One Night Stand

Yes, and by that I mean Ali and I had what we call our one night stand with the Mixot Guesthouse in Vientiane. Everyone has their preferences for accomodation but we learned that $3/night/person will get you a room with a shaky ceiling fan (we made a bet who it would fall on at night), scratchy sheets, rotting walls, and shared bathrooms where the toilets didn't flush half the time. I know you are all so proud of us, and now that we survived the night, we can laugh about it over some Tiger beer.

But focusing on the finer things that Vientiane had to offer, we spent this morning sightseeing. We started out in That Louang, an immense golden stupa that represents Laos's most important religious building and serves as its national symbol. The main spire is surrounded by shorter spikier stupas and lotus petals, which all serve a special Buddhist meaning. This stupa is surrounded by other various Khmer temples and since we beat the usual tourist rush, we were able to enjoy these landmarks peacefully. Then we took a tuk-tuk to Wat Sisaket, the oldest wat in Vientiane built in the early 1820s and is the only wat to survive the Siamese invasion ten years later. When you look at this temple, you can tell that it has been through a lot. The coloring is faded and it no longer has that gilded shine that all the other wats in Vientiane have. The most interesting part about this wat was its collection of Buddha statues surrounding the wat and the little niches covering the walls of the temple containing two tiny Buddha statues in each niche. We passed by the glorious Presidential Palace and headed to our last destination, the National Museum. Ali and I were definitely moved by the information and photographs on the Lao Nationalist Movement, and have had some intense discussion about American foreign policy ever since (more discussed by Ali, I am still taking this all in).

We said goodbye to Vientiane as we flew over to Hanoi. From what we have seen already, I can say that Hanoi is a busier, crazier city and not as laid back as some guidebooks suggest. We can already see the differences between Vietnam and Laos in terms of climate and vegetation but we are excited about spending the next week here.

Sorry still no pictures, I uploaded them but this computer freezes everytime I try and add an image here. I'll try again soon!