We visited some more temples this morning. Most notable of them was Wat
Si Saket, which is the oldest temple in Vientiane, built in 1818. There are more than 300 seated and standing Buddha figures of varying age (15-19 century) and size, and thousands of small Buddha figures in the niches in the cloister around the temple.
We took a local bus to Xieng Khuan (Buddha Park). The park is located about 25 km from Vientiane on the bank of the Mekong. It has a load of Buddhist and Hindu sculptures made out of concrete, including a huge reclining Buddha and a large ball (probably depicting the earth) and a tree on top – it was possible to climb up the ball by narrow stairs inside the ball. The inside of the ball had several floors and each floor depicted different worlds (hell, heaven, etc). All together, the whole park was a really weird place.
The bus ride with local bus was quite an interesting experience – the bus would stop whenever somebody wanted to come in or go out. The door of the bus would open and close in the curves of the road as it pleases – not exactly the same safety standards that we have in the EU, but I didn’t feel unsafe there.
It was our last evening in Laos. We spent it walking the promenade of alongside the Mekong and watching the sunset. We met an interesting Danish gentleman, who was travelling around the region alone. He was a retired math and physics teacher, who had been to Tartu in 1990 with some teachers swop program. He travelled around the lot (e.g. including Argentina several times) and had a lot of interesting stories.
We had our favourite green papaya salad, with some BBQ brochettes and veggies for dinner and did a little more shopping. And it was time to call it a day.
We’ll leave Laos tomorrow afternoon. So by tomorrow evening we should be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
To conclude on our Laos experience – we really liked it here. Laos is quite clean (especially as regards toilets :)) and peaceful compared with other SE Asian countries we’ve been to. Lao people are nice and friendly, and the overall ambiance is safe (nobody tries to trick or scam you). For sure there is a lot of poverty around, but overall, the life does not seem so sadly poor and hurt as in Cambodia. An interesting point to note about Laos though is that that the communist red flag with the hammer and sickle is widespread.
Blue eyes wide open... 