We are leaving for the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi on Tuesday night (as we can get the Vietnamese sleeper bus with proper beds and a toilet rather than the Laos bus which is falling to bits and takes ten times longer - not that anyone told us this we had to do extensive research ourselves).
So we have 3 more days to kill in the most boring capital in the world (sorry). There really isn't a lot for the tourist to do here as, unlike the rest of Laos, it lacks any real beauty. There are a lot of good restaurants however and for the first time on the trip we treated ourselves to some western food by having a delicious steak in a French restaurant - Laos food is really quite bland compared to Thai food so I had exhausted all the other options!
We have a nice balcony in the IHouse Hotel though:
On the bright side the people here are much friendlier and it is great to be in a proper city mixing with the locals: some old guys asked us to play cards with them yesterday and some others danced with us in the street. I feel a bit mean for my rant the other day now as all the women, children and some men have been friendly (most men are still stoney faced though).
We visited the COPE exhibition yesterday.COPE provide prosthetic limbs and rehabilitation for civilians who have been injured by cluster bombs. It is really quite frightening how heavily bombed Laos was by the USA during the Vietnamese war - they dropped at least 280 million bombs on Laos and they believe at least 80 million cluster bombs did not detonate on impact and so remain in the ground today! Children are often the ones who are fatality injured as they find them and play with them or they collect them as scrap in exchange for money. We talked to one 19 year old boy at the centre who had lost both his arms and was blinded on impact. I am pleased to say that the UK has signed the petition to stop the use of such bombs but sadly the US has not and it is the Australian and Japanese governments who provide most of the aid for this centre. We gave a donation and also donated some extra by buying a few books for the children but it seems very little given just how many people are affected.
So it is with mixed feelings that I leave Laos - on the one hand I have been dazzled by just how beautiful it is, on the other I have been a little disappointed. I will always remember the nice moments such as the monks chatting us up at the border (very entertaining as they were only 15),the lovely sandwich lady in Vang Vieng and the public bus journeys where we saw all the road kill being eaten at the side of the road and the locals laughed at use for eating crisps and we at them for eating raw potatoes. Despite sounding quite negative about Laos at times it has been a great experience .
0 comments:
Post a Comment