Vientiane

We have just spent a few days in Vientiane, capital city of Laos, enjoying some western food and fast internet access after our journey up through the south of Laos. Its a small place as capital city's go and it doesn't really have a city feel about it. Theres only a population of about 200,000, no tall buildings, the traffic isn't particularly busy and the only thing that tells you it is a capital are the prices, which are generally a bit higher than the rest of the country. Someone told us before we arrived that it was quite smelly here and they were completely accurate. The sewage system is pretty poor, lots of open holes with black liquid drifting along, just crying out for an unwary falang (foreigner) to fall in. Fairly regularly, a strong smell of egg assaults your senses and I do mean senses in the plural and No, its not me either! It does seem weird that the capital should have this problem, when the other 'city's' don't. You would think that they might spend some money on their sewage system as there are huge signs up everywhere reminding people not to litter, but who cares about litter when you are waist deep in a load of sh*t!!
Saying all that, its actually not a bad place, theres alot of French colonial architecture about, mixed in with the Wats, street food stalls and other Laos buildings. Its a really interesting mish-mash of styles to walk around and apart from the sewer problem, generally a very clean place too. We've been visiting some of the tourist sites today and two caught our attention. The first is called 'Buddha Park' and is actually about 25k outside of Vientiane and the clever ones amongst you will guess that it is A: a park and B: full of Buddha statues. This park was designed by a chap called Luang Po Bunleua Sulilat, a monk, who decided to fuse Hindu and Buddhist philosophy's into one big park of bizarre sculptures. The park was built in 1958 and all the statues are made from concrete, half of them look like they were built in 1658 though, due to the weathering on them.
There are some really interesting statues dotted about, a little different from the norm. One was like a massive apple that you could go into like a maggot and work your way up to the top of it, which is where this photo was taken of the park, quite a weird place. There was a gigantic reclining Buddha that you can see which was quite cool as well. I really liked the one in the photo with the suit on, a nice bit of contemporary Buddhist sculpture!
After the Buddha park, our tuc tuc drove us to the most famous structure in Laos, which is called Pha That Luang. Its a fairly big temple type place and looks pretty impressive from a distance, but up close, a little underwhelming and quite dirty. Still, the Laotians like it and thats all that matters. Apparently a piece of the Buddhas sternum rests within this temple, but as the temple has been destroyed, rebuilt, pillaged, looted and also the small question over the Buddhas actual existence, makes it fairly unlikely that the bone is still there (or ever was).