C & C globetrotting around the world…

Vientiane, the capital of Laos is a town of 230,000 inhabitants and its name means “Sandalwood City”. Throughout history it was invaded by the Siamese, the Vietnamese, the Khmer and the Burmese. It was settled by the French as an important hub of Indochina, but the town never grew into a bustling city like Saigon. We used this opportunity to catch up on sleep. It feels so good to be able to sleep in, not be woken up by crowing roosters! It was an unusual Christmas for us away from home, but we still pampered ourselves with delicious food and relaxing massages. The influence of the French is still present with some colonial villas and many French restaurants, as well as stands selling baguette everywhere. In the 1960’s, Vientiane was full of CIA agents and Russian spies. After 1975, Pathet Lao (the revolutionary Communist movement) sent many people off to re-education camps, but about 10% of the population (mainly educated people) fled to Thailand.

During our stay here we visited the Wat Si Saket, the oldest temple in Vientiane. The interior walls of the cloister have many small niches and contain over 2,000 Buddha statues made of wood and copper. Underneath these niches are 300 larger standing or seated Buddhas dating from the 15^th to the 19^th century. The temple itself is pretty small, but interesting with many old frescoes. We also visited the Patuxai, an Arc de Triomphe replica, but with more elaborate carvings. It commemorates the Lao who died in pre-revolutionary wars and was built with cement donated by the US for the construction of a new airport. Some people call it the “vertical runway”. We climbed to the top where you get a 360 degree view of Vientiane. The city is really flat, so you can see pretty far. From there we walked to Pha That Luang, the most important religious national monument in Laos. It is a golden stupa and a symbol of both Buddhist religion and Lao sovereignty. Legend has is that some missionaries from India built a stupa here in the 3^rd century BC to enclose a piece of Buddha’s breastbone. The current building dates to the 16^th century AD built by King Setthathirat (whose statue is in front of the That) and is surrounded by some Wats and other monastic buildings. It looks nice, but we were disappointed that you can only walk around it (access to go up is closed), so there is nothing else to see.

We found some French bakeries that made heavenly pastries and cakes, so each day we had a piece of these delicious creations. It was great to have “Kaffee&Kuchen”, even if not home-made. There was a French restaurant right next to our hotel, so we went there for 2 meals as well, and it was great. Usually we like to eat the local food, but we couldn’t say “No” to tasty but cheap French food. There are lots of French expats in Vientiane, so the restaurants are abundant to cater to them. We can’t complain. Lao food is also not very diverse we find, with many restaurants serving variations of fried rice and fried noodles, so we welcomed the alternative of Western food. One dinner we went to Makphet, a restaurant run by “Friends International”, like the one in Phnom Penh. It trains former street children to enter the restaurant and serves great modern-style Lao food. We had a nice evening with great dishes while supporting a good cause. Our Christmas Eve dinner was unconventional this year since we had a Lao version of BBQ/Raclette/Fondue. It was good, but we missed the cabbage rolls… We spent 2 days with some Couchsurfers and the guy was a chef in a fancy French restaurant, so on Christmas he brought home a “buche glacee” for dessert.

Even if we are far away, Santa was still able to find us. He gave us a Spa package each. It included a 1-hr Lao body massage (relieves pressure points and stretches the muscles), then a 1-hr herbal massage where they apply bundles of steamed aroma-therapeutic herbs to your muscles and massage you with them and finish off with a neck and shoulders massage for half an hour. We were so relax when we came out of there, it was incredible. Thanks Santa!

On December 25^th, we went to the Catholic church for Christmas mass, where there was a Vietnamese wedding going on. As soon as the wedding finished, we went up to some sisters to say Hello, Merry Christmas and to see if the mass was still being held. They were happy to see us and asked us if we wanted to sing in the Christmas choir. So we did. There were Lao kids, the nuns and us. It was nice and it finally felt like Christmas.