Buddha park and public bus

Me and 3 other people that were staying in my room at the guest house decided that we were going to go to the Buddha Park that was about 30 min outside of town. Rather than taking a taxi or a tuk-tuk which would have been very expensive we decided to take the public bus! This was the first public bus that I took in Asia and I was expecting a long ride squished between old people with a baby on my lap and a chicken on my head. Thankfully when we got to the bus station we found out that it was just an old bus where they tried to fit as many people as possible on it. So not actually too bad. The ride costs 6000 kip which you just hand to the driver whenever you feel like getting off. I never actually saw any bus stops other than the bus station. It seemed as if when you wanted the bus you just went and stood at the side of the road and waited until one came. The driver would just stop at random points and pick up more people, and when you wanted to get off you just yelled or hit the side of the bus or made enough noise for the driver to notice.
Eventually we got to the "Friendship border" between Laos and Thailand and 90% of the people got off the bus. After that we were able to get a seat for the rest of the way.
 Last stop on the bus route was the Buddha park which we had to pay a small entrance fee to get in and some sort of "camera fee" which I didnt end up paying because she asked me if I wanted a camera and I said no cause I though she was tying to rent me one.
Once inside you can wander around and see a whole bunch of statues depicting various characters of Buddhism. Just inside the gate there is a large spherical building which we saw 2 monks sitting on top. Deciding to go up there and see the view we climbed inside the mouth of some creature on one of the walls.

 Once inside it is sort of a maze with stairs going up and down and dead ends, Oh and its pitch black which makes for quite an interesting experience. As you make your way to the top the passages get smaller and smaller so you have to squeeze though a small hole to get onto the roof. Once on the roof there is a great view of the whole park.

There are lots of other statues in the park which were kinda nice to look at but didnt really amaze me cause I didnt know the stories behind them. One building near the back of the park had some sort of flute music coming from the top so I decided to go up and see what it was. I climbed up many stairs along the front of the building and again they got smaller and smaller as I got closer to the top. I couldnt even stand on the last step because it was so small. It turned out to be just some random guy sitting up at the top playing a flute. Not sue what i was expecting to find, something more interesting some how.

We basically just spent the afternoon hanging out on the grass and drinking coconut water( surprisingly filling). While sitting there a monk came over with his rather quiet friend and we helped him with his English homework. Out of the group of people I was with I was the only person who English was their first language so all the tricky questions came to me. It wasnt very difficult work the questions were just really open ended. It was as if you were supposed to write a creative writing piece but it only gave you 3 blanks to fill in with whatever words you liked. Eventually we got through it and the monk carried on his way. A little while later a guy who was in law school came and asked for help with his English homework which was pretty much the same simple vocab just about law subjects.

It seemed as if people who wanted to practice their English would just go to the Buddha park and wander around until they found someone who spoke English to help. 

After hanging out for a bit we decided to head back to the city for some dinner.

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More pictures in the Vientiane album.