Vientiane - no hustle or bustle

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Seriously, you would not imagine for a second Vientiane is a capital city. I mean compared to the rest of laos its a sprawling urban mass. compared to every other capital city i have ever seen, its a tranquil country retreat. And its probably only this "busy" because they recently got a new road to connect it to other 'cities' and everything! Apparently Japan has bought them their 2 new good roads. I have been telling everyone this so i hope its true...

It was so laid back there, that actually the first thing we did upon finding a hostel was fall asleep. Once again, it was well deserved and well needed. i did spend the previous night scrunched up in a little ball. Fancy thinking i was gonna go on holiday and get a rest! i'm getting as little sleep now as i did during those those last gruelling dissertation weeks... well, at least i'm getting out the house a bit.

In vientiane you can really notice the frenchness... hell they even got an Arc du Triomphe. honest, its a bit small though and from what i can gather they're not so keen on it... on the descriptive plaque, you know, for the tourists, its described as a concrete monster, even more ugly up close. or words to that effect. apparently its not even finished becasue the vietnam war got in the way? did you know that laos bore the brunt of that through no fault of their own. I didn't. but i learnt all about it in a completely non-biased way at National Museum. rooms are dedicated to the struggle of the Laos and vietnamese people, after vanquishing the cruel french, they they fought tooth and nail against the American imperialist and their Puppet armies. Like i say, not biased at all. It was very funny actually, every caption on every picture 'the us imperialists and their puppets', as well as subtleties like 'people of all classes joining together to celebrate victory against the US imperialists... you get the jist. I knew there was some good old fashonied communism at the heart of this here country. Actually it was a bit bad - there i am, stood in the mueseum, giggling away at the audacity of the captions, until i noticed someone glaring at me. looked up and realised i was laughing at a picture of dead children or something terrible like some real sicko. a hasty exit was required.

what else... yeh we had a gorgeous dinner by the riverside. massive fish, cuahgt fro the mekong (apparently!). It was just like eating on the south bank, but you know, cheaper, more peaceful, more beautiful, and instead of gazing at ugly glass office blocks on the other side, we had thailand. but you know, same same.

I imagine your pretty bored by the wat talk, but it has to be mentioned as the photos are numerous - we went to Pha That Luang, which is pretty much the laos centre-piece. on the cover opf the lonely planety and everything! Its pretty much this massive golden spire in the middle of nothing. it looks pretty amazing actually. despite the shoddy workman ship i saw in a few spots. an eternal pedant. but yeh, amazing - i believe they built it to keep a bit of buddha's bone, or something to that effect. there was a few other wats in the area too - we got our fortune told by some monks - though the transaltion was a little hard for them. the gist of mine was i was gonna have good luck and all would be fabulous. oh, and IF i marry, i will have a boy. How do they know eh? amazing. bless. we also saw a spotty teenage monk, hanging with a girl, playing her music on his mobile phone. Religion is pretty slck here i'm thinking.

actually, i think i'm rambling, really REALLY tired... but i gotta get this done! I'm halfway down vietnam already but still in laos in blog world. what else what else... oh yeh, went bowling. Brilliant eh! tyhe bowling alley was just like the one on Walton on the Naze pier, i.e. old. i had a great time, probably becasue i won, and also random Laos men kept buying us drinks! Not in a creepy way i should add, just you know, being nice to the whiteys. the first made an interesting first impression when he said he thoguht i was from kazhakstan. interesting choice. mind you, he claimed he thought sofia was from turkmenistan which is just taking it too far. the other guy was an immigration officer. he was very drunk. it was pretty interesting though as i was finally able to broach the subject of communism, and frankly, if they like it (not that it that communist there... jusdt a dictatorship i guess). but anyway, bascially the way he described it was, when you;re young your parents tell you what to do, and its fine and you accept it and ytou can't change who they are. when you;re older its the same, but the government tells you what to do, and you just do it. fair enough i suppose! anyway, boweling was cool, we got a little tipsy, and did i mention i WON?

what else... yeh, we went for a massive brekkie with Tom, an english bloke who lives in Laos, we i know through a friend of a friend of a friend (is that right benny?) . he brought along his gorgeous little boy, louie, who entertained us all morning (we're getting to that age...). he recommended Buddha Park to us, which we had previously thought might be a bit crap. we stood corrected! absolute genius! from what i can gather, some local nut just decided to get random people to build loads of massive tacky statues of various religious figures ina small park, and let people loose. when you first go in there's this massive erm, thing, that you can climb through and up, and inside there are 3 levels showing hell, earth and heaven, in the form of crappy statues in the dark. then when you get to the top you have to climb out a teeny tiny hole. i'm not selling it i'm sure, but it was brilliant!

thats pretty much it.... hotpot soup? erm, we were starving. like really starving. finally found somewhere nice to eat, on the riverside, lounging on cushions... all would have been fine but then we saw this couple a few cushions down, eating dinner out of a clay pot on hot coals. wahey we thought, we'll have us some of that! So we ordered it, they brough over the hot coals and the clay pot, and then loads of bloody raw food! We had to cook it ourselves! i know i know, its 'fun', and it was, but jesus i was starving... took as so long to all make it. basically you heat the water on this pot, whack in the meat, some veggies, eggs, erm, prob some toehr stuff.... and when you think its done, you eat your soup. it was well nice actually, when we figured out what we were doing. Afterwards we went to a bar and i saw the end of the Community Shield. It looked DULL.

thats not even very interesting is it? i promise i'll try harder next blog. I'm pretty hungry now as it goes... maybe a baguette. anyway, to finish - vientiane was good, and its mad that a capital city can be so quiet. Ooo its a feast for the imagination this is. Bye! x

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