Asian Adventures - Vientiane, Laos
After our rocky journey to Vang Vieng, our journey on to Vientiane was absolutely fine. We got chatting to a nice English couple in front of us and who were actually on the same slow boat as us from Thailand to Laos. When we got dropped off we arranged to meet the couple later on for some drinks. Our hotel was only a 10 minute walk away from where we were dropped off using the Maps Me app. Maps Me is officially now my new favourite app! You download the map of the country you want when you have Wi-Fi and then after this you can use the map through your GPS. This is excellent to use when you are in a foreign country as you can only use your Maps app on your phone when you have Wi-Fi as usually most people won't have 3G to use abroad. This way with Maps Me as long as you have Wi-Fi to download the map of the country then you can search for places and directions to somewhere without needing 3G.
We had picked a pretty good hotel for our stay here in Vientiane as it had two swimming pools. One of the more luxury hotels of our travels. We spent the afternoon lounging by the pool and trying to work on our non-existing sun tans!
Rory is generally good at finding us nice places to eat so that's been his job when we've been away.Tonight he had a great find in a French restaurant La Cave Des Chateaux which had a set menu of French onion soup to start, steak and chips for main and fruit and ice-cream for dessert all for £8!! It was absolutely delicious too! It was a lovely setting for a restaurant as we were sitting outside beside a fountain that gave the restaurant a romantic feel about it.
We met Lizzy and Joe from the bus after dinner for drinks. We chose a bar to meet at that we had read about in Lonely Planet. We arrived first at the bar and found it was completely empty apart from the bar man asleep on the bar!! We went back outside and waited for Lizzy and Joe so we could choose somewhere else to go. The next bar we tried to go to, again on our recommendation, was currently a building site and no longer even a building! We really weren't doing well so handed the responsibility over to Lizzy who had a look in her guidebook to find a bar that wasn't empty and was still trading.
The bar she found was Bor Pen Nyang and it was situated right beside the river. It was really fun hanging out with another couple and hearing about where they had all been travelling to. It was funny speaking about some of the characters on our slow boat as we knew exactly who we were all describing. One in particular was an English guy who really didn't have his life together and didn't know what was going on half the time. He had no idea how to change his money over from Thai Baht to Laos Kip and had no clue about getting a Laos visa. It was quite funny to observe and eventually he made it through the border and we actually ran in to him in Luang Prabang. We had a really great night meeting new people.
Whilst in Vientiane we wanted to sort out our Vietnam visa before we crossed the border as Hanoi in Vietnam was going to be our next stop. Usually UK citizens get a free 15 day tourist visa at the border but we felt like this wasn't going to be long enough for us to do everything we wanted to do in Vietnam and I'm so glad we bought a visa extension. Unlike most South Asian countries you can't buy a visa at the border, you need to get one beforehand. We went to The Vietnam Embassy to get a 30 day visa. All we had to do was fill in a short form, pay $60 each and then leave our passports overnight for the visa to be put in them and come back the following day to pick them up. Super easy!! I'd definitely recommend doing it this way if you were doing a similar trip as us as I think it's even easier than doing it before you leave. As you would either need to find the Vietnam Embassy in the UK or deal with the hassle of having to send forms and your passport off to get your visa where as because the Embassy was so close to our hotel in Vientiane it was so simple for us to do it that way.
After we filled in our visa forms we went to The COPE museum about the unexploded bombs in Laos due to the Vietnam War. I would highly recommend visiting this museum as this was one of best museums we went to on our trip. It is so interesting but also awful to hear about the thousands of unexploded bombs that were dropped on the Laos countryside. The people living in the countryside have to look out for bombs whilst they are doing their farming and sometimes they can hit one without even knowing which could explode right in front of them. This is still going on today which makes it even more heart breaking. It's so sad as people can't afford to stop farming as they need to make money to live so are taking the risk everyday when working that they might hit an unexploded bomb. There's a very moving documentary you can watch inside the museum that tells you about this. There is also a rehab facility next door to the museum for people who have been effected by the unexploded bombs. This museum is definitely somewhere to visit.
