A week by the river

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As promised, I am updating my blog from Vientianne (pronounced Weing Chien). The internet here doesn’t seem to like my blog much, so I hope you can read this! The first day in Nong Khai was spent enjoying the views from the Mut Mee terrace, looking across the Meakong River. The next day was a bit more action packed, with a surprisingly long cycle to the sculpture park in Nong Khai, which is truly bizarre. Sculptures, standing 7 storeys high look over the park, dwarfing visitors. They are all of a religious nature, drawing inspiration from both Buddhist and Hindu religions, and really are quite an impressive site, as you can see from the above picture. In addition, we decided to visit a small building near the centre of the park. We wandered around this building, which was full of both ornaments and pictures of the man who created the park. This in its self was quite weird, but as we reached the top floor of the building, we saw a room which you could peer through glass windows into, where a domed Perspex structure sat. As we got closer, we saw that this structure in fact contained a very well preserved, mummified dead body. We were later informed that this is, in fact, the body of the creator of the museum who has been dead for 15 years, and that the staff hold him in very high esteem, and thereby preserve his body very carefully. They said, they even have to cut his hair from time to time as it still grows!!!

The next day we cycled our way around the copious temples that are in a Nong Khai. For a small town, it has an incredible number of “Wats”. I am told that Nong Khai has the largest number of temples per head of anywhere in Thailand. There must be over 20 in a town smaller than Horsham. What’s more is that they are all fantastically ornate, and all a spectacle to look at. However, after 2 days cycling, we were absolutely knackered, as the heat is truly penetrating, much worse than I felt in Saigon or Hanoi.

It was therefore, pleasant to spend today largely in transit, and after sending a couple of letters, we had a fry up breakfast before checking out. We then had to go through the rather bureaucratic process of crossing the Thai-Lao friendship bridge. After finally getting our visas (paying $35!!!) we got over to Vientiane where we checked into our guesthouse, which has by far the largest room of our travels so far. I now sit in this internet café, starting to get hungry. I will update you with stories from Vientiane when we get to Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat awaits.

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Comments

[Robin]

Alan, this looks fantastic! How big is that Buddha? That's either one small temple, or one giant statue... Hope it's all going well - all looks very impressive (and far more interesting than listening to rain here). How's communicating with the locals? And the food (no food blog?) - eaten anything weird yet?

[abelmore]

The Buddha is massive, but the real big ones are at the sculpture park, I've got some perspective pictures on my camera, which I will upload at some point. I will update with some food info in my next blog :).