Buddhas in repose

I went to Xiang Khuane, about 25km outside of Vientiane. I thought about catching a tuk-tuk, but in the end was so glad I didn't. It was a fifteenth of the price to walk to the bus station behind the Morning Market and get on a waiting bus. It was a shabby one, full of Lao people travelling to outlying villages. It stopped on the way at the Thai border, then carried on down the Mekong through small villages almost back to back. Through gaps I could see Thailand over the river. I couldn't work out what was bothering me about the scene and I kept glancing back at the wide green river, the hotels and temples on the other side, the fishermen's boats... Then I realised. There was no security. No ten-foot fences, no guardposts protecting men with guns, not even cameras as far as I could see. It was a peaceful river between two friendly nations. Korea has obviously jaded me.

Xiang Khuane is an oddity, the dream of a Lao artist in the 1960s who mixed Hinduism and Buddhism and from the stew in his head created hundreds of concrete statues of gods and Buddhas and fantastically intricate beasts. At the entrance is a huge pumpkin-shaped construction. I've met a Chinese girl on the bus who's also travelling alone. She has no English, but we stick together taking photos of each other and laughing at the impossibly small spaces we have to scramble through. The pumpkin is meant to represent the realms of hell, earth and heaven as you climb. Somehow we get into the centre of earth where dusty statues of soldiers and broken body parts lurk in the gloom. My partner has a torch, thank god, as otherwise I don't think we'd find the stairs upwards. I say stairs, but really they were uneven ridges not wide enough for a foot. We squeeze through a narrow opening into daylight and find ourselves in heaven with a view of the whole park.




Going back down again, we discover actual steps which lead to an outer corridor circling the rooms we stumbled into - but I still think ours was the more interesting route.

The main attraction of the park is a massive reclining Buddha; I'm smaller than his feet!


Some of the statues I'm not entirely sure of, but they're a creative use of concrete - much worthier than Patuxai for instance...


I have a feeling the one above is a god eating the sun, perhaps from Indian mythology, but my shallow knowledge fails me.

When the park is exhausted, and it doesn't take too long, I pay a smiley child for the use of a mosquito-haunted pit latrine and head back on the bus into town. The driver stops on the way to pick up his lunch from his daughter in one of the villages, and we have to pause for the little girl to climb on and give her dad a hug. He smiles apologetically at the Chinese girl and I, the only foreigners, lifting his hands, but I'm not bothered - it's just another perk of being in Laos.


Everywhere in Laos, homes have small shrines in the corner of the gardens, intricate, coloured, or plain wooden mini houses, with steps and chairs and ornate rooves. I'd thought these were a Hindu method of worship but apparently Buddhists use them too. Every morning offerings are left, and it's something I love about Eastern gods. Beside the marigolds (in the sacred orange colours) are laid sweets and lao-lao and cigarettes and beer, as if the gods are just like us in their pursuit of pleasure!















Finally, because all good things must end, my last day arrives. I do some last-minute shopping at Talat Sao, have coffee and a baguette at a French cafe, and sit and read in the garden, waiting to catch a tuk-tuk to the airport. On the way back to the hotel, though, I catch sight of an advert for an English teaching job in the window of a cafe. So who knows, Laos, I may be back...

City life

An innocent question of mine on the Lonely Planet online forum had unexpectedly sparked off a heated debate over the qualities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, one camp claiming the beauty of Luang Prabang and the big-city unfriendliness of Vientiane, the other telling me that Luang Prabang isn't "real" Laos, but a Disneyfied theme park, while Vientiane is a charming laidback city. I can now see both sides of the argument; I was still pleasantly surprised by Vientiane, though. With wide boulevards and French restaurants in some parts, other neighbourhoods boast narrow lanes filled with temples, street hawkers and (still French) cafes. The centre is easily walkable in a couple of hours.

At sunset I find myself sitting on the banks of the Mekong, 390km from where I was that morning. The scene has changed dramatically. Vientiane eschews the deep calm banks of the northern town, and instead I'm sitting in a large carpark with my beer, looking over a scene of carnage. Great machines are carving out the wide shore. Mining, perhaps, or building a new road. The carpark I sit in is an expanse of grey dust, a busy road running alongside. It's home to a few makeshift, open-air bar-restaurants and a legion of colourful tables and chairs. From where I sit I can see two temples, gold pillars glinting in the setting sun. It's not a peaceful riverside town, but it does have its own manic charm.

