Let me start this post with a (completely selective) extract from Lonely Planet’s description of Vientiane:
“It’s not the most attractive city in South-East Asia, but its location on a bend of the Mekong and the lack of high-intensity traffic noise more than make up for that.”
For those that have had experience with Lonely Planet diplomacy (and after 10 months of intensive day-to-day reference, I’d say we qualify) this basically translates as “Vientiane is an ugly, slow shithole that happens to be next to a pretty cool river…so catch the next boat out of there, ASAP.”, which made it all that much better when we got stuck here for 4 days and 4 nights!
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself!
Vientiane is the capital of Laos, with a history going back some 1000 years, however only becoming the capital of Laos (itself a foreign invention by colonial powers) when the French took over in the late 19th century.
We cruised into town at around 5:00pm on the Vang Vieng backpacker express, which was surprising on two counts – it had air-conditioning and we managed to run over a cow on the way.
Our tubing buddies, Stew and Catherine, had arrived in Vientiane that morning and had done us a huge favour by finding a decent hotel and reserving us a room in this notoriously hard-to-find-hotels city. We gratefully cleaned up and spent the night over curry and beers as it was absolutely pissing down outside.
The next morning, we managed to find the Vientiane branch of Joma and tucked into the best bacon, cheese and egg bagel this side of the Mekong. Sensational! We hopped next door to the travel agent to organise a flight to Hanoi. Stew and Catherine were braving the bus, however after our record of buses in India and Asia generally (Steph was still getting over the bus-flattened cow from yesterday), we thought that a flight would be in our best interests.
A classic breakdown in communication led us to booking a flight for Friday instead of Wednesday, meaning we were stuck in Vientiane for 4 days. Cancellation fees would have been more than the flight itself (how does that work?) as such we figured we would just chillax – use the opportunity to catch up on some blogging, email and some much needed liver-recovery.
The sun was blazing at this stage and the four of us thought it would be an exceptionally good idea to head out to “Patuxai”, an Arc De Triomphe attempt that even the good locals acknowledge failed miserably.
These guys need a lesson in Lonely Planet diplomacy!
Despite the concrete monstrosity-ness of it all, the view over Vientiane is a pretty good one, and it at least shows you that, in contrast to the natural beauty and lushness of the rest of the country, Vientiane is a “town on the move” with modern apartment blocks and shopping malls – the new face of Laos in the 21st century.
Inside Patuxia.
After a quick lunch at one of the aforementioned shopping malls, we headed back to the hotel where Stew and Catherine needed to be picked up for their marathon overnight bus trip to Hanoi (little did we know at that stage that choosing to fly was one of the best decisions we made in ages! More on this later…).
The next day we ended up hiring a scooter so that we could get out and see some of the sights and surrounds of the city, as well as get to the Cambodian embassy to arrange our visa for entry in a months time or so. The US dollar price of the visa had risen considerably in Aussie dollar terms…the AUD had falling from 98c in June to 67c this week – the Financial Crisis was having a serious impact on our daily budget!
After taking care of administrational matters at the embassy, we headed out to the golden temple of Pha That Luang, Laos’ most important national monument and a symbol of both Buddhism and Lao sovereignty.
The wrought-iron work on the gates was very fine
Paintings on the ceilings and walls of the temple, depicting scenes from Buddha’s life.
Ganesh, a Hindy deity, combined with Buddhist symbols
Based on reports from Ed and Nicky’s blog, we followed this up with trip out to Xieng Khuan, or “Buddha Park”. Revving the scooter up to full power, it took about half an hour to cover the 25kms distance out to Buddha Park. On the way we passed the lush green of rice paddies, so common here, however Steph can never fail to take at least a couple of photos.
Buddha Park
Again, taking liberty from Lonely Planet, a brief description:
“Xieng Khuan, as the name suggests, is a park full of Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, a monument to one eccentric man’s bizarre ambition.”
The park is filled to the gills with sculptures from the mundane to the macabre. It is a truly fascinating place and made all the more interesting from the fact its located in a seemingly random field on the banks of the Mekong.
The entrance to one of the larger sculptures, an internal staircase takes you up four stories to the top for a great view over the park!
After we got our fill of sculptures, we scooted back to Vientiane proper, picked up our passports with our new, gleaming Cambodian visas and back to the hotel for dinner and some TV.
The next day, we returned the scooter without even having to refuel – total cost of about 50,000 kip, which amounts to about US$6 – absolutely sensational value! We munched on our bagel eggers and pondered on the fact that we had seen most of what Vientiane had to offer and still had a couple of days up our sleeves. We used the opportunity to catch up on blogging, spending most of the day in the internet cafe, however in the early evening we headed out in search of entertainment.
Drinking the complimentary shot of Lao Lao at a riverside bar
Vientiane at night
Steph was trying to work out if we could ship one of these home!
I’m sure Coca-cola would have a problem with this one!
What to do when in Vientiane for too long– Go Bowling
Yes, we ended up at the local bowling alley which, to be honest, was just what the doctor ordered – we’d definitely had our fill of Buddhist temples, rice paddies and statues and it was great to suck back some suds and bowl a few frames.
We finished off 3 games with Steph scoring an unbeaten high score of 181 – sensational game with 6 strikes (including one Turkey – look that one up if you’re rusty on bowling lingo).
Steph showing the fine form that made her an under-12 Binghamton league champion
Kyle showing the form that results in his wife almost tripling his score
181! Grandpa Seeley would have been proud!
Leaving Vientiane and Laos…
Which is beer and which is water? Actually…it might have been very weak tea.
Lunch at our now favourite Chinese BBQ place next to the hotel – 38,000 kip (USD4.50) for Chinese BBQ,veggies, soup and strong water/weak tea!
Our unscheduled stop in Vientiane was actually a blessing in disguise, as it allowed us to re-charge our batteries and reflect on what had been an absolutely fantastic couple of weeks in Laos. It also meant we missed the bus ride from hell that Stewart and Catherine had experienced – including teak smugglers, angry border guards, being marooned in the middle of nowhere and no less than 7 bus changes before reaching Hanoi 28 and a half hours later. Yep…I’ll take a plane ride 2 days late over that any day!
Laos is a country that’s spoilt for breath-taking scenery and the people would have to be some of the friendliest that we’d come across so far during our year of travels. This is made all the more amazing considering the country had suffered under years of colonialism, the hell bombed out of it during the Vietnam War and experienced political isolation and inertia under a communist regime until the turn of the century.
We had some truly amazing experiences and very fun times in Laos, entering the country by boat, the festival and beauty of Luang Prabang and debauchery of Vang Vieng. And while Vientiane promised to disappoint, we ended up having a great few days here as well.
We packed our bags, took a deep breath and grabbed a tuk-tuk for the main airport and our flight to Hanoi. We knew that Vietnam was going to be amazing, but a completely different gear to the relaxing and chill pace that is quintessentially Laos.
