Vientiene, Laos (Post #79)
Monday, January 9th, 2006Saa Baa Dee!
It was difficult to leave our favorite town, Vang Vieng but we can’t stay in one place forever.
So, we took a bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiene (the capital of Laos) yesterday (about 4 hours). An interesting thing about the bus “station” in Vang Vieng is that it is an old air strip used by the U.S. during the Vietnam war. It is just a huge dirt and gravel strip of land that serves no purpose other than the place where all the buses leave from.
Upon getting off the bus in Vientiene, we saw the Mekong River behind us and some guest houses in front of us. We walked across the street and got a room. That’s the easy transportation-to-guest house transition we’ve ever had. We arrived about 2:30pm so we got some lunch and then headed to see a couple of the city’s sites (a famous wat built in 1818 and a victory gate sort-of-thing that was built in 1969 with cement donated by the U.S., meant for the construction of a new airport). We went back to our room pretty early and were glued to BBC. We really like it when we have a TV (with international channels) in our room because we get caught up on all the international news. We also spent some time planning where we’ll go and what we’ll do in Vietnam, as this is our next country and it is fast approaching.
Michele Harmon