We landed on Sunday evening (the 30th) and made it into the country despite Bethany not having a photo for her visa-on-arrival (extra fee paid: US$1).
On Monday morning, New Year's Eve, we made it to the National Museum. Remember that the Lao Democratic People's Republic is still a one-party state that is (at a minimum) communist. The museum promised to explain how the revolutionary Pathet Lao fought bravely and successfully against US imperialists and their puppets. The upstairs section of the museum delivered, in the form of multiple black-and-white photos and newspaper captions on the armed struggle. The downstairs section on pre-history, however, was far more interesting.
On Monday afternoon, we learned just how manageable Vientiane is. We were able to take in a religious temple and museum and a five-hour nap and still have time for dinner. We walked to almost all the sites. The traffic isn't too bad, and the streets aren't too wide. We were also not the targets of a single sales pitch!
That being said, Vientiane is moderately interesting but the national cuisine is not something that we'll actively seek out back in the States. They serve dishes with lots of herbs (primarily cilantro and Thai basil, the queen of all basils) but with pretty low-quality meat (ground chicken, chewy beef) and not too many features.
After dinner, we walked back to the museum (only three blocks away) to see the happenings at the New Year's Eve Party at the BeerLao Music Zone, in the plaza next to the National Culture Hall.
Crowds of young things dressed in not too much arrived on motorbikes to park under the national and hammer-and-sickle flags in the national museum parking lot and then walk across the street to the BeerLao Music Zone. Particularly noteworthy were single, unaccompanied females arriving on their own bikes; we weren't in conservative majority-Muslim Southeast Asia anymore, Toto. It was hard to tell whether we were watching the children of the elite or just of the middle-class; there were lots of them. Their numbers shouldn't have surprised us; the median age in Laos is about 19 years old.
At some hour, a live band of Lao twentysomethings took the stage to perform covers of three songs, with an interpretation that might be described as "heavy rock":
Adele's "Rolling in the Deep"
Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting"
Bruno Mars's "Lazy Song"
They then played one song in Lao that the audience helped sing, and left the stage in favor of pre-recorded techno.
We didn't stay around for midnight, because we are boring old white people.
Vientiane and most of Laos are changing rapidly enough to outpace the Lonely Planet guide we brought. The buses to Buddha Park, the most awesome and bizarre Buddhist statue park we've ever visited, went not-too-inconveniently but in a manner not described in the book.
After two days of Vientiane, we pretty much ran out of sites in-town to see. We headed over to Phonsavan (the capital of Xieng Khuoang Province) to see the Plain of Jars and learn more about the massive amount of bombs secretly dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War.
We have odd interests.
Below are more photos of Buddhist temples in Vientiane. The short history is that the Lao communists tried to wean the population away from Buddhism when they finally took power in 1975, but that it didn't take.
The city is awash in naga statues, as the Naga is the protector of Vientiane and Laos. Adam is interested in taking one home. Perhaps we could replace our staircase railing with a wooden naga.
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