Buddha park

First stop on the agenda today was the Australian Embassy Medical clinic to check David's ear. We arranged a tuk tuk yesterday to pick us up nice and early so we would be guaranteed to arrive on time - even if we had trouble locating the place.... Well we didnt take into account an agreeable tuk tuk driver who nodded happily to all of our questions about the embasy and assured us over and over again that he would take us there without any problems.

So bright and early this morning we headed off for the embassy about 5mins drive away - after about 5 mins our driver stopped and said "which consulate"

Ok.... so we were fairly worried by his question. Obviously he didnt understand the word "Australia" no matter which way we tried to pronounced it so he stopped to ask another Tuk Tuk driver who pointed down the road and smiled nicely. After another 5 mins I mentioned to David that i really didnt think this was the right direction, as we had just passed a sign for the border! We then passed the Cambodian Embassy and quickly looked it up on the map to see if it was close to the Aussie embassy - Im sure you can guess by now the outcome.... It was over the opposite side of town.

We now had 5 mins to get to the embassy for our appointment. We signalled to our driver to pull over and David ran to ask some guards near by. He showed them the map and after quite a bit of gesturing and pointing and confused looks it was decided that the consulate was near the monument.

I had had enough of our tuk tuk driver by now. The engine on his tuk tuk was not running well and we were puttering along so slowly (murpheys law or something - slowest tuk tuk when you're in a hurry - LOL) I pulled over another driver and asked him - he had a truck so we were guaranteed a faster ride - and he SAID he new the embassy! Well our driver assured us that he had the low down on the embassy location now and as we had booked him for the day, (for sight seeing), he was not keen to let us go.

We relented and climbed back in our little putter buggy. He did a u turn into a busy road and stalled in the middle - (I know this sounds like a laurel and hardy movie - but its true). Once we were going again our vehicle plodded through a few back streets, being over taken by every car, motorbike and tuk tuk on the road, until we reach a nice big traffic jam.

Well tuk tuks are known for being reckless in order to achieve their destination, and i fully expected ours to zoom down the opposite side of the road, as he had promised to hurry. Not our little friend. We seemed to have the most cautious tuk tuk driver in Lao. We edged our way through the traffic inch by happy inch until we finally came to the road that would take us to the monument.... we zoomed out of the traffic jam, breathing a sigh of relief.

Our driver raced towards the monument....... and then kept on driving - straight past - bye bye monument, bye bye consulate... We all turned our head to watch it go past and blankly looked at each other..... David quickly nipped our next little adventure in the bud, stopping the driver again and asking another local guard for some pointers. Were given some terrific directions that took us straight to the gate.

I rushed over to the locked gate and asked to be let in so we could see the doctor. The guard motioned for us to go around the corner to the other gate.... so we raced around the corner and down the road as far as the embassy wall took us..... you guessed it - no gate.

So we rushed back and in our best "desperate farang" faces pleaded with him to tell us how we can get into the clinic, as there is no gate. He then gestured that the gate was not around the corner but down the road - Oh of course, how could we have missed that????!!! The clinic is not on the embassy grounds!

We raced down the road and were asked at the gate to sign in. After all this rushing we were in no mood for being stalled - shifting down a gear we patiently signed in and raced off the clinic.

We were now 40 mins late - and had been informed the day before that the doctor was busy after 10am. With a long weekend starting the next day, I was worried that we would have completely missed our appointment.

Well the receptionist reassured me that it was fine and the doctor would see us next - 10 mins later we were walking out of the doctors with a script in hand and $120 poorer.

As suspected Davids ear drum has been perforated and there is a small infection so he has started on some antibiotics and needs to followup with a GP in Australia next week when we return. It will take about two weeks for his hearing to return to normal.

After getting that addressed, feeling much calmer and having dismissed our tuk tuk driver with a generous tip (since we werent interested in hiring him for the day anymore), we walked the short distance to Patuxai (Victory Monument).

The Lao's call it the vertical runway because the money for a new military runway was apparently provided by the United States towards then end of the Vitnam war however the lao's decided to build a monument with it celebrating their independence. The monument itself is a replica of the French Arc de Triomphe. David and the boys climbed the steps to the top (6 storeys).

Next stop was to secure another Tuk Tuk to take us to the somewhat quirky Xieng Khaun or Buddha Park.

Buddha Park is a collection of slightly bizare Buddhist and Hindu cement sculptures in a peaceful park near the Mekong River which overlooks Nong Khai in Thailand. Highlights of the park is the enormous reclining Buddha which the Boys climbed onto for Photo's and the truly strange 'Hell Mouth' - a large pumpkin shaped sculpture with a gaping mouth as its entrance, inside which is the creators rather unsettling vision of the underworld. We climbed extremely narrow steps in the dark to get to the top which had great views over the park. Other highlights of Buddha park include monsters with heads in their mouths, humans combined with animals and a tall narrow Pyramid shaped tower (almost South American in its design) which the boys again climbed very narrow steps to get to the top of.

The park was certainly different and for that reason alone it was worth the visit however the road trip there and back with 5 people (including the driver) being transported by a 100cc motor in the Tuk Tuk was another experience.

The roads were quite bad for a capital city and there was quite a lot of road work being done so there was a lot of dust and mud to accompany the huge potholes and the bad Tuk tuk suspension! We survived - Just.

We needed money when we arrived back (we had to pay the Tuk Tuk driver in Lao Kip and Thai Baht combined) however we quickly found out that that was a bigger challenge than we though as this weekend is a festival weekend across Laos and so all the Banks are closed for three days (and we had a total of 4000 Kip - about 55 Australian Cents). We eventually found out that fortunately, Laos has recently introduced it's very first ATM machine with international card access (and there is just one) and it is in Vientiane so we were able to withdraw some money.....Phew - not sure what we would have done to address that problem!!

Anyway, that was our day. Tomorrow is planned to stay around the Central city area and visit some of the local sights.

Hopefully it will be much less eventful!

Keep smiling love stephanie