Vientiene, Laos (Post #79)
Saa Baa Dee!
It was difficult to leave our favorite town, Vang Vieng but we can’t stay in one place forever.
So, we took a bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiene (the capital of Laos) yesterday (about 4 hours). An interesting thing about the bus “station” in Vang Vieng is that it is an old air strip used by the U.S. during the Vietnam war. It is just a huge dirt and gravel strip of land that serves no purpose other than the place where all the buses leave from.
Upon getting off the bus in Vientiene, we saw the Mekong River behind us and some guest houses in front of us. We walked across the street and got a room. That’s the easy transportation-to-guest house transition we’ve ever had. We arrived about 2:30pm so we got some lunch and then headed to see a couple of the city’s sites (a famous wat built in 1818 and a victory gate sort-of-thing that was built in 1969 with cement donated by the U.S., meant for the construction of a new airport). We went back to our room pretty early and were glued to BBC. We really like it when we have a TV (with international channels) in our room because we get caught up on all the international news. We also spent some time planning where we’ll go and what we’ll do in Vietnam, as this is our next country and it is fast approaching.
Today (January 9) we booked a ticket from Vientiene (where we are now) to Hanoi, Vietnam. Most backpackers take a gawd-awful 2-day overnight bus trip from Vientiene to Hanoi but when we compared an overnight, 30 hour bus trip with $115, 1-hour flight, we booked our plane tickets. This afternoon we took a sawngthaew (like a truck with benches in the back) to a very unusual place called the Xieng Khuan (Buddha Park). This park contains a collection of slightly bizarre Buddhist and Hindu cement sculptures and includes a strange hell mouth structure. The hell mouth is a large domed structure with a gaping mouth as the entrance. Inside are several floors of the sculptor’s vision of the underworld. There were a lot of skulls and people killing each other inside this dome thing with a mouth. The rest of the park was full of awesome sculptures that Mike and I both really enjoyed looking at. Here is a picture of Mike in the hell mouth:
This is a picture of a sculpture of heads on top of each other but at the base of the heads are arms coming out and in the hands attached to the arms are little people:
The part of Vientiene we are staying in sits on the Mekong River. At night a row of people with very fresh fish (as in, the fish are often still flopping around) set up stove things (getting electrical power off of the street lights). They will cook you a cheap dinner with very fresh seafood or serve you fresh-squeezed fruit drinks. You can also sit along the river and simply have a beer and watch the sun set. Here is a picture I took while we ate our dinner:
Tomorrow night we fly from Vientiene, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam. So, next blog will be from Vietnam.
Bye!
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Tags: Category #21: Laos
Michele Harmon
Awesome photo of Mike in the mouth of hell. Ironically, he was probably “in-heaven” seeing those depictions. Peace. – R.