Expensive bakeries. You know those times when all you want for breakfast is a two-dollar cup of coffee? Well this is the right town for that. Despite the price, though, I don't mind paying a little extra somethin' somethin' for real coffee. I've been downing sludge for the past three weeks since Nescafe has some kind of monopoly...everything is instant, even when it's advertised as authentic Lao coffee, something we had heard was going to be awesome.
A little version of the Arc du Triumphe. What Paris would be complete without one? Actually, what CITY would be? It's called Patuxai, and it's pretty impressive from far away. Unfortunately it gets uglier as you get closer, a fact that the locals are well aware of. There's even a little blurb talking about its construction, which refers to the structure as an unimpressive, concrete monster. Talk about national pride. Apparently it was built with concrete donated by the USA to built a new runway, but I guess the truck didn't make it all the way to the airport.
Wine shops galore. I think I stopped in four of them before finally selecting a nice vintage of no more than a few dollars. Yep. I'm pretty cheap, I guess, but didn't want to overspend considering I wasn't sure if we even had a way to open it. Turns out that the guesthouse lent us their corkscrew, so we moved the furniture outside to our posh fourth floor balcony and went to town. We had also purchased some fruit, a baguette, cheese, and some cold meat to make a dinner of it. We abolished the wine and emptied the minibar in no time flat (yes, a MINIbar, we're living it up in this town), before going in search of more beer. I'll save you the rest of the details, but we ended up spending some time with a local at a restaurant named Chen, and I asked some ladyboys if they were men. I already knew the answer.
Ahem, so let me get back on some kind of chronological track. Our first night in Vientiane consisted of me hanging out at a French restaurant which turned out to be waaay too upscale for a smelly backpacker like myself, and Dustin running around on some kind of drunken scavenger hunt called the Hash House Harriers. You can read about it, or ask him. I noticed pretty immediately that while all the servers at the restaurant have obviously been told about western etiquette, it isn't in their culture and so the application is less than subtle. Forced actually. For example: usually when you're ready to order at a restaurant, you close your menu nonchalantly and the waiter comes over. Here, I had figured out what I wanted, and closed the menu only to be pounced on my people trying to take my order. They'd been circling like hawks, waiting for the bat-signal I guess.
But my run in with high society didn't end there. I was looking to get a foot massage at some point, so stopped into this little parlour on the corner near where we're staying. As soon as I opened the door, everyone in the lobby immmediately stood up and bowed to me! Pretty nice, I thought. I haven't decided how I want to abuse the system yet, but I think I'd like to go in and out the door until they stop standing and just look at me.
The next day we saw alot of the main touristy things, including Patuxai and Pha That Luang, the national monument to concrete and gold paint. I was a little surpried that for such an iconic temple, it wasn't more impressive or better maintained. But it was nonetheless incredible to see, in person, the same thing that's been starting at me from the cover of my guidebook for ten months.
We've also been spending a fair bit of time wandering, in true Taylor and Dustin fashion, through streets, shops, and the huge market in the centre of town called Talat Sao. It isn't as big as the one in Bangkok, certainly, but pretty huge nonetheless, and filled to the brim with silk scarves, cell phones and opium pipes. Man, some of those pipes are so amazing that both Dust and I have thought about taking up opium smoking, so we'd have a reason to buy one! I also had to fight off the urge to buy a cellphone. It's good I've got someone to talk some sense into me.
So I'll leave you with that. Next stop, CAMBODIA, and with it our return to the world of budget guesthouses and cheap food. Well that is, if we make it. Lao Airlines has the worst safety record in the world, I think, but has really stepped up since the new millenium. God save the Queen.
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