After a much shorter and more punctual bus ride than the one from Luang Prabang we arrive in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.  As capital cities go it is very small, only 250,000 people, and there do not appear to be any buildings over about 5 stories here, so the city is quite spread out.  The Mekong river runs along one side of the city, and forms the border between Thailand and Laos.

We spend a few hours walking the city and go by the presidential palace, and down along the Mekong where they have built a long wall to protect the city from flooding, and a park in behind the wall.  There is a large statue in the park that has a few tourists around it, but we do not find out until later that it is of King Anouvong, the last king of Vientiane – clearly this has not made our history books back home yet.

Extending up from the presidential palace is a long boulevard that ends at one of the fairly small number of tourist attractions here in Vietiane – their own version of the Arc de Triomphe.  Known as Patuxai or the Victory Arch, it was built to commemorate those that fought to get independence from France – just a little irony there!

There is a big gold colored Chedi here as well that is featured on the flag of Laos, and a couple of other locations that are considered tourist highlights, but after the arch we are not overly impressed and just decide to walk back to our hotel and start looking for dinner.

None of this is news to us as many other people we talked to had mentioned that Vientiane was nothing worth stopping for, and we would certainly concur that for us it is nothing more than a waypoint on a trip either to or from much more interesting destinations farther north.

That pretty much ends the trip for us, tomorrow we will make our way back to Bangkok and then the next day begins the long flight back to Seattle……

I may have jinxed our luck with the rain in my previous post as we woke up this morning to dark skies and liquid sunshine. Just like at home though the weather often changes fairly quickly, and by the time we are finished our breakfast the rain has mostly stopped and the skies are just a little overcast.  Our plan for today is to take a long walk/hike across the river and through some rice fields to a cave we have heard about.  It is completely in the opposite direction of all the madness of the tubing so it seems like a good way to kill a few hours.

There is a bridge just down from our hotel that leads across the river, and just like the 520 bridge back home, it is a toll bridge 🙂  Depending on how you are crossing (walking, motorbike, tuk-tuk, etc.) the toll varies from about $0.50 to just over a dollar.  In local standards this is a decent amount, and having the bridge concession is likely quite lucretive as there is a lot of traffic going back and forth.

On the other side of the river is a small village and then a road that heads off perpendicular to the river into a valley that we have seen from our hotel balcony.  There is a loop you can do through the valley with various stops along the way at caves and other sights, but the whole loop is about a 35km bike ride and supposedly some rough terrain in a few places, so having had a bike experience already we are just walking.

A couple of km down the road there is a sign marking the trail to the first cave.  There is a massive limestone karst rising straight out of the rice fields that we can see from our hotel, and that is where the cave is.  The path goes right through the rice fields and to call it a trail is really a fairly liberal use of the term.  It is probably about another km through the rice fields and then we start to get close to the karst and into the forest.  As soon as we get near though we encounter a small stand out in the middle of nowhere manned by a couple of Laos people – they want 10,000 kip each (about $1.25) for us to see the caves.  We pay our ‘admission’ and one of the fellows waves his arm in the general direction of the path we are supposed to follow and off we go.

About half way down that trail we run into another young Laos boy who points towards the cave and starts to lead the way through the jungle.  We did not really think much of this, and thought it was perhaps part of the 10,000 admission we paid for him to show us where the cave was.  When we get to the cave, he points inside and pulls a few LED headlamps out of his bag and in we go; however, after about 50 feet he gestures to a small opening that we need to go through and then asks us if we want a guide, and there it is – the bait and switch again!  For another 50,000 kip he will guide us through the cave, otherwise he wants his lamps back and we are free to carry on by ourselves if we like.  We were feeling a little burnt out, and the approach just turns us off, so we said no and left the cave and made our way back to the main road. We walked down the road a little way taking in some of the scenery in the valley, and then turned around and headed back towards town and our hotel – it was getting to be time for lunch, and one of those sandwiches on the fresh french bread was looking pretty good.

We got back to town at just the right time because the skies decided to open up again for some more rain. We just made it to a place for lunch before it started coming down fairly hard, but we figure by the time lunch is done it might pass again so this works out OK for us anyway.

Due to the party activity that happens here in the evenings, most of the guests in the town are more than a little tired and slow moving in the morning/early afternoon, and I think because of that the restaurants have adapted their furniture for the crowds.  Almost every place where food is served, at least half of the tables are more like bed with some throw pillows and a short table in the middle.  Customers can then lay back and relax while recuperating from the night before, or while having their lunch.  A lounger would not be much good without some entertainment, so to keep the patrons entertained all of these restaurants have 2 or 3 TVs playing non-stop reruns of either Friends, or The Family Guy.

We are about half done our lunch when the heavens decide to really open up, and we are now right in the middle of some serious industrial strength rain, so Mrs. Columbus and I hunker down into our loungers and watch us some Family Guy!!  6 episodes later Mrs. Columbus is feeling a little numb – I think because Family Guy is not really much of a rom-com, and the rain has finally let up so we venture out to find ourselves a bananna pancake and do some last minute shopping.

We will be leaving here tomorrow for Vientiane and the start of our journey back to Seattle, so we go back to our hotel to start to pack up and then meet our friends Jackie, Bruce and Stephanie for our last dinner in Vang Vieng.   The rain continues to come off and on, so we decide to have dinner beside the river at the hotel so that we don’t get trapped out in a downpour.  The meal was quite nice, and with tranquil setting, and the good company we really enjoyed our last night here.