A Day Tour of Lao's Small, Friendly Capital
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| Laos |
Introducing Vientiane
With a population of three quarters of a million, Vientiane is a small capital city. There are monuments and modern developments, but it is
largely a city of narrow streets, low rise buildings and abundant temples. Relaxed,
friendly and built on a human scale Vientiane is immediately appealing. The view
from our hotel was typical; to our left a street of low, slightly ramshackle buildings;
to our right a small temple with the Mekong River behind and Thailand in the
hazy distance.
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| Chou Anou Road Vientiane, Looking left from the Laos Orchid Hotel |
Last night we dined in a street restaurant a brief step to the left (hidden in the picture). The restaurant was busy, the service was slow and the dishes arrived
in random order but the warm fish salad with chips and chicken in sweet sauce were
well cooked, the night was warm, there was cold Lao Beer and all seemed right with
the world.
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| Chao Anou Road, Vientiane, Looking right from the Laos Orchid Hotel |
Vientiane - pronounced Vianchang (the Latin transliteration is French which has no hard ‘ch’) - was an ancient Khmer settlement. In the 7th
century, migrating Lao and Thai people from southern China arrived and made Vientiane
a city state until the formation of Lan Xang, the first Lao kingdom, in 1354. In
1560 King Setthathirath moved the Lan Xang capital here from Luang Prabang.
In 1707 disputes over succession fragmented Lan Xang. Vientiane became the capital of its own small kingdom which subsequently became a vassal
kingdom of Siam. In 1828 King Anouvong rebelled and the Siamese responded by
taking the city, carrying off everything of value and razing the rest to
the ground. Devastated and empty, Vientiane was reclaimed by the jungle.
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| Vientiane, the Lao capital is just across the Mekong from Thailand |
When the French arrived they chose the site of the ravaged city to be the capital of the landlocked portion of their new Indo-Chinese protectorate. To their credit, the French carefully rebuilt much of Vientiane’s cultural heritage, but inevitably the oldest buildings are (with one exception) crumbling colonial mansions.
Wat Si Sakhet
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| The Sim, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane |
Wat Si Saket is that one exception, and it was there S, our guide, began his city tour. Built by King Anouvong in 1818 in Thai style, it became
the Siamese army headquarters in 1828. Perhaps they could not bring themselves
to destroy a Thai temple, but it was the only building of note to survive the
year.
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| Modern tomb, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane |
Outside, the graveyard is still in use and there are some expensive new stupas raised by wealthy families. Inside, a cloister surrounds the simple sim. Stupas punctuate the cloister....
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| Cloister, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane |
while the walls are filled with
Buddha images.
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| Buddha images lining the cloister, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane |
Wat Pha Keo
Wat Pha Keo, just across the road, is a French rebuild of a sixteenth century original, and photographs inside show how much work was required to breathe life back into the shattered shell. The now beautiful building sits in a lush and peaceful garden.
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| Wat Pha Keo, Vientiane |
Formerly the king's personal temple, it is presently a museum whose main exhibit is elsewhere. The temple once housed the Pha Keo, the ‘Emerald Buddha,’ but it was carried off to Thailand in 1799 and now resides in Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. Considered one of Thailand’s most sacred images, it is touched only by the king when he changes its robes three times a year. There is little or no chance of it returning (and, to be fair, it may well have been Thai originally) but Wat Pha Keo is ready just in case. Cambodia also has a claim; they keep a replica in the Wat Preah Keo in Phnom Penh pending the original’s return. (see The Story of the Emerald Buddha, posted April 2015 for the full story)
Inside, the collection of Buddha images includes an unusual ‘rain
beckoning’ Buddha, he stands with his arms at his side, his fingers pointing to
the ground.
That Luang
Driving across the city centre took us to That Luang, Vientiane's largest stupa, most important religious building and the symbol of both the city and the nation.
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| That Luang, Vientiane |
There may once have been a Khmer Hindu temple on the site, but in the third century BC the Indian Emperor Ashoka sent missionaries equipped with one of the Buddha's ribs to convert the locals to Buddhism. They built a stupa to entomb the sacred relic.
