East of Venice

On the way home to Korea I have an eight-hour layover. This time, however, it's in the daytime - so I get to go into Bangkok on an organised tour. It's just me and another man - a Malaysian scientist - who happens to get to the desk at the same time as me, so we share the guide's price. Our guide is Lek, and he leads us through VIP customs out into the muggy heat of the Thai winter and into a waiting car.

We drive into central Thailand and from an old wooden pier we catch a boat across the river. Unlike the lazy Mekong, this one rolls and waves and chops at the boat as we loll our way across. In the centre there's a steady line of banana leaves, fresh apples and marigolds - offerings from the morning meditation.

On the other side from the pier is Wat Arun. It's more a stupa than a temple, with an almost Islamic influence, white ridges extending up and up until the neck starts to complain about the abuse. Four smaller domed towers stand at each edge.


We start to climb up the narrow, steep stairs - the vertigo isn't too bad as long as I keep my eyes closed. My fingers are white on the railings though. From the second level I look out over central Bangkok, golden temples all around, modern skyscrapers in the middle distance. It's a beautiful city from this vantage point.


From up close, the Islamic influence turns to a more Portuguese-style decoration, perhaps, with blue-and-white pottery set into the walls, and mosaic littering the stupa from ground to heaven.


The statues are most definitely Asian, though.


Little bells hang from the outer towers playing the background music to our climb.

After placing my feet thankfully and firmly back on solid ground, we're led down to the river again. All around the jetty are hundreds of enormous fish, disturbing the surface. Lek says it's not allowed to fish near the temples, which protect all life in their vicinity (I can see this from the fat cats strolling past with an air of superiority). From the jetty we get on a long-tail boat, shorter and sturdier-looking than the Lao ones, and head into the canals.

The Bangkok khlong are ancient waterways right in the centre of the city, edged with teeming life, both animal and human.


Thais live in stilted houses and floating shacks above the water, with farms of water plants in between shops and bars. Temples and schools also back onto the canals, many with their own little jetties.


The houses are obviously poor but very sweet to an onlooker, quaint and wooden with masses of flowers and potted plants overflowing from the verandahs. Some of the families are out eating their dinner amongst the greenery on low tables; some are fishing for their dinner almost from their front rooms. There are lots of fish here too. We pause at a jetty where a heavily tattooed monk - who I'd mistake for Triad were he not in saffron robes and sitting in the lotus position - sits talking to a squatting woman.


A man sells Lek some large bread rolls and we lean over the edge of the boat to feed the fish, which leap and scuffle for the food.


By this time, I'm pretty starving myself so I'm grateful when, back on the bank, Lek suggests a restaurant round the corner that he likes. It's a local place with plastic chairs on the sidewalk, and a man frying vegetables in a wok on the street. When I ask for a Fanta inside, the boy scrubbing the floors looks at me in terror and yells "Farang!" into the back room until a woman (his mother?) appears to take my order. The food is plentiful and delicious. We walk back past Wat Arun, black in the dusk, to our car.


Back at the airport I'm taken by the massive display of Thai royalist adoration across the glass front, adorned with pictures of King Rama IX, the longest reigning current monarch in the world.


Thais love their king, who's seen as semi-divine - "enthroned in a position of revered worship, (he) shall not be violated". Harry's trip here in December coincided with his birthday and the entire city had apparently shut down. All the way into town I was met with displays of affection, the king and queen on flags, statues, monuments...


A bit different from the benign contempt the British queen is held in!

And then it's back to the cold breeze of a Korean morning in February - although it's ten degrees warmer than when I left, my tan is still hidden beneath layers of wool, and I'm looking forward to South Africa - in just three weeks' time!

I'm so grumpy at the airport and in the immigration line, where I wait for 45 minutes for one man to process about 3 visas, while his superiors watch from behind - Korean bureaucracy with minimal actual efficiency. But then I get into a taxi, and the driver practises his English all the way to the Village, showing me photos of his children and explaining how proud he is of the girls in university, and talking about his wife and his love for driving, and I walk through the Village gates with a smile on my face.

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...