The streets of Vientiane make for pleasant walking. The cultural blend that exists in Laos is evident as local architecture is interspersed with colonial French style buildings and a lot of signs are written in Lao with French translation.
Vientiane would be a good city to visit with a higher food budget than my own. There are a lot of high quality French restaurants mixed in with local places and more bakery/cafes than you could wish for.
After a morning wandering the little shops and brunching in one of the cafes, I got myself a pedicure and took my newly groomed feet to the National Museum. The museum is located in a dilapidated french building and costs 10000 kip to enter (less than £1). The exhibition is designed more or less to work in date order, so begins with a very low tech display about the discovery of dinosaur fossils in the country, before moving in to talk about the various peoples that made up the population of Laos years ago. I found this portion of the museum very worthwhile. Once you arrive at the section dealing with the 20th century it gets interesting for a different reason. The exhibitions dealing with the Laos independence movement has a highly communist bias, and there is a lot of propagandist material on display, laid alongside enough weaponry to start another rebellion. It was definitely an informative and slightly bizarre window into Laos culture and worth a visit.
My second bizarre activity was a visit to the Buddha Park. About 40 minutes from Vientiane by public bus - a journey that was quite uncomfortable for me as I was stood the whole way in a skirt terrified the wind was going to lift and I would flash the monks sitting behind me - the Buddha park is a green space by the river filled with a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist statues. These statues look ancient but in reality this park was created in the fifties on someone's whim. By far the eat thing there was the giant pumpkin like structure which you entered through the mouth of the devil and then ascended through hell to heaven at the top. Some of the groups of statues inside were incredibly twisted and it could be quite creepy if it wasn't just so incredibly odd.
The next day I spent fulfilling the rest of my cultural duties by walking to the two main monuments in the city. The first is an Asian style replica of the arc de triomph, known colloquially as the vertical runway, (the concrete used to build it was donated by the US to build an airstrip so it is essentially two fingers up to the 'imperialist puppets' [museum's terminology]). The second is the national monument in Laos and appears on their currency. The gold leaf covered stupa is a beautiful sight in the late afternoon sun and the surrounding temple complex is definitely worth a look.
After all that walking and culture the only thing left to do was satiate the appetite. That evening I ordered a cucumber salad with sticky rice at a small restaurant along the river front. Sounds pretty innocent right? Well this turned into my very own woman vs food challenge. It was without doubt the spiciest thing I have ever eaten. My mouth was on fire, my eyes were red, I rubbed my nose and that started burning. And it was CUCUMBER. It's meant to be refreshing! I even had to let the rice cool down before I could use that to absorb some of the spice. Aside from that it was delicious, but impossible to finish. Food definitely won this round.
Next blog: Ban Na Hin (Kong Lor caves and a Laos dance party).
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