So we raced back to Phnom Penh from Kampot in the hope that we could get a flight the same day to Laos. When we arrived in Phnom Penh we got a tuk tuk straight to the Lao airline office. But much to our dismay- the Cambodian lunch break was on for 2 hours. We knew we would be pushing it to get a flight that day but still needed to book one regardless. We stuck around the area, got ourselves some lunch and waited.
In the end we did get a ticket to leave the same day and it was a race to the airport but the tuk tuk driver who stuck out the wait with us got us there in great time.
It was quite a full on day and when we got into Laos we just wanted to get a place and chill out. Well that wasn't as easy as it seemed either. We walked around and around but all the affordable places were booked out. Eventually we got a crappy place but it was somewhere to sleep for the night.
The next day our first mission was to get our Chinese visa. Which also seemed simple enough- if only we had taken a passport photo with us. We should have known better and wasted time going out there and back twice that day.
Vientine did get better for us from there on in. We moved our lugguge and selves to a nice guesthouse on the riverfront for upgraded and cheaper digs.
The river front was an excellent place to be. It always had something going on- markets, bands, jumping castles, boxing and sideshow alley type games. We spent alot of time just walking around and hanging out there at night. We watched a Thai band there one night and they sang for us the only two English songs they knew - Hotel California and Still got the Blues for you. Matt had a turn at a dart throwing game and we had some local made whiskey - Lao Lao with a market seller.
We did do some other things in Vientine though- we hired bikes and went to Patuxai- which is the Lao version of the Arc de Triumph (Patu means arch and xai means victory). Matt was less than impressed than me. I thought it was quite a nice place with surrounding gardens and good views of the city. We also checked out the presidential palace (from the outside) and went to a shooting range.
Matt had a go on two guns me just one. We both shot the .22 automatic hand gun. We got 5 bullets each, I didn't even get one into the target. It was really loud! Matt did ok with that, and was inspired to have another turn this time on a rifle. The target was much further away and the gun much quieter. Matt did excellent with that one and got a bullseye. (Debbie and Harvey, this was done at a proper shooting range in a controlled environment, nothing dodgy. Although there is plenty of those around).
