Vientiane (Thu, 17 Feb)

We decided to look for a slightly better accommodation for the upcoming two nights, as this seemed one of the keys to make the stay in Vientiane happier. After some search we found a decent place to stay for little more money, but with much more comfort.

We headed to explore the city’s main sights after moving and slow brunch. One them is Patuxai (Victory Gate), which is kind of a local version of Arc de Triomphe, except that this is made of concrete. The LP and google sources had describer it in quite negative manner leaving an impression of it as a concrete monster, but compared with some of the some concrete establishments in the ex-soviet states (including in Tallinn), this looked quite fine. It is said that this monument was built with the concrete donated by the US for constructing a new airport instead; therefore it has a nickname “Vertical Runway”. The upper level of monument offers great view to the alleys leading to the monument and to the whole city.

We continued walking alongside avenue, which hosts several embassies, banks and government institutions – a lot of new development and building is going on everywhere. Finally, we reached to the destination of the day – Pha That Luang. This is a three-layered gilded stupa, which is the most important religious monument of the country and also the symbol of national sovereignty. There are of course some more temples around it, so we saw some of those as well.

We took a tuk-tuk back to the centre and continued walking around the sights there.

In general, this was a day of taking it easy and not rushing into too many things.

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Luang Prabang / Vientiane (Wed, 16 Feb)

It was a little sad to check out from our guesthouse knowing that our time in Luang Prabang is soon over for this time, but it’s time to move further.

We still visited the National Royal Palace Museum in the morning. We hired the audio tour, thanks to which we could learn more about the last Lao kings, history, traditions and mythology. The royal palace was rather modest compared with its counterparts in Europe, but it was quite nice. The really flashy part of the royal buildings was the royal Pra Bang Temple, which really looks rich with all the decorations.

We did a bit of handicraft shopping in the local market. With all nice handicraft here, it’s really difficult not loose your mind. The prices are very affordable, but of course we can’t carry loads with us for the next two months.

We had the flight to Vientiane in the afternoon. After slow and nice Luang Prabang, Vientiane did not look charming at all at first sight. Besides, we had a little hassle with finding a guesthouse, as the budget options were mostly full and the more expensive options did not seem worth it. We settle in a quite lousy room in budget guesthouse after all, but this did not do the adaption with the new city any easier. I was already determined to leave for Vang Vieng next morning in order to get out of Vientiane, but Felipe thought Vientiane deserved its chance.

We went for a walk to the newly refurbished promenade at the bank of the Mekong and watched the sun go down to Thailand, which is just across the river. We also wandered around some streets in the centre, looking for book shops to check if there are any good materials on what to do in Vientiane in 2,5 days, but we didn’t seem to find the right books on that. We also googled a bit on the city and after all I agreed that if we take it on slow pace, we will find enough so to do here.

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