Vientiane, the peaceful capital of Laos

With the headline, almost everything is already said about Vientiane 😉. Vientiane is a strangely divided city, which cannot quite decide between old mansions in French colonial style and Buddhist temples and sanctuaries. Actually quite beautiful, but for a capital city, it is almost frighteningly small and quiet...

For our part, we played the role of classic tourists here 😉. After arrival and a delicious bottle of French white wine (thanks to the former colonial ruler of Indochina), we wandered around the bars and ended up in the Egyptian EasyBar, where we had a little discussion about God and the world with a New Zealand retiree. By the way, this English is really difficult to understand because of the accent 😂.

The next day, still slightly hungover, we took the bus to the Buddha Park. The line 14 there was surprisingly easy to find (after multiple inquiries). We just managed to get on the bus when it started. The 35-minute trip there was quite pleasant, but the return trip was not necessarily the same 😳. Since the Buddha Park is located right next to an important border crossing to Thailand, we waited with the bus at this border crossing until the bus was completely overcrowded. In principle, this is still okay, but unfortunately, most of the people getting on the bus brought plastic bags with them from the street food stands in front of the bus stop. So, still feeling a little sick, we were surrounded by a large symphony of smacking and other eating noises, accompanied by the smell of fermented and subsequently burned rat meat 😖. Beautiful. As for the park itself: touristy but worth seeing👍!

In the afternoon, back at the bus station, we quickly grabbed a tuk-tuk to "expertly inspect" all the other sights while it was still light 😉. To conclude our selfie tour, Christian quickly became a tuk-tuk driver 😂. The day ended with a walk through the night market, which, unlike Luang Prabang, consisted mostly of phone cases and "high-quality" branded textiles...

After a foot scrub and a Lao massage, Vientiane and Laos were unfortunately already history for us.

Our next destination is Phnom Penh (Cambodia), the next capital city on our journey. As we are already writing from Phnom Penh, let's just say this in advance: a drastic difference!