Vientiane - Jan 11-15
Find a room in one of the guesthouses in the Lonely Planet, right in the middle of town, for about $6.50. I hire a bicycle for 2 days as I figure this will be easier than walking, and it is. It is completely painless as the pressure on the pedals is from the ball of my foot rather than the heel and ankle which still hurt constantly and more so when weight put on them.
For the next 2 days, I visit every sight I can fit in. The highlight would have to be a temple that is built in a patch of jungle about 3km from the centre of the city, the size of Heffron Park, or one of the 2 sections of Hyde Park. It has been maintained to show what Vientiane was like before it was developed, and so, what it was like must have been dense bamboo forest with occassional wooden huts on stilts camouflaged sporadically throughout, and temples hidden at the ends of roads. One of these stilted huts has a large steel water tank underneat which is heated by a wood fire until it boils. The steam is fed via a metal tube or flue into the floor of a room build in the hut, covered by various herbs, created a herbal sauna. When you arrive, you are given a sarong and a cup of tea, and you spend as long as you like going into the sauna, coming out, cooling down, having cups of tea and conversations with the other tourists, foreigners who have moved to Laos and locals who know about this place. When you have had enough of the sauna, you are lead to an area with 8 beds where you are given a 1 hour Laos accupressure massage. I spent about 3.5 hours there. Total cost, about $5.
Another highlight is one of the bars along the riverbank. Vientiane is built on the Mekong at a point where it is many hundreds of metres across, but there is a sandbank a few kilometres long and most of the river wide, right along the town, so you don't get to see the full river flowing. If you follow the river, and go past all the tables and chairs along it services by the various food trolleys, if you go as far as you can along the river road where it turns to join the main road, which has turned off some time before, you get to a spot where the sandbank ends and the full width of the river is in front of you, and so is the Sala Khounta. If you imagine a saloon from a deserted wild west town - wooden boardss with gaps, man sized wagon wheels leaning up against them outside and in, vines covering it, you get the picture of what this bar looks like from the outside - like it's about to topple over and fall into the river. Once you step inside though, it still has the same charm, but is well decorated with wooden chairs and tables home made from tree stumps and logs, and the most amazing view of the river, especially at sunset, which you can see by going to our pictures page.
Whilst here, I have been able to speak with Beck and Jett most days. The technology is first class - web cafes with headsets and camera allowing full video and audio contact with anyone who has a computer and headset. Barbara and Gavin (my sister and brother-in-law) and my mother (with their help) have also been in contact on this system. Some say it destroys the solitude only available when travelling. I love it.
Tomorrow night I start travelling south towards the Cambodian border, although it will take over a week as I'll be stopping at a number of places on the way. Whilst here, I also finalised Jett's flight to meet me in Ho Chi Minh City on Feb 10 to travel through Vietnam with me and Thailand with Beck and I. Jamie, from Charity Challenge, the organisation Beck and I became involved in raising money for the Australia Tibet Council, is travelling to Vietnam and volunteered to escort Jett, for which I am forever grateful. It will be 3 months by then since I have seen him, and will be 2 months by the time I see Beck again. My mothers flies to Bangkok in March, thanks to Jett's mum, to escort Jett back to Sydney. Don't know when I'll be able to update the site again, but excited about heading towards Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Jett in Vietnam, and Beck and mum in Thailand.
posted by flamethrower77 at 4:52 AM
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