I honestly thought that Vientiane was small and unimpressive the first time I passed through, so I wasn’t expecting much this time.
After the bus ride with friends from Vang Vieng, I was stopping for a night, while they were all immediately jumping on another bus. I linked up with a few people from our bus who were going to the same hostel I wanted to stay at (the one I went to last time) and walked a few blocks with them to get there. 3 Australians, 1 American girl (from “the state up north” that we don’t say in Ohio). It was a good opportunity to practice my Spanish with the Argentinians, so that was cool.
When I arrived at the hostel, my Israeli friend M was across the street eating pizza while waiting for a bus out of town, so it was nice to run into another friendly face.
Before sitting around and having a lazy evening, I made plans with one of the Argentinian guys to go to the Buddha Park the next morning.
After a long, comfortable sleep and the free breakfast at the hostel, we walked down to the bus station to find the local bus #14 out to the Buddha Park. It’s 75 cents for the local bus; the tuk-tuks and tour operators kept trying to sell us a trip for close to $10. Yeah, right! The bus dropped us off at the gate outside, and we paid 50 cents to get in.
I really can’t express why in the world this park of a bunch of Buddha statues needs to exist or why it’s in this location, but it’s here. It’s quite interesting, as well.
