Vientiane, Laos-y

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Punning aside, I rather liked Laos and its capitol city. From what I’d read about the country, I’d expected that it would be more laid back and under-developed than Thailand. I caught glimpses of that mood, certainly, but my own travels were so condensed that my experience during ten days of traveling through both it and Thailand was speed—almost constant motion.

I rode in trains, buses, ferries, motor-boats, motor-bikes, scooters, motorized-rickshaws, truck-beds, and little carts. Countryside flashed by through windows or stretched away out the back of whatever truck-bed I was sitting in. And what a country it was: fields of rice, groves of durian, electric green hillsides, and little houses on stilts peppered along roadways.

The difference between Thailand and Laos, from my vantage, was stark. Thai towns were fairly industrialized: Multiple car and bike repair shops filled each town and the roads connecting these little hubs of activity were paved. Roads in Laos, by contrast, were dirt and, after even minor rainfall, mud. At one point on the way from Luang Prabang to Vientiane our bus found itself delayed four hours as a line of several dozen trucks and buses slowly threaded their way between several buses that, in attempting to navigate their way downhill had gone off the slippery road and into ditches on either side. At several points all of us traveling on board had to get off so that our bus could make it through a particularly sticky patch of mud. Most of this business happened well after midnight in pitch darkness.

The town I was coming from, Luang Prabang, had been the old colonial capitol. The scenic part of the city was contained on a small spit of land jutting out into the Mekong River. The buildings in this area were all done up in French colonial style –second-floor balconies, white paint. Barring the various places currently under construction or renovation, it all seemed to be decaying in a picturesque, tasteful manner. It was easy to imagine it playing muse to endless artful photos in upscale travel magazines. Add to that a large number of excellent cafes and bakeries and you had a place of overwhelming charm.

The entire spit was lined with outdoor restaurants where you could sit, drink fruit juice, and watch the river flow. Here and there were stairs leading down to the waterside. Men congregated around these points and touted boat tours to passersby. Early September was already the off-season, however, and they didn’t put much effort into their pitches. Mostly they just sat about or played football. (Even now the heat was fairly oppressive and I didn’t blame them for preferring to stay put.) With nightfall the air cooled and more well-to-do locals gathered at several restaurants to hold parties. These featured food and singing . . .Oh and the music! Especially in Laos, the music was an incredible mixture of warbling female vocals and groovy synth-beats--the sort of styles one hears in a Dengue Fever song.

Whether or not Vientiane had such little pleasures to reveal, I can’t say. I arrived in the morning and left in the evening. The ten hours I spent wandering around the town were not promising. Morning brought a monsoon rain, followed by (at least for a Seattleite) scorching heat. The city is located along the Mekong, but lacks the shady foliage-heavy vistas of Luang Prabang. Instead there is a long promenade with views of the muddy river. Turn around and you face a city “sky-line” of ugly buildings lacking in much charm. Were you actually living here, I honestly think it would be pleasant enough, but for a tourist like myself it offered little of interest.

The most striking thing about the city—or any comparable capitol city—was that this was the center of the national culture. TV, radio, printing, national theatre, movies, and so on all emanated from here. The pint-sized Bibliotheque Nacional would, doubtless, have been overseen by the “Laotian National Librarian.”

A nation this tiny gets tossed easily by the political tides—which goes towards accounting for the considerable Chinese presence. Used book stores had large Chinese sections. Several streets served Chinese food, and a far greater number of stores had bilingual signs. In some sense, Laos felt as “Chinese”-- and, perhaps, more so even--than some places within China’s own borders.

Preferring not to waste a night’s sleep and, consequently, a day’s time of conscious travel, I B-lined back to Bangkok and spent my final two days visiting different temples and eating various mystery-meats.

Generally, I hoped to snap an array of photos to show back home; one particular goal was to get some good shots of the red light district. After Chiang Mai, where I had (believe-it-or-not) accidentally stumbled onto the central brothel district within ten minutes of arrival and been shocked by its sheer, boisterous scale—bright lights, shouts, girls spilling of doorways—I expected Bangkok to be even more disarming.

My quest got largely sidetracked when I happened, equally accidentally, upon the Middle Eastern district of Bangkok; a series of interconnected side streets lined with kebab shops and nargile cafes. Wandering around here ate up all the time that I had to spare, and a ten-minute jaunt up and down Alley #3 (one of the famous red light streets, located across from a Starbucks) offered no opportunity for evocative photography.

Perhaps coming later might have presented something else, but the scene at dusk was rather bland. Girls sat about with bored looks on bar stools. Here and there groups of foreign men—mostly over fifty, with shaved bald heads—sat chatting with one another, largely ignoring the women next to them. Here and there foreigner couples sat together, their faces signaling the same apathy as the bar girls.

As I headed back to my place, it was getting dark and the neon lights were coming on. At night, Bangkok becomes its most beautiful. Lines of cars caught up in the traffic glint with reflected light, as do the murky canal waters that snake through the city.