January 28, 2009: After getting dropped back at the bus station we decided to walk from there to Phathat Luang, the most important monument in Laos. Phathat Luang (Great Sacred Stupa) enshrines a relic of Buddha. It is indeed quite impressive! Before entering we crossed through a huge empty parking lot, indicating that when the festival …
January 28, 2009: Since we’d gotten a couple things checked off our to-see list the evening before we were able to sleep in on our one full day in Vientiane. We headed off to Talat Sao bus station around 11am to find a bus to Buddha Park. Our guide book said you could catch a …
On our way walking back from Wat Sisaket we saw that the Patuxai arch was just down the road, so we headed over to see it as well. On the map the sites had seemed far apart, but they turned out to be mostly within walking distance. Vientiane is actually a pretty small city for …
We made it to Wat Sisaket at 4:10pm, and even though it was supposed to close at 4pm they still let us into the grounds. We weren’t able to go inside the main wat, since it was closed, but the part we saw was still impressive. The walk way around the wat was filled with …
We would have liked to spend another day in Vang Vieng, but it was time to head south to the capitol of Laos, Vientiane (Wienchan). We bought our bus tickets through Manalay, a company that offered hotel pick up, thinking it would be nice to not have to pull our suitcase along the rocky dirt …