Walking around the nations capital - very quiet!
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
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89
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Trip End
May 14, 2009
Vientiane,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, August 28, 2008
They put up a good show by all accounts, but to let in an equaliser with only 4 minutes left was a bit frustrating. Ah well, concentrate on the league and the FA Cup!!
Today we went for a walk around Vientiane. Like I mentioned in the previous blog, there's not much to see but we will do our best. First place we went to was the Presidential Palace. Now this place has seen better days. It needs a good lick of paint, so if you've got some spare time Askew, get your ass over here and get some work done!! I did walk straight into the grounds of the Palace to take a photo, but it's not actually open to the public. This meant that in theory I could have been shot with no problems at all!! Luckily, the guard t the gate was only armed with a crusty baguette, so I managed to avoid any such death penalty!! We decided this was a good time to move on.
Next stop was a fountain in the middle of a nice square. All was well, except there was no water spraying from the fountain!! It must have gone on strike or something
Laos Cultural Hall
. There wasn't much reason to stay here, but we did find a Scandinavian Bakery place, so we plotted a leter visit here for lunch.We weren't bothered about visiting Temples but we did stumble across Wat Sisaket, so we took a look. We didn't actually go into the temple as we weren't dressed appropriately. Apparently my leather cut out pants and gimp mask weren't appreciated inside the temple of Buddha! It was, however, OK to walk around the grounds of the Temple (not in the leather gear really). There were a few shrines and we got chatting to a couple of Monks. They were trying to improve their English so we had a good chat with them about....well everything really. They were very friendly and it was nice to have a conversation with some locals who weren't just trying to sell you something. They also said how beautiful Lorna was, but I didn't feel threatened as they weren't allowed to do anything because they are Monks!! Lol.
Next it was up to the Victory Monument, which is basically a rip off of the Arc de Triomphe. I suppose it's OK as this is a previously French colonised country. We paid 2000 kip to go to the top of the monument as you can get som good views from up here. It does really remind me of the one in Paris, even the main street running away from it could be mistaken for the Champs Elysses - well, if you squint a bit.
It was now time for lunch as the hunger drums were banging in my gut. We made our way back towards the bakery, taking a small detour to pass the Black Stupa on the way
Vientiane Street
. This should actually be called the Green Stupa due to all the moss and plants growing on it! The Stupa itself does look like a giant dog turd, that has come from a dog with a pointy bum! We did have a bit of a giggle about this before heading off for food.We had basically had a 4 hour tour of Vientiane, by foot, and the whole thing had cost us 2000 kip each. It may not be much to see, but it really is a cheap half day out if you fancy a walk. At the Scandinavian Bakery, Lorna had a chicken salad and I had a chicken baguette. When it came out, it was actually a foot long baguette and it was chicken tikka in it - fantastic! Boh meals were spot on andit really filled us up. You could say that it was the right touch!
We then headed back to the lodge, taking a walk along the riverside. We ended up popping into a travle agents and booking our bus tickets to Vang Vieng for tomorrow. It was quite funny really. We had asked for a price at the lodge earlier and they said 60000 kip. When we asked for a price at this travel agent, she said 55000 kip. We said this was OK and we just needed to get our money out. She must have misunderstood because she then said "OK, what about 50000 kip"? I was wondering how long I could stand there until she got down to 10000 kip, but felt that would be unfair, so we apid 50000 kip. Bus leaves at 10am tomorrow, so nearly early get up for a change.
After a brief supermarket stop off, we arrived back at the Dragon Lodge to get showered and changed. Tonight we went back to the Xayoh Cafe that was mentioned yesterday. The meals here were also very nice and more Beer Lao was consumed. Amazingly, when the bill arrived, they hadn't charged me for one of my Beer Lao's!! It must be a National thing that states that Vickers always gets a free beer when in cafe or restaurant! We will put this to the test in Vang Vieng tomorrow.....
