On Monday, February 4th Heather and I started our day off right – meaning, we went straight for our last cup of iced Lao Coffee from our local Luang Prabang coffee guy. Yes, we were there long enough to find a coffee guy. His name is Lenou and we were very fond of his stand of freshly squeezed orange juice and Lao made as-you-like-it coffee (p.s. Lenou says hi Flynn and Sarah!). We had asked him the previous night what time he opened, as we were leaving at 7am, and he said 6:30! Mind you, he’s normally in the market until 9pm, so the guy works very long days. However, he loves inviting his patrons to sit on a bench next to his stand and striking up conversation as he brews each coffee, and hopefully we told enough people about him to increase his business. He even gave us special to-go cups Monday morning, large bamboo ones, that are usually reserved for hot coffee because he knew we were going straight to the bus station.
Our bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiane was supposed to be 8 hours. Here’s a quick 101 on Laotian buses:
There is always a public bus (normally the cheapest option). This bus will, undoubtedly, pick up limitless numbers of extra people while going through villages and smaller towns that don’t have bus centers. These people, especially, have it hard because they usually are transporting bags and sacks of goods from one place to another, and because of the system, will end up without a seat, sitting on aforementioned bags of rice or peanuts, in the aisles.
Now, there are also VIP buses that are a bit more expensive (a little more than $1USD difference, usually), that are nicer buses, sometimes with air-conditioning, that are rumored to cut your trip by a few hours because they won’t be stopping to pick people up.
(and, fyi, ALL buses feature the hottest lao music, as well as some karaoke dvds if you’re so lucky…, so no need to worry if your ipod or mp3 breaks)
We ended up on a VIP bus to Vientiane. However, the trip ended up taking us 9 ½ hours with a few stops to pick up other passengers, a bathroom break, a lunch break, and a large stopover in Vang Vieng (a tourist hotspot) where about 75% of the white people on our bus got off.
So is life, eh?
We arrived at the Vientiane bus terminal and were ushered into a tuktuk that took us to ‘center city’…unfortunately, being as we were arriving around 7:30 pm, rooms were scarce and we were forced to take one that was a bit more expensive than we were hoping, which means it was $8/person rather than $4…to keep things in perspective (we were, however, able to move to a more affordable accommodation the next morning).
Like I said in the title of this post, though, Vientiane didn’t really ever measure up, or redeem our first night impressions.
Tuesday, February 5th we walked the city – literally – walked everywhere. We’re getting rather good at shooting tuktuk drivers looks and quips so they’re fully aware we will not be needing their services.
We first wandered to Patuxai, or, as Lonely Planet explains, “Vientiane’s haughty Arc de Triomphe replica”. As someone who has gazed at the wonder that is the Arc in Paris, it’s a stretch to say that this is a replica…it’s not very appealing to the eye. It’s mostly a concrete-gray color and while it has some nice fountains on either side, it’s just not very impressive of a monument in the center of the city. Granted, it apparently was never fully finished as the builders intended it to be, so maybe more plans for grandeur were in the works – AND we were able to climb up it and get a great view of the city. Ruining the historical value (or maybe ensuring that this does have some tourist draw) were several shops/stands selling silver, tshirts, various SEAsian country flag patches and miniature Buddha statues on each level.
We spent the rest of the day (in a heat we claimed to have missed, god only knows why, just a week earlier) walking the city…well, we meant to head to the national museum and somehow made a gigantic circle around it – signs seemed to only be posted on a few major roads and intersections in Vientiane. We did make it to the ‘beach’, aka, the Mekong during dry season --- there’s a large, sprawling area of roadside restaurants overlooking the river, but since ¾ of it is dry at the moment, right now they overlook a beach.
At this point, we really hadn’t gotten a feel for Vientiane – we couldn’t tell what the city was all about. So we figured we’d try bowling, which apparently is rather popular among locals and tourists alike. And while Heather and I succeeded in embarrassing ourselves compared to the locals in the lane next to us, we also had a fabulous evening (finished off with dinner at a nearby restaurant that was also hosting a british singer-songwriter for the evening, Billy Paige), of good ‘ole fashioned bowling. Yeeeet, not really what I would consider a traditional Laotian pastime. Weird, eh?
Wednesday held another day of motorbiking adventures, this time started off with the rental woman doubting Heather’s standard motorbike abilities, which, in the words of Flynn jebb – are “bangin’ good”. And I rode on the bike of the bike almost 30 km to Xieng Khuan, the Buddha Park, over bumpy roads, so I think I would know best. We spent the morning and part of the afternoon finding and exploring the Buddha park. It is literally a park full of Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, designed and built in 1958 by Luang Pu (Venerable Grandfather) Bunleua Sulilat, described as a “yogi-priest-shaman who merged Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, mythology and iconography”.
Interesting, to say the least. Walking through the park, looking at the different sculptures – my favorite was a gigantic reclining Buddha that flanked one side of the park – it was amazing to realize how much religion is a part of the daily lives of most Lao citizens, and they certainly don’t shy away from it. Wats were around every corner in Vientiane and while every single one was closed, much to our dismay, they must stand as a daily reminder for all Buddhists about their faith. Running on Wednesday morning I passed an area where people were buying incense to offer at shrines all over the city – and it obviously made for a pretty good smell compared to the fish in tanks awaiting their end at nearby restaurants.
After returning the motorbike, we headed to the National Museum which shed a bit more light on why we weren’t able to pinpoint Vientiane’s character. The museum was separated into 16 rooms/exhibits, many of which were dedicated to the Indochina War years and the following “US imperialist and their puppets” period of rule and rebellion. While I personally thought the language was a bit over-the-top bordering on brainwashing, it makes complete sense in the context of Laos’ history. Vientiane also has, since the mid-19th century at least, been under the control of various imperialist powers or governments supported by the west. It was until recently that Vientiane was actually run by the popularly voted upon government, and even then, the city lacks much of the influences of the local indigenous village cultures that we came to love so much in the North of Laos. We also found it difficult to find an authentic Laotian-only-cuisine restaurant. Most had menus of ‘fusion cuisine’…choose anything from Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Western or French. It’s definitely a testament to the tumultuous history of Laos, as well as the individual history of Vientiane as the capital city, that we still, after having left Laos, can’t seem to explain Vientiane’s character as anything traditionally or uniquely Lao. We’re glad we went, for sure, and happy we were able to see as much as we did in 2 days.
We’re also, however, very happy we’re in Cambodia now. Laos was bittersweet, as we were unable to see as much of the North as we would have liked, and unable to visit the south because of time constraints. Which just means we’ll have to travel back there at some point in the future. Any takers?
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