Photos : Laos, Vientiane Laos, Buddha Park
On the road again
Wiping the Vang Vieng scum from our collective shoes we headed for the capital, Vientiane. After our foray with the VIP busses, the decision was made to not test our sanity and patience with a second leg. The 5 of us hired a private minivan. Some of the best money spent. Proper aircon, roomy, ability to stop whenever we wanted and no Vang Vieng backpacker scum.
We arrived in Vientiane in relatively quick time, cool and relaxed. Our driver had done a good job of finding the main street (ok I’m being generous as there’s one road into town from Vang Vieng and it takes you to the main street) but directing our driver to the hotel was another matter. We had some electronic maps and knew where we wanted to go but had to convince the driver to take us there. He was on his phone numerous times and had a confused look on his face. His understanding of English is marginally better than our command of Laotion and ran about 3 words. We managed to use the advanced sign language of a thumbs up (I know you’re impressed by our ingenuity) and pointing in the rough direction we thought our hotel was located. He succumbed to our conviction and enthusiasm about wanting to navigate our own way. One wrong turn and we were there 15 minutes later.
I quite like Vientiane but it’s very different to Luang Prabang. It’s larger, not as relaxed, a lot more hustle and bustle. We did a self guided city tour of sights near our hotel but also hired a driver and car for a morning to head to Buddha park and some city sights that would otherwise take a while to reach on foot.
Asking for an English speaking driver yields you a person who can drive and speak a few words in English but in no way does it mean they can string a sentence together. Our driver who I will call Marcel, was no different. For the day we relied on names of places (in our best Laotion accents and English) but often using the ever reliable sign language. Ken was becoming well versed in the whole English to Laotion process and his sign language was improving by the day.
How do my teeth look?
Laotian women seemed to have gone to one school of how to eat. For the uninitiated it goes something like is. The food is to be consumed with the mouth open and not all the food is required to fit in the mouth before mastication begins. When masticating it’s a good thing to show the people around you exactly what you’re eating so don’t be shy and chew with a closed mouth. Also, the conversation doesn’t have to stop because your ingesting food…keep those gums a flapping!
We ate at some decent restaurants we witnessed first hand the mastication Olympics. I think most competitors were worthy of medal placings however the gold medalists were outstanding ugly to watch.
One Buddha, two Buddha….100 Buddha!
Set on a relatively small site is Buddha Park. It’s a very impressive collection of stone statues relating to Buddhism. Beings are represented in all manner of incarnations, beings, position, sizes and styles. The largest is the reclining Buddha that stretches 40 meters.
We deliberately wanted to get here early in the day for a few reasons.
1) we had sunlight on most of the statue faces
2) less tourist busses
3) it wasn’t the hottest part of the day.
Don’t think the park is boring and don’t expect to find gold Buddhas. These Buddhas here are made from concrete and are different in design from what you’d expect. The park isn’t that big but it is impressive due to the statue style and numbers. It’s like someone’s big back yard has been cluttered with all number of statues and in varying designs. All are made from reinforced concrete so there’s no gaud here, although there is the esoteric. The designed depict demons, gods, human and animals. Even the human form is exaggerated.
Whilst all sculptures are interesting there are 2 larger designs that draw you in. One is the 120m (390ft) reclining Buddha and the other a pumpkin. Yep…a pumpkin. But this isn’t any ordinary pumpkin for this pumpkin has a mouth through which to enter, heaven, earth and hell. Not bad for a mere pumpkin. Inside the pumpkin you find the narrow staircase which leads from hell, to earth. The center of the pumpkin is walled beyond which you find many small sculptures. The entrance to the walled center is tiny and you have to stoop or crawl to get through. The small statues aren’t that impressive compared to the outside ones however it is interesting. The pumpkin offers you a way to go beyond heaven. Yep….what’s beyond heaven? The top of the pumpkin of course. This vantage point overlooks the park and you get to appreciate the number and style of sculptures from a new perspective.
We spent, due to my slow pace taking too many blurry or poorly composed photos, about one hour here.
City highlights
Buddha park is located a little way past the Friendship Bridge that extends between Laos and Thailand. Originally we had planned a visit here thinking that it would be vaguely interesting. It isn’t. It’s so boring in fact we drove underneath it and kept going. Marcel had been told we wanted to go here however the yawn factor meant this part of the itinerary could be foregone. The only thing we had to do was convince Marcel, from Marcel Marceau fame, we weren’t interested. Again it was sign language and an occasional statement of another tourist site that got the message across.
With perfect weather we headed to That Luang where we shared the moment with 100s of our closest friends. The That was built in the 16th century and considered one of the holiest temples. Unfortunately for That is that the Thai’s thought in 1828 that the That needed that TLC otherwise known as destruction…that was that. The original construction had actual gold leaf covering the pyramid at the top however this was plundered by the the Chinese, Burmese and Thais. Today you get to see the rebuilt 1930s version and no gold 🙁
Near the stupa is a small temple that has wonderful colourful paintings on the ceiling. Most people seemed to pass it with feigned interest however it was a great place to get some different pics and with the monks holding court at the front it was even better.
There is a Arc d Triumph here…or at least a Laotion version. It’s nowhere near as impressive as the one in Paris but this one has a water feature, occasionally a passing monk and music!!! Not sure which was more important.
For the remainder of the afternoon we spent time walking around town checking out a few of the temples. Generally they were different from each other in aesthetics and purpose.
For example, at Wat Si Saket that was built in the 1800’s, there are 100’s of small ceramic Buddhas adorning the walls. This is an interesting place not only for the number of Buddhas but also because it may be the oldest temple still standing in Vientiane. It’s relatively small but great for photos. Other temples and museums all had charm unique to each.
As with each day so far, watching the sunset and having a refreshment and snack was a welcome relaxation. The vibe here was unfortunately more like Bangkok albeit on a much smaller and more subtle scale. It was a fun place to people watch and attempt to spot the ‘ladies of the night’ or the locals trying to be very American complete with big Harley’s.