Laos - Vientiane

Apologies about getting so far behind on the blog. Procrastination has always been a strong suit. I'm hoping to get quite a few blogs up in the next couple of days before leaving SE Asia on the 5th.

Day 139 - Saturday, June 9

Unfortunately, what I had been told in Vang Vieng was true; there wasn't really much to see or do in Vientiane. I checked out their copy of France's Arc de Triomphe (made with concrete supplied by the US that was supposed to be used to build a runway.)

From Laos - Vientiane

And checked out a few more temples:

From Laos - Vientiane

Including this one which provided a good example of Lao scaffolding, which uses tree branches of random sizes and shapes and doesn't exactly inspire confidence:

From Laos - Vientiane

I also checked out the COPE center, which is a non-profit dedicated to helping provide prosthetic limbs to those who need them. Unfortunately, many of the amputees lose limbs as the result of explosions from American cluster bombs dropped during the Vietnam war that never detonated. Sadly, there are still large parts of Laos that are virtually uninhabitable due to the number of undetonated bombs scattered throughout the area.

Vientiane is located on the mighty Mekong, but the water level was quite low when I was there. A picture from the riverside:

From Laos - Vientiane

I was really hoping that Sydney was going to be my one and only experience with bedbugs on this trip, but unfortunately I killed an adult bedbug as I was sitting in my room Saturday afternoon, and then, sure enough, I woke up with a handful of bedbug bites on Sunday. Not cool.

Day 140 - Sunday, June 10

Sunday I made the short flight from Vientiane to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. When I arrived I opted for the public bus into the city, and much like my rides on other public buses in SE Asia, I was the only white person on the bus, which I never would've found if not for wikitravel.

As an aside, I kind of love wikitravel, and highly recommend it for people traveling around to multiple countries. It's obviously not as comprehensive as full on guidebooks like lonely planet, and with it being open source, hotel and restaurant recommendations have to be taken with a grain of salt because any savvy hotel or restaurant owner can edit the page to their benefit (I've used other sources like tripadvisor for restaurants and hotels). But overall, I've found it to be a really great concise resource when visiting places, and I've yet to be in a city for which there wasn't a wikitravel entry. And the best part is that it avoids the need for carrying around heavy guidebooks.

So anyway, on the bus from the airport to the city, I met a really friendly Vietnamese woman who was just happy to have someone to practice her english with. It's unfortunate that because of all the touts and people trying to sell me something that everytime someone tries to initiate a conversation with me, I automatically assume they have ulterior motives, but that also makes it all the more enjoyable when someone like the woman on the bus initiates a conversation just to be welcoming and friendly.