Vientiane, Laos

Hard to believe, but Vientiane is Ingham with stupas and covered in mould:

Vientiane.

Yup, here it is, the capital of Laos, and it's nothing more than a small-ish Queensland town. It even looks like Ingham with the six lane streets and low-rise buildings - only it's loaded with all that stuff you'd expect to see in Indochina:

For example:

LOTS AND LOTS OF SODDING WATS.

Only here they're called Vats, but
let's instantly forget that piece of trivia.

Stupas.

That Luang.
Actually, there's an interesting story here.
Should tell you sometime.
And also, here, stupas are called Thats,
but let's forget that too.

Monks in saffron robes.

Two for the price of one:
monks and a stupa.

Folk in conical bamboo hats.

The look is surprisingly chic.
(Story about her below)

Folk toting stuff on bamboo poles

Except when it isn't!


Another two for the price of one, twice:
Bamboo poles AND conical hats.

Tuktuks.

Tuktuk AND a conical hat.

Crazy numbers of motorbikes.

And never driven in the right shoes!

Again, conical hats!

Food cooked and eaten on the streets.

And a conical hat.

This is really clever.
It's a coconut husk used as an oven.

Orchids Everyplace.


Ice carts Everyplace.

Such a blast from the past.
Grew up with these.

And they sell ice-cold coconuts too and hack off the top so you can drink it, just like at home:

Talk about wafts of nostalgia!

Bad Street Art.


Silk Shops, Silk Stalls, Silks, Silks, Silks.

It's like I've died and gone to heaven.

Took so many photos of silks I really need to turn it into a slide show and set it to music. The "Alleluia Chorus" from Handel's Messiah works for me.

GLORIOUSLY STUPID CHINGLISH SIGNS

But since Laos is also a communist country, there are things that are all it's own:

Enormous Flags on Public Buildings.

Strong Military Presence.

These guys were refreshingly dumb
and just a tad rather silly.
You go boys!

Large New Government Buildings that
Don't Quite Work Architecturally.



And New Buildings that are
Visual Masterpieces.

Monument to Those
Who Died in the Vietnam War.

This was so very beautiful I'm sorry I didn't get any good photographs. But here's another one anyway, so you can see the whole thing:

ENORMOUS SATELLITE DISHES ATOP WATS.

And now that you know what the town looks like, let's get down to the real business of this post:

MY HOLIDAY

DAY ONE:

Discovered why I was able to find a room here. As you know, this trip was suspended owing to the ruckus in Bangkok and then suddenly on again, which meant that my nice travel-room-booking-people (will give you website when I'm back in HK) said there wasn't a room to be had in the entire city ... which meant poor worried Keith spent simply hours phoning around every place and finally, yup, found me something: the very last room to be had in Vientiane!

It was all so "last minute", I had no idea which hotel I was in, so he also hired a car to pick me up at the airport, but said "No one there spoke English so it was hell trying to give them details, so look out for anything that remotely resembles your name." ... and here's what they came up with:

At least I think this was me.
Mr Mursy was out of a room
if I was wrong!

Anyway, The Last Room in Vientiane is an attic-room atop an old French building that's been bigtime Thai-ified ...

Khamkhoun Hotel

- love that wood-lace thing they do - and I think no one wants to rent it because ... well, apart from being up four increasingly narrow and steep flights of stairs ...

The nightmare stairs.

... it has thunderous air-conditioning, noisy fans, the worst-ever water pressure that means only the tinsiest trickle for a shower, and ... well, it also has something else that's very strange. The entire night something kept trying to rip off my bedcovers. The best thing about being away from Keith, I'd have thought, was that this wouldn't happen but ... whatever it is doesn't feel at all creepy so I think I'm going to have to learn the Laos for "Go towards the light!" ... or would that have to be French since it used to be a French home. Maybe I should try both.

Also the hotel is full of a great many strange foreign guests, all of whom are there "making visa", as the gaggle of Russian prostitutes told me. Very "Casablanca" indeed. Seems Thailand tosses everyone foreign out every three months and they have to stay away a couple of days before they're allowed to get another visa, which is great for nearby places like Vientiane that are just starting their Tourism Industry.

And the strange folk who "make visas" in Vientiane aren't even remotely interested in the country or in doing anything and all sit around the hotel all day, smoking and drinking, and being totally useless as a source of travel advice. Here's one of them:

A Jewish biker from Amsterdam.
I didn't know Jews had bikers!

Had lots of interesting chats, however, with all sorts who I'd never meet under usual circumstances. I now know all sorts of strange things, like that, in Holland, there are ever so many Jewish biker gangs, and that there is a thriving industry for Russian prostitutes in Thailand ... which means I now know where Wan Chai's gaggle of blond Russian prossies - who turned up out of the blue and then vanished again, I imagine, under pressure from our somewhat scary Mama-Sans - have ended up.

DAY TWO:

Psst, keep this under your hat, but I'm loving Laos. Don't let too many people know because it would be ruined if too many tourists rock into here. It's a gentle place with slow-starting mornings, sleepy afternoons and just when you're thinking, "Wow, must have a brutal nightlife." everyone is home in bed with the lights out by 8 pm.

