I can't quite put my finger on why, but I couldn't connect with Vientiane. I was there from late on a Friday to early on Sunday, and the whole time the place seemed deserted and lifeless to me, like the financial district of an American city on a Sunday. Maybe that's how the downtown is, and there's probably a little more hop to the place out past the circle of monuments in more residential districts. But it seemed strange to me that there was almost no street life along the riverfront. There was no night market to speak of. This morning at breakfast, across from the cultural hall, I counted minutes going by without a single vehicle passing. This is a totally unfair way to judge a community, I know. It just reminds me of how hard it is to really learn anything about the places we visit without having a local guide to help us connect.
I decided to cut the visit short, but I did find enough to keep me busy for a full day. Haw Pha Raew, a former temple now used as a tiny museum of religious relics, was interesting. Across the street Wat Sisaket was especially beatiful. When I nodded hello to a monk there, he wanted to chat for awhile to practice his English and get my email and had his friend take his picture with me. They were visiting from a town in the south, taking in the city sights themselves. (Monks go on vacation, too, I guess. In Luang Prabang, I felt bad about getting up early to mix with the famously obnoxious tourists taking pictures of the famously picturesque morning march by the local monks to beg for alms, until I saw another monk -- presumably visiting from out of town -- taking pictures himself.) I explored the gifts shops and picked out a few things that can survive the backpack. I stopped into a well-known silk shop -- Carol Kennedy Designs -- and talked with the shop clerk for awhile. She tells me Carol is from Connecticut, too. I went out to the suburbs Wat Sok Pa Louang for some more meditation practice. I stumbled across a nice little Japanese restaurant and ate very well there. I loved most of the hot Lao coffee I had, by the way. The iced coffee, not so much. The Vietnamese still lead in that category.
This morning I hired a tuk-tuk to take me to the Friendship Bridge, 20 km out of town, and I wasn't sure we would make it. It seemed slow and a little sick sounding from the start, and we did break down about 10 minutes into it. I sat under the canopy while the driver disassembled some of the guts and got it going again. It's about 45-minutes by ailing tuk-tuk, probably 20 minutes in any other vehicle. I didn't see any other westerners at the border crossing, and I did a lot of wandering around in confusion, once walking through a checkpoint without getting checked.
I'm at a rustic traveler's camp in Nong Khai, Thailand for now, pretty and quiet (in a small-town way, not in an abandoned-capital way, like Vientiane.) Pushing on south tomorrow.
-Robert
