Next, we headed to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and met up with some travelling friends. Not much to say about this city really, it only has about 200,000 people but it was a welcome stopover for a few days for us while we enjoyed air-con, good coffee and nice restaurants. Recently, the heat here has been unbearable so a few days of doing nothing was just what we needed. One interesting construction they have is a large monument like the Arc de Triomphe. 
However, it was actually built with cement donated by the USA for construction of a new airport, so it is known as the “vertical runway”. We also visited their National Museum which has to be one of the worst ever. ...so bad it was funny! It had plenty of photos and objects with no description whatsoever, for example, a large stone with some engravings on it and a sign saying that it was “many hundreds of years old”. Elsewhere, there was a collection of guns with the simple sign: Don’t Touch! We actually got stuck inside the museum because after we entered, a thunderous downpour started outside – we couldn’t think of anywhere worse to be trapped!
From there, we took an overnight sleeper bus right down to the southern tip of Laos...the “Four Thousand Islands”. The bus itself was interesting as there were no seats, just bunkbeds (simple metal ones like from a dorm). We were glad of somewhere to lie down for the overnight trip but some of the other passengers weren’t so pleased when they realised that they had to share a bed with a stranger – the beds were intended for 2 people but were narrower than a single bed (just a seat width for each person).
However, it was actually built with cement donated by the USA for construction of a new airport, so it is known as the “vertical runway”. We also visited their National Museum which has to be one of the worst ever. ...so bad it was funny! It had plenty of photos and objects with no description whatsoever, for example, a large stone with some engravings on it and a sign saying that it was “many hundreds of years old”. Elsewhere, there was a collection of guns with the simple sign: Don’t Touch! We actually got stuck inside the museum because after we entered, a thunderous downpour started outside – we couldn’t think of anywhere worse to be trapped!From there, we took an overnight sleeper bus right down to the southern tip of Laos...the “Four Thousand Islands”. The bus itself was interesting as there were no seats, just bunkbeds (simple metal ones like from a dorm). We were glad of somewhere to lie down for the overnight trip but some of the other passengers weren’t so pleased when they realised that they had to share a bed with a stranger – the beds were intended for 2 people but were narrower than a single bed (just a seat width for each person).
Considering that Laos doesn’t have any sea or big lakes, it is perhaps unusual that it has any islands at all but these are formed within the massive Mekong river. There may not be 4000 but there sure are a lot. We stayed on one of the islands (called Don Det) which had no electricity (apart from generators from 6pm-10pm). We had been hoping to see some of real Laos and finally got the chance here. We rented bikes and took off into the rural farmland in the middle of the island. It is amazing how basic many of the houses are, usually just a few simple wooden walls, with no 
running water and no bathroom (everybody washed in the river). Most houses had a few chickens running around and usually have a few lost children aswell. The people all seem to work either as fishermen or farmers, plenty of women were out “picking rice” in the paddy-fields (we’re still not quite sure where the rice comes from) and the men (boys) are often seen working the land with some crude ploughing device pulled by a buffalo or something. One thing that did surprise us 
though, especially considering the limited electricity.....many houses seemed to have satellite dishes outside and a lot of locals also seemed to have mobile phones. One house we walked by, we saw a woman outside washing herself standing inside a big basin, while at the same talking on a mobile phone.
Afterwards we took our bikes to check out a local waterfall (not so impressive) and then a short boat trip to go out and see some river dolphins (impressive but difficult to see in the murky water).
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