PART 2 FIRST POST: CITY OF SANDALWOOD

Boo-dah Indochina 2013 is proud to present the Part 2 cast for the next 11 days: Our Leader: Stephen Wakeham together with Joseph Wilan, Katherine Smith, Barnaby Dowling, Jessica Smethurst, Guenther Goettlinger, Laura Ellen Topliss, Jack Byamshaw, Naomi Potter, Adam Boorman, Cedd Mumbycook, Amy Salvin-Hughes & Jenna Gourdeau.

17-18 July 2013. Days 1 & 2 of 15. (Day 11 is the last G Adventure day).
Ha Noi VIETNAM, Vientiane LAOS (Pah That Luang temple, Haw Pha Kaew temple, Wat Si Saket temple, The COPE Centre, Patuxai), Xieng Khuan (Buddah Park) LAOS, Vang Vieng LAOS. 
Overnights in Vientiane LAOS, Vang Vieng LAOS. 

Most historians agree that Vientiane, the capital of Laos means "City of Sandalwood". My first day with our "G Adventures" party of 13 including me, saw us spending most of the day in Ha Noi and flying to the capital at 5.30pm in the afternoon. As I had seen most of Ha Noi, I decided to sleep in and do a 10km run around the Hoan Kiem Lake at 9:30am. It was muggy but cloudy so the absence of the sun and the inclusion of a breeze made it an enjoyable run. Lots of traffic but that did not matter since the red-brick footpath around the lake is in good condition and wide enough for all sorts of pedestrians and even the odd motor bike taking a short cut!

Back at the hotel it was time to stock up on wine (just in case I could not find any in Vientiane) and read up on Laos and Vientiane. At 2:30pm I left my second Ha Noi hotel and headed to the airport to fly to Laos with my new found friends. Our 80min flight to Vientiane was met with a bit of jet stream turbulence and the drive to the Laos hotel was only 20min. Even from the air, Vientiane is green and not overcrowded. It is a stark contrast to the hot, honking streets of Ha Noi. It was also a lot cooler and less humid.

There is conjecture on the exact meaning of "Vientiane", population 237,000, the capital of Laos - most historians tend to pick "City of Sandalwood" with "City of the Moon" coming in a distant second. Vientiane became the capital in 1563 to avoid invasion from the  Burmese and first settled in the 9th Century. The Siamese burnt most of the city in 1827 and the French finished rebuilding most of it in 1899 after they took over in 1890. Vientiane sits on the Mekong and across the river is Thailand! As we arrived in the city just after sunset at 6:15pm we decided to go straight to dinner which was an experience in itself.

 Finally, I found a country that can burn my mouth off with chilli - the classic Laotion dish "Laarb" brought the fire brigade to the door! Finely chopped fish or chicken or pork or beef mixed with finely chopped chilli (the fine chopping is what does the trick), mint, coriander served with tomatoes and cucumbers. Delicious. The other dish was green papaya salad with finely chopped chilli - starts off cool and refreshing and finishes off with a hot zing! The great thing about Laotian dishes is that you can vary the degree of each main ingredient when you order them, eg: more or less papaya or mint or chilli. The other great thing is they are dirt cheap. Most mains are $3-5AUD and 500ml of local "Beerlao" lager is only $1.20AUD. Marvelous. No wonder so many British and Australians visit here. We even met an ozzie miner working here to extract copper! Laos is rich with minerals but does not have the money or expertise to extract the gold, copper, tin and bauxite it has. 80% of people are farmers and live along the Mekong and the northern mountains which is why the cities are so small and quiet.

Tourism is booming here because it is cheap and untouched - like Thailand was in the 70s and 80s. Laos also has a lot of water and export rice and power from its emerging hydro-electric plants being financed by Russia. On our way back from dinner we passed several street side food places and noticed lots of BBQ style meals including whole fish (only $5AUD), half chickens, slabs of water buffalo and double-palm sized frogs! We opted for street-cart cooked banana pancakes instead!

