15th April – Tour of Vientiane

This morning we had a tour of Vientiane, which is the capital of Laos with a population of approximately 800,000 people. Laos was once a French colony and this is very evident in Vientiane with the street names starting with Rue, French patisseries & hotels.  The menus are sometimes written in both Lao & French. The architecture is also French inspired with Lao features.

Today is part of the Laos new year celebrations and most of the shops & restaurants are closed and all the people come out to drive around the city so there are traffic jams everywhere.  Our guide Johnny decides that we will do our tour in 3 tuk tuks.

Our first stop is the Presidential Palace where the President hosts visitors and receptions. The palace looks straight up the wide avenue towards the Victory Gate.

Our next stop is Ho Phakeo Museum which is a temple originally built in 1565 by King Saysetthathirath to house the Emerald Buddha, which was lost to the Siamese in 1828 & is now in Bangkok. We saw this jade Buddha while we were in Bangkok.

Next we go to Wat Sisaket, a temple which houses 6,840 Buddhas in little niches.  As we enter the temple you can buy small buckets of water with flowers in them to pour over the altar.  This process is to wash away the bad luck of the past year.  They believe that by pouring this water over you they are blessing you and bringing you luck for the new year.

There are young ladies making lays made of frangipani, which are placed over the Buddhas & altars.

There is also a man selling little bamboo cages containing 2 small finches. The purpose of these is to allow people to make a wish for what they would like to release from their lives from last year and to give them good karma as they release the birds.  Lindy buys one of these cages & releases the birds.

Next we catch a tuk tuk to Patuxai or Victory Gate which was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but incorporates Lao motifs and was half built in 1957 by the French.  During the US occupation at the time of the Indo China war (Vietnam War) the US gave Laos money to build a runway.  Instead of building a runway they finished the Victory Gate which they referred to as the “horizontal runway”.

We climb to the top to get a great view over the city.

Our last stop is to Pha That Luang the Great Sacred Stupa that was originally built in 236 of the Buddhist calendar or 307BC. The original version of the present stupa was built in 1566 and it was restored in 1953.  It has just been restored again this year with fresh paint and gold leaf on the top spires.  This is the most important national cultural monument in Laos and symbolises the coming together of all Lao people.

We had a free afternoon, so we walked through town dodging the water sprays, and continued  down to look over the Mekong river where there was some poorer looking housing.  This is in stark contrast to the mansions we saw yesterday.

 

We walked through a temple where many people were splashing water on the Buddhas & us, but only after they asked us if it was OK to do so!

We walked back through Anouvong Park which is marked by a wonderful monument to King Saysetthathirath.

We continued back to the main street where we watched the parade of cars, most of them utes, with water barrels in the back so they could throw water over anyone who was within range.

We couldn’t escape the water as we made our way back to our hotel soaked through to the skin.  It was great fun and we have had much good will bestowed on us for the “New Year”.

We passed the are where they have a live music at night which didn’t stop until 11 PM last night, the area is sponsored by Heineken.