Friday 8 October 2010

The vertical runway!

Hi All...

Our second day in Vientiane was pretty much another walking tour of the city. First stop was the Patuxai, Vientiane's Laos version of the Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the Lao who died in the pre-revolutionary wars. They started building it towards the end of the 60's using cement donated by the US to build a new airport!! (Like it!). It is therefore widely known in the city as the vertical runway! It is pretty gaudy with quite a few areas of over decoration, but has never actually been finished and officially opened as they ran out of money!!

Next stop was the Pha That Luang -  'another temple' Dean moaned, 'they all look the same' and to some extent he is correct, but they all have a different story to tell & everyone looks pleased when you make the effort to visit them. - although my cynical head might say its the 5,000Kip we pay to get in that they like more........




This is the most important temple in Laos & is seen as a symbol of both the Buddhist religion and Lao sovereignty which seems a little strange for a communist country, but hey ho whatever works......
Anyway as it was lunchtime and the place was over run with Chinese tours, we were actually restricted in what we could see (much to Deans relief) so we wondered the 4km back to the centre of town and had lunch in a little restaurant by the national stadium, which was the location of the SE Asia Games last year and is now being ripped down.........

Our final stop was the Lao National Museum, which was formerly known as the Lao Revolutionary Museum and has a real communist feel..................  It was interesting if a little one sided, but hey maybe that's because I am a little ...........

 So as this is our last night in Laos we are going out to sample some of Vientiane's finest food and enjoy our last Beer Lao.

Tomorrow we fly to Hanoi - we chickened out of the 30 hour + bus journey  mainly due to the horror stories of issues of being dumped at the border or in the middle of no where etc

So thanks for looking

Hugs

Sara




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