Vientiane is pretty basic and all the phone lines at each internet cafe were hopeless so we couldn't get anything sorted there. We ended up after being directed to various places in a smart hotel using their land line !! It cost us 25 pounds for 10 minutes on the phone to the bank but hopefully they will get it sorted. They kept saying Phil needed to fill in some forms and they'd have to speak to the bank in Laos so we didin't hold much hope of a quick result.!!!! It was the wrong time to call Richard as our time difference meant we would be in bed by the time he came in from school so we messaged him instead and will call at the weekend !

18/11/09 Vientiane Tuk Tuk tour

We met our driver for the day at 9am for a sightseeing tour of Vientiane. It is a capital city but very small and a strange feel to the place. It doesn't seem to have a venral point or any particular central area to it. We started off by driving about 45 minutes out of town to see the Buddha park (Xieng Khuan) which as the name suggests is a park area full of Buddha statues. Th epark was built by Bunkua Sulilat who merged Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, iconography and mythology to create a new religion. The park is full of Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and they are really bizarre hybrids of the originals. While looking around you get the feeling that the man was a bit of an eccentric and quite manic in his sculpting of things. There were some really strange ideas and very weird designs to some of the things there . We spent a long time looking round and climbing inside a huge stupa full of statues and winding staircases, we managed to climb out to the roof and get a view across the park and see the big reclining Buddha lying there too. We went back to the tuk tuk and travelled back into town to see a golden temple calles Pha That Luang which is the most important monument in Laos. Legend says that the main golden stupa contains part of Buddhas breastbone. Unfortunately the main stupa was closed for lunch when we got there but we could see the majority of it from outside so we spent some time visiting other buildings within the complex. There was a Buddhist temple where we watched some young monks playing and went to see the temple building. There was the home of the most important monk in Laos but that was being refurbished so we couldn't go inside. The main golden temple was really impressive especially against the blue sunny sky. Our next stop was at Laos version of the Arc de Triumph called the Patuxai which is a big concrete archway dominating the area. It was built from concrete donated by USA to build a new runway at the airport so is known as the vertical runway. We climbed the stairs o the top and could see out across the city. After coming back down we went to see Hot Phra Keo temple which we looked around then crossed the road to see Sisaket temple. Sisaket was built in 1818 by king Anoukong and is the oldest temple in Vientiane. Its interior walls are lned with hundreds of niches containing two thouand small Buddha statues. It was a lovely building and inside the inner temple were some old unique murals depicting life in old Laos. Once our tour finished we went to get some food at a bar called sticky fingers where Phil had sausage and mash and Liz had chicken pasta. Very local food....!! We sprent the rest of our time updating the blog and by about 11pm Phil was starving so we went to get him Spaghetti Bolognese at a place we had passed near our hotel. The only problem was it should have been called noodle bolognese and the noodles were awful !! Vientiane pretty much closes by 11 so we headed off to the room.