3rd – Wet, wet, wet

We started at a reasonable time around 0830 where we got picked up by a taxi that took us to three different sights in the city; Patuxay Monument, The Golden Temple and CARE. CARE is the local museum about cluster bombs, the consequences of the usage of these during the secret war, and what they do to help the locals living with them in their presence. So pretty much like the smaller UXO in Luang Prabang. 

The Patuxay Monument is from the 60s and built by the French and looks like a smaller version of their Arc de Triomphe, but built in a local style. It was possible to go up onto a viewing platform, and the two internal floors were basically just two mini-markets with anything souvenir-related. It felt a bit ingenuine but the view from the top was nice. Vientiane doesn’t have much in tall buildings so there wasn’t much to look at as such but you could get a good impression of the size of the city.

The Patuxay Monument.

The view from the top. The presidential palace can be seen in the distance.

The ceiling between the four pillars.

The Golden Temple was huge and very golden – I assume that’s why it got its name. Other than that, though, it was quite a bit like the others we have seen throughout the trip.

The CARE museum was as expected; informative and harrowing. They showed the consequences of the left over UXOs and focused on the work they do with building prosthetics from simple means, not only for victims from the bombs (though that is their priority), but also for people who have lost limbs through accidents, deceases and so on.

 We were back at the hotel at 1130 and left an hour later to pick up our ordered lunches and go to the airport to catch our flight to Hanoi. Despite the flight only being an hour long they still managed to serve sandwiches and drinks.

We arrived at our new hotel in bustling Hanoi around 1730 and 1800 10 of us went on a night market food tour. We ended up at 7 different places where we got to taste various things and when we finally returned to our hotel around 2200 we were truly full. We ended up tasting steam hot rice cakes, fruit candy, Vietnamese bread, BBQ pork with noodle soup, fruits, egg coffee (and -chocolate) and a local beer.

During the tour we got hit by rain. Lots of it. At first you walk down the street keeping to one side as the other side is forming a new major river, then you make a turn down another street and suddenly you are in water to above your ankles. And yet only shortly after it stopped raining most of the water had gone and everything was back to normal. That was quite an experience.

Notice the disappearance of feet.