Vientiane

After moving on to Laos, we started with a couple of nights in Vientiane. This is a different city again to the places we had visited during the trip - for starters being much smaller with a population of less than 1 million people. Travelling during the off season definitely has its advantages, but in this case it seemed that the lack of tourist numbers had left the city very quiet, with only a small city centre to start with. One of those upsides is the fact that walking was a reasonable way to get to the places we were interested in visiting, despite the heat and humidity of the wet season.

After arriving and settling in to our accommodation, we took a walk along the river (the Mekong again...), where we could see Thailand on the opposite bank. It was less developed than the city waterfronts we had seen previously, and very quiet - again reinforcing that we were there in the off season. We found a statue of the last king of Laos overlooking the river, which doubled as a shrine, complete with people praying. On our way back into the city centre, we admired some of the French-styled architecture and also passed the presidential palace. Gillian, of course, had to get a photo. We found a lovely family run restaurant for dinner, and managed to muddle through ordering with the help of google translate. The food was great, but as the only customers it was a shame to see the place so quiet. Some more people came just as we left, although it's hard to see how 4 customers a night keeps a business viable. 

With a strong French influence, there is a huge boulevard running through the city, with the Patuxay sitting at the halfway point. This is a "victory gate", celebrating Laos independence from France and loosely modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris - which feels a bit like mixed messaging. You can climb to the top and get a good view over the city, and there is a bunch of information on the way up about Laos culture, as well as some plugs for tourist attractions across the country. 

Further out from the centre, we found Pha That Luang - the Great Stupa. This is an impressive monument dating from the 3rd century BCE, and rebuilt several times since. It is said to house a relic of Buddha, and is part of a bigger complex of temples which included another of James' favourites - the sleeping Buddha. While open to tourists, it is not as well set up as previous sites we had visited to date on our trip, which was a bit of a theme in Vientiane. There is less tourist traffic, and I think we would be prepared to say much less than the country deserves, which means that attractions are correspondingly less well set up for foreign visitors.

Other highlights included two more significant temples in terms of the regions history, Wat Sisaket and Ho Phrakeo, which once housed an emerald Buddha (moved from Chiang Mai, to Luang Prabang to Vientiane) - taken to Bangkok when the Siamese invaded Vientiane, and now considered the talisman of Thailand. We also saw the Black Stupa, had lunch at another iteration of the Friends restaurants that we first encountered in Phonm Penh, as well as exploring the street food at the night markets and finding a couple of new dishes to try. Our last evening finished with us finding a small cafe/bar in which we were (again) the only patrons, and had Gillian feeling profiled as a selection of 80s music was played over their sound system. To be fair though, the waitress also seemed to be bopping along to the tunes, despite being half our age.