Day 80

Thursday 20^th January 2011

This is our first and only full day in Vientiane so whatever there was to see or do had to be seen and done today. Despite the fact that we had no alarm set and nothing inparticular to get up for we were up and at breakfast for 9.30am – but that might have something to do with the fact that we were in bed at 10pm the night before!!!

Breakfast was at the restaurant next door to our hotel, The Spirit House. Franky was delighted with his full English as it came with proper beans. Although it also randomly came with fried onions!?! All Buddhist homes have spirit houses outside. They are typically better than the family home so that the spirits will choose to live their rather than entering the actual house. Offerings such as food, drinks and flowers are left daily to further entice the spirits to remain in their own house. The spirits today had been left coffee and tangerines!

I had no real idea of what Vientiane had to offer but we had a map so set off for a mooch. We started with the fountains in the centre of town but they weren’t working so a bit of a let down. Next up was That Dam, or the Black Stupa which we stumbled across. It is believed to be the shrine of Naga mighty dragons who are the protectors of the capital city. However, it’s become a bit run down in recent times and now is just in the middle of a roundabout!

 Vientiane had been colonised by the French back in the day and they built Patouxay or the Victory Monument in the 1960s to resemble the Arc de Triomphe. Again this had seen better days but we decided to climb up for a view of the city…. this cost us only 1000 kip, which sounds alot but at 1300 kip to the pund it wasn't, it was about 80p! In fact everytime we buy anything I'm thinking, '50 000 kip - how much????' but that's actually only about 4 quid! We're millionaires every toime we go to the bank as 1 million kip is the most you can witrhdraw.

Finally I wanted to see That Luang or the Grand Stupa as this was on all the pictures of Vientiane and so I thought it would be worth a look. The sun was high in the sky and beating down so we hailed a tuk tulk to take up there. Well I hailed one that turned out to already have a passenger – a lady with 4 huge sacks of onions in the back – but they seemed happy to detour and take us up to the Stupa!

Franky invested in some MORE shades – he now has 2 pairs so we can afford to lose one which I sure will happen sooner rather than later. (at least there not a valuable camera eh Suz - Franky) £4 for some Ray Bans – authentic ones – honest!

There was a beautiful building called the Revolutionary Monument on the same site.

That Luang was built by the King Setthathirath in 1566. Consequently there is a statue of him outside.

That Luang built on the site of an older Stupa and is believed to contain a relic of Buddha. It is 45m high and has been damaged several times by foreign invaders but is lovingly restored everytime by the Laotian people and consequently has become the symbol of their nation.

That concluded the ‘sights’ that we wanted to see and so we headed back in another tuk tuk to the centre of town for liquid refreshment…. and somehow found ourselves back in the Belgian bar with the good beer?!? they also did these really cute little taster snack plates to go with the beer – yummy!

After a hot and sticky day of sightseeing we decided it would be good to get a shower so we headed back to the hotel as the sunset over the Mekong river.



We have a really early start tomorrow with a 6.30am flight to Cambodia so Franky declared that a nap was out of the question as we needed an early night!!!! Instead we opted to go out for a nice Italian meal – perhaps not the obvious choice in Laos but Aria did not disappoint. We had the BEST buffalo milk mozzarella I have ever tasted. Franky had ravioli filled with roast deer in red wine sauce whilst I had mushroom risotto. Followed by tiramisu and chooclate mousse and washed down with red wine. With full bellies we headed back to the hotel to bed.