Hello again,

Well, what can we say about Vientiane? The journey down there was pretty uneventful, which was quite a relief after our trip to Vang Vieng (Landslides and all!). Its probably one of the smallest, and most chilled out capital cities in the world, and parts of it look like it would be better placed in France.

We arrived in the late afternoon, at a bus station that was a few kilometers from the centre (which is typical in Laos, to allow Tuk-Tuk's to make a few thousand kip). After a short journey, we arrived in the centre of Vientiane's backpacker area, although you wouldn't have thought it on first glance. Whilst hunting around for a guesthouse, a girl came up to us and gave us her lonely planet guide on Laos, for free!!! We were well chuffed as we didn't really know where we were going as our book was quite vague. Very nice of her! We eventually settled on a proper hotel, very new and clean with all the mod cons and free breakfast which made up for the price!! lol. That night we chilled out and went for a really good meal round the corner. They forgot to charge us for half the meal haha.

The next day we had a little explore and milled around. We walked down to the 'Arc du Triumph' and along the supposed asian Champs d'elysees. It wasn't quite the same lol, but had some nice trees and it was interesting to see the arch. It had only been half built (quite typical in Laos... the money had run out) so when you actually got close to it, it was pretty much a concrete block. Although the inside was pretty! We then strolled down to the market which was under a construction site. You could buy everything there, from fridges to clothes and everything in between! We settled on a memory card, as ours has a virus, but found most of the souveniers were over-priced compared to elsewhere in the country! We also found a shop that was like a french supermarket selling cheeses and meats and bread etc. That night we decided to treat ourselves and went to a proper french restaurant and had some amaaaazing food, including a cheese board and a creme caramel mmmmm.

For the rest of our time here, we didn't do a great deal other than sit in cafe's and wander around the many craft shops. The textiles and silks in Laos are amazing and so beautiful, but a little bit out of our price range... we saw one wall hanging that cost 11,000,000kip... or 90GBP lol!

It was a nice way to spend our last few days in Laos, and we even bumped into Jim & Jamie, which was really nice, and a bit of a relief to know they had made it down the 'death road' too lol! Small world really, it quite shocking how many people you recognise just walking down the street. One bloke, who we had dubbed 'the posh man' we saw everywhere we went in Laos!

After 5 days in Vientiane we decided to move straight on to Vietnam as our visa there was being wasted, and we had seen all that we had really wanted to see in Laos. Given more time, and a bit more dispendable cash we could have quite happily stayed a lot longer, but travelling from place to place is quite an ordeal, and can take anywhere between 1 and 3 days... I don't think we could have done anymore if we had tried!

We booked a bus ticket to get us to Hue overnight, and were told we would be travelling for the 22 hour journey on a 'VIP' bus. After this journey I'm pretty sure all that mean is that you get aircon, and aren't sitting on someones lap. Will tell you all about it next time =)

Anyways, time for dinner now, going to find some Vietnemese food mmmmm... curry mmmmmm! Check out our photo's (there is a chunk missing due to virus's).

Love to each and every one of you xxxxxxxxxxx