They also stop everything to watch various Thai soaps ...

... although this restaurant
shut down to watch the
Thai version of Steve Irwin.

Vientiane isn't a big town and it's not really designed for tourists. It's only the morning of my second day and already I've done everything there is to do, except visit the museum which I'll do this afternoon ... and haven't visited Buddha Park either because that's wayyy out of town, however Mr Lee ...

Not an overly nice fellow.

... says he will take me in his tuktuk tomorrow. I keep wandering around the streets photographing buildings and gardens, then getting hopelessly lost, but then within a minute I recognise something and know where I am. It's too small and compact to really get lost yourself in.

Any good stories? Well, not really, although there's The Little Girl Who Didn't Get Killed:

Alive and well!

She ran out on the road in front of me and a tuktuk had to swerve to avoid hitting her and wiped out the market stall of The Chic Woman while doing so. (Have another look at that photo above. She's only three minutes away from having her stall wiped out.) All a great drama when it happened, with much diving out of the way and fearful screaming, but, almost instantly afterwards, no one really minded. Everyone was just so pleased the kiddie wasn't killed, and the rest seemed to be seen as collateral damage. The tuktuk driver waited just long enough to see the little girl reunited with her mother and then drove off. It's like this sort of thing is "everyday" and ho hum round these parts.

I guess another story would be me wandering the streets for over an hour last night, retracing my steps, trying to find the cute French outdoor restaurant I'd seen during the day ...

Because I just loved the sculptures,
decided I had to come back to try the food.

It took me over an hour of wandering around in the dark, searching one street after another, until, finally, miraculously, saw it again, and, yes, had a great meal there. Then, this morning, out on my veranda ...

Right there! Can you see it?

Totally shocked me! Honestly, I have a praeternatural sense of direction!

And I guess another story would be that I chased and grabbed a beggar this morning. Cute little boy, very poor, very dirty and in rags, and he wasn't actually begging; he was selling chewing gum.

My Little Not-A-Beggar Boy.

Was in the middle of breakfast at a street cafe so I didn't buy any and he walked off, but then I noticed my lighter was missing. Since all my other lighters were confiscated at the airport and I haven't seen any for sale here, this was a major calamity. I'd seen the little boy touching it earlier and saw him off in the distance so sprinted off down the street and grabbed him. Since we had no language in common, it was all done in mime but he realised my problem and walked back to my table and showed me that all he'd done was put it inside my cigarette case. I felt all kinds of mean so, by way of apology, I gave him my little Buddha blessings pouch charm I was given at Chi Lin Nunnery. I thought he needed blessings more than I did. And after he'd left this time I realised he'd actually stolen my butter ... and was off in the distance licking it out of the packet ... and good luck to him.

Of course I realised later that, in my mad dash after him, I'd left my bag etc behind, but this isn't Vietnam and the people are fundamentally honest so, despite another beggar stealing my bread, my bag was still under my chair, so no harm done.

Hey, in two days the only time I've been cheated here was by a Vietnamese pair! Talk about typecasting yourself, huh!

And the only other story-ette is I fixed my ghost last night! It was a last straw thing! See, stupidly, when I went out on the veranda to have a late-night smoke I left the door ajar and when I returned inside, the entire room was full of mosquitoes! Like, literally a haze of black of them ... so I turned the fan on to get rid of them only the fan was both savagely noisy AND connected to the bathroom light which meant I couldn't have one without the other ...

... so there I am, trying to sleep with a light shining right in my face and the bloody fan practically screaming, ... but when I turn them both off, the zillion mosquitoes return and buzz around me ... so the night's turning into a nightmare ... and then, right when I'm finally drowsy and dozing ... my bedclothes are yanked off, and I was just so livid I yelled at the stupid thing to sod off ... and then remembered the thing about white lighting that I'd seen on "Charmed" and did that and it seemed to do the trick. I even managed to get to sleep immediately afterwards so I think I'm going to do the "Charmed" thing every night from now on.

That's all for now. I'm safe and well, and must tell you that Keith was wrong ... I didn't "simply find myself a nice streetside cafe and sit around drinking copious cups of tea, smoking vast numbers of cigarettes and doing sudakos". Course I didn't. Instead, I found myself a sublimely gorgeous streetside cafe ...

Bon Cafe on Setthathirath Avenue
next to Nam Phu

...and I'm doing Killer Sudakos.

DAY THREE:

Solved The Mystery of the Music, which you can read about in the post above. It was a fun mission and I loved having something to do.

Love the Laotian colour sense, although I already knew that before I arrived and was the reason I wanted to come. They do "dark wood aesthetic" better than anyone else on the planet, although it's really distressing how badly they treat all this exquisite old hardwood furniture. It's sooo taken for granted that they have stuff you'd die for out, say, in the garden or on the veranda, exposed to the weather.

Throwing out tradition!

