Vientiane

These planes leave without warning so that guy had better move.
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“This is the ghettoest airport I’ve ever seen!” Thus spake Henry, world-weary 13 year old, as we cruise to a stop, the only plane at Pakse Airport and a Lao Airlines plane at that. Departure was scheduled from Siem Reap at 10.40 but we were hurried onto the plane at 10.10, the last passengers to embark, and we were taxiing two minutes later. It seems they like to pick up time where they can in case they lose it somewhere else. They lost it in Pakse as we sat in the heat while the plane refueled.  It’s a bit of a chewing gum and string job, this plane, with seat cushions that look cushy but are, in fact, as hard as day-old scones. After an hour, my bum is complaining.

Hey, it can get mighty cold in Wat Sisaket!
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We’re served orange juice (50% juice, 40% water, 10% sugar) and Lao Paste Fruit (tamarind candy) to celebrate Lao New Year. I offer my hardly-drunk OJ to the flight attendant in an “I’m finished” gesture and she simply smiles, so I go to the toilet to dispatch the offending liquid. The toilet has zero leg room (yes, even less than a 747!) but a place to dispose of used razor blades (???) and an on-board perfume atomizer. How French. Thank goodness the whole world is not yet generic.

Datta Lotta Buddha

Are we relaxed yet?
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Vientiane is about the size of Wangaratta -- or Oxnard – and just as sleepy on this hot afternoon. Our guide tells us to call him Nong and, over time, he lives up to his name.  In two hours we see all the sights. Wat Sisaket has a temple surrounded by a cloister, and houses 300 seated and standing Buddha images and a couple of thousand smaller silver and ceramic “personal” Buddhas behind them. The temple holds another estimated 4,000. Datta lotta Buddha. Wat Pra Keo Museum was built to house the Emerald Buddha. You know – the famous little one in Bangkok. Whoops! Someone slipped up. Actually, it was nicked by the Thais, who have quite a reputation in these parts for relic thievery. That Luang (not this Luang but THAT Luang) is a golden stupas – the site at which the bones of “the original” (accept no substitutes) Buddha are kept – inside a smaller stupas enclosed in the larger stupas, a little like the sarcophagus at Chernobyl. Just in case you need to visualize it, there’s a life-sized replica of the small stupas on one side of the humongous one. We finish at the Morning Market, where the vendors are remarkably polite and, in fact, a tad boring after the crazy Vietnamese we came to love. Bath Cambodia and Laos are still off the beaten tourist track and this is as far from high season as you can get.

That Luang looks so fake but is in fact the most sacred site in Laos.
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Our hotel’s modern minimalist design is eerily familiar. What’s not as familiar is the showy thunderstorm that precedes torrential rain and several blackouts this evening which, in a 40 wat city, is pretty funny. Also unfamiliar are the sights and sounds of toads and geckoes. A toad on the pathway, in a rather Lao gesture, allowed itself to be petted before flip-flopping into the grass. The gecko, a foot long and fat as a tick, serenades us from the wall of the house next door.

Every city has its own version of the tuk-tuk. Vientianes is particularly cute.
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We go to the dining room and find the entire hotel deserted. The lights are turned on for us. The floor is flooded. This slight inconvenience is overlooked by the waiter who bows as he proffers a satin-covered menu of expensive French dishes (wow! $12 for a steak!) This storm lashes the entire country and we sit with our feet in water.