Having survived our 24hr bus journey with a fairly painless border crossing (accompanied by a 3 foot cuddly bear called Rufus!); we arrived into Vientiane. We checked into a lovely little hotel and had a quick snoop around this charmingly small capital city before collapsing into bed with the intention of catching up on some of the lost sleep from last night.
The next morning, Mission Accomplished! We awoke feeling a lot brighter and decided on a day of sightseeing on foot. The first call was the market to hunt down a new power supply for our little life line, this laptop, as ours now failed to charge the battery at all. Amazing what these places can conjure up, we left with a genuine Acer battery to breathe life into our ailing technology.
Being in South East Asia the walk back from the market threw a few temples and monuments into our path, the most interesting of them being That Dam, a stupa (literally meaning heap) which legend has it houses a 7 headed naga which will protect the Laos people from invading armies. We saw no sign of this serpent god so just took a picture of the pile of bricks instead!
Over the next few days we investigated most of the sights to be found in the centre of Vientiane including the national monument, the golden Pha That Luang. We hired a couple of bikes and cycled out there and just to demonstrate our much mentioned bad timing we arrived during the monument's lunch hour (they get hungry you know with all that posing for photographs!) and so had to make do with admiring it from afar.
We also gate crashed the funeral vigil of one of the elder monks of the city. We were allowed to go inside to pay our respects but I was only allowed into the very front part of the temple (as are all women) while Dave could wander freely if he chose. He declined this opportunity for fear of coming face to face with a dead monk! We walked around the complex of several temples and statues and marvelled at the fact that a country as poor as Laos can afford to build such extravagant things.
One monument which didn't cost anything for the country of Laos to build was the Patuxai Arc, which was built using the concrete which the USA donated in order for the government to build a new runway, brilliant! From afar this 'Victory Monument' looks quite attractive but on closer inspection it becomes clear that it really is just a big lump of concrete.
We were rather lazy in Vientiane and didn't venture outside of the city but we left the capital refreshed and looking forward to seeing what the rest of Laos had to offer us.
The next morning, Mission Accomplished! We awoke feeling a lot brighter and decided on a day of sightseeing on foot. The first call was the market to hunt down a new power supply for our little life line, this laptop, as ours now failed to charge the battery at all. Amazing what these places can conjure up, we left with a genuine Acer battery to breathe life into our ailing technology.
Being in South East Asia the walk back from the market threw a few temples and monuments into our path, the most interesting of them being That Dam, a stupa (literally meaning heap) which legend has it houses a 7 headed naga which will protect the Laos people from invading armies. We saw no sign of this serpent god so just took a picture of the pile of bricks instead!
Over the next few days we investigated most of the sights to be found in the centre of Vientiane including the national monument, the golden Pha That Luang. We hired a couple of bikes and cycled out there and just to demonstrate our much mentioned bad timing we arrived during the monument's lunch hour (they get hungry you know with all that posing for photographs!) and so had to make do with admiring it from afar.
We also gate crashed the funeral vigil of one of the elder monks of the city. We were allowed to go inside to pay our respects but I was only allowed into the very front part of the temple (as are all women) while Dave could wander freely if he chose. He declined this opportunity for fear of coming face to face with a dead monk! We walked around the complex of several temples and statues and marvelled at the fact that a country as poor as Laos can afford to build such extravagant things.
One monument which didn't cost anything for the country of Laos to build was the Patuxai Arc, which was built using the concrete which the USA donated in order for the government to build a new runway, brilliant! From afar this 'Victory Monument' looks quite attractive but on closer inspection it becomes clear that it really is just a big lump of concrete.
We were rather lazy in Vientiane and didn't venture outside of the city but we left the capital refreshed and looking forward to seeing what the rest of Laos had to offer us.
No comments:
Post a Comment