We then changed tack & decided that the fastest option was to use ChinaOdyssey to arrange the rest of our stay in China picking us up from where our pre-planned arrangements ended . They were very good & a couple of days later all we had to do was pay a 50% deposit . Unfortunately I filled in all the forms required , copied both sides of my debit card + my passport & faxed these off but unfortunately they do not take debit cards. They preferred Paypal so I attempted this route but was stymied by a transaction I had made a couple of weeks earlier to an Ghanaian charity which Paypal deemed dubious & bounced even though I subsequently told them it was legit. This resulted in Paypals labyrnthine security process kicking in & asking for proof of ID & address - not so easy from here- despite my protestations. Our third option was Jenny's credit card which seemed OK. While all this had been going on a weekend had arrived & gone we had booked more days in our hotel to allow for a further 4 day delay. These delays have prevented us from making any side trips from Vientiane as the Chinese consulate keep your passport to add the visa & you cant book into a Lao hotel without it. Today some 14 days after arriving in Vientiane we got our passports back complete with visas.
Fortunately Vientiane is a very relaxed place to spend time in. It has lots of good local restaurants, bars,very good coffee shops & bakeries and the Taj Mahal which reminded us of eating out in India all that time ago.As far as sights go there are a number of Wats dotted throughout the centre of town most of which have been rebuilt but we visited what appeared to be the most interesting - Wat Sisaket. This ones claim to fame was due to its survival from the Siamese invasion in the early 1800's who used it as a base whilst they were pillaging & destroying the rest.. It houses some 11,00 buddha images + the broken remains of a number of others.
Other than this we visited the National Historical museum which wassplit into two sections. The first was pre-history & charted the progress of civlization in Paos from stone age to the Siamese invasion. This doesn't amount to a great many artefacts lots of the most important pieces had been looted by subsequent invasions Chinese,Khmer,Siamese & French. This looting was compounded by the effects of action covered by the second section which started with the Indo-China war & was compounded many times by the wholesale bombardment it received in the Vietnam war..( i've read that Laos has received more ordnance per capita than any other country . A map of the country showing bomb sites as small red dots is solid red in the south of the country. What was amusing was the "revolutionary" language of the time used for the war exhibits as in "the imperialist U.S. forces & their puppets".. All in all though it was thought provoking without being quite as shocking as Cambodia or Vietnam. Next stop Kunming China !
Fortunately Vientiane is a very relaxed place to spend time in. It has lots of good local restaurants, bars,very good coffee shops & bakeries and the Taj Mahal which reminded us of eating out in India all that time ago.As far as sights go there are a number of Wats dotted throughout the centre of town most of which have been rebuilt but we visited what appeared to be the most interesting - Wat Sisaket. This ones claim to fame was due to its survival from the Siamese invasion in the early 1800's who used it as a base whilst they were pillaging & destroying the rest.. It houses some 11,00 buddha images + the broken remains of a number of others.
Other than this we visited the National Historical museum which wassplit into two sections. The first was pre-history & charted the progress of civlization in Paos from stone age to the Siamese invasion. This doesn't amount to a great many artefacts lots of the most important pieces had been looted by subsequent invasions Chinese,Khmer,Siamese & French. This looting was compounded by the effects of action covered by the second section which started with the Indo-China war & was compounded many times by the wholesale bombardment it received in the Vietnam war..( i've read that Laos has received more ordnance per capita than any other country . A map of the country showing bomb sites as small red dots is solid red in the south of the country. What was amusing was the "revolutionary" language of the time used for the war exhibits as in "the imperialist U.S. forces & their puppets".. All in all though it was thought provoking without being quite as shocking as Cambodia or Vietnam. Next stop Kunming China !
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