Sunday, September 25, 2005

Vientiane: Not Much Doing.

Another day in the Laos capital. We're getting a bit stir-crazy here, as there isn't a lot to do. I'm feeling pretty much better, nearly back to fighting fit. We decided to move guesthouse, the other one was too much like a prison cell. We moved just round the corner to a better place, with air-con and a TV that shows BBC World. It is $15 a night, but worth it, just so we can have some space and not feel so hemmed in.

The problem with guesthouses in Vientiane is that they differ so much in price and standard. For around $5 you are lucky to get a bathroom, and the places are usually pretty shit, damp and smelly. Then it leaps up to $15-$30, when you are more likely to get a place that is of a half decent standard, particularly if you are sticking around a while.

We've decided to extent our Laos visas. so tomorrow that will be one of our missions. The other is to go to the MAG office. One to offer a small donatation for the fantastic work they do, secondly to see if they need any volunteer help, whatever that maybe.

We want to get out of Vientiane, so am not going to stick around for our Vietnam visas. We'll extent our Laos one, then head up back north to Vieng Vien. There we can do some WOFFing if we want, as that was our fall-back plan if the volunteer thing didn't come off. There are too many goody-goody Christain yanks getting all the volunteer jobs. I over-heard some talking last night. All clean-cut, on gap-year or placement from university. Jobs for the boys again. Same all over the world.

Yesterday we went to the Buddha Park, about 32Km from Vientiane. Like the place we visited in Thailand, this was created by a monk. However, unlike the Thailand one, this place was bigger and the statues were not painted in bright primary colours.

We managed to get ourselves there by public transport, which was a bit of a feat in itself. Still not knowing when we should get off, we enquired of some young monks as to when we should disembark. They too were going there, so we simply followed their lead.

On entering the park, there is a interpretation of Hell. You enter through a huge 'hell-mouth', the path leads round the dark inside and up more some stairs. Level after level you make your way up through hell, until you crawl out at the top. There we sat, Sam a little nervous of the drop below us. I ended up chatting with one of the young monks who'd been on our bus. Sam needed to feel the ground beneath her feet, so we all got down and the monk explained some of the images that were represented in the park.

Soon the rains came, so we headed for shelter. After about an hour or so they stopped. Making our way back to the road to get the bus, we had a quick look around the gift shop. And there we stayed for about 2 hours. We ended up talking to some people from the nearby village, they wanted to learn English from us. So a 2 hour lesson in English language, culture, slang, etc... followed. We had a great time, and saw lots of buses fly passed as we chatted. If we'd have missed the last bus we'd been told that someone would put us up.

We did however manage to get what I think was the last bus to Vientaine. It had been a long day. We'd started early, going to the post-iffice to send more cards to people, and then to the morning market, before we'd gone out to the Buddha Park. So we grabbed something to eat, had tried to have an early night. I finished the book I only started the day before, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. Sam carried on reading the other book I'd just got, Mr. Nice, the Howard Marks story. She's given up on the JG Ballard she was reading.

I crashed as much as our deeply uncomfy bed would allow, Sam unable to sleep, spent a lot of the night reading. So with little sleep, and still not feeling a 100%, that is why we decided to shift out and find a better place to stay for the last two days in Vietaine.

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