The sun disappears into the haze a finger's width above the Thai shore, and I retreat to my hotel.


After breakfast the next day, I hurry out into the stiff winter cold (it's probably about 25 degrees, but everyone's in jackets) and take a 15-minute walk up a wide street that bisects Vientiane. It's apparently sometimes called the Champs Elysees of the East, but I can't imagine by whom. I guess it's mainly because of what's been built at the far end. At 45m of grim concrete, Patuxai doesn't loom so much as lurk. It's based on the Arc de Triomphe. I think it's the ugliest thing on four legs I've ever seen.


As instructed by the guidebook, I climb up through the 5 floors, dark rooms filled with mass-made, shrink-wrapped souvenirs, to the viewpoint. I look down the Champs Elysees to the Presidential Palace. I look the other way to the Communist headquarters (I presume). I climb a circular staircase to the very top where I look at the graffiti and note that S.K. Was Here. I climb down again.
























Hmm. A brutally honest sign at the entrance notes that the monument "from a closer distance appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete." I have to agree...

Back down the avenue, I come to Talat Sao, the morning market. This is much more interesting, with traditional medicine sellers and silk weavers jostling for space with refrigerator stalls and cellphone stands. Sadly they're in the process of building a Malaysian-funded building next door for the market to move into. Big rooms and well-lit corridors will be on offer. Boooo-ring.... :D


At the end of the road, next to the Palace, is Wat Si Saket, a beautiful Provence-like terracotta-coloured temple set in a courtyard surrounded by what in Christendom would be called cloisters. When Laos was still Lan Xang, the Land of a Million Elephants, Vientiane was razed to the ground by invading Siamese armies, and Wat Si Saket was the only building left standing (some say this is because it was in the Bangkok style.) When the French arrived in the 1900s, they found it derelict and lonely on an empty riverside plain, and it was one of the first buildings to be restored by them during their reconstruction of the city.


Thousands of Buddhas rest in the cloistered silence - big ones sitting on the floor, tiny ones occupying niches up the wall.


The central temple also has arched cubbyholes cut high into the walls with yet more golden statues. A sign from the curator says there are more than ten thousand. Around the outside perimeter there are monks' quarters, old cottages with dragons curled around the stairs. A young novice is brushing his teeth on a balcony. I feel a little like I'm back at the English Village with the roles reversed - so I don't take a photo. The poor monks must feel just like I do, living in a human zoo. Although they do have the comfort of being enlightened. I just eat a lot.


I have breakfast at a shack on the sand by the Mekong. More building works. A woman passes by carting eggs somewhere, but the eggs here are dangerous - in line with the rest of Laotian eating habits, many of them are fertilized duck eggs and unwary travellers are surprised by the little bird inside...

The joy of a river

Lunar New Year, and Korea is shutting down. So once again, I'm climbing on a plane and going to have a look at someplace new! Hooray!

From Korea to Vientiane is just 7 hours on a plane. Unfortunately, the Laotian capital isn't on a major route from Seoul, so after a frantic drive to the airport after work on Wednesday and a flight to Bangkok, I get to, once again, spend a night on the obliging Starbucks couch. I have a ten-hour layover and it's bringing back memories of the long night on the way to Bali last year...

Sadly they're building a new shop right next to Starbucks, presumably to avoid inconveniencing day travellers, and I can't block out the screeches and whines of their tools. So after a gruelling night spent moving from chair to chair, trying to find a quiet and comfy place to sleep and eventually giving up, I made it to morning and to my 11:45 flight to Vientiane. It took just over an hour, flying north into the peninsular hinterland, over miles and miles of rice paddies and the odd hill. Coming in to land, it was only at the very last minute that the ground beneath us turned from field to concrete runway. Through tedious customs and visa formalities, a driver waited for me in the heat; he had very little English, so, with a minimum of words, he hustled me into his battered Peugeot and set off through the city streets. The buildings lining the wide avenues reminded me of Madagascar: with faded French colonial pretensions, the shabby beauty of the verandah-lined stilted houses appealed to me straight away.

