Country #111: Something in Laos

When you take the speed dating approach to travel, you can't allow yourself to get too bogged down in the details. Take for example, my latest adventure. I landed in Vientiane at midnight and had an entire twelve hours before I had to catch a flight to Guam. The sensible thing to do would have been to get some sleep, maybe a quick breakfast and start the new day refreshed (or as close to it as possible when whizzing through time zones).

Problem is Vientiane is the capital of Laos, a new country for me and I was determined to see... something, which is more or less how I phrased it when I checked into my hotel at 1am.

 I explained to the front desk clerk that I wanted to set up a driver to show me the sights. When asked what precisely I wanted to see, my response was "Uh, I don't know. Anything specific to Laos. Temples, maybe. That monument that shows up in all the Google searches. Anything interesting. No shopping."

Come 7am, my driver and his very limited command of the English language were waiting to fulfill my wonderfully vague request. As we set off, all I was able to gather was that we were going to the furthest point first, which was 15 minutes away.

It turned out to be 50 minutes away but the ride along the Mekong River, through a number of small bustling towns was interesting enough to tamp down the number of times I asked "Excuse me, where is it that we are going again?"  For the record, the answer was always "No English".

When we eventually arrived at our destination, it was closed. This was not the greatest sign but the small group of employees gathered at the entrance seemed to indicate that they were just waiting for someone to show up with a key.

With a couple of minutes to kill, we continued down the road to a temple dedicated to all things day-glo.

Me (using a whole lot of sign language) "Why does she have a snake?" My driver (yanking vigorously on his head): "Not snake. Hair."

By the time we returned, the Buddha Park (or Xieng Khuan) had opened. It is everything the name suggests. It is a park, sitting right on the Mekong River, which forms the border with Thailand. And there certainly are a lot of cement Buddhas, with some Hindu deities interspersed here and there. I have since learned that it was built by a mystic monk, Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat, in 1958.

I had been stressed about spending so much of my very limited time just driving to our first stop but having this strange trippy place all to myself made it totally worth it.

I wasn't sure what to make of the oversized mini-golf trap (would that make it a regular golf trap?) with the gaping mouth so since there wasn't anyone to stop me, I crawled right in.

Inside there were yet more figures and narrow little steps leading up to  a good view overlooking the park.

As I was preparing to leave, two busloads of Korean tourists were pulling in. It was time to go.

Next stop: Pha That Luang. I know this only because I saved all my entry tickets with the plan to find out after the fact what I was looking at. 

What I saw: a shiny gold stupa. What I learned afterwards: it is the most important monument in all of Laos. Originally built in 1566 and covered with 500 kilos of gold leaf, it has been sacked and destroyed by every invasion to come through town. 

It is believed to hold a piece of the Buddha's breastbone which was brought to Laos by an Indian missionary.

Wat That Luang Neau as in "Wat that Luang Neau done now?"

That monument I had mentioned to the hotel desk clerk a few hours before? That was the Patuxai, a victory monument celebrating Laos' independence from France. You would think that its meaning would be enough to spare it from constant comparisons to the Arc de Triomphe but non, ce n'est pas.

For a small fee, you can climb up to the top for a view of the city and the Presidential Palace directly opposite the monument.

Right by that Palace is Wat Sisaket, which I pretty much sprinted through since time was now running out. That's a shame because this is one of the city's oldest temples and houses 1000's of Buddhas.

But there was one more stop on my something tour, Wat Si Muang. This was by far the busiest of all the temples I visited. Inside there was a monk with a tip jar tying string bracelets on the wrists of worshippers and people doing the Kau cim thing where you draws sticks to find out your fortune. 

Even with the benefit of google, I am not totally clear on the story but apparently a pregnant girl named Muang threw herself in a pit during construction of this temple and was later crushed by a pillar. Her spirit now watches over the city. Why the foreman on this job couldn't hold off with his pillars until they could get the pregnant chick out of the pit is just one of the many questions I wish I could have asked.

In the back room, it was all about plates with offerings. That's because this is the wishing temple, where you go to pray for your desires. Once the gods deliver, you have to come back and make an offering. Judging by the number of plates, the system seems to be working quite well, making me wish I had known about these powers beforehand.

At this point, I had thirty minutes before I had to be back at the hotel. My driver pulled up to the Morning Market, a chaotic shopping area that appeared to be immense. Our communication had improved to the point where he understood when I refused to get out of the car and kept repeating "No. No shopping. Please don't make me go out there."

Instead, he took me to see That Dam Black Stupa.  I'm not being catty. That's what they call it. For real.  Its story involves a seven headed water serpent that lived therein and protected the city. At least six of the heads must have fallen asleep because in the 1820's, the Siamese army (present day Thailand) invaded and stripped the stupa of all its gold, leaving it in the state it is today.

It was now almost noon and I still had to shower and get ready to leave for the airport at 1pm. It had been a whirlwind tour, one where truthfully speaking I had no clue what I was looking at half the time, but I'd enjoyed it all the same. It's a beautiful city, with plenty to see but with few enough tourists that souvenir touts are not a problem like they are in other Southeast Asian cities. Hopefully, on my next visit, I will have a chance to explore it more in depth but for now, I can at least say I saw something in country #111