at Vientiane

There are hotels around the place where we got off, a little far away. There was a shop that had pork for breakfast right where we got off. They served pork soup. One of our friends had a case of pork. But what could we do? We drank two pork noodle soups. After drinking, we paid the bill and started searching for a hotel to stay in. We saw a Chinese hotel. It seemed a bit more expensive than we expected. That time we looked for two hostels, but neither of them were full. After that, we walked a little more and settled in. We found a room on the fourth floor where we had to walk. It was like climbing a ladder.

Cement Statue Park

There is a Buddha Park in Vientiane. There is also one in Nong Khai, a few steps away. When I was in Thailand in 2017, I went to this Nong Khai city without any reason. I met a sister there and we had a little story. So that time, I visited the Buddha Park called Sala Ku Ku on the Thai side. The sculptures there are the same as those in the Buddha Park on the Laos side. They are both considered to be the work of the same artist.
On the way to the Buddha Park from Vientiane, we stopped at a place to eat. There was a chicken dish that was good for our friend. We also bought something to eat. When you get to the food stalls in this country, you are given a glass with ice on top. People drink with ice cubes on top. Usually, drinks are kept in the fridge like here and they take it and put the drink on top of the ice cubes themselves. I saw this in Malaysia too. It keeps the water cold for a long time.

Booking tickets
Laos Vientiane is not a place to go. We didn't find any bad massage parlors with Chinese people. Food and drinks are easy. Ethanol is cheap anyway. There are temples. But we didn't have much interest in temple tours. So we decided to go to the next destination. We chose the China Lao Railway. We saw that there was a ticket counter in the shopping mall in the city center. That's when we set out to find it.

Missing a friend
We went on two bikes. Although we had SIM cards for communication between us, there was no connectivity between one of our friends because the phone's battery was dead. At one point in the town, we missed our friend. He came right after us. But when we turned around, he had changed. Not only that, the fight went somewhere and there was a small accident. After about thirty minutes of wandering around, we finally reached the junction or city center, where we stayed for about half an hour. After that, the other friend who went on our bike had already caught up with him. If the fight had really happened, it would have been a lot of fun.

City Center
The shopping mall called Center in the city center of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, has a parking lot underneath, like the shopping malls in Sri Lanka. There was no place for us to park our bikes in that basement park. We could have parked our bikes right in front of the mall. But we decided to park our bikes under the mall and go inside. We went inside and found the rail ticket counter there.

What is that counter?
Usually, you can only buy train tickets in Sri Lanka from the station. But in Laos, the station is a little far from the city. Sometimes you have to walk 10-15 kilometers to the station. Therefore, a Lao-Chinese railway ticket counter has been opened in the center outside the stations in Luang Prabang and Vientiane. From there, we can book train tickets. Since Chinese people come on this Chinese train, sometimes all the trains are booked. Therefore, it is better to book tickets in advance. We also got a good deal without booking tickets for our knowledge.

Also, from this ticket counter, we can book a complete ticket for our trip. That means we can go to a place, stay there for two days, and take the train again, etc. It was only later that God's wisdom dawned on us that we could buy all the tickets on the first day.