Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital of Laos, about a four hour bus journey from Vang Vieng. On this journey we made our first stupid mistake since travelling - we left our passports at the guesthouse. Thankfully Maddy realised just as the bus was about to leave, we told the driver and he thankfully managed to help us out. He charged us 30,000kip and stuck me on the back of a scooter to nip back and pick up our passports while the bus waited. Could have been a bit of a disaster as we would have had no choice but to get the bus back to Vang Vieng and pick them up.

Anyway, Vientiane was a bit of a let down for me as I got really ill while we were here. We were only planning to stay one night anyway before heading down to the 4000 Islands. On the day  we set off we did have a bit of an explore - saw a fairly cool temple, but again it wasn't really worth the entrance fee. Also had a little explore round town and saw some government buildings. It was nicer than I had expected but nothing to shout about really. We found a really cool Italian restaurant that did an all you can eat buffet with pizza and pasta made to order - the food was great but I later found out I wasn't quite well enough to get stuck in to the extent that I did. The best thing that happened that day was finding a chemist who spoke great English so we could both stock up on some bits and bobs and she sorted me out with some medicine to get me on the mend.

We spent a little while looking around for bus tickets to the 4000 Islands, the prices ranged from 230,000kip up to 280,000 kip. We couldn't really figure out what the difference was (different companies they claimed), so we went with the cheapest option. While we waited for the bus we got chatting to some guys that booked from our hotel, they paid 250,000 kip. Their pick up came first and we waited for about 15 minutes and then the same van came and picked us up - in the meantime they had just been driving in circles, hadn't even picked anyone up - bizarre!

A great tune from Blu Mar Ten, I picked up their album Natural History just before I left home - it's worth a listen, quite a range of styles on there.