Brodie’s next 15,000 klm
To see other blogs of our travels https://issuu.com/janandkeithtravels
Vientiane - Looking up r The flight from Bangkok to Vientiane was fairly short and trying to balance eating a meal and filling out immigration papers was a real challenge. We had taken some passport photos in a Bangkok kiosk and was concerned that we had the right size , and with incomplete immigration forms we lined up at the VOA desk in Vientiane airport with some trepidation. Turns out it wasn’t a problem as long as the US dollars were right so was your form. A short taxi ride and we were at the hotel, the first thing we saw after being welcomed by many staff was the reception desk made from the front end of a 70's Mercedes. The room unlike Bangkok had windows and a bright airy avant guarded feel, with light fittings and hangers made from plumbing fixtures. Once settled in a walk was in order, we headed towards the river and the night markets, it seems thato we were further from town than expected, it’s so hard to judge when picking a location on a map. When we reached the river, The Mekong, it was our first surprise ... expecting a river wall and the river lapping below turned out to be a river wall and hundreds of metres of fields with the river in the distance .... a huge sandbar had built over the years since the wall was built changing the course of the river. Continuing our walk along the river wall we passed a few open restaurants and a boat restaurant that probably hadn’t seen water for many years. Perhaps another kilometre or two finally saw us at the night market, mainly clothing with a food section off by it self. Before braving the night market I used an ATM and became an instant Lao millionaire by withdrawing $155 aud.. Jan saw a pair of shoes she liked but thought they were dear at 25000 kip until I explained it was less than $4.00 straight back to the stall and they were hers!. I was short of tee shirts so 60000 kip bought two tee shirts ..... the markets seemed very cheap ..... transportation not so much. We were about 3k from the hotel, if that, so we decide a tuk tuk was the way to go, in Thailand or Cambodia it would have been $4 tops.... $8!! not a lot of money but just seemed too much. Back at the hotel we ate in the restaurant, besides needing a torch to read the menu, featured some Honda’s, BMW’s and Vespa”s all in pristine condition some with zero on the odometers, I had fried rice with seafood and Jan a green curry both very tasty and then we shared French Fries with garlic ..delicious!!
river with Thailand on the other bank
Ouodomxay ... a mistake?? or just another adventure
Have you ever sat around for four hours for a delayed flight that takes you a couple of hundred kilometres from where you really want to go .. well we have. Let me make it quite clear ... it was my fault, yeah! I know! I’m not often wrong but with so much going on prior to starting this trip I didn’t get the chance to triple check my bookings . Back to the story, the day started early with breakfast and a walk down to the river and the surrounding lanes. Due to a bit of rain they were all mud, even the major road that ran along the river bank was just a muddy potholed gravel road, It seemed strange to see a modern service station, a flash hotel and new construction front a gravel road ............progress beating infrastructure, As we walked around we noticed most of the houses in this area were fairly dilapidated and fairly old but still interesting to see the different designs. We decided to get to the airport early and due to the renovations going on it was just as well. Checkin was in a temporary building and we had to wait till our flight number was shown on a sign and then join a chaotic queue. Once we had a boarding pass we had to hang around on some steps until they opened the departure lounge, even though it was a domestic flight we still had to go through immigration. After sitting around watching other flights leave we finally discovered ours was delayed by a couple of hours..... the seats weren’t all that comfortable.
Finally on the plane it was a smooth flight to Ouodomxay, but surprise surprise we had to pass through immigration again... finally outside the terminal we discovered no taxis and no one spoke English. A tuk tuk driver approached us and when l showed him our hotel voucher he seemed very puzzled, I’m thinking it is a popular guesthouse he must of heard of it. He took the paper away for discussion with his mates and with sign language and a bit of internet we finally realised we should be a couple of hundred k away not here!! I got the tuk tuk to take us to a hotel ..any hotel.. which turned out to be quite reasonable considering it was only $15. and had a travel agent attached. I had done a quick check and there appeared to be nothing to hold our attention so I got the lady (with much sign language to book us the next flight out, the next day. The flight was 2,400,000 kip and as well as no English, no credit cards either ... time to find a few million in cash.