For tea we found an Indian, Namaste, that was super cheap and rated high on Tripadvisor. Tripadvisor has become our new best friend when looking for restaurants and hotels. We started putting up reviews for the hotels we were staying in. The restaurant was very basic inside, not really decorated, but the food was amazing! I don't actually really like Indian food so I always just have a korma when I have it but I couldn't complain about the mountain of food we managed to order as it all tasted amazing! The restaurant owner was also extremely friendly.
We really took advantage of having a pool at our hotel as we would usually go out in the morning to do our sight seeing them come back to the pool in the afternoon to cool off.
Rory had been constantly going on about the fact he hadn't played guitar in nearly a month which is the longest he'd never played it for. I said I would buy him one as an early birthday present with the deal that he had to carry it when we were travelling from place to place. He had looked up a music shop that he wanted to go to and was in heaven when we walked in and he saw so many guitars. I know nothing about guitars other than what I think looks good so I patiently waited until he chose the one he wanted. Before I let him go back to our hotel to try out his new toy we went for a walk along the river front. The only annoying thing is the river is quite far away from the path you walk on but you can still see Thailand across the river which is pretty cool.
In the afternoon after Rory had put the guitar down we headed out to find a tuk tuk to take us to Wat Sok Pa Luang for a meditation session with some monks. Our tuk tuk driver dropped us at the very edge of the path leading up the temple. Walking up the dirt path we were a bit confused as there was no one in sight and we wondered if we had come to the right place. Eventually we spied another women wondering around looking as lost as us. We went over to speak to her and managed to find the temple that had cushions laid out on the floor ready for the meditation session.
Firstly, all the people in attendance got into small groups and chatted with one of the monks who was taking the meditation. The monks are keen to learn English and this a good opportunity for them to do so and for us to learn more about their lives as a monk. The monk we spoke to was Souliya who was lovely and gave us an insight into what it was like to be a monk. His English was great and we felt bad that we only knew a couple of phrases in Lao. After our chat with Souliya the meditation began. The monk taking the meditation started it by giving a brief explanation of what meditation was and what the benefits of doing it were. We then did 20 minutes of seated meditation and 20 minutes of walking meditation. I found the seated one extremely hard as you had to sit cross legged for the whole amount of time. You could see all the tourists trying to slyly move their legs slightly to get more conformable where as the monks seemed to sit through the whole 20 minutes not moving a mussel. The monk chat and meditation experience was something we both were keen to experience on our travels and it was so great to participate in something unique that we'll always remember.
Vientiane has it's own Arc de Triomphe, Patuxai that we decided to climb up on our last morning in Laos. The climb wasn't very hard and at each level there were market stalls set up to entice tourists into buying something on their walk up. We picked a good day to climb it as the sun was shinning and there was a clear view from the top.
The USA had donated concrete to Laos for them to build a new airport but they decided instead to build The Patuxai which has now become the main attraction in Vientiane.
To end our time in Laos we wanted to go to a Lao restaurant and The Laos Kitchen seemed fitting. It was actually my first time having fish on the holiday. I went with Mekong Fish cooked in a sweet and sour sauce. I picked well as it was amazing! Such a good meal to end our time in Laos with.
After dinner we went for a couple of drinks along the river. Vientiane is quite disappointing for nightlife. You would think being the capital there would be lots of busy bars to go to but we went to a couple we had read about and they were both empty so we ended up in the bar we went to on our first night here. That was fine by me as they did do cheap cocktails!
I'm really glad we went to Laos as it's such a beautiful country. The places we visited were all surrounded by hills that reminded you of home.
Recommendations -
Vientiane Golden Sun Hotel - http://www.vientianegoldensunhotel.com/
La Cave des Chateaux - https://www.facebook.com/lacavedeschateaux/timeline
Bor Pen Nyang - http://borpennyangvientiane.com/
COPE Museum - http://copelaos.org/
Wat Sok Pa Luang - https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g293950-d3201837-Reviews-Wat_Sok_Pa_Luang-Vientiane_Vientiane_Prefecture.html
The Lao Kitchen - https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g293950-d2066961-Reviews-Lao_Kitchen-Vientiane_Vientiane_Prefecture.html
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