Vientienne; A Capital Adventure

From Vang Vieng we travelled to the capital of Laos, Vientienne (45,000kip or $5.60 for the 4hr bus). On the whole, I tend to prefer smaller cities with character and have found only a small handfull of capital cities that are interesting and approach the charm of smaller places. Usually big capitals are devoid of culture and are quite boring. Vientienne did not challenge this opinion. The resteraunts and cafes are concentrated in a small tourist area on the Mekong, beyond this area there is nothing but souless and dirty shop fronts. In order to get away from this atmosphere, we rented a scooter for a day ($6.20) and headed south-east to Wat Xieng Khuan (Buddha Park or spirit city). Unfortunately maps are few in Laos and I am prone to worry about being lost, wasting time and running out of fuel etc. So when we hit a dirt/mud road that just got more rural as it went on, I got anxious. Nevertheless, my trusty companion was confident in the locals and their nodding of directions and finally we made it to what turned out to be an amazing tourist attraction. The park was built in 1958 and is a bizzare but inspiring amalgamation of Hindu and Buddhist iconagraphy. The largest concrete monument is a three-tiered 'pumpkin' composed of hell, earth and heaven. You can enter through earth and both decend to hell to be surrounded by devils and ascend to heaven for an amazing view of the whole park.This park may be 'touristy' but the statues are very powerful and if you do as we did and have a cheese/bagette picnic on the mekong, you will be very fulfilled at the end of the day.

In a further effort to get out of the city, the second half of the day was spent on our scooter going in the opposite direction to the Dreamtime Eco-Retreat. This journey was much the same as the previous one, except twice as long on a muddy road (our poor scooter was taking a beating) with an added adventure on sand in the middle of the bush. I might have known, but it turns out that an eco-retreat is a euphamism for place where tree-hugging 'hippies' smoke lots of marajuana and 'relax'. I consider myself mildly eco-aware/friendly and I will always defend peoples right to have their own beliefs and to share them, but this place was a little too extreme for me. There are signs in the traditional toilets (you squat over the groud) that say 'toilet paper means killing trees' and the resteraunt only serves meat if specially requested. It was an adventure to get there (and to shower in a bucket in full view of the surrounding bush) and loved the log cabin, the candlelit atmosphere, the hammock and the gentle silence of the bush, but I felt as though I was not welcome because I am not percieved to be a 'hippie'. We did get to play a few games of scrabble too, which made the trip totally worth it. 

Interesting note on the traffic in Asia; beware! They either ride scooters or drive massive 4x4's and falangs are generally considered to be annoying. On the way back to the city, I saw a man who was pretty much dead after being hit by one of these big cars and 5 minutes after this I got hit or more accurately, side swiped by another one of these 4x4s (I was mostly surprised and it only hurt for a bit). Needless to say I was happy to get out of Vientienne for our next stop; Hue, Vietnam.