This afternoon we crossed the Friendship Bridge to Thailand for a transit of 30 hours to Cambodia. We stamped out of Laos and caught the train across the Friendship Bridge over the Mekong river to Thailand where we went through immigration and got a visa. Then sleeper train to Bangkok.

Today was a day to relax and swim in the mornin, then after lunch we took a tuk-tuk to the Buddha park out in the countryside. The park was built over 50 years ago and is now used regularly for worshipping.

We arrived here last night and are in a hotel with a pool - yay! Vientiane is the capital of Laos, but looks more like a regional town. There are no high rise buildings, but lots of Buddhist temples. We visited the COPE rehabilitation centre, which makes prosthetic limbs for people (including babies and children) who have injuries from bombs dropped by the U.S. during the Vietnam war. Many of the bombs are unexploded and still dangerous.