2/21–23 –Vientiane–last day and then the long travel days home

We sleep soundly….until the Monk’s Alms call at 4:15 AM, followed by the drum banging for the final Alms call at 4:58 AM.  Sigh.  This goes on every morning, making sleeping in a challenge.  No matter how cool it is that they are calling for Alms, 4:15 is a bit early on most mornings.  This morning, we’re not complaining as we want to be up early so we can take a long nap before our late night flying journey begins.

So, we are up.  Drinking coffee and wasting time until breakfast is served at 7:00.  It’s a long morning already.  Of course, we are the first down to breakfast, and they don’t even come out to set the tables for about 10 minutes, but, we’re all about wasting time this morning – until we can take our nap.

After breakfast, we walk down to the river, to wander through the now empty park on a search for some statue at the end of the park. We walk along the deserted paths, through the scrubby grass and end up crossing over to the river side, to walk along the marsh lining the Mekong. The river is pretty far away across the marshlands, and there isn’t much to see over here, besides another whole permanent market complex, so we cross back to the park and end up at the Chao Anouvong Statue – which turns out isn’t the statue we were aiming for, but becomes our final destination nonetheless.

The statue is impressive, looking off across the Mekong to Thailand on the other side of its banks. 

King Chao Anouvong is considered a war hero, who fought to his death trying to regain Laos independence from Siam in the early 1800’s.  There is a small altar at the base of the statue for offerings, but what really catches our eye are the hundreds of small elephant statues placed at the base of the statue.

Pretty neat.  Turning away from the river, we make our way through the park, past the embassies and out onto Setthathirath road, heading toward Lani’s House.  We take a detour through what we are somewhat affectionately calling “our” Wat – Wat Hai Sok.  It’s a lovely Wat, with Monk’s quarters in the back of the compound, Stupas, some interesting Naga depictions and that blasted drum that wakes us up every morning.

Time for sleep.  We’ve paid for an extra half day in the room since our flight doesn’t leave until late this evening, and we plan to make the most of it.  We’ve re-packed and organized, so now all we need is a little shut eye, and we’ll be ready for our 30+ hours of traveling.

We do manage to get some shut eye, and are relatively bright eyed and bushy tailed as we drag our luggage down stairs to check out.  After a little tussle with the cab fare – won’t even go into it, but Sullen Boy actually smiles as we work out the details – will miracles never cease!  (Personally, I think he was just happy to be rid of us!) – we are on our way to the airport with 4 hours to kill.  Of course, when we arrive, after standing in line for about 15 minutes, we find out we are too early to check in. We were afraid of that, but figured we’ve got nothing but time, so we’ll stand in line.  We have another 2 hours before check in, so first we drag all our bags up the escalator and hang out in a little cafe for wine and beer.  After way too much time there, Ed scopes out the restaurant on the top floor, and we decide to head up there (there’s an elevator, thank heavens) for a quick bite before we fly.  It’s called the “West Coast Restaurant” and it is a buffet, but also has ala carte items. We are not hungry enough for the buffet (although it is only $16 US and includes beer and wine), so we order ala carte.  Ed gets the Pad Thai, and I opt for the fried spring rolls – figuring I’ll just eat something small.  Oh my God.  Talk about overload.  The Pad Thai is fantastic, perfectly cooked and seasoned – and huge. Had we known – we would have just shared that – but we didn’t, so after digging into an obscene amount of really cheap noodles, my spring rolls arrive.  Holy cow – there are probably 10 spring rolls?  Cut into thirds?  Who knows – it is a crazy amount of food – and it is really, really cheap.  At an airport, no less.  Crazy!

Needless to say, we didn’t finish everything on our plates! But, boy, we sure don’t need to eat again for hours – which is probably good since our main airplane meal won’t be until after midnight.  It’s finally time to go check in, which we do, checking all our bags so that we can travel fairly unencumbered, then head upstairs to the small, jam packed flight waiting area. We choose to go to the lounge and use our last Kips, combined with USD, for entry, then sit in comfort and silence, with wifi, for the next 2 hours until our flight is called.

After that, it’s pretty smooth flying.  All the flights work out well – great snacks on ANA…

…We’re on time most of the way, smooth air, lots of great movies!  We land at Dulles pretty much on time on Thursday 2/22, after losing a day to the International Date Line and air travel.  We take Lyft to my parent’s house (the driver trying to rip us off by saying we have too many bags – NOT – don’t even start with us buddy), have a lovely visit, then hit the road, stopping over night in Durham and having a great dinner at a brewery there (yeah, well, we are priming ourselves for Asheville).  Sleep really well and then make the drive back to Asheville arriving safe and sound after a fabulous 60 day adventure through SE Asia. 