A later stupa was built by King Setthathirath whose statute sits in front of the current construction like a short limbed Baden-Powell in full Scout uniform. A 1641 account by a Dutch traveller gives an awe-struck account of his gold-covered pyramid.
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| King Setthathirath, That Luang, Vientiane |
French explorers, Garnier and Delaporte, stumbled across it in 1867 and found it overgrown by jungle but largely intact. A few years later
Chinese bandits stripped the remaining gold and reduced the stupa to rubble. The
French built a new stupa in 1900, but the result was widely derided as looking
like a railway spike stuck on end, so they had another go in 1930 using Delaporte’s
sketches of Setthathirath’s stupa.
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| The cloister, That Luang, Vientiane |
The 45 metre high stupa is surrounded by thirty small spiky stupas and a crenelated wall. The stupa is painted gold, but an ever increasing area is gilded.
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| That Luang, Vientiane |
It is surrounded on three sides by monasteries, the decorations and the flowers being typically Lao and, I thought, more pleasing
than the stupa itself.
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| Monasteries round That Luang, Vientiane |
On the fourth side is a military parade ground, but parades are out of fashion so it is no longer used. Nearby a woman was grilling bananas
and sweet potatoes. I asked her for a photograph and her reply was this beaming
smile. Laos may be a poor country, but it is mercifully free of aggressive
beggars, hustlers and scam-merchants. The default attitude of most Lao is a big
smile, as though a sunny disposition was a condition of citizenship.
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| A Lao smile |
We bought three bananas. I am not sure we needed bananas on a stick so soon after breakfast, but a model needs a modest reward. We ate them it anyway.
Patouxai, Vientiane's Arc de Triomphe
As Vientiane was built by the French it naturally has a Champs Elysées. Lan Xang Avenue may be a country cousin of the Parisian
original, but it is one of the city’s few wide roads. The French, though, failed
to provide it with an Arc du Triomphe (see A Collection of Arches de Triomphe post 1900) so the Lao built that for themselves ironically
to celebrate their victory over the French in the 1950s. Called Patouxai, it
was allegedly constructed from concrete donated by the Americans to improve the
airport and is popularly known as the 'vertical runway'.
It is a quirky edifice and not exactly beautiful, but everyone up from the country must come to see it. The formal garden is the
haunt of a dozen or so official photographers in numbered hi-vis jackets who
record the memorable visits. They were doing some business, but digital cameras
have become so cheap and widespread their days must be numbered, even in Laos.
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| Patouxai, Vientiane |
Patouxai is bigger than it looks and two floors packed with stalls must be negotiated before reaching the roof. We bought a tee-shirt for our grandson with a hammer and sickle on the front. It will take him a couple of years to grow into it but whether he wears it with pride, irony or, most likely, incomprehension (he is only three) his mother will appreciate the opportunity to be controversial.
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| Inside Patouxai |
From the roof we looked down the Champs Elysées one way.....
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| Avenue Lan Xang, Vientiane |
...and over the garden the other.
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| The garden, Patouxai, Vientiane |
S next suggested we visit the mall. Neither of us regards shopping as a recreational activity, and a mall is a mall wherever you are. We
went to the morning market instead which was at least different. The market sells
household goods and handicrafts, including some wonderful, but appropriately
expensive, carvings.
The Remarkable Story of S
Afterward we chatted with S while the driver extricated his vehicle from the car park. His English was fluent, albeit with an American accent, and
his listening skills were those of a native speaker, not someone who had
learned English at college. He was born, he told us, in 1978 in a refugee camp
on the Thai border. We had heard a similar story from C, our second guide in Phnom Penh. C’s parents had been fleeing the Khmer Rouge, S's the Pathet Lao. Unlike
the Khmer Rouge, the Pathet Lao were not homicidal psychopaths, but they were
revolutionaries and those connected to the old regime had good reason to flee.
Sponsored by a Catholic group, the family moved from the refugee camp to Peoria, Illinois, and then, five years later, to California in search of a more
familiar climate. By 1990 the situation in Laos had normalised and his parents
decided to go home. S, who was eleven and had spent almost all his life in the
U.S., arrived in Laos believing he was there for a holiday. Understandably he
found it difficult when he learned the truth, but in time became reconciled to
his new life. His sister, however, returned to California and when he attended
her wedding in 2006 she suggested he might stay. S, though, had made a life in
Laos and did want to uproot his wife and child. Compared with laid back,
amiable Laos, he said, the pressures of Californian living did not appeal. I could
understand his point. Financially the gulf between California and Laos is almost
unimaginable, but if you count wealth in smiles not dollars, Laos is richer.
