Currently in Vientienne, the capital of Loas. We've had two nights here so far just trying to fill in time until we go to Vietnam to meet two friends from University. We travelled up from Vang Vieng with two girls we met the week before when we were tubing. The journey was only about 4 and a half hours and went really quickly. We walked around for ages trying to find somewhere cheap to stay, food and accomodation is so much more than the other places we've been to in Laos. We finally managed to haggle down a family sized room for 40,000 kip each which is about 3 pounds. We called the room our penthouse because it was on the top floor with 7 beds and a really nice bathroom! We thought we'd got a great deal but then the truth started to be revealed; broken air con (which we were so excited about because we can only ever afford rooms with fans so when we realised it didnt work we were gutted to say the least!) The shower was cold water (Kind of used to that now) The fridge didnt work, the water ran out in the bathroom and the TV was also broken!! It was actually quite funny! In the day we visited the Buddha park (which you can see on the pics) It was an hours tuk tuk drive away and was really amazing. There was a reclining buddha which was HUGE and some crazy eyed hindu styled buddhas. In the evening we went out to meet some people who we've been with for the entire time in Laos so we had a great last night out with them and then everyone came back to our 'penthouse' for drinks...luckily we had a bar which was willing to serve us!
Today beth and I visted a Laos culture musuem which was quite interresting, althougth we think some of the things were fake because they looked brand new and were meant to be ancient artifcats!!

So tomorrow we head over to Hanoi in Vietnam. The bus takes around 25 hours but we have a sleeper bus so hopefully we'll sleep for the majority of it! With the hostel we're staying in now we get free first night accomodation in a hotel in Hanoi....Free internet, breakfast, aircon...sounds too good to be true! We're then meeting up with the two girls we shared the penthouse with her her 23rd birthday!

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