It wasn't until we reached the outskirts, though, that I realised I was going to fall madly and irrevocably in love with this country. We turned onto a dirt road and drove through tiny villages centred around shops operating from wooden shacks. The houses, set on large plots of land, were all built on stilts, and in the spaces beneath, whole families were gathered, eating lunch, or chatting, or simply sharing a smoke. Goats meandered along the edge of the road, paying no heed to the drivers, who were, if we're honest, simply meandering themselves. Some were meandering so successfully they'd come to a complete stop on the road and were now engaged in talking to stall owners, maybe buying a baguette or two for lunch. It was great. I couldn't have come further from the grey high-rises and farm-quilted valleys of South Korea. And we were only a short drive outside the capital city!

My lodge was on the banks of a river, the Nam Ngum, just a collection of rough huts with verandahs and an outhouse or two.



Steps led down the steep bank right to the water's edge, where, having now run out of land, the owners built a restaurant on the water. The deck enclosed a section of the fast-moving river as a makeshift pool.




Tables and chairs were scattered over several moored rafts under thatch, and at the far end, when I arrived, the kitchen was filled with chattering Lao, all of whom stop at the sight of me and come over with warm smiles to wish me welcome to their country. I settled on the edge of the restaurant, my legs dangling in the cool water, a book in one hand, in the other a bottle of Beer Lao, the best lager I've ever tasted. Can life actually get any better than this? The next few days will tell...

Across the river, a village lies, carved out of the forest. A ferry carries people and scooters back and forth, but I make my way there on a section of the restaurant, which detaches to become a thatched raft.



We land next to some women washing clothes in the river and Joy, my guide, leads me up the steep bank to the village. (Joy is a nickname; it means 'skinny' and he lives up to it.) Although Hmong people are increasingly coming down from their traditional mountainous homes to live and work alongside lowland tribes, this village is entirely Lao. The Lao are strictly Buddhist and a bright gold and green temple occupies prime position. Joy takes me inside. He is Hmong so his knowledge is limited, but the images on the wall bear close resemblance to the ones I saw in India, if a little more graphic; one shows a man, surrounded by a feasting family, his guts graphically spilling from his belly.

We walk to the village school, where around 50 children are taught by a single teacher. When we arrive, a pack of kids waves at me from the verandah, but then the teacher walks up and they all disappear back inside to learn about mountains and valleys (Joy translates for me).



I discover that the students are divided into classes, the teacher moving from room to room, handing out work to be done in her absence.



I don't want to interrupt, so I quietly look in through the windows; the children seem fascinated by me though and so I move on for the teacher's sake.

The afternoon, hot and sticky, begs to be observed from the cool vantage point of a tube on the pool, and I find myself very obliging in this respect.

The next day I ventured to the restaurant next door where I bought a Fanta and sat down under a thatch roof at the top of the riverbank, above pumpkin patches and tomato stakes - an organic vegetable garden which has to be abandoned once a year when the river swells, but which otherwise feeds the restaurant, the attached families, and my lodge.

It wasn't quiet. Mohawked boys drank Beer Lao and laughed in the larger hut next to mine, and Thai pop blared from the loudspeakers. The ferry roared its way across the river beneath. But it was calming in its cheerful simplicity. Families of chickens stalked grubs in the overgrown garden. Whenever I glanced up from my book, my eye was invariably caught by one of the legions of butterflies - sometimes a tiny yellow buttercup butterfly, someimtes a giant blue-black Birdwing, 15cm across its span. A silken cream butterfly, its wingtips brushed with orange paint, veered by to inspect my Fanta but went off in search of more natural sugar. And just down the bank, an abandoned hut, marigolds testing its boundaries, played sunny host to an almost chameleon-like lizard, its skin glowing bright red in the noon light, fading to a muddy green at the tip of its tail. He watched me with as much interest as I showed him, turning his head to stare into the camera lens.

I was talking about India a few days ago with some colleagues going there, and found it strange that my enduring memories are of the myriad cafes Sara and I sat in, not talking, often, but simply writing, reading, watching people. It seems that often the best impressions I get from a place are from doing absolutely nothing! Score!

Sometimes in Bali I got frustrated with the thought that everything was just for show, that the only industry was the tourist one, that even the most genuine-looking restaurant was too pricy for locals. It's different here. When lunchtime comes along, the huts fill up with Lao, chattering, bantering with the owners and eating the same food as I've just ordered.

Like I said earlier. Love at first sight.