2/20–Vientiane–last supper

Refreshed after our hibernation, we strike out into town, in the opposite direction of our normal haunts.  We are heading to Union Pizza and Shawarma for some authentic Lamb Shawarma since our Chiang Mai connection has disappeared.  The restaurant is a little storefront at the beginning of what is called “Cowboy’s Alley,” a street food sort of street with tons and tons of food and alcohol stalls.  We wander through the alley, just to waste time, because we are set on having Shawarma tonight, and end up back at the restaurant, as the only customers.  We grab a booth, make ourselves at home and start an evening long conversation with the owner – who is a wonderfully fun companion to our meal.

The restaurant itself is a small, narrow little diner-like place with booths and a large table at the back. Sparkling clean, and air-conditioned (which the proprietor turns on for us when we say we’re hot), it’s not an ambience sort of place to hang out all evening, but it is a great place to get extraordinarily good food at reasonable prices.  And you can’t beat the company!

We of course order Shawarma – I get the the pita sandwich, Ed the platter, which are both fantastic, and totally authentic.

In between ordering and eating, we have an hours long conversation with the owner (whose name we never seem to get).  He tells us all about Vientiane, living in Laos, his connections, the Cowboy alley, the challenges he is having with the landlord who owns the building, the Backpacker hotels down the street, how he and his brothers (his brothers and family live in Canada) are looking to start another business here. You name it, we talk about it.  It makes the evening fly by and we are sorry to finally have to leave!  But leave we must – as we make our way back toward Lani’s House, stopping for a night cap at Good Earth, where we listen to more good music, and I can’t resist taking pictures of the menu for the names of the entrees here.  So fun and creative!

Back in our room, we succumb to the comfy king size bed and sleep soundly….

2/20–Vientiane afternoon

We take a quick bathroom break and dump most of our traveling supplies in the room, then wander back out into town in search of lunch.  As we pass the Wat across the street, we notice they are working on finishing the Elephant statues at the entrance. We’ve looked at these unfinished pachyderms every time we leave the hotel and are excited to see them actually being worked on. Plus, it is fascinating to watch how they craft the huge statues from wire frame and cement.  Talent – for certain.

Walking around the corner, we hit the restaurant streets, not finding anything to our tastes until we reach the Pricco Cafe, a French bakery we have passed a couple of times now on our walks.  They have a great outdoor seating area, but it is too hot for us, so we head inside to a nice two top in the air-conditioning, right next to the vintage TV aquarium. 

Ordering French comfort food, I opt for the Quiche Lorraine, and Ed for the Ham Tartine, basically an open faced ham sandwich smothered in cheese.  Both arrive piping hot, delicious and filling.

But not so filling as to stop us from our next adventures, which takes us all the way back into town to visit the Haw Pha Kaew, a former temple turned museum that used to house the Pha Kaew (an Emerald Buddha just as important as the Phabang) until it was taken to Bangkok by the Siamese in the 1700’s.  Now the Haw Pha Kaew is renowned for its collection of bronze Buddha statues surrounding the temple structure. 

We sweat our way down the main street, past the Presidential palace and onto the grounds of the Haw Pha Kaew.  It’s typical tiered roof architecture soar high into the cloudless skies, and the bronze statues are definitely worth the walk (and the sweat). Elegantly placed around the exterior of the temple (no pictures inside, thank you), they line the terrace with peaceful stateliness.

Outside, the gardens are gorgeous and lush, providing some respite from the busy, dirty streets.

But the most intriguing thing here (at least for us) are the tree trunk carvings displayed under a tarp tent on the side of the garden.  They are magnificent in their detail and we can’t stop looking at them.  These are almost more impressive than the Buddha statues (probably because we’ve seen so many Buddha’s, and while we have great respect for the leader, these wood carvings are a really nice change of pace).

You can tell we’re intrigued by the number of pictures!  Also intriguing, once again, are the translations.  We’re not quite sure what this one means – did they do the 3rd restoration? And kept everything the same? Did they not do the 3rd restoration, and everything is in the same condition?  You be the judge!

Done with our sightseeing, we retrace our steps to the hotel, stopping at a convenience store for beer and snacks and finding fresh popped kettle corn popcorn, $0.60 cents USD, which is way too good (and bad for us), then working our way back to hibernate in the hotel A/C until dinner time.

2/20–Vientiane–Kaysone Promvihane Memorial

Driver Man apparently doesn’t know that the Lao Museum isn’t open, because he takes a left out of the President’s Museum to take us the half block to the Lao Museum.  We tell him it isn’t open, and he finally gets the picture when we get to the entrance, and it’s all blocked off – heck is really isn’t even much of an entrance yet.  Yeah, it is definitely not ready for prime time!  So now it’s off to the President’s Monument, better known as his home. 

We tell Driver Man that we just want to go to the President’s home, but even though we explained this to him this morning, with Sullen boy there, he doesn’t get it. We finally realize he’s never been there and doesn’t know where it is.  Thank you Lonely Planet!  My app tells us exactly how to get to there from the Museum, so I direct Driver Man to the entrance to the memorial.  While he is skeptical, he follows my instructions, almost missing the entrance, but after questioning the guard at the gate, finally accepts that this is a new place to add to his repertoire of visitor sights. Add another new experience for our travels:  teaching the taxi tour guide driver a new tourist destination!

