The One with the Arc de Triumphe

So we find ourselves in the Laos Capital Vientiane, and due to a lack of time decide not to follow our original route down to the South of Laos and into Cambodia, but rather to go back to Bangkok and enter Cambodia from the West... a disappointing and yet necessary decision if we want to see anything of Vietnam.

Vientiane is much smaller than I expected, but we did do a bit of sight seeing here visiting the gold Chedi of That Luang - where a monk asked me to take a photo of him and his monk friend!

We also visited the National History Museum of Laos which was all very biased against the "American Imperialists and their puppets" but when you consider that Laos is the most bombed country in history per capita... you can kind of understand the tone.

There is also a funky arch - the Vientiane Arc de Triumphe, but called the Victory Arch. We climbed it for a very non impressive view of the city.

Sadly we did not leave ourselves time for the Buddha Park which looked COOL on the postcards or to visit the famous Wat Sisaket... but we had a journey to make which would see us take in 3 countries and a journey of 30 hours to get us to Siem Reap, Cambodia.