Got back to Vientiane in the middle of the afternoon. As the bus was making its final turns towards the drop off point I spotted a bowling pin totem; clearly a bowling alley. I marked this spot for later. The bus dropped us off right in the backpacker district. I recognized where I was, which was only 4 blocks away and ignored the scabbly tuk tuk drivers and started walking. I got about a block away when I spotted 2 backpackers that look a bit familiar: Alex and Nikola! They had their packs with them because they were getting on the train to Bangkok in a few hours, so I hung out with them until they left. They had been to Bangkok before and were really selling me on it. Given what I had heard from a couple other travelers, Bangkok didn't sound very appealing, but Alex and Nikola changed that. Alex even drew me a little map with his points of interest. I saw them off and took a breather in my hostel.
After resting a bit I decided to walk over to the bowling alley. It wasn't very far. I got there and it was pretty empty--maybe 2 or 3 of the 15 lanes were in use. The price was 10,000 kip per game, which is about 1.25. I started with 4 games. I was so excited. I ended up bowling 6 total games that night. While I was bowling I realized that the other people bowling around me were very, very good. In fact, my scores, averaging 130-150, were the lowest in the room. But when you consider how inexpensive a game is, a person could get in quite a bit of practice. I bowled more in 4 days in Vientiane than I have bowled in the last 10 years.
I walked around looking for some food after bowling. I had a tough time. Most of the street food that I was finding was desert stuff. So I had some Taro Milk tea, which was served out of Apothecary jars on an aluminum wagon and some steamed buns that were similar, or identical, to the ones from Vietnam. I got back to the hostel and discovered that I couldn't use the internet because they turn it off after 9PM. This is entirely ridiculous. The evening is an important time to use the internet--especially for people who are traveling from locations with large time differences. I had paid for 2 nights already, so I decided to switch after my 2nd night.
My next few days in Vientiane were kind of lazy. I discovered that if I took the train to Bangkok, I would only get 15 days there, and I had already booked my flight out of Bangkok for the 31st, so unless I got a visa in advance, I couldn't leave Vientiane until the 17th. This wasn't so bad, as I had come to like Vientiane , and it was pretty inexpensive. I did a lot of bowling, of course. One day I was browsing around the supposed, largest shopping center in Laos, Talat Sao--if Laos was in China, though, it would be the 10,000th largest shopping center--when I bumped into a group of guys I had met in Dalat, Vietnam. I ended up meeting them later that evening and took them, and some people they had met in their hostel, to the bowling alley. It was sort of scary for the poor girls who worked there, to have a rowdy group of 12 foreigners coming in like we did. They handled it fine though.
My 2nd hostel was a little better than the first--at least the internet didn't shut off at night. I stayed there for 3 days and then switched to another place that had a cafe at the bottom. The internet at my 3rd place also stayed on all night but it was terrible, so I had to start using the free wifi from the bar across the street.
I did a lot of walking while I was in Vientiane. It isn't a very big city anyway--plus there really isn't much public transportation, and the weather was generally really nice. And it had nice wide sidewalks. The only danger was the ocassional missing sidewalk tile, which if missed, could land ones leg in a few feet of water or sewage, or a mixture--my smell wasn't too great so I couldn't tell really. I think it was better not to know. I found a monument that was like the Arc De Triumph in France. I haven't been to the one in France but this one was cool--you could walk up inside it and come out on top--great views and lots of ladies selling cheap Tshirts. One day I took a trek to a fitness center and used their gym for about 4 dollars. It was full of mostly ex-pats though.
Finally after a few days of doing nothing touristy I decided to try and challenge myself and make a trip outside the city to a place called "Buddha Park", which was a small area with artistic scultpures of Hindu and Buddhist icons. Getting there required taking a bus from the public bus station. I found the bus, got on, and showed the driver the name of the place I wanted to go in Laos (to which he nodded). It took about 45 minutes. The bus got incredibly crowded--mostly full of older women with bags of food. They would scream out whenever they wanted to get off, crawl over the heaps of people, and throw some money at the driver. By the time I got off, the bus was practically empty. The park was beautiful, but a bit small. There was a wierd pumpkin like cave in the center that you could enter (through a dragon like sculpted mouth). It was kind of interesting in there, like spelunking a bit. The scultpures weren't as artistic as I was imagining though--I had expected to see something that would stand out as being unique, but what was there would fit in at any temple or palace. I caught a bus back and chatted with a thai ladyboy, who had just crossed the border and kept showing me pictures of "her" baby. I was really getting excited to go to Thailand now. I thought maybe I would attempt to get a visa at the Thai consulate instead of waiting out another week in Vientiane. My journey to the Thai consulate was less than enjoyable--far less. On my first attempt, arriving there a little after lunchtime, I discovered that they only accept Visa applications for a 3 hour window in the morning; the window had just expired mere minutes ago. No big deal--I can come back the next day. I got an application to pre-fill out anyway. The next day I went back and found the counter open and got a numbered ticket from the machine. They had a display above the line listing numbers, but they would call out 10-20 numbers at a time and everyone would queue up. This started confusing people, so they instead just started to line up before their numbers were called, which then caused other people to complain and yell because they were being jumped in position. I finally got the counter but they told me I needed to glue my pictures to my application and photocopy my passport--requirements which werent actually listed anywhere. I did that and lined back up, go to the counter again, and was told now I needed to put in a better address than just "Bangkok". I was annoyed. I gave up. Boy are they picky. I convinced myself on my long walk back that it was better to stay in Laos anyway and give them more of my tourst dollars, because they are nicer and more helpful.
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