Legless in Vientienne

For a capital city Vientienne is more akin to sleepy French town. Colonial era architecture keeps the city low rise and the Laos people's relaxed attitude permeates all walks of life. Even the tuk tuk drivers manage just a single "tuk tuk" as you pass, if that, in contrast to Cambodia and Thailand's endless string of questions. "You want tuk tuk", "Where you go?", "What you do tomorrow?".

Whilst Kaylie and myself enjoyed a coffee Em and Nat went in search of a hotel and succeeded in finding a good price on an air conned room for a treat. Discussing things to do in the city the others opted to hire a bike and tour around whilst me and Em opted for shanks pony.

One of the most interesting experiences was a visit to the Cope Centre. In a country with considerably shaky health care provision the Cope Centre provides support for the disabled, a significant proportion of these by UXOs. Laos is the heaviest bombed country per capita in the world. The culprit, American carpet bombing during the 60s and 70s. Many of these bombs were cluster bombs and with a high failure rate, unexploded "bombies", litter significant parts of the country. Over 60 million of them to be more precise. No suprise that 100 or so people are still killed every year by UXOs, many children.

The most frequently found bombies are tennis ball sized spheres packed with ball bearings. These are still unstable and get set off by all manner of things from cooking fires which heat the ground, to ploughs, curious children and scrap metal collectors. Pretty disturbing to think every time you send the kids out to play they could be blown up or lose a limb.

Cope provides funding for a huge range of support, from prosthetics to rehabilitation, surgery to education. After exploring the center exhibitions and reading a few testimonies to the work you certainly feel humbled by our relative healthcare facilities. One story of a 9 year old lad who died in 2006 at home as the closest hospitals did not have the blood or equipment to save his life was pretty hard hitting. His parents having had to hire a Sangthaew (pick up style taxi) on the futile journey to take him to two hospitals, find these couldn't help and doctors suggest better he die at home.

Anyway to not go on too much of a charity rant more info at http://www.copelaos.org/

Also interesting was the national museum. Although crumbling and old fashioned the museum follows a gallery format of prehistoric Laos to the present (well 90s).

Whilst some of the ancient artifacts were fascinating, reading about the 'American Imperialists and they puppets' on every sign that accompanied modern exhibits was a giggle. Even though the likes of America could do more to assist mitigate the ongoing destruction caused by their previous trigger happy approach to cluster bombs etc. the communist way of dealing with history is fairly silly. "This is the spoon used by comrade [insert suitable comrade] to eat his rice in his brave struggle against the American Imperialists and their puppets".

Our next stop was at Vientiennes 'Arc d'Triomphe', the victory arch, which also has an interesting story. Built with concrete, donated funnily enough by the Americans years back to build a bridge, this fairly spectacular arch reveals its inner concrete ugliness when you get closer. Although the interior floors, now used by souvenir sellers, have ceiling plasterwork which would look more in place in a French chateau.

After two nights however, and with time before our flight home starting to tick by more quickly we opted to take the bus up to our next destination, Vang Vieng.