How Laos Can You Go?

Part 3 - The City

This post will be a little different than the first two. We saw enough in our two days walking around that going through everything I saw would make this post even longer than the 9000 words I usually type. Plus, I wanted to tell you about the visa and the journey so you could kind of understand both the complexity of the former and the monotony/asininity of the latter. I think both show an insight into the visa process in particular and the culture of SE Asia in general. Whereas today I just want to give you some of my base impressions of Vientiane and Laos. (Also, over the course of the trip, I thought like 7 times that I needed a notebook to jot something down. I would see something and immediately think of how it would be interesting a blog post and how I could write about it. I think I need more followers to have an attitude like that. Like...100,000 more. :) )

The capital of Laos in the city of Vientiane, located along the mighty Mekong river. Julia told me that it was called 'the largest village in Asia' and the nickname seemed pretty appropriate. A sleepy town, where most things seemed to be closed by 11 and certainly none of of the high rises of Bangkok, or even the 20 story hotel's or apartment buildings of Chiang Mai. A more touristy area along the river, about a 30 min walk from the embassy and where we were staying. Most of the guesthouses and restaurants were located around here, and there was even a little market set up at night.

The first night we were walking through a wide park admiring what the locals call the Patuxay, a huge monument resembling the Arc de Triumph. It was actually built to celebrate independence from France, so it was slightly ironic they modeled it after one of Paris's most famous landmarks. (Examples of French colonization can be seen all over, from the aritechure to the food to many of the important signs (inc all street signs) being in both Lao and French.) But we are walking towards the Patuxay and I look over to my right to see a big government building...and notice the red and yellow hammer and sickle flag of the USSR. Wait a second, Laos is communist?

I mean, disregarding the fact that my world knowledge is severely lacking and ignoring my complete and utter lack of research about a country I was going to be in for 3 days, I am actually kind of excited. I'm in a communist country! And to be honest with you, aside from the flag (which, get with it Laos, there isn't even a USSR anymore), there really wasn't any indication that the country was very communist. I didn't have to recite a loyalty oath when I entered the country, and people weren't lined up at the local collective to receive their share of the fruits of production. About the only place it really became apparent was in the museum.

Being the capital, one of the things located in the city was the National History Museum. Julia and I headed over there and entered a seemly deserted building and began to look around. After skipping quickly through the clay pots and arrowheads of early peoples of Laos, I began to get to the last few centuries of the country, depicting everything from French colonization up to present time, including multiple rooms depicting the struggle against 'U.S. Imperialists', a phrase I would see quite often. Most of these rooms were filled with pictures, captioned in three languages, Laos, French and English, though a few of the later rooms also contained guns and bombs used in the conflict. During the next hour, I was dumbfounded at the things I hadn't known about historical U.S.-Laos 'relations.' I learned Laos is the most bombed country in the history of the world, and that a majority of those bombs were dropped by us in the Vietnam War. I saw over and over again pictures of Laos leaders (always called 'comrade so and so') 'inspiring troops to fight against the U.S. Imperialists.' I saw some of the recovered bombs we had dropped on this country, and some of the guns those very same future communist leaders had used to kill Americans. I mean, I am not trying to comment on the necessity or wisdom of our actions during Vietnam, but it was just bizarre to be standing here reading all of these things, with a copy of my U.S. Passport in my pocket, looking around wondering if someone is going to jump out of the walls and tackle me for the 2,000,000 TONS of bombs my country dropped in theirs. We dropped more bombs on Laos than all of the bombs in WWII put together! And yet, here I am, strolling the museum without a care in the world. Just a bizarre experience.

The rest of the city was also pretty cool. We hopped on a local bus to head out to a place called Buddha Park, where a local rich guy had collected all these crazy stone statues of Buddha and other crazy things and just put them all in a park. We had to ride on a local bus to get out there...which was awesome, being the only white people on the bus, having no idea where to get off or how far it was, and just getting to watch the local people interact with each other. Very cool. We made it out there, and the park was amazing. They had the biggest sleeping Buddha I have ever seen (my favorite of all the Buddha's, obviously.) They also had this huge 5 story orb cut out of stone, that you could go inside and they had a center chamber in each level filled with these messed up statues and it was like pitch black in there and you could climb up on the roof of it and overlook the whole park. It was pretty awesome, mostly because you could climb on the roof. We meandered around the park for a bit, then headed back out to the road to wait for another bus. Well, we didn't quite know what the deal was, so we crossed the street to wait for the return bus, assuming it was a 'there and back' bus route. Unfortunately, it turned out it was a big loop route, so when we saw a bus fly by in the opposite direction, little did we realize that not only was it the bus we wanted, but it was the last one of the night. We wouldn't even have known this if some people who were checking out the park with us hadn't decided to roll down their window and ask where we were headed as they were driving away. It ended up being two girls from New Zealand visiting their relatives, and not only did they inform us that the buses were done, but they offered to give us a ride to Friendship Bridge where it would be a lot easier to catch a ride than on the side of the two lane highway on which we were currently standing. They were very nice, and although I'm sure we could have found a tuk tuk (eventually...I think) for the 45 min ride back into the capital, they saved us a lot of money and trouble by giving us that ride. So thank you family, wherever you are.

We also saw some cool temples and other things of that nature, which were cool and beautiful and cultural and which I will link to some pictures soon because I can't really do them justice with my words alone. (Also, it would be so American to me to say they looked very similar to many of the Wats I have seen and become used to here in Thailand, so I won't say it.) The morning of the day we left, we did check out Pah That Luang, the national symbol of Laos. It was a huge golden minaret type structure surrounded by many other smaller golden points. It was unique in being known more for its cultural than religious significance, though there was a definite religious aspect to it as well. Although being there for 3 days was hardly enough time to see everything, I felt like I got a decent sense of the city and enjoyed it. It was much less touristy than Chiang Mai, and also just had a more relaxed feel. Less to do, stuff closed earlier, but still an interesting mix of religion and politics, of Asian and French culture, of tradition and tourism. And like I said multiple times while I was there, I got to spend a weekend in Laos, how many people can say they have done that? :)

TPWWLT - New Found Glory - 'Something I Call Personality'

PS - I am not addressing my failure of the blog the last two weeks, other to say that I am good, not injured or sick or anything, and that I had about 3/4 of this post written the night after my last post, so I had to finish it before some more recent updates.

PPS - Instead of 'Laos' rhyming with 'mouse', the locals pronounce its as rhyming with 'now.' (Like 'Lau.') That might make some of the post titles and my weak puns and exchanging 'Laos' and 'low' a little more understandable to some of you.