For me, our main day in Vientiane started at 5:45am on Thu 18 July. I was keen to run my 53rd country along the mighty Mekong and it was great. Cool and not as humid. Still got wet with sweat but I saw a lot on this run. Mainly construction. There is nice new paved road straddling the river that goes on for 3km passing brand new luxury hotels, conference facilities, a new Police headquarters and even a training centre for Laotian pilots. Laos just joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) this year so it is no suprise that these buildings are going up given that they will have to host a sitting or two sometime soon.

We organised two tuk-tuks to carry the thirteen of us around the city and surrounds today for only $4AUD each! We set off at 8am and returned at 1pm since at 2pm we were due for our 4hr mini-bus trip to Vang Vieng in the mountains. Our first stop was 25km from Vientiane at a place called Xieng Khuan or "Buddha Park". It is a strange, almost eerie place comprising some 300 stone sculptures of several Buddhas and other revered deities of both the Buddist and Hindu faiths created 1958 by a yogi-shaman priest called Luang Pu. From here it was another 1hr drive back to Vientiane, part of it, along the Mekong passing several dusty villages.

Most have little covered roadside BBQ eating places and most of us wondered how they survived. By now the sun had emerged and it was hot and humid. It was not long until we faced the elegant and towering golden spires of the Pha That Luang which is the principle Great Sacred Reliquary or Great Stupa of Laos. 
Much like the Angkor Wat is to Cambodians, the Pha That Luang is the principle symbol of Wat Si Saket is also famous since it contains more than 10,000 tiny terracotta statues of Buddha placed in small cavities inside the central temple and in a covered vestibule around it. This temple has the most Buddha statues of any country in Indochina including Thailand. Our next stop was particularly interesting.

It is known as the COPE Centre and is a non-profit organisation formed by various philanthropic groups and individuals to raise funds to diffuse the many unexploded ordinances (or explosives, especially cluster bombs) or what is known as "UXOs". Laos has the dubious honour of being the most bombed country per head of population. 260 million US bombs fell on it from 1960 to 1975 and 80 million are unexploded and with a population at the time of only 3 million it is no wonder this statistic stands. All this and poor Laos was not even part of the Vietnam War! Well not directly.

Around the late 1950s the Russian backed communist party "Pathet Lao" started to challenge the constitutional monarchy "Royal Lao Government" leading to the outbreak of the "Laotian Civil War" from 1960 to 1975 which is closely tied to the Americans and their involvement in the Vietnamese Civil War. The Americans were always worried about the influence of Russian communism in all of Indochina and for this reason they assisted the Laotian Royals in much the same way as Southern Vietnam by providing troops and even bombing parts of Laos from 1960.

The only difference with the Vietnam War is that they did not tell anyone - for this reason the Laotion Civil War (especially the bit from 1960 to the start of the Vietnam War in 1965) is known as "The Secret War". Pathet Lao won the Laotian Civil War and took over power on 3 December 1975. Laos has been communist since and one of only five countries worldwide in that category along with Vietnam, North Korea, China and Cuba. The official name of the party in power is the "Lao People's Revolutionary Party" or "LPRP".

 
Like most communist countries it is alleged that approx 200,000 people died or disappeared as a result of the civil war. Even the last royals of Laos disappeared after the LPRP took over. Having taken in all this history it was off to our last stop to see sweeping views of the city of Vientiane - the Patuxai or Lao's own "Arch De Triumph", ironically celebrating independence from the country it was modeled on. This huge arch was built in 1969 with cement donated from the USA intended for the construction of a new airport! The views of Vientiane from the top are well worth the visit and climb. A hidden secret of this fine arch with meticulous artwork underside is the wind tunnel effect breezes coming from 4 directions under the arch in the centre - a natural air conditioner! Despite this we all welcomed the air conditioned rooms of our hotel. Most went out to lunch and I blogged a bit before we all climbed aboard our mini-bus to head to Vang Vieng, some 3.5hrs away. What happens after this is picked up in the next post that focuses on Vang Vieng...