Fortunately there were many atm’s so that problem was solved...time for food. We found a restaurant not far from the hotel that had an English name...that was the only English they had, but we did end up with some very tasty sweet and sour pork (nothing like Aust) ginger chicken and CHIPS. WE DON'T FIND ANY ENGLISH IN THIS TOWN ALL SIGN LANGUAGE!
Breakfast was the next challenge, the hotel didn’t offer any so we took to the streets, nothing even came close to looking like a suitable venue and I eventually bought a fried flour thing turned out to be quite nice, Jan wouldn’t have one so we ended up paying 15000 for a weird noodle dish not really what we wanted for breakfast. We spent the rest of our time wandering the main street checking out the different shops and markets........ Lunch was in a KFC copy where they gave up on sign language and gave me control of the till to order lunch ....
Looking for breakfa
Egg factory with chooks in background you can watch them being laid!
These fried doughy things were quite nice, never found out what they were
ast in Ouodomxay
Jan waiting for breakfast noodles she didn’t like them!
What's a view
without steps?
The Plain of Jars Site 1 After wandering the streets of Ouodomxay we finally caught a plane back to Vientiane and had an almost western meal at our hotel. The next morning we once again headed to the airport defiantly going to Phonosavan. We flew into an airport reminiscent of Grafton’s 30 years ago, as soon as we got inside the terminal we were approached by a tour agent offering us a trip to our guesthouse, with no other form of transport in sight we accepted his offer and ended up using his fairly expensive private tour the next day. Although at over $120 each for the full day it wasn’t all that bad in comparison to a half day tour of Vientiane at $100 each and we did all the work. (we didn’t do the bike ride preferring to get bikes from the hotel. The guesthouse was fairly basic, but the staff were friendly, about 600 metres from the main street down a fairly rough dirt road. We spent the afternoon wandering the main street and finally deciding on a place with a lot of deactivated (hopefully!) bombs out the front. The menu had quite a variety of western dishes and I chose “Good local beef” (cause I didn’t want bad local beef) with you guessed it chips!. Jan only had toast as she felt the place hadn’t been cleaned since the end of the war in 1973, mine was nice. The next day after a fried egg breakfast we were on our way to the Plain of Jars. The guide spoke good English and it was a good tour, the only real downside was the cold (we were unprepared for it.) and the driver wouldn’t return 5k to the guest house when Jan realised she had forgotten her camera. The Jar sites, so far they have found 72 but only 3 are safe for tourists due to unexploded bombs, consist of lots of stone jars ranging from a metre to over 3 metre scatted over hill sites. They are believed to be 2 to 3000 years old and no one really knows there purpose. The most popular theory at the moment was that they were used for burials, but that is only a guess. They were made from sandstone with a about 20% from granite, they had been transported up hills up to 20klm from the quarries where they were made, some of them weighing in excess of 3 tonnes .... quite an effort.
The biggest jar at s
site 1 over 3 metres
These were the markers showing a path free of bombs
Getting to some of the sites was an adventure in itself
Last day in With the plane not due till 12 noon we decide we would go for another stroll around Phonsavan, this time we went away from the main town area. The shops were still pretty similar with a surprising number selling hardware and quite a few of the rest selling scooters. We must have seen over 200 brand new scooters in stock at various shops but with prices starting around $600 its not surprising. We then came across the “shop” in the photos, we quickly realised that they were live pigs in the wicker baskets and they were slaughtering and processing the pigs on site .... just pick your basket and 15 minutes later walk away with the “bacon
Pulling a pig out of basket
Processing in background
n Phonosavan
Slaughtering the pig by bleeding out
Buddh Our last full day in Vientiane and we decide to take a city tour, the ďŹ rst stop being the Buddha Park. This park is about 25 k’s from town and was started about 20years ago by a monk with some unusual ideas, I will let some of the photos tell the story.
ha Park The onion shaped thing is hollow with another hollow ball inside, both can be accessed by some fairly precarious steps, they would Australian OHS in tears. The inner ball has sculptures inside while the outer provides. the “safer” route to the top I had to go to the top for the photo’s it certainly didn’t make feel comfortable with uneven concrete and no barriers. Fortunately they had a sign a the top warning me
Buddh
ha Park
Buddha Pa
ark
Buddha P
Park
And the most iconic stupa in Laos
To see other blogs of our travels https://issuu.com/janandkeithtravels