Originally called “Six Klicks City” when it was allegedly the USAID headquarters as well as CIA base in the 50’s and 60’s.  Subsequent digging finds that it may have simply been the residence area for Americans living in Laos during that time.  Regardless, it is designed to resemble an American neighborhood with wide streets and small little ranch and 2 story homes. The complex was totally self-contained with bars, restaurants, tennis courts, swimming pools and an American school until the President moved in after the 1975 takeover of Vientiane.  Occupied from 1975 until his death in 1992, President Kaysone lived quite simply in this small little compound outside the city.

Driving into the compound, it does look like an old American neighborhood. Little fences around houses, small concrete driveways with carports in front of the house.  Old air conditioning units hanging out the windows.  Its sort of weirdly creepy in a way, especially because we are in Laos, not some suburbia in the U.S.  Definitely a time travel thing. 

We pile out of the cab and enter into the serene little homestead of the President.  Upon entering the compound, we are greeted by a duo of lovely girls,one of whom speaks English and will be our tour guide.  We pay our small fee, and she begins to tell us about the buildings.  (She is adorable, and speaks incredibly well, but apologizes for her language skills and giggles throughout the entire tour.  I only wish I had taken a picture of her!).  We start in the welcome center where there are chairs and a stage set up for presentations.  It was a traditional little ranch home, but I think they’ve just converted it into offices for the memorial now.

Next, we walk outside and down the little sidewalk to one of the houses that the President used for his residence.  Here we must take off our shoes to visit, and no photos are allowed. Which is a darn shame, because it is so wild – definitely just like stepping back into the 70’s.  It is a traditional little 2 bedroom house that was used as his office, with the bookcases and desks in one large room, the President’s sitting room in another, and a simple dining room situated in an old screened in porch. 

All along the way, adorable guide girl shows us pictures of the President when he was in residence here. It’s adorable, and again, I wish I had asked if I could take pictures of the pictures, but I didn’t think of it until we were long gone.

Moving on to the next house, the President’s residence, we see the table and chair that he used in the garden to take his breakfast and read his morning newspapers.  Here, we do have a picture of the President, taken from the brochure we were handed as we left, which can be compared to the current view (think they’ve done a bit of pruning since the original picture.  ).

Under the carport in front of this house is the President’s car, a Mercedes, up on blocks, pristinely clean and gleaming.  Inside, the house is a traditional two bedroom ranch, with a breezeway that has been converted into a gym type area, and the President’s sandals and tennis shoes still sitting in place by the door.  (He was obviously a real fitness nut, because he has this gym in his house, another full gym in a house behind this one – where he actually died – and lots of pictures of Kaysone performing Tai Chi or boxing or something.  Our adorable guide shows us a picture of Kaysone exercising, and he is wearing the same shoes that are sitting here in the door.  Beyond the exercise room, there is a den, with half filled whiskey bottles still sitting on a credenza and then the bedrooms – with closets still full of his clothes and his glasses on the night stand next to the bed.  Amazing that they have kept everything just the same as the day he died in 1992.

Back outside, we walk through the complex, getting the history, looking at the gym/house where he died with the tennis court out front…

…as well as the 50’s era office building at the rear of the property.

The last stop is the building where the Politburo met. Here we are allowed to take pictures, of the sterile room, the microphones at each place, and the little kitchen in the back with the original coffee and tea service.  Here again, Adorable Guide shows us pictures of the meetings in this room with the President and other dignitaries (which surprisingly I could not find on the web later when I searched).

We have come to the end of our tour, and as we head back through the complex we get a chance to really look around and take some good photos. 

It truly is like stepping back in time to a very different world – made all the more surreal by the fact that we are indeed in Laos.  The most interesting aspect is that Kaysone did live very simply here in the complex – but all his life. He is revered by the Lao people, and means to Laos what Ho Chi Minh meant to Vietnam, or what Fidel Castro meant to Cuba.  He served as the first Prime Minister from 1975 to 1991, and while he was only President for 1 year before his death, this country idolizes him, even though he never promoted the cult-like fervor that his people feel for him.

Back in the “welcome center,” Ed gets to sign the guestbook, looking like Politburo member himself, sitting up on the stage, royally signing our names to the book.

Then we say goodbye to the Adorable Guide and her counterpart, and walk back out into the heat to find Driver Man waiting.  This was one of the best experiences we have had – and one of the most cost efficient – only 10,000 Kip ($1.20 USD) for both of us and a guided tour.  You can’t beat the price, not the mention the intriguing look into the personal side of a revered leader.  Fantastic.

Driver Man happily takes us back into town and to Lani’s House, driving us right up to the gate (as opposed to the other taxi driver from the airport).  He’s obviously been primed by Sullen Boy, because he asks about when we are leaving – we tell him tomorrow – and agree for him to come pick us up at 5pm to take us to the airport.  Works for us – nice car, good driver, good price – we’re all set for our last days in Vientiane.