Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Travel to Vientaine, Laos PDR part 2

Dear all,
never did I imagine that when I broke off from my last post, it would actually be a more than one month break. I travelled to Guangzhou and had to clear a lot of backlog at work when I got back.

Now,to very quickly carry on..after the stupa That Luang visit, we moved on to the Patuxai as the sun was setting. 1st thing that caught my eye was a fountain right in front of the monument. It was actually a gift from the Chinese Government to Laos PDR. It makes me wonder if the Singapore Government have ever presented such a gift to their friends..



The tiny park surrounding the Patuxai also gave me the impression that people in Laos treasure their time to exercise more than people in Thailand.


To be honest with you,i personally feel that there is nothing really much to see over this part,maybe because the monument is already past closing time and we could not go up to see the surrounding view. However,since we travelled all the way here,a photo to prove it is indeed a must.



After that,we took a stroll around Vientiane city to look for our dinner. Just to show u a snap shot of how it looks like..

It looks just like any other town in Thailand,but not so much like Bangkok.
We managed to settle for a stall by the river overlooking the other side- Thailand..
There are 2 sections to this stall,one part with tables and chairs..the normal way to have dinner..this did not appeal to me very much..

We choose to sit on the floor by the low table and lay ourselves comfortably on the cushions.

The next morning, we have to make preparations to cross over to Thailand. We arrived at the bus station and it was a very crowded place.Still fascinated with the sandwich sellers on the streets..because over in Singapore,its a much more expensive version known as Subway'.



We have to quickly get the bus tickets..

It still proved to be a very long wait for the bus..

We managed to talk to some tuk tuk drivers who wanted to send us across the Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge for about 40 baht each..Its so different from last night a tuk tuk driver show us a price list of 95000 kips for the same journey! And I thought they did not try to anyhow charge us since they have a price list. Luckily we did not take up his offer.
The bus tickets only cost us 55 baht each..its much cheaper..Altough the tuk tuk is even cheaper,we still chose the bus because we do not know where the tuk tuk is going to drop us.

We managed to get to the border without any hiccups.Time to say good bye to Laos PDR!