Laos. Vientiane.

We took another bus journey to the country's capital Vientiane. It was amazing to be free of the crappy country roads and on some pretty bump free roads for a change! Although it is the capital it is still tiny but it did not come as a nice change to be back in a city. It was a but disappointing to be honest! 

After we checked in we went on a short tour of the city.we took the crappiest tuk tuk ever! Not sure what it had it it's hear box, but could not find the gears! We visited a temple/shrine which was pretty underwhelming really. Not quite sure why it was there. It was solid so didn't have anything inside but we and all the Buddhists walked clockwise around it. 

We then visited the Laos equivalent to the Arc De Triompe. The Americans apparently donated a load of concrete to make a runway (not sure how true this is as surely you'd make a runway out of Tarmac?) but they decided to build a knock off arch instead but make it a metre taller. So I've not seen the real one in Paris but I'm sure it doesn't look much like this one! But it was quite pretty underneath with the decoration on the ceiling. 

I paid 2000 kip and took a walk up inside to the top. On each floor we passed so many scabby market stalls selling the crumminess tat ever!

From the top the views were good, but there's not really much to look at !

In the evening we took a trip to the river front and had some drinks and dinner. The river was more of a stream a long way off in the distance! The drinks were good and I was glad to be having my last Laos meal as they had been getting rather boring. Not much flavour to them. 

After dinner we took a trip to the night market, but it was just full of crap! Just crappy cheap western clothes and phone covers. No thanks, looking forwards to doing shopping elsewhere!

In the morning we paid a visit to the amputee centre where we learned about cluster bombs which were dropped by the Americans during the Vietnam war and are still injuring people now as many are still unexploded. It was really interesting and also really sad. Children would injure themselves but picking up the small round bombs not knowing what they were and lose a hand or their life. Adults would use them for fishing or for scrap metal and often injure themselves too. It was terrible but also so interesting. I wished I had some money left to donate but didn't have a kip left. 

After this we made our way to the airport to head to Vietnam! It was a very short flight, just an hour and it seemed to just take off then land straight away. Had my final Beer Laos. I'll miss it!