Our first few days in this beautiful country where spent in Wonderlands Guesthouse 2, a cute little guesthouse nuzzled behind the Main Street in Vientiane. After doing our usual routine (freshening up, sorting out a motor bike, dumping our clothes at the launders) we headed for a ride around to check out the town. Vientiane is bizarre. If someone showed me a picture and told me it was the capital city of a country, I'd laugh. It's not only quite small, it's not built up what-so-ever, if you could get onto a 10 story building (which you couldn't, as there are none) you would have just as much of a view as a 100 story in Bangkok. Even though there are a lot of tourists here, the city hasn't seemed to conformed, it feels local, welcoming and charming.
We only really had one full day in Vientiane. We researched some things do to and seeing as we have already done our fair share of temples we decided to take the ride out to the Buddha park instead. After about 40 minutes of bumping up and down on a common dirt (more like Boulder/mud) road we reached the Buddha park. Even though there were a few tourists, the place is beautiful. I don't know if it was just me, but it was a little aerie at times, something about standing in a near dark tower surrounded by statues rubbed me the wrong way.
Before we knew it, our time in Vientiane was over, but even after such a short stay we were already in love with Laos and the beautiful people that live there.
I better go, our host just told us our mini bus we are waiting for has been and gone already.