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Other entries in Vientane

Vientiane

Our first night in Vientiane will always be remembered for the Frosties game! It's a drinking game taught to us by the Scottish lassies on the tour. The idea of the game is to bend down and pick up an empty cereal box (preferably Frosties because you can eat them straight from the bag whilst you play the game!!) off the floor, with your teeth. An added complication is that you are not allowed to touch the ground with your hands, so it's a bit like limbo in a way! After each successful pick up, part of the box is torn away, meaning that it gets ever shorter and hence nearer to the ground.
 
 It was hilarious and great for girls as they tend to do rather better than the guys. James and Stuart made the best attempts for the guys, Stuart retiring last with a pulled hamstring (so he claimed!). I did much better than I had expected, getting down to the last 3, but the eventual winner was Miss flexible, Laurie!!
 
My initial impressions of Vientiane were not good. It seems pretty run down, there are big holes all along the pavements and there is a lot of rubbish everywhere. Undeterred, however, I resolved to do some sight-seeing. My first stop was Haw Pha Kaew, a former temple exclusively for royalty. It's now the museum of art and antiquities and although it's set in some lovely gardens, the exhibition itself isn't really worth the entrance fee. The temple is quite small and houses maybe a dozen glass cabinets full of Buddha statues of various sizes and made from various materials.
 
Next I visited Wat Sisaket which is much better. There are some interesting buildings in the grounds, including a really colourful drum tower.  As you enter the main temple area you come across cloisters, the backs of which are covered with niches, which in turn house over 10,000 small Buddha figures. The murals inside the main temple building, in the centre of the courtyard area, are very well worn but you get the impression that they were once quite magnificent.
 
My final visit of the day was to That Louang, Laos' most important religious building. I took a songthaews along Lane Xang Avenue (Vientiane's equivalent of the Champs Elysee) and passed the Patouxai (the Arc de Triomphe). They are both pretty impressive. The That can been seen from quite some distance and has an amazing gold stupa that glints in the sunshine.
 
A wide path leads through landscaped gardens to an enclosed garden and shrine. Beyond that is the stupa which is surrounded by an enclosed cloister. The stupa is around 45m tall and sits on a platform surrounded by stone carved lotus flowers. Its an awesome sight and well worth a visit. There are also lots of small, brightly coloured stupa on the boundary and a large, very colourful, modern temple to the left.

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