Visiting Vientiane…

 

In order to get to Vientiane we boarded the same train which took us from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, on the Laos-China railway line. From the station, we had a 30 minute TukTuk ride to get to our hostel, which was made interesting by the fact I had to direct the driver, by pointing my finger left or right out of the Tuk Tuk whenever we reached a turning point.

 

Arriving on Thursday, we had originally planned to spend a couple of days there, before getting a flight to Vietnam. The first thing we did when we arrived was apply for our Vietnamese visa. This should have been quick, with a usual acceptance time of 72 hours. Unfortunately, we were told that visa approvals were taking much longer, due to there being a week long public holiday in Vietnam, we knew at that point we wouldn’t be able to fly until the middle of the next week at the earliest.

 

After a few hours on google searching ‘things to do in Vientiane’, we quickly realised there was in fact very little to do at all, explaining why many people regard Vientiane as ‘the most boring capital city in the world’. We spent our first two nights in a backpackers hostel, which was unnecessarily loud from 12pm onwards, so we decided to look for a nicer place to stay for a few days while we waited for our Visas to come through. This coincided with our friend Sarah leaving to Bangkok, so we said our goodbyes and retuned to a group of 3 once more. We splashed the cash and spent £10 a night to stay in a 4* hotel, with a rooftop pool, and spent a big chunk of our remaining time either sat by the pool or diving for rocks within the pool.

 

Aside from relaxing, we managed to track down 2 driving ranges , which killed an hour of the day and me and Sam also went to visit the COPE centre, which was rated the number 1 attraction in the city .

 

The COPE museum was centred around cluster bombings and the damage that it caused to Laos, and still causes to this day. It was interesting as I personally had no idea that Laos is the most bombed country in the world. The effects of the bombings were not only devastating at the time, but it is estimated that 800,000 cluster bombs that were dropped on Laos were ‘duds’ that never exploded, which means even now there is still a team of 3000 people who go out daily looking to locate and disarm the remaining bombs. The other side of the COPE centre was for the treatment and rehabilitation of people who had lost limbs due to the bombings. We read many heartbreaking stories of the victims, and donated our spare KIP to partially cover the cost of a prosthetic leg for someone.

 

On our last night in Laos, we met up with our friends Elliot and Ciara one last time, for a meal and a few drinks before we all headed home for an early night.

 

The next day we caught our flight from Vientiane to Hanoi.

 

Beer Choice: BeerLao (650ml) , 17,000 KIP (78p).

 

Favourite memory of Vientiane: Boarding the plane to leave !

 

Written by: Ben