After our two day trek we returned for one more night in Nong Khiaw.  Chatting with Dan over dinner that night it suddenly hit me: I was ready for a city.  The thing about traveling in Southeast Asia is that so many of the popular tourist towns (such as Hoi An, Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang) feel like they’re designed for visitors.  In our experience it’s in the bigger cities that you feel like you can actually blend in a bit and start to get a sense for what life is actually like in a given country.

As I mentioned previously, Laos is the least urban of the Southeast Asian nations.  Therefore, its capital city of Vientiane is relatively small and laid back.  But it is a city and it was just what we needed at this point in our trip.

In order to get from Nong Khiaw to Vientiane we had to take another overnight bus ride.  For this one the two of us were squeezed into a little bunk, smaller than a twin bed.  I could only be thankful that I was traveling with Dan and didn’t have to bunk up with a stranger for the whole ride.  Needless to say we didn’t sleep much that night.

That was fine though because when we got to Vientiane we had five days to hang out with very few plans.

Vientiane lacks Luang Prabang’s charming French country vibe but it does have some beautiful colonial architecture.

Laos’s capital is fairly lacking when it comes to sights to see and, therefore, is not a particularly popular stop for backpackers.  However, we managed to entertain ourselves just fine.  Here are some of the highlights.

The Food

The food we had in Vientiane was some of the best of our trip.  One of the nice things about it not being a huge tourist hub was that we could easily find delicious local restaurants rather than being funneled toward places designed for visitors.

One of our favorite spots that we went back to several times was Kung’s Cafe Lao.  This place served sticky rice pancakes with fresh mango folded inside. They were out-of-this-world good and Dan and I have been discussing how to make them ever since.  I got mine with a blended coconut coffee – a cold, slightly sweet, creamy and delicious treat that I could easily drink every day.

Another favorite spot was Viengsavanh which basically served one Vietnamese dish: nem nuong.  Travelfish describes nem nuong as delicious, filling, cheap and highly addictive – all true.  It is basically pork meatballs served with rice paper, herbs, lettuce and veggies that you make into a wrap and dunk in some seriously amazing chili peanut sauce.  This was another restaurant we had to try more than once.

In addition to these two places other favorites included Lao Kitchen, where we had the best duck larb of our trip and House of Fruit Shakes, where we stopped for some amazingly fresh mango passion fruit smoothies.

Buddha Park

About an hour bus ride outside of Vientiane is one of the area’s most bizarre attractions.  Started in 1958 by a priest trying to integrate the tenets of Buddhism and Hinduism, the park is basically a sculpture garden filled with highly stylized statues of figures from both religions.

We started by climbing in and up the giant pumpkin situated near the entrance of the park.

The interior of the pumpkin is navigated via narrow passageways from which you can look into its center filled with strange diorama-like scenes.

From there we explored the rest of the park, stopping to take photos of the many creatures depicted throughout.

The park lacked the spiritual serenity of many of the religious monuments we visited but it was cheap, easy to get to and provided a totally fun way to spend the afternoon.

Patuxai

Dominating one of Vientiane’s main thoroughfares is its very own ‘Arc de Triomphe’, the Patuxai monument.

The Patuxai appears grand from a distance but I have to admit that we found it more strange than impressive.  First of all, on the inside of one of the columns hangs this plaque:

Clearly the Laotians are not too proud of this monument to their independence from France.  It seemed so weird to me to call it a ‘monster of concrete’ as part of its official description!  They clearly want to keep expectations low.

Despite this less than glowing introduction, we purchased tickets to go up to the top.  The inside is filled with stalls selling the kitschiest souvenirs you can imagine.  Many of them were covered with layers of dust and looked like they had been sitting there unsold for years.

The actual view from the top was nice enough and certainly worth the few cents we’d paid to get there.

Vientiane is probably not a city we would have visited on a shorter trip but I’m glad we got a chance to experience it.  The food was great, the sightseeing was fun but low pressure and it offered the perfect way to ease back into the urban side of Southeast Asia.