We got up pretty early, partially because of the hard bed, and decided to go take a look around. Right away the streets of Vientiane reminded me a lot of Hanoi. Uneven, sometimes broken, and lots of holes to be careful of. We walked along the main road, into the morning sun, and took in the sights. Lots of shops were still closed, some seemed permanently closed, and there were plenty of cars on the road going into the center of town. We walked past a beautiful old temple painted with bright colors and elaborate tile work. We missed a major fountain landmark, because it was surrounded by food stands being built for the New Year celebration coming up.
After walking past the presidential palace (no pictures allowed), we realized that we needed to get some local money. Lao kip is hard to get outside of Laos, so we tried our luck at an ATM. Kuniko was wary of trusting the ATMs in Laos, because she had heard that sometimes they’ll eat your card and leave you stuck without it. We tried an ATM connected to a bank that was open and had customers going in and out of it on the premise that if our card was eaten we could at least go bug the staff about it. Luckily the card went though fine and we had 600,000 kip to spend. Woo-hoo!
Our first stop for sightseeing was Wat Si Saket, a temple that was surrounded by a courtyard housing thousands of Buddhas. The Buddhas were big, small, silver, white, damaged, intact, you name it. It was a very visually striking stop, and it turned out to be my favorite place to visit during our stay.
As we walked through the city we passed what turned out to be a graveyard. Little shrines to memorialize people were built around a grassy area, with a temple nearby. Some shrines were simple, others covered with flashy silver, all with a tiny picture of the occupant (?) – very interesting. It reminded me of our visit to Moscow and the graveyard we visited there with some ostentatious gravestones.
We walked to the center of town to see the Lao version of the Arc D’Triomphe – a beautifully Asian version of the French landmark. It was kind of the anchor of the town, and the first day we just took a few pictures from a distance. Vientiane is a small capital, and we wanted to save some sightseeing for the other days.
One interesting point about Vientiane was that they had crosswalk signals on most intersections, but they only seemed to be working about half the time. Sometimes there were signals but no buttons, sometimes buttons but no signals. Sometimes nothing at all. We soon learned you should just walk out there and keep your head on a swivel. Just like in Vietnam, at first it seems like suicide and by the end of your first day it is second nature.
With all this walking we were getting a little hot and thirsty, so we stopped at a small cafe for a beer and a snack. Our eating strategy throughout the rest of the trip was to stop at many different places, and try just one or two things at each place. We never ordered big at any one place, hoping that instead we could try a greater variety of things and have less chance of eating too much at a bad restaurant.
Our first cafe was a cool little place. It was a shop that was open to the front, and they cooked in an open-air style. We sat on plastic chairs at a plastic table, and were able to order from a menu that thoughtfully included English. The ladies cooked the food for us, and cats wandered in and around eating scraps that the staff had left them. The food smelled great – they grilled some pork and then put it inside some French bread with cheese and lettuce. The sandwich itself wasn’t exactly like a bahn mi from Vietnam – it was sort of like a breakfast version. Not so exciting, but luckily the food improved from there. The cold beer was why we there – and it went down nicely. BeerLao, the major (and maybe only) beer available was typical of Southeast Asian beers – light and easy to drink.
Back at the hotel we swam a bit at our pool, but it was just a few degrees too cold. The weather was warm but not hot, and I guess that the pool would be much more popular in the summer. After swimming for a while we retired the swim trunks in Laos.
At lunch we hit our first really good food stand. It was a tiny restaurant with a family living and working there, and grandma and grandpa sat in the back babysitting the infants while the rest of the family prepared our food. We had a great bowl of pork noodles, with a broth rich in roasted garlic, lots of rice noodles, big chunks of tender pork, cilantro and hot peppers, too. We also ordered some fried rice that we laced with blazing hot peppers and fish sauce – my god it was spicy. We were both sweating pretty heavily after the meal, and luckily we could wash everything down with cold beer.
While we ate in open air restaurants we could watch things happening on the streets. People were cooking outside, cars drove past and stray dogs walked by now and then looking hopefully at the food. There were many scooters on the road, just like in Vietnam, and people often pulled over to buy some food to go. This was not a rich country, but everyone we met was friendly – and nobody pushed us to buy anything or begged for money. It felt safe there, and the longer I was there the safer I felt.
Kuniko really impressed me, too. Sometimes we went to places that were definitely on the dirty side. Japan is a very clean country and we are used to very sanitized conditions, but Kuniko will go wherever it takes to get a good meal. She doesn’t mind flies buzzing while we eat or stray dogs lying under table while we ate outside. She is just as adventuresome as I am when it comes to good food. I’m lucky to have someone like me who will stop at nothing to find a delicious experience.
In the evening we went down to the Mekong River and watched the sun setting on the other side, and then explored a night market that is set up every night. Most of the market was selling goods, which we weren’t really interested in, but some places sold food. We bought a bowl of noodles served at room temperature, with cubes of strange meat (almost black, but with a mild taste) and a liberal dose of cilantro, peanuts, chili peppers and chili sauce. But it wasn’t until we walked north to the food stands lining the streets near Ban Anou that we really got an eyeful of culture.
This street had food stands lined up along one side, and they were selling all kinds of interesting things. Mainly grilled meats and river fish (folded in half and grilled whole), but there were also curries, homemade sausages, eggs on skewers (in the shell – how did they do that?), a stand with ten different kinds of noodle stir fries, and plenty of flies buzzing around. Each stand used fans to keep the flies away, and some stands had little electric motors that rotated big strips of paper – kind of an automated fly dispersal device. The smell of cooking smoke, the lights and all the great food – it was like foodie heaven.
We were overwhelmed by all the choices that night and decided to visit again the next day. We did buy some spring rolls to take back to the hotel later and eat. On the way back to the hotel we decided to have one more little dinner stop, and we finally ate Lao “larb” – a sort of native dish involving pork, sticky rice, and salad greens and herbs. It was quite good – better than I expected – and we ate it with beer as we sat on a shaky table on the sidewalk in the warm evening. Below us two dogs were sleeping, and we knew better to shoo them away. They didn’t seem to mind – they seemed to appreciate the smell of the food but didn’t really make any efforts to get any.
So it was an eventful day in Vientiane, and we certainly ate our fill. Everything was affordable – we ate and drank all we wanted and still only spent around $5-7 a meal (for both of us).
