Imechapishwa: 08.03.2018
[by Franzi] The next morning started with some planning, we booked our bus to the next city, but this time through our hostel, because we couldn't find any bus connections on the internet. But this also has an advantage: We will be picked up directly at the hostel and don't have to worry about how to get to the bus station. The decision for the next hostel was also made quickly and booked directly on booking.com.
Everything finished, we decided to take a
little temple tour through the city. Unfortunately, we started
in the afternoon and partly during lunch break,
and one or two temples were closed. But we were at
Vientiane's oldest surviving temple "Wat Si Saket" (10,000
Kip/person = 97 cents), impressive how long something like this
survives. There were small recesses in the walls, in each of
which sat one or often two little Buddha.
Then we
went to the house of the president, a huge mansion, and from there
to a small Catholic church. The first one we saw since
we are in Asia. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we
couldn't go inside. From the outside, it looked
rather run down, almost abandoned.
At the end of the street,
according to our guidebook, there should be a local food market.
After some searching, we found a very small market with
fresh and dried fruits and also a few baked goods like baguette or cookies, but everything was small and
unfortunately not as described in the guidebook. We were both a
little disappointed.
So we made our way back
to the hostel. It was only afternoon, but it was so hot
and humid that we were both completely exhausted. On the way, we
picked up some water and passed the
street food stand from the day before and decided to get a
small snack. This time we knew what we liked and what we didn't, so we bought 12 pieces (10,000 Kip = 97
cents).
Back at the hostel, Jonas wrote the last blog post and uploaded it, and I browsed through the guidebook a bit.
In the evening, we went out again to a local night market, where clothes, shoes, accessories, bags, and even technology are sold. We weren't sure how bargaining works in Laos, so we decided to read up on it first and come back the next day. We walked through many different streets in search of food, but nothing really caught our attention (also not in terms of price). So we ended up at the restaurant/café from the previous evening, but this time we had burgers and beerLao again, and I had a fruit shake, which the café is actually known for. Back at the hostel, we just fell into bed.
For the next day, we had actually planned to rent two bikes and explore the city and some sights that are a bit further away from our hostel. However, we didn't feel like riding 25km (one way) in 38 degrees in the shade, so we decided to rent a scooter instead...