We found the Guest House Mixay Paradise, a very clean place and affordable 85,000 including breakfast. All the signs that pointed out extra charges if you do certain things were a bit over the top and we saw a situation with other tourists and a waiter that was blown out of proportion, but we had a very nice stay (and good laugh).
After we checked in we went to the evening market on the Mekong River and Robert enjoyed the view over the river towards Thailand.
We had dinner at a restaurant that trains street children to become professional waiters and chefs.
For the next day we planned to visit the Buddah Park that is a little bit out of town. We had to take a bus from the Talat Sao bus station from platform 1 number 14 that took us to the Laos/Thai boarder.
From there we got a small and old bus to bring us to the Buddah Park.
The Buddah Park is collection of concrete Buddahs and is nice to walk around for about an hour, but I have to say the bus ride with the locals made the hole effort worth it and a good experience.
A huge lying Buddah.
There is a Buddah Building that you can enter and climb to get a nice view from the top.
To get back we just waited opposite the Buddah Park and the shaggy bus picked us up after a while of waiting.
After we arrived back at the Vientiane bus station we had a nice soup at one of the stalls for lunch.
After our bellies were full again we walked to the Cope Center to see the museum about the problem with "bombies" in Laos and how they help victims to afford proteases and get training to use them.
How did all the "bombies" end up in Laos?
Laos was not in war for a long time but still until today many locals and especially children die every year from bomb explosions. When Vietnam and the USA were in war, the USA started their planes with cluster bombs in Thailand flew over Laos to drop the cluster bombs with thousands of the so called "bombies" inside them to Vietnam. But they were not able always to drop the bombs in Vietnam and as it was too dangerous to land with the cluster bombs again, they decided to drop them in the country in between, Laos. They also wanted to hurt the communists which gathered on the Laos side, so they had planned operations to keep them from moving or spreading out again.
This was against a signed treaty but nobody cared. The Lao people at the boarder area even lived in caves, as they were attacked so many times. That explains why they are so far behind in the development of the country in comparison to other countries. So when the cluster bomb gets dropped it opens up and the hundreds "bombies" fall out and about 60% of them don't explode and just wait to be touched. As the "bombies" look like toys, especially children get attracted to play with them. Also nowadays there is the possibility to earn a lot of money with scarp metal.
After a lot of information from cope we went to see a wat and more Buddahs.
When we returned to our Guest House we met Chico and found out that Chantal was not feeling too good and was resting. We decided to leave tomorrow together to Kong Lor. In the evening we went to see a Laos dance performance at the Seng Lao Hotel.
Unfortunately it was not very busy, but as the show did not happen yesterday, because of too little interest, we were happy we were able to see it this Saturday evening.
The show was nicely done. The dance was nice, the music good and a man that was able to whistle like different birds was amazing.
The food was plenty and delicious and we were not able to finish everything.
More pictures of Vientiane.
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