Vientiane

Patuxai

I arrived in Vientiane two days ago and upon my arrival got a good feeling about this town. I booked into a great guest house and the place had a really nice feel to it. As I arrived after dark I didn’t explore too far but found a nice pub in the road adjacent to mine. It was showing ‘Wimbledon’ and during the course of the evening a number of people who I met in Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng who obviously had the same idea, turned up and we had a good time.

I went on a walking tour the next day as recommended in the guide book but quickly found this disappointing, most of the sights were foreign embassies or just buildings and not really of much interest.

View from Patuxai... Not bad

The biggest attraction in Vientiane is a building called Patuxai, which is basically an Arc de Triomphe done on the cheap. It was up in the 1960s and made entirely of concrete, even the marketing department of the Vientiane put a plaque on the wall describing it as ‘a monster of concrete’. The interior had not been decorated and the staircases were similar to the ones found in multi story car parks.

The only other recommended tour was of the ‘Lao textile museum’ which I didn’t really feel up for. It’s probably better than the ‘museum of counterfeit good’ in Bangkok (this really does exist) but I didn’t want to pay to find out.

Love the honestly!

Sadly Patuxai was the highlight of the sightseeing tour in Vientiane. There was not much else to see or do. I’ve checked the internet and the guide book but there is nothing. Not even a bar with a pool table. I met a number of people I knew later in the evening who had come to the same conclusion and had already booked tickets to move on out of town.

Tonight is my third and final night in Vientiane tonight and have booked a bus for 7pm tomorrow. I’m really not sure what I’m going to do with my day. The only thing I can think of is to find the mayor of Vientiane and present him with an award for ‘the dullest capital city in the world’. I could even chip away a piece of the concrete monster and get it mounded in some away to present him as a trophy.