Vientiane

Hi All,

Now in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, we are crazily excited to have been joined by Ross' sister Beth. Waiting with her name on a board at the airport was a strange experience, it’s not often you meet a loved one in an airport so far from home. Having had a couple of weeks detox since Matt and Imy left us, we dropped Beth’s bags at the hotel and headed straight out to a bar for a few drinks, as well as grabbing some street food on the way!

Vientiane is a relatively quiet capital - very different from the crazy traffic of Ho Chi Minh or the bustle of people and street food vendors in Delhi. Instead the city is full of old temples and delicious French bakeries. Locals and tourists alike can been seen sipping on strong Lao coffee and enjoying crispy pastries. We of course had to give these a go and sampled not one but two each; the almond croissants and pain au chocolat went down a treat.

We hired push bikes to explore the cities temples. We visited five in total, each one slightly different from the last: from large modern monasteries brightly decorated in fresh paint to ancient temples housing the religious artefact museum for the city. Then we caught the public bus to head further a field to the Xieng Khuan Buddha Park 25km out of town. Here we were wowed by the sheer number of huge Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, built by an artist to combine the philosophy and mythology from the two religions. The largest statue was a reclining Buddha 40m long. When we returned back to the centre, we rounded off our bicycle tour by visiting Laos’ Arc de Triomphe- a large victory tower that we climbed to gain a view our the city.

That evening we had a huge street food BBQ feast for Beth’s first dinner in Lao. We collected our food for take away like the locals and found a bench to perch on. A whole duck, Lao sausages, sticky pork kebabs, stir fried veg, spring rolls and sticky rice later... we left feeling pretty stuffed (and all for £9)!

The following morning, we had a much more meaningful experience where we visited the city hospital (don’t worry we haven’t sustained any injuries). Beth, who works for the charity Smile Train, had arranged to meet patients and their surgeons in the plastic surgery ward before they underwent cleft surgery. One adorable little girl was about to undergo surgery to improve the prominent scar on her lip; this was the result of the lip repair surgery she had at 3 months old to fix the unilateral cleft she was born with. Then we met a mother and father who brought in their 9 month old baby for pre-assessment for her first corrective surgery. It was incredible to meet these wonderful children and speak to the plastic surgery team in the hospital. They were extremely welcoming and thankful for their connection to Smile Train; so much so they even took us to meet the director of the hospital! As a charity, Smile Train work across the world to provide completely free cleft treatment to children and babies by sustainably training and empowering local doctors. Take a look at the link below to find out more about the work they do.

https://smiletrain.org.uk/our-cause/our-model-uk

In the afternoon, we explored the local markets before watching the sunset over the Mekong River - cocktails in hand of course. That’s all for now, next we are catching a 14 hour long night bus to take us 350km north to the city of Luang Prabang.

Love R, D and B xxx