We arrived in Vientiane at about 8am. We arrived at our hostel shortly afterwards. Matt and Maitay decided to stay a night so that they could explore Laos longer. I decided to split up and go to Hanoi so that I could meet my Italian friend, Michelle, on the 28th. My sleeper bus was at 5pm so that gave me the whole day to explore Vientiane.
After having breakfast we went to the COPE museum. This was a museum dedicated to documenting the horrors of clustor bombs. There was a shockingly small amount of information about the politics behind why the Americans bombed Laos during the Vietnam war, instead the museum focused on individuals who had their limbs blown off by undetonated 'bombies' decades after the war. The place was very emotionally stimulating due to their use of video, posters and plastic limb decorations, however I was really hoping to uncover more about the bigger picture. My guess is that the Viet Cong were mobilizing their armies through Laos and that's why president Johnson decided to bomb them, but I'm not sure - I'll have to Wikipedia it later. A few random facts I managed to remember from the museum were: (1) on average Laos was bombed every 8 minutes and (2) Laos was theost heavily bombed country per capita.
When we got back I had enough time to grab food, see a few temples and shower up before my bus arrived to take me to Vietnam.
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