Day 4:
We planned to visit the COPE centre today and would visit the pool again after. We went to the same cafe for another aussie breakfast which was delish, there were no more pain au chocolats left so we had a croissant after our breakfast instead, quite greedy but why the hell not?! Today is even hotter than yesterday so i hoped it wasn't a long walk to the COPE centre! Before we started the walk, we went to the main road to book our bus ticket for the next day to kong Lo Caves. This cost us 105,000kip each which was the cheapest we've seen it. After booking the ticket we began our walk to the centre.
The heat was almost unbearable but we made sure to keep hydrated! Dan says its closer than the victory arch which i was skeptical about as you have to take directions from books with a pinch of salt. As we were walking, we went passed a pet shop which had a large amount of bird cages to sell as well as animals. They were selling rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, birds and puppies! The puppies were in an open top cage outside so i couldn't resist stopping for a stroke. There were two very tiny black and beige puppies and around 6 puppy golden retireivers which looked like andrex puppies! They were sooo fluffy and cute and one in particular caught my eye. I was seriously contemplating buying him and considering if i would need a pet passport to take him across the borders with me. This was obviously unpractical so I had to drag myself away from the pups and continue our walk to the centre.
We got there after around a 20 minute walk which wasn't so bad. When we walked in it was a blessing to be greeted with the cool breeze of air conditioning. We were greeted by a man sitting at the front desk who showed us the best way to go around the museum type thing. We read a lot about how the americans dropped thousands of bombs "bombies" across the Vietnam/Laos border. Years after the war, children would be playing in fields and undetonated bombs would explode, blowing away the children's limbs, if not killing them. As we walked around reading of the trauma it really made us hate America. Plus, out of all the countries who made donations to help get rid of the bombs, america gave the least, what a joke!
We read how artificial limbs would be manufactured and fitted to the survivors of the bombs. Families would recycle parts of bombs for everyday life such as cutlery, plates as well as stilts to hold their houses up. After a very educating stroll through the centre, we opened the door to leave to get to the swimming pool and hit with the heat. We were contemplating getting a tuktuk but we didn't want to spend too much money so just ended up walking back (making another trip to the puppies) and off the the pool again.
The pool was a bit busier than yesterday but we still managed to get two sun loungers beside each other. We got a drink, chilled for a few minutes before we got so hot we had to jump in the pool. This became a routine for us! At 16:00 the same swimming instructor and french fmily came and there were two young boys in the pool who were winding me and daniel up by starting at us then giggling and going underwater when we looked at them. One even spat the pool water on us! As well as saying "you have big butt", i took this as a compliment and as they were french i was so close to calling them petit merde, somehow,that should translate as little s*** but both parents were nearby so i didn't bother. We left when the sun began to set and headed to the hostel to shower and pack before heading out for dinner.
After sorting out all our belongings and feeling refreshed from the shower we decided on going back to the indian as we knew we enjoyed it and didn't want to waste time trawling the cafes for a decently priced meal. We got our usual at the indian and went to the night market afterwards to get Dan some new flip flops as his are falling apart. All the sizes were small, but a woman pointed out two pairs of bigger sizes for dan and he opted for an orange pair with a weird bumpy sole. We walked back to the hostel to get a good night sleep as the coach would pick us upbat 09:00am.