I woke up early at 6am and got up. There was no breakfast here because it was so cheap and it was dark downstairs with the guy working here asleep on a mattress. I worked out roughly how many days I needed everywhere in China and started booking accommodation. Macau was going to be over a weekend so it was crazy expensive and I wasn't sure what to do. By 8am people were awake in the hostel and I was ready to leave. I had 3 things to do and then hopefully get my visa processed at the embassy. One of the things was to exchange all the Laos money as I'd discovered a few more hundred in my suitcase. I went towards the embassy hopeful of finding a photocopy place a money exchange place and an internet place. I was close to the embassy with not much luck so far as the 2 banks I'd been to didn't exchange Laos Kip when I saw a photocopy place so I copied my passport. One down, 2 to go and it was about 9am I walked a bit further to a bank and they didn't do Kip either but pointed me to a road do I headed there and walked all the way down the road with no internet or exchange places but several photocopy places. I got far enough and turned to head back on a different road where I did find an internet place. I organised my bookings onto a word document but they didn't have a printer so I couldn't print my flights. By now it was 10.20 and the embassy shuts at 11 so I started running and managed to get there before 10.50. Thankfully it wasn't busy not like HCMC consilate and someone looked at my application which was not so well done. He wouldn't allow it without printed copies of the flights and I also needed a print out of my insurance and he gave me a list of what I need. I went back to the hostel where I had booked another night and I decided to go to the tourist information centre as that was supposed to have free internet there. On the way I found a travel shop that exchanged money and they gave me a rate on my kip at 20.4 which was less than I expected so I didn't go for it. I passed the central lake people visit and the information centre was nearby but didn't have much there, It did have a currency exchange where they did 22 Dong to the KIP, better but still a large difference but then maybe I had my numbers wrong. I saw a sign saying the information centre had moved so I went to that place not far and a woman there showed me a road where I could get printing done. I walked there and walked down the whole road but didn't see any internet places. The end was near to the national museums so I had a look but it was 12 and they were closed for lunch. The national opera building nearby looked decent and like a lot of buildings was yellow. I decided to walk down to a lake in the south and hopefully find an internet place but there were none on the way and then the lake was not accessible from that side so I headed West a different way and still no internet places and came to another lake awhich was accessible and ok with a statue and a park next to it buit in the rain/drizzle it wasn't great. From there I made my way to a security museum which was a bit like the one in Vientiane only better with some links to the Countries history and it was also free. Nearby was the police museum also free so I went there as well. stopped in at the hostel and found that the Kip to Dong rate should be about 28, I also looked up internet shops in Hanoi and I went yo one but it was long gone. So I went to the internet place I saw thr day before but they had no printers so I headed back to the information centre visiting a temple on the way and I found another money exchange place that would do it for 22 dong to the kip and I was starting to think I might need to find people going to Laos and exchange with them, if I didn't sleep well it could be from all this Kip I was losing (sorry thought it was worth a try). I expected to maybe be told another place where I could print but they insisted on this place and I saw they'd written down the building number on the map which I'd missed. So I went to that address which was a photocopy place but when I asked if I could print they let me use a computer and 25 minutes and 14 pages later they charged me just 10,000 dong. By now it was too late to visit museums so I went round the old quarter where nothing really stood out there were a couple of temples but one was shut and the other was fairly small. I went to one more place and then a travel shop where a northern Brit was booking her whole Vietnam holiday and this place exchanged my Kip for 25 Dong each. I also found I had 50 more kip than I thought so after that I had loads of Dong, maybe 3.5 million including what I'd taken out.
I walked back to the hostel and got some water from a circle k and a big bag of rice vermicelli which was just 10k on the way. There were a few people at the hostel including a German girl from Frankfurt who later on booked all of Vietnam at the hostel, seemed to be the thing people do when they arrive. I got some of the free beer from the barrel and chatted to an Australian called Kell and a Brit called Dave. Dave played rugby league in Australia and Kell was an Aussie rules man. After a few glasses I didn't feel very productive so I didn't go to the internet place or check all of my forms for the visa. I got my washing back and when I was putting it away I discovered I had more underwear in a bag so it was ok. I read a bit and had an early night.
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