This, I realise as I'm lying here on this hard mattress, is my first time in a hostel dorm since my small backpacking trip in Europe way back in 2005. If I'm not wrong, that last hostel was in Amsterdam. Oh my lordy, I just calculated, I was 18.
I also remember how much I hate the top bunk.
One of the guys from my dorm shows me where I can rent a bike and we decide to spend the day together riding about. He's travelling by himself too, so we're too lonely travellers, coasting through the rather empty wide streets of Vientiane. His name is France, and he's from Borneo, Indonesia (later, I ask him what he thinks about his country's invasion of East Timor, of which, it turns out, he has never heard).
It's interesting to note the demographics of backpackers, one can see which countries has a growing middle class with the expendable income to travel. I notice more Indian travellers, MANY South Koreans, Chinese, Israelis, Japanese, and, interestingly, few Australians (although, they may be all concentrated in Europe).
France and I stop and climb the Patuxai gate. The city is quiet, very little traffic, one way streets, many Buddhist temples, and gigantic, practically empty, government buildings
Vientiane, with its big statues of King Sisavong Vong, unnecessarily huge white government buildings, perfectly manicured gardens and parks, very little traffic and people, communist flags, and a stark contrast between opulence and near-poverty, reminds me of the brief time I spent in Belarus and Kharkov, Ukraine; two places not too far removed from the aesthetics of Soviet Russia.
This city, despite there being very little to do here, has a quaint atmosphere to it: a slight whiff of Social Realism, muddled with French colonial 'charm' (as the guidebooks put it), and its own unique brand of South East Asian-ness.
We soon realise there's not much to see in Vientiane after checking out a few of temples and riding along the bank of the Mekong which is very low and muddy now in what is now the dry season.
In the evening, after an eventful half-hour of dropping off our rental bikes (the bike man is missing so his neighbours break into his safe for our bond money), France and I walk to the riverside to drink a beer on the bank of the Mekong as the sun sets.
My fucking ankle is hurting, aching nearly all the time, from all this walking in thongs. It' throbbing at the moment, and I marvel at how slow a joint heals. To think, nearly eight months have passed since I broke it.
The sun, the big red sun, sinks into Thailand on the other side of the Mekong. Now, a sunset pretty much anywhere is worth the time spent watching it, but this, this sunset, this sun, steeped in the haze of 750,000 Laotians cooking dinner with wood-fired stoves, this sunset is something I've never seen the likes of. The orb is giant, it's big and consuming, and the whole riverside, its people and things, gazeat this daily ritual. It floats, and sinks into the murk, and disappears into Thailand, my next country.
Then the riverside evening line-dancing work-outs start. We walk past the line-dancers, get some street food, I buy a cheap Casio rip-off watch (which I'm delighted about), and, realising there's not much else to do here, funnily, in the capital of Laos, we head back to the hostel.
There is one detour. We notice searchlights scouring the night sky, and follow the source. We find a big disco, held in the grounds of the National Culture Hall. This is a purely local affair, with DJs, BeerLao branding on every square inch available, and a curious merging of West and East, loud and restrained, Laotian and a copy-of-a-copy of Western values.
Tomorrow, North.
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| Patuxai gate |
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| A preposterously large government building |
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| Through the gate's window |
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| Pha That Luang |
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| Reclining Buddha |
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| Never the same through the lens |
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