Vientiane - Capital of Laos

The train journey in the high speed train was relaxed and uneventful. The spectacular scenery around Vang Veng gave way to flatter less interesting rice fields, and there were no more tree topped hills. However, everywhere that farmers left uncultivated, there was plenty of green
We headed into town, and then out to the night market, which we assumed [wrongly] was s street food place, instead it was a clothes, electrical stuff, and other stuff market, where the main thing seemed to be fake branded Versace, Gucci, etc. So after a while, we realised our error and by a process I do not quite understand, ended up in a Korean restaurant, that turned out to be pretty good.
I should mention that although almost everywhere else quality, value, and service were excellent, our hotel in Vientiane was a sad exception. The “Garden Villa”, formerly known as the “Garden Boutique” was badly misnamed. Our rooms were passable, but service, and especially breakfast, were dreadful. The manager’s answer to everything was “my staff are taking care of it”, except of course they were not, or not properly. Strangely we didn’t care that much as our priority was to get ahead with home schooling before we meet Grandpa in Japan, so on day 1 we did not do that much, but we did at least manage to find some street food in the evening, and see a bit how the local middle class youths spend their free time. However, we did not find anywhere to sit, so we went off to a local restaurant near the river. It's really excellent.
Our final full day in Vientiane started with a poignant reminder of Laos’s indirect involvement in the Vietnam War. The Ho Chi Minh trail passed in two areas through Laos, and as a result, the US relentlessly bombed Laos. The bombers came at a rate of one every 8 minutes for 9 years. The bombs used were mainly cluster bombs and fire bombs (white phosphorous). Of course at the time there was untold death and destruction, but sadly when the war ended the deaths and injuries continued at a high rate due to millions upon millions of unexploded cluster bombs, that are the size of a tennis ball. They go off when hit by a digging spade by cooking a fire above them and other reasons. The result is alongside the many deaths tgetecare a significant number of lost limbs. We saw this at first hand in an exhibition at the local site where prosthetic limbs are produced and fitted for victims. The material essentially covers four topics. The background of the Vietnam war, the impact of UXO (unexploded ordinance), the limb fitting practices over time, from home made to models based on western tech and methods, and finally efforts since the year 2000 to systematically clear away the UXO. It clearly got through to both us adults and our children.
In the afternoon, we went to the main Buddhist stupa in the capital (That Luang). I wasn’t expecting much after already seeing so many, but this one was indeed impressive, and to add to the interest, there was a religious festival during the time we were there. This was mostly visible in that many local visitors were making donations of fruit and flowers, which were usually elaborately prepared. There was also a very enterprising teenage boy who waited for donors to disappear, and then he took the best flowers and stuffed them in a bag, presumably to sell them a second or 3rd time.
The next day, we headed out of Vientiane and Laos to catch a plane to Bangkok from Udon Thani in northern Thailand. We followed the advice of the hotel manager and google maps that time to get there was 2 hours for a total distance of 58km, but what they forgot to mention was the border controls on the Laos side (quite fast) and the Thai side (intolerably slow). To avoid missing our flight we abandoned our bus and hired a taxi. Luckily that got us to the airport on time, and the rest of the day went smoothly, except for one little boy having a pretty difficult set of tantrums that upset the delicate balance of our tired team. Every group is dependent on the weakest link.Read more