Laos National Day

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Laos is such a relaxing country. We had flown into Vientiane the day before & were already completely at ease (especially after coming from hectic Vietnam). Here there are pavements you can actually walk down (as long as you avoid the odd open sewer), the tuktuk drivers don't shout at you from every direction but wait until you are very close before whispering 'tuktuk' only once & the odd car or bus driving down the main street is about as busy as the traffic gets. There's minimal air pollution & the sun shines brightly with little humidity.
Today was Laos National Day & we weren't sure if anything would be open, the first bakery we came to, JoMa's, was & we had coffee & huge pastries while people watching in the sun. It was then time to do the second half of our walking tour of the capital. We got to Patouxai, a sort of replica of the Arc De Triomphe made from concrete that was supposed to build the airport runway & checked out the views from the top but we couldn't take any photos as it overlooked some military or government building. It was then time for lunch & we spent quite a while locating an alley somewhere between the bus station & a temple (there are no road signs in Laos) to find that the recommended vegetarian restaurant was closed for the holiday. A packet of emergency sweets sufficed & we walked up to Pha That Luang, an enormous stupa covered in gold leaf. It was shut. But only till 1pm, a mere 10 minutes away, just enough time to get a fizzy drink from the stall outside to supplement our lunch. Once we had walked round the stupa, as there's little else to do at most stupas, we walked back into town past dozing guards with rifles outside government utilities buildings. Ice creams back at Patouxai just in case we hadn't had enough sugar & then Beerlao Dark & even more pastries at the Scandinavian Bakery before sitting in the sun on the balcony to catch up with some reading.
When the sun had finally dipped behind the temple across the road we were ready for our first proper meal of the day. Our chosen restaurant, closed for the holiday, so we were left wondering the streets again until we came upon the Lotus Garden restaurant. We asked if we could eat upstairs & got the whole level to ourselves. The seating was cushions on the floor & being the only customers upstairs we got our own waitress. When serving food in Laos the custom is to be lower than the person you are serving to. This was quite difficult for our waitress as we were as low as we could get which resulted in her almost sliding across the floor to give us our menus & dishes. When not bringing us food or adjusting the air conditioning she would wait crossed legged in an alcove by the window or just outside the door in case there was anything else we needed. We tried to limit the amount of times she had to slither over to us.

Drink of the day: Beer Lao Dark

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Comments

[Sarah]

Not Arc de Triomphe
Didn't know that about taking photos from the top of here. I've got some if you want a look when you get back!

[kitty]

laos
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