feldmanlarry

I’m combining these two days and they’re not real highlights of the trip so if you are just reading a couple of posts, I would suggest going down to Day 20 and before or go to the Moscow entry (Day 24). My itinerary had two days with no guides or real plans. Vientiane is the capital of Laos and doesn’t have the gritty feel of Hanoi, the cultural feel of Luang Prabang, or the European feel of Saigon. I would describe its ambience as French colonial and Stalinist “grace” mixed with native Buddhist and native Laotian culture.

At first I was wondering why I had left myself two days here with little to do but then I remembered that it seemed like a good idea to recover and get ready for the crazy last 4 days. I found a company that would pick me up at 8:30 AM to go for a boat cruise to a waterfall with a lot of driving. I would return around 4:30, which would leave me just a little time before the guide was picking me up at 5:45 for the airport to Hanoi. That trip seemed like a good idea but I was still tired from the excursions in Luang Prabang and this one sounded similar to what I did on Nov. 11.

When you travel, it’s always a struggle between doing something every possible minute you have and taking time to recuperate. I had taken a couple of partial days to recuperate here and there, but for the most part I was on the side of squeezing in as much as possible.

My first visit was to the Lao National Museum, formerly the Revolutionary Museum that I missed coming in from the airport because it was closed. I wasn’t too interested in the first two parts — pre-history and early dynastic history. The other two parts fascinated me — the “liberation wars” of 1945-1975 and the post-revolutionary era.

Laos had in common with Vietnam that there were the revolutionary forces on the one side and a pro-American government on the other side. The peasants and most of the people in Laos were on the side of the Pathet Lao, the revolutionary forces, but the pro-American side controlled the larger towns and highways, especially during the day. The museum was clearly on the side of the revolutionary forces since they form the government today. This picture is captioned “Mass rally to greet the victorious outcome of the Geneva Conference in 1954.”

This picture’s caption is “French officers and soldiers are preparing to fly out of Lao from Vientiane Airport after the defeat in Indochina.”

1954 could have been the end of the SE Asia wars. The colonial power, France, had decided to go home. The wars were very unpopular at home and a social democratic government had just been elected. The new prime minister promised to get the troops home and he succeeded.

As a patriotic American, I am not proud of what the US did in Indochina. The US was the only country in the Geneva Convention who was belligerent and working behind the scenes to stop any peace agreement. The decision later on to move troops into SE Asia was one of the worst American decisions of the 20th century.

The Pathet Lao revolutionary forces used a large set of caves as a headquarters and for living space for up to 23,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viengxay_caves. These pictures are of a meeting of Panthet Lao leaders and of a cave school.

Women shooting an anti-aircraft gun. The pose of the woman on the left is typical of that era.

The caption below is “These weapons were brought to Laos by the American imperialist for use in their expanding special war.”

I’m not going to go into the whole history of the American war in Laos but this map fascinated me. I had been to the massive former US military base in Khe Sanh, Vietnam (see Nov. 7 blog entry). My guide there had commented about how important this base was not only for the US war in Vietnam but as a center for attacking Laos. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was located just inside Laos and was the main supply route from North Vietnam to the fighters in South Vietnam. This map shows how the US attacks came from Khe Sanh into Laos.

This shows the routes of the final battles of the Laos war that the Panthet Lao revolutionary forces won in 1975.

On a lighter note, I got a chance to talk with and have my picture taken with a set of school girls and with a Buddhist monk who were also visiting the museum.

For dinner, the center of Vientiane where I was staying was filled with pseudo-European places. There were many options for foods like spaghetti, French pastries, and sanitized Laotian food. There was a square filled with such restaurants around this large central fountain.

I avoided these restaurants and ate in a very simple place that had only Laotian people in it. I wouldn’t have done this at the beginning of the trip. I’m getting more brave (stupid?) as time goes on. I had ginger chicken with rice, soup, and Lao beer. It cost probably about $5. It wasn’t very memorable but I liked the simple ambience.

The next day, I took  a 10 minute walk from my hotel to Wat Si Saket, a beautiful Buddhist temple built in 1818. Apparently, it’s in the Siamese style which kept it from being destroyed by the Siamese since they used it as a headquarters in the 1820’s.

There were 2000 statues of Buddha, which again struck me as overkill. Each wall had Buddha after Buddha next to more Buddhas. Here are a few along one wall.

Tuk-tuk’s are motorcycles with a passenger area body built on top. They’re all over in India, Laos, and Cambodia, among many other Asian countries. They’re banned in Hanoi since the traffic just couldn’t handle them. I had ridden a rickshaw in Hanoi and a tuk-tuk at the Taj Mahal  four years ago but no tuk-tuk on this trip. Unfortunately I found what turned out to be a shady character hanging around Wat Si Saket who offered to take me around on his tuk-tuk. It turned out his tuk-tuk was not in great shape. Several motorbike riders held their noses from the fumes while going by us. It wasn’t really comfortable either.

I wanted to see the Thai border so we started out going to the Friendship Bridge. After driving a while, I realized it was an hour each way, which didn’t seem like fun especially since I was starting to get a headache from the fumes. We turned around and went to the Laotian version of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, called Patuxay.

There was a very unusual description on an official plaque, which says it was “built in 1962 but never complete due to the country’s turbulent history. From a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete.” Usually, official plaques try to hype the monument, not put it down. It was impressive but some other parts of Vientiane, it was European colonial style and not worth spending more than a few minutes to see.

Several monks and others enjoyed sitting at the monument.

I ran into this distance tree after being free of the tuk-tuk. Paris was under attack right around then with over 100 killed. It was 9,237 km (5,749 miles) away. New York was 13,476 km (8,374 miles); Thailand 1 km; Capetown, South Africa 10,587 (6,578 miles); Brisbane 7416 km (4,608 miles); and the North Pole 8,014 km (4,982 miles). So Australia, Paris, South Africa, and the North Pole were similar distances.

I had a little bit of time before they were picking me up to go to Hanoi and another of my goals was to have a massage in Laos. There was one just a 5 minute walk from my hotel that had good reviews, called Champa Spa. When I went in they had me take off my shoes and socks and sit in a chair that had a small built in sink for feet. They gave me a short foot massage then took me up an elevator to a private room with a mattress on the floor. The woman was great. She gave me a full body massage in one hour including briefly climbing on my back. No funny stuff was included in case you’re wondering.

My visit to Vientiane was not a highlight of my trip but it did end well. I went for a walk to a park along the Mekong to see the sunset. Many people were doing the same thing, including the woman who did my massage but mostly teens.

The sunset was spectacular. Once again, I needed my friend Michael Bronfenbrenner (see Facebook — Through The Lens Stories) to capture it like it should be done. Thailand is on the other side of the Mekong here.

I’m sure that if I stayed longer in Vientiane I would find more that I would appreciate. Maybe I’ve gotten spoiled and expect too much. If I had to pick one highlight, it would be the museum since the biggest theme of this trip is the Vietnam War. I will be posting soon an overall summary of my feelings about the war although it’s not hard to get the gist of how I feel from the entries so far.

Now, I’m on to Hanoi overnight then on to Moscow tomorrow morning.