And I saw a rubbish pile yesterday (above) that broke my heart because all the stuff in it, anywhere else, would have been in a museum; all these old broken ancient statues. Met a charming American-Laotian girl earlier today and I told her how I felt and her only reaction was "They'll regret it when it's all gone!" Mmmm, ho hum!

No real news. Lots of wandering, photographing, chatting with random strangers, sitting around in my favourite cafe, visiting wats, taking tuktuk rides, getting massages ... same ol' same ol'. In fact, just talking about massages makes me want another one, so I'm off there immediately.

DAY FOUR:

My ghost? Update is that there is nothing to report. Absolutely nothing happened last night and I didn't even "whitelight". I did however try to see if I could see ghosts - which I never have - so spent nearly an hour in my room last night squinting into the middle distance just in case ghosts were like those 3D pictures that suddenly come into focus ... but nothing whatsoever. But, hey, did you know that if you stare at a lightbulb for ages and then look away, you can make the "light echo" on your retina move all around the room? That's a cool thing to do when you're hopelessly bored!

My only other piece of news is that I met my little beggar again today and this time he asked me if he could take my butter. I thought it was nice he didn't steal it this time so offered him my bread as well. And then I noticed the strangest thing. See the photographs? He's eating my bread and there's a dog watching him eat ...

... and so he gives the bread to the dog ...

Hardly beggarly behaviour.
Or maybe he just empathised
with the dog.

... and then proceeded to lick the butter out of the packet. Same as last time. Guess he just likes butter; probably a nutritional deficiency. Oh, and see the pouch he's wearing. I gave him that: an old Qantas overnight pouch with toothbrush, comb, toothpaste, etc in it and he was totally thrilled - like literally danced with joy - and the old French guy sitting at the table next to me said, very pensively, "I gave my daughter a BMW for her last birthday and she screamed at me that it was the wrong colour!" Think that says it all!

Leave tomorrow for Luang Prabang and an e-mail from Keith has just informed me that I don't have a hotel there! Everything is booked! Bit grim, huh! But also very "First Christmas." Mmmm, not looking forward to lugging my bags around everyplace myself so hopefully Keith finds something in the next few hours.

Off for massage now. See you later!

NIGHT OF LAST DAY:

Little worried about not having a hotel room in Luang Prabang. I really don't like the idea of sleeping in the open. It may be dangerous.

Mind you, everyone said that Vientiane was dangerous, and, well, although I have thoroughly enjoyed the place, I can see what folks mean. Couple of times I've been a little freaked. Mainly by, you know, the Mountain People, who are called, I believe, the Lao Song. They have a way of looking at you like they're wondering what your head would look like three inches big.

Am hanging around now in a cybercafe hoping Keith will drop by for an on-line chat and I can find out what fate awaits me.

Summing up days later!

Can't say I was sorry to leave Vientiane. Lovely place but gosh it got creepy after a while. I think people are right to warn you about the horrors that happen within the place. There is definitely something dangerous and nasty lurking just below the surface. It was kinda good to get away and just in time too, I strongly suspect!

... OK, what happened was that morning of the final day, I woke "feeling all Irish"; my body tingling with that very alive sense of danger and foreboding that I highly respect because it always keeps me out of trouble. I call it "being bansheed" because, according to legend, all descendants of Brian Boru have a banshee to warn them of danger, and since I'm a descendant of Brian Boru through his eldest son Morrough, ipso facto, this is my banshee warning me of something.

Anyway, the banshee-ing was happening to me bigtime and, at first, I couldn't work out where the threat was coming from and thought it may be the jungle people - Lao Song - who were creeping me out ... but then I realised that it actually was coming from the sleazy young tuktuk drivers. Lone woman! Unprotected and vulnerable! Limping impala at the waterhole! That sort of thing. They had something unpleasant planned for me, I knew, and there were a lot of them in on it, but ...

... forewarned is forearmed so I only selected tuktuks with more ethnically Chinese-looking drivers without a hint of cheekbones. 90% of Laotians are Khmer, yes, but there are 60 different races living there, and I figured that ... well, if they weren't young Khmer sleazebags they'd speak a different language and thus they'd be out of the loop, so I would be safe with them, and I was right except ...

... gosh, that was a fraught couple of seconds on the last night. See, I had to hang around the cybercafe waiting for Keith to confirm I had accommodation so it was very late when I finally left. Wary, I walked past a lot of tuktuks with definitely-Khmer drivers until I found one off by itself with a very Chinese-looking elderly driver and so I asked him to take me to the hotel. But then he starts to take me out of town! I'm all "MIZ-TAAAKE!!!!" so I say "Hey, my hotel is that way!" and he says "Khamkhan?" and I say "Khamkhoun!" and he's all "Sorry, sorry!" and turns the tuktuk around!

Yeah, yeah, tedious story but kinda a big deal freaky when it happened. Promise I'll never tell it again! But I'll tell it just this once as a warning that Vientiane isn't really the sort of place you should be in alone, if you're female that is! I think I was just very lucky.

Gosh, how do people who aren't Irish ever survive!