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Published: April 21st 2009
Arche de Triomphe, Vientiane
The US donated cement for the construction of a runway and they used it to build this instead. We took a bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiane, the capital of Lao. How strange a capital city! It's just as laid back as the rest of Lao and feels more like a Western suburb than a capital city. It's like Burbank without any high rises (or Jay Leno.) Well, there is one 15 story hotel on the banks of the Mekong but other than that, most everything is a couple of stories high. There's not a ton to see there but it's a nice place to watch the sunset over the Mekong. And we had some great Indian food for the first time since we were in Malaysia.
We took an overnight bus from Vientiane most of the way to the site of some ancient Khmer ruins that pre-date Ankor Wat. This bus was mighty uncomfortable. Think of two people on something narrower than a twin bed with a foot cut off the bottom. The funniest part was that people who bought a single ticket would be doubled up with another stranger. Not that they were strangers for long after that little spoon fest!
The ruins in Champasak are rather unspectacular after having been to Ankor Wat but
View from top of Arche
Look, no high rises anywhere! they had some fine reliefs left in a structure on the top of a hill. Oh, and the museum was rather interesting. Oddly, there was an era when they would make Hindu images of the god Shiva combined with his wife Parvati. Half male and half female with a breast appearing on one side of the body. It represents the two sexes merged into oneness. Nice thought. They must not have had a 50% divorce rate back then.
Finally, we took a bus, ferry, and boat to an area near the Cambodian border called 4,000 islands or in localese, Si Phon Don. We had an amazing experience there. We were walking down a road with some new friends, a Dutch girl and a Japanese guy. Suzan said, "Look at the sun!" which seems like a really stupid thing to do but of course we did. Why stop now?! ;-) It was about noon and the sun was encircled by a 360 degree rainbow and the area in the center was a darker gray than the rest of the sky. We looked up about 20 minutes later and it was gone. What a strange and magnificent sight and how lucky
we are to have seen it! I Googled it and the explanation was ice crystals in the atmosphere that reflect the light this way, even on a day when there's no rain. Would have been more fun if there were stories of aliens involved. Or Catholic explanations of it being Mary's halo are fun too.
P.S. In case you're wondering why I keep spelling it Lao instead of Laos, fret no more... We kept hearing people say Lao instead of Laos. Toby said he liked the sound of Lao better as it doesn't sound like lice or louse. After all, who wants to visit a country that sounds like body vermin? So we started calling it Lao. Then my mom happened to email us a blurb from Wickipedia that explained it all. Laoatians always called it Lao but the French added a silent "s" to the end of it and all of us English speakers keep pronouncing the "s." That's almost dumberer than the US changing the Filipines to Philippines. ;-)
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victor
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Wow, interesting pics and stories. Glad you didn't get blinded looking at that bizarre rainbow!