Lunch was in a simple noodle shop, and very good it was, too.
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| Vientiane noodle shop |
That Dam, The Black Stupa
Nearby, on a quiet roundabout by the American Embassy, is That Dam (the Black Stupa). All sources agree that it is old - though none will
say how old - and that a nine headed dragon is reputed to live beneath it.
Currently dormant, he last appeared to defend the city during the Siamese
attack of 1828. Considering the state Vientiane was left in, it was hardly an effective
intervention. Some also suggest that the stupa may have been covered in gold,
and if so, the Siamese nicked it.
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| That Dam, Vientiane |
The National Museum
It is a short hop from That Dam to the National Museum, but nothing is very far in Vientiane. Housed in a fine, if ageing, colonial mansion, it
covers everything from dinosaur bones through the clothing of Laos' ethnic
minorities to the revolution. The captions date from revolutionary times and
are long on condemnation of the French Colonialists and American Imperialist but
short on balanced analysis. They make amusing reading, though, and the
revolutionary spirit of certainty even seeps into the archaeological captions. The
jars on the Plain of Jars, they state categorically, were used to house bodies
until they had rotted away and the skeletons were then cremated. This is
plausible, but in truth, no one knows.
Wat Ong Teu, The Heavy Buddha
Wat Ong Teu, the Temple of the Heavy Buddha, stands to the side and a little behind the temple opposite our hotel. It was built in the
1560s by King Setthathirath after he moved the capital here from Luang Prabang.
Despite being destroyed and rebuilt several times it is still in its original
Luang Prabang style, with a sim, drum and bell towers and monk's living
quarters. Here, in front of the Heavy Buddha – the largest Buddha image in any
Vientiane temple - King Setthathirath’s nobles swore allegiance to him. Two centuries
later they were summoned to swear allegiance to Siam and 150 years after that
they gathered here to swear allegiance to the French.
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| Drum Tower, Wat On Teu, Vientiane |
The temple was deserted except us and a young monk sitting cross-legged in front of the Heavy Buddha reading sacred texts. As we looked
around a stray dog wandered in. The monk paused in his devotions, selected a
pebble from a pile beside him and threw it at the dog. The dog looked at him
quizzically. He threw another and the dog ran off, yelping. ‘Would the Buddha
have done that?’ I asked silently, though stray dogs are a nuisance here as
they are in many other cities.
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| Young monk and the heavy Buddha, Wat On Teu, Vientiane |
In search of a Beer Garden
That was where S finished for the day. We took a stroll down Setthathirath Road towards the city centre, then cut down to the Mekong and walked back beside the river to an area where the Rough Guide claimed there were a collection of beer gardens. They were strangely elusive. It was hot, Lynne was reluctant to continue and several times I suggested we should just go to the next corner. Lynne did not fall for this ruse and was nearing open rebellion when we eventually found not the promised line of beer gardens, but one on its own. It was all we needed. Chilled Beer Lao on a hot afternoon after a slightly longer walk than intended is immensely satisfying.
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| Setthathirath Road, Vientiane |
The Belgian Beer Bar
Later we headed for the nearest section of the Mekong. Passing the food stalls in we made for a Belgian Beer bar in Fa Ngum Road we had spotted in on our earlier wanderings.
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| Food stall, Fa Ngum Road, Vientiane |
Sitting in front of a life size cardboard Tintin we drank pastis which caused us to muse briefly on the unintended benefits of colonialism. They had a full Belgian menu including (at a price) moules-frites, but after my lapse in Phonsavan I was back on local food and enjoyed my minced duck with mint and chilli. Lynne had pork fillet with mushroom sauce, chips and salad, which is hardly Lao, but at least she was eating properly again after her earlier problems. Despite their impressive range of Belgian beers, we stuck to Beer Lao. Were I an expat rather than merely a tourist, I might have made a different choice.
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell
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