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Thurs 14th April 2011
Official date for Laos New Year
We had our complimentary breakfast at our hostel, which was: toast with butter, jam/marmalade, egg, fruits and tea/coffee. The egg was overcooked but the marmalade was very tasty.
After breakfast, we went to the bus station to catch the local bus to get to the 'Buddha Park'. A local asked us where we were going, we hesitantly replied 'to the Buddha Park' because we thought he was going to sell us something or he wanted something from us. But we were wrong, he genuinely wanted to help us and directed us to the bus stop, which was kind of him. We got on a very crowded and extremely stuffy bus which had no air conditionning, it was full of locals apart from a lady called Misha from Tokyo. She was very friendly and chatty, we chatted to her throughout the journey which took approximately 1 hour. When we arrived at the Buddha Park, we paid an entrance fee of 5,000 LAK each plus an extra 3,000 LAK each to use our own cameras, which was a bit cheeky of them. The Buddha Park was interesting, it was a good size, it had old looking Buddhist and other relgious statues around. The main focal point of the park was a massive reclining Buddha.
We got a local bus back, whilst going back we got soaked by locals throwing water
through the window as it was Laos New Year. When we got back to our hostel we
wanted to book a taxi to take us to the airport tomorrow as we had a flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We had problems booking this as it was Laos New Year and there
was a limited amount of taxis available. We wanted to share a taxi with an English
couple called Jamie and Laura who were staying at the same hostel as us but for
some reason, the staff at our hostel said that we could not share with them, which
puzzled us as we were all going to the airport at the same time. In the end, we
luckily managed to book a taxi from across the road from us which cost 40,000 LAK each.
As it was expensive to get a tuk tuk from our hostel to the 'That Luang' Temple (main temple/national symbol of Laos), we decided to walk to the Patuxai
Monument then get a tuk tuk from there which was less than half the price it would
have cost us. Whilst walking to the Patuxai Monument, we got drenched by more
locals. Upon arrival at the 'That Luang' Temple, we were amazed by the beauty and
size of it, it was a gold covered large Buddhist stupa. Historically, religious people
from as far as India came here to worship. After looking around the 'That Luang',
we went to a temple in the same area. We saw some monks sitting at the front of
the temple where we were both blessed by one of them and were given a lucky
Buddhist band each. We made our way back to our hostel by doing the same
journey we did to get there. We got soaked some more on the way back.
For dinner, we ate at the 'Khop Chai Deu' restaurant. Jay had Luang Prabang
sausage with rice and Helen had the House Special fried noodles with shrimp. It
was really good food, easily one of the best meals of the trip. Jay thought the
sauce was exceptionally good as it was very spicy, just the way he liked it. We also stayed for drinks, after a good night out we headed back to our hostel to pack our
stuff ready for our very early flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia tomorrow.
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