Vientaine 24/10/07 - Today

We arrived into Vientiane at about 4ish in the afternoon and again avoided the tuk tuk drivers and strode off confidently bags on backs. All seemed pretty normal until we reached the river front and then we hit the stalls. The book had been going on about this quite relaxed city with a slow pace of life and all we could see was a long line of market stalls selling everything from flip flops to nappies.

This is the capital city of Laos and we had been expecting something a little busier than previous places but this was not what we had thought it would be like. Still we marched on passed all the stalls and at this point, traffic and lots of locals presumably out doing a spot of shopping for nappies, and got to the hotel we had picked out from the bible (or Lonely
Planet to us).

The hotel was the Orchid Guest House and was on the river front practically hidden by the stalls but the receptionists were nice and friendly so we went to look at the rooms. They were not too great but clean, so after a 6 hour Mini Bus ride and a fairly hefty walk by this point we decided to stay. On getting into the rooms and reading a bit further it appears that we stumbled upon one of the biggest festivals of the year. This is called the Bun Nam Festival and
signifies the end of Buddhist Lent.

Still at this point in time all we could think was, hope this music stops relatively early and where is the nearest restaurant. We did find food in a local Tex Mex place round the corner and watched the locals going about buying random things and drinking lots of Beer Lao until we all decided to crash for the night.

As the rooms were not particulary brilliant and it was a more expensive room compared to some of the ones we have stayed in we decided to have a look round a few more guest houses the next morning. Granted, the festival had made things a little more busy than normal and a few we tried were full but seeing some of the selections 'not listed in the Lonely Planet' made
us realise that we had pretty much not done too bad so far. We did find something a little better than where we were so we moved all our stuff about 10 minutes up the road to the KPP Guesthouse which was a bit cleaner and definitely cheaper.

Vientiane is a bit of a mixture city. It has much of the Laos charm and relaxed nature (although it was still very busy at this point) and has some old French Colonial buildings, some Modern shopping Malls (with lots of fake designer gear and electronics and a very strange food court where you buy vouchers at the beginning then wander around random food stalls and
still just buy a baguette) and then some crumbling 1970's building that were obviously built just after the communist party took over and now look decdedly worse for wear. Even the local bowling alley, which could have been anywhere, had a hammer and sickle flag. So really indiacative of the communist side which had not really been apparent until now. I won 2 out of the 3 bowling games by the way. I know i don't need to put that in i just wanted to...

As with Luang Prabang there was a walking tour in the book so we decided that this was a good idea to get to see the sites. It also still avoided the front as everytime we went by the river you couldn't move for people. ( Just as a side point I am easily average hieght in most of Southeast Asia. In fact I may almost be described as tall, but not quite. This I realised
in the crowd of people where I could still see).

Again if any of you really want to look up any of the things were saw here is a quick run down:

- Putaxi, Vientiane's version of the Arch De Triumph, and built using stolen cement given to Laos to build a runway by America in the 60's (even the sign on the side explains that the closer you get the worse it looks).

- That Dam, Old Ruins of a Stupa. Apparently once covered in gold.

- Presidential palace, Big French colonial palace used only for ceremony now.

- Wat Muxai - Big giant gaurdian statues (apparently women)

Later that evening we went down to the river and watched people lauch small wreath type things with candles into the river. Each one lauched with a prayer presumably for a good year. Seeing big barges on the river lit up Blackpool style was impressive but the sight of hundreds of small flaoting candles in the river was very spectacular. All topped off with fireworks and firecrackers going constantly. By this time despite the noise and crowds we were all glad we were here to see this going on.

The next day was the climax of the festival and involved Dragon Boat racing between teams from all accross Laos and other countries in Asia. It was impressive to see the long thin boats with about 60 people paddling in unison but without knwing what was actually going on we only watched it for about an hour. It was broken up by the odd advertising boat with people doing random dancing obviously for about the last 5 hours given by the lack of movement and
just about moving arms in time. Even the previously energetic 'sexual health' boat (Dancing people waving inflated condoms) looked to be getting a bit tired.

The entertainment was kept up by the waitress in the bar where we were watching the races. The basic game appeared to be, we order drinks, waitress smiles and nods seeming to fully understand the mixture of east/west midlands and geordie (Caroline is a Geordie if you hadn't worked that out), waitress then brings three completely different drinks to the table and
smiles very proudly. And Repeat x 3. A fun time for all... The people serving in the restaurants is along similar lines. Generally you order, they nod and then bring out whatever food they think you might like regardless of what you actually ordered. The woman in Dierdre Barlow Glasses, Hawain shirt, trecking shorts, flip flops & socks a side pony tail was one of our all time favorites. Especially the way she introduced herself with the word sorry and then again apologised everytime she came to the table.

It's quietened down now in Vientiane and the cleanup is well and trully on. Trucks carrying empty bottles of beer lao have been going along the road all day and I think (I would hope) that the poster seller selling extra large photos of a dinner table with food and Ritter sport chocolate, have now moved on to other places.

We have a couple of days left here before we continue down south so hopefully we will get to see the City in a much calmer and Laos type way over that time...

The Final day in Vientiane was taken up by a visit to the Buddha Park. This, according to the book, is a collection of concrete sculptures, generally in a form of Buddha or other religious things. Not very exciting or entertaining you may think?... Well think again. This was possibly one of the strangest and coolest things we had seen in Laos mainly for the strangeness mentioned just a second ago.

The Journey was eventful in its own way by the combination of tuk tuk to the bus station, indentify bus, wait for next one as the first one was full (by full this is more than just the seats were full... Every bit of space was full including the isle and roof), and avoid other tuk tuk drivers wanting to take us there for about 10 times the price of the bus (apparently westeners don't like using buses). Once on the bus it was initially empty but as we got near to leaving it again filled up and all the available crevices on the relativelly small bus were filled. Seats designed for 2 were generally filled with 3 plus rice bags...

About 6km out of Vientienne we turned off the paved roads onto an unmade dirt track which was still basically the main road. Both of us remebered, while getting bumped around and covered in dust, that most paved roads in Laos have only been done in the last 20 years and there are still a lot of pretty main routes which we would class as about the same quality as a rough dirt track.

Still, as the bus emptied and we guessed we must be nearly there, (purely based on how long it should have taken compared to how long we had been on) I asked the man in front if we were nearly there. In very broken english he said about another 5 minutes and then when we arrived he gave us the nod and we got off next to the small sign we would never have spotted.

The Buddha park itself was crammed full, (as promised) with statues of varying size and styles - the place was amazing in it's sheer scale and randomness. Some ranged from small almost life scale statues to others being possibly about 30m tall and even a reclining Buddha that must have been 50m long and about 15m high. It took 4 photos to get it all in!!!. There was another one that looked abit like a concrete pumpkin with a pole on top. It looked quite basic from the outside but then we spotted someone coming out of the mouth of the face on the front and realised we could go in. Inside there were 3 levels each with more sculptures inside.

The whole area was relatively small. About the size of a quarter of a football pitch but there were hundreds of sculptures packed in. The park was built by one man in around the late 1950's. He apparently decided it was his calling and started building the concrete sculptures and it just went from there.

The bus ride back was similar to the one there apart from the added safety feature of a cracked windscreen on this bus. Dust, bumps and lots of people is something we are pretty much used to now.

That evening we had dinner with Caroline and Flemming one last time as they were heading into Vietnam and we were heading south in Loas some more. On the last walk along the river we stopped to watch the public aerobics session, deceded not to join in, laughed a little bit in the lack of rhythm of some of the locals and said goodbye. It has been cool to travel with them both and I hope we manage to catch up again sometime soon.