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After a nice break from "the backpacking" way in China, we are back into the swing of things and absolutely loving it. We left Kunming, China yesterday morning, on a very quaint plane from the 1960's with miniature seats and loud propellers. The flight was a quick 2 hours, where we sat and made fun of a man at the front of the plane with the worst comb-over even imaginable. We arrived in Vientiane and were hit with a wave of heat. We knew it was going to be hot, but we had forgotten what the heat was like after being out of it for almost a month.
We made our way to the middle of the city, right along the banks of the Mekong River and found ourselves a nice guest house with hot water and a restaurant (always a plus). We spent the day walking around, and surprise surprise...getting lost! I have come to the realization (3 months later) that neither Koren nor I are very good with directions. We always have a map, but it doesn't really help when you don't know what direction is North! We didn't do much today, found some books stores (we were unable to find English books in China), a People Magazine and some neat little shops. During our walk around we kept finding all of these restaurants that served Beer Lao for a dollar. It was so hot outside, that every hour or so, we needed a nice cold Beer Lao to keep us cool and keep us going. The day pretty much ended here and all we could say to eachother was how happy we were to be back on the road.
We woke up this morning (February 24th) and had a huge American Breakfast (for $2) and set out on a mission.... to rent bicycles. We have heard the best way to see the city is on a bike, so that was what we were going to do. We got two retro-style bikes and began to pedal. We were heading to Pha That Luang (the most importnat national monument in Laos). The people at the bike rental shop told us it should take us about 15 minutes to get there by bike... an hour later we arrived...surprise surprise...we got lost. But unlike China people here speak English and can help you out, the only problem is, most of them gave us the wrong directions. We knew we were looking for a Giant Gold Pagoda and we finally found it. Dripping with sweat, we sat under a nice shady palm tree waiting for the gates to open. The Pagoda was beautiful. We walked around for quite a while before getting back on our trusty bikes and heading to the next sight of the day...Wat si Saket. Guess what?? We didn't get lost trying to find it. I was pretty impressed, but considering we only had to follow one street all the way there, it as pretty tough to get lost. Wat Si Saket is the oldest temple in Vientiane. It houses more than 2000 Buddhas made of wood, stone and bronze). All in all, the day was great. We are still trying to get used to the heat and the humidity, but we know our tolerance for the sun will be back quite quickly an we can't wait. Our tans are virtually gone and we can't wait to have them back...we miss them! Well, that is it for the sightseeing in the capital city. I think we are going to be back here in a week or 10 days before heading back to Thailand, and we will pay a visit to the Buddah park then. We are off tomorrow morning to Vang Vieng for a little bit of tubing!
previous travel blog entry
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