Laos - Vientiene

Sunset in Vientiene
One of the many temples (Wats) - this particular one has a large collection of budhas.

So we arrived in Vientiene the capital city, not knowing what to expect from Laos at all. Coming early morning from a hot and humid Kuala Lumpur we landed and the first thing that we noticed was that it was really cool, almost cold enough to put a jacket on, which was a pleasent surprise. Thinking that i was going to get a hard time by immigration because i look like a terrorist mass bomber to a lot of the immigration people at airports around the world, i was again surprised at the lack of hassle, especially considering that the people here have probably never seen a Sikh before.

Vientiene..

We collected our luggage, changed some money for Kip, the local currency and got in a taxi to our guest house. The streets were free from traffic and congestion, especially considering this is the capital city, the centre of town was really clean and quite European looking, all nice surprises.
This is the Laos equivalent of the Arc de Triomph. A lot of French architecture can still be seen in Laos.

I was so impressed with the wide clean streets lines with flowers.

The black stupa

The guest house we stayed in was really nice, it was called Mali Namphu and was centrally located and clean and quiet.

This is a shot of the breakfast area from the balcony. Fantastic guest house at 9 pounds a night with breakfast.

On going out and exploring we found Vientiene to be charming, with a great mix of people, restaurants and places to go, there some fantastic sunsets to be had over looking the Mekong. Sunset and the Mekond river - because of the dry season it was very spindly.

Shopping was great in the day market and the variety of vegetarian food was good for us too!

Overall, Vientiene has to be my number one city, simply because its so unlike a city, the place and the people make this a true gem in the South East!

Gurcharan bought some Birkenstocks - fake ones. Very cheap.