After our 2 trekking adventures in central / southern Laos, we agreed we had had enough of the countryside for awhile and were itching for the civilization of an urban landscape… we had 6 days remaining in Laos, and we decided to split them between the capital city of Vientiane and everyone’s favorite Luang Prabang. Upon return to Tha Khek after our second trek (way back on Friday Feb 25), we made a beeline for the bus station and bought tickets to Vientiane, called a hotel to book a room and told them we’d probably be there between 11pm & midnight.
A couple hours into our ride, it became apparent we would not be arriving anytime near 11pm or midnight, and we made the decision to cancel the hotel room and wait out the night at the Vientiane bus station. So, from 2am til dawn, we hung around the surprisingly nice station – and we were in good company, too. Around 6, the sun started to come up, and we decided it was time for some noodle soup breakfast and to find ourselves a place to crash for the next couple nights.
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| Lounging in the Vientiane Bus Station |
We had a pretty chill and relatively uneventful time in Vientiane, which we enjoyed very much. We spent some of our time in holistic pursuit. We rented bikes and ventured a few km out of the center to a temple/monastery that holds open meditation sessions each Saturday afternoon. For about 90 minutes, we learned about and practiced seated and walking meditation with a group of about 25 people, 3 monks, and a Dutch moderator/translator. On Sunday morning Jason gamely joined me for a yoga class, which I enjoyed very much but unfortunately he cannot say the same. On Monday, I subjected myself to the wonderful torture of a traditional Lao massage, which included having my limbs pushed & pulled every which way, feeling grateful that my regular yoga practice meant many positions that to me were odd for massage were not completely foreign (e.g. when my masseuse stood on my lower back and pulled my arms behind me, lifting my torso off the ground, I was happy to be comfortable in a bow pose!).
Other than our quests for physical and mental wellness, we spent a good deal of time at cafes and bars, drinking Lao coffee (thick black coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk) and large bottles of the ubiquitous Beer Lao. We visited the intriguing temple Wat Si Saket, which houses over 2000 miniature Buddha statues in tiny nooks, and we took our bikes out to Laos’s very own Arc de Triomphe, which upon reading its plaque, seems to be both a point of national pride and embarrassment.
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| Just a few of the mini Buddhas at Wat Si Saket, Vientiane |
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| The 'Gate of Victory' at the end of Vientiane's main boulevard |
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| Some honest information about the eyesore arch |
On the night of Monday Feb 28, we sadistically booked ourselves on the overnight bus between Vientiane & Luang Prabang. We thought we were very clever by arriving at the bus station early and claiming some choice seats, only to find out that this was the first bus service we had taken in Laos that had pre-assigned seats. Ours were all the way in the back row… 2 of the last 3 actual seats to be sold. We were cursing our bad luck when, after the bus seemed full, plastic stools were brought on for the center aisle and those with ticket numbers higher than ours spent the next 12 hours perched on 6x6 inches of plastic. It was a fairly miserable 12 hours of little sleep and being subjected to unintentional snuggling from the Lao man next to me, but thankfully there was no horrible Thai dance programming blaring as there had been on our bus from Tha Khek to Vientiane!
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| The view from our seats |
We arrived in Luang Prabang with all the rejuvenation of our time in Vientiane pretty much erased by the bus ride, and mercifully our hotel had a room ready for us to crash in and even offered us a complimentary breakfast upon our arrival – we must have looked desparate!
We had heard so much about Luang Prabang – a city with a heavy French colonial influence, the former governmental palace, and many lovely temples – before we arrived, and everyone we met who had been there absolutely loved it. Maybe it was due to raised expectations, but we thought it was just okay. We found it overtouristed and a little too done up for the industry with tour hawkers on every corner, especially compared to the rest of Laos, which was so clearly untouched by crowds and just finding its footing in its burgeoning tourism. At this point in our trip, too, we were ready to be done with SE Asia and find something to eat besides noodle soup, so I can’t put all the blame on the city for not being as charming as we would have liked.
We toured temples, the old palace, and wandered around town and to a nearby village. We ate noodle soup, market food, delicious pastries (thanks to that French influence!), banana shakes, and put our Lao BBQ skills to use again – we even had other tourists coming up and asking us for advice on what to do. I have to admit we felt pretty smug that we were self-taught on the streets of Savannakhet.
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| Luang Prabang Night Market, overlooked by Wat Ho Pha Bang |
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| Wat Xieng Thong |
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| Jason crosses the annually-rebuilt bamboo bridge to the village of Xang Khong |
Our most unique experience in LP was watching the monks make their rounds to collect alms at dawn one morning. Given the quantity of temples in the city, there is a multitude of monks, and each morning they silently flood the streets in their saffron robes and bare feet, collecting balls of sticky rice from devout old ladies, among others. The participation of tourists is highly discouraged as they try to maintain the sanctity of this ritual, so we tried to stay out of the way and take a few snaps subtly.
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| Offerings of sticky rice |
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| Jason watches the monks from the stoop of our hotel |
In total we spent 17 days in Laos, which ran the gamut from exhilarating to exhausting and often both. By the time it was time to leave for Bangkok, we were ready for a change of scenery, but all the same thoroughly satisfied with our time in this little-known country. So much so that we entrusted our lives to their national airline once more…
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| Oh boy! How I love flying random airlines! |
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