Vientiene & goodbye to Laos

Our last bus journey in Laos was from Luang Prabang to Vientienne, a 10 hour journey. However a bus journey in Laos wouldnt be the same unless it broke down....so it was very fitting that after ten minutes into our journey we stopped to get petrol and fill the radiator up with water. With this being Laos, the alarm bells should have started ringing, especially after we had to keep stopping every 20 minutes to keep filling up with water. 3 hours later and half a dozen water stops we eventually broke down, in the pitch black and half way up a mountain. Myself and Niamh just fell into fits of laughter, deja vu was setting in, especially as when we got off the bus to check out the situation we noticed that the bus going in the opposite direction had also broken down and the bus drivers and men had set up a little campfire, making themselves cosy for the night. Luckily, about two hours later another private bus pulled up and offered us a lift to Vientienne for the bargain price of 4 dollars,so we pulled our bags off and jumped bus. Only about 6 people took the offer to pay more and carry on, although the alternative was a 8 hour wait in the mountains till help came from the public bus company at 8am the next day. The private bus was hilarious, it was full of Asians and just as we settled down to try and get a bit of sleep at around 1am, Westlife comes blaring out of the radio...literally blaring so we couldnt hear each other talk, this was then followed by local Laos rock music till we reached Vientienne at 9.30am.   Vientienne is okay. It's another city, but unlike the rest of Laos there are a lot of businesses here and it is really strange to see people walking around in work clothes instead of making sticky rice and chasing chickens! The first day there we pretty much slept and ate which suited us fine. We booked outselves in a nice hotel as a little treat and tried to take advantage of the place. We met up with Juan-Luis and Cecilia that night and headed down to the beach, along the Mekong for a BBQ dinner of stuffed fish and sticky rice, washed down with a few Beer Laos. There is somthing very relaxing about sitting by the river at night with just candles on. The next day we did a little sight seeing before meeting up with Cecilia and Juan-Luis again to say our final goodbyes as the time had come for us all to go our seperate ways. Juan-Luis was flying to the South Islands in Thailand for a black moon party, Cecilia was heading to North Thailand and we were going to be heading to Vietnam. That night we went in serach of some local Laos food and as we were wandering along we got chatting to a lovely local girl who was eager to practice her English with us. She took us to her local "high street" for some traditional Lapp (basically a groud mince meat cooked with herbs and mint). The local place consisted of a stall on the street which was selling take away options of papya salad etc then a table and chair behind that, next to the two gas rings where all the cooking took place, and just beside where the dad was sitting on the sofa watching his telly for the night. It is really strange how everyone works where they sleep...literally.   The day after we decided to hire some bikes and bike around the place to see what else there was to offer. We biked our way round lots of little side streets and markets until we found the main temple, which was very grand, gold and touristy. Saying that, it was still worth seeing. That night we had our last beer Lao in Laos and packed our bags ready to get the early morning flight the next day to Hanoi and to meet up with Caroline. We were sad to finally be saying goodbye to a country that we had both fallen in love with (broken buses and all). We had even become quite good at the language and Niamh was even starting to barter in the local markets in Laos. Hey ho, we have to move on, so Vietnam here we come!