Travelling Alixon : Vientiane: Feels like coming home

Dragon gate

Vientiane is a relaxed and easy town, with the added enjoyment that I’ve been there so often it feels very familiar: it’s a welcome break from India! Vientiane is also the only place I’ve ever known that used to have a fast food restaurant (a KFC) but which closed due to lack of custom. The food here is so good, and varied, and cheap, that it’s easy to see why it wasn’t popular.

There are a lot of street plants but, for some reason, they’re all in pots. The larger and older ones must be very pot bound! This isn’t only the case in Vientiane – it also happens in Savannakhet and Luang Prabang that I’ve seen – but I think it’s more obvious here as there are fewer dirt streets. Here the pots sit directly on top of the asphalt. I guess in the wet season the rain comes down pretty heavily - maybe there's too much erosion if the plants aren't in pots?

Vientiane also has an idiosyncratic line in power lines along the street. It seems like every time someone needs a new connection, or an existing one breaks, they tie a new power line in amongst all the old ones. At this point it seems like the only option – I have no idea how anyone could figure out which one to repair amongst so many!

Many buildings take up the whole block that they’re on...but that’s not always very wide!

There is lots of construction underway throughout Vientiane. Opposite the hotel I stay in work on a building has progressed since I was last here, in early December 2014. It’s six stories high and there are three winches, each attached to a small electric motor. To get bricks, cement and other materials up the loads are put into a wire basket or a wheelbarrow which is hooked onto a metal chain and winched up by the motor. At the sixth (fifth, fourth...) floor a workman leans out (holding on to the building where possible!), grabs the wheelbarrow and hauls it in. It’s certainly dangerous work, in addition to the regular hazards on a building site. I think the daily rate for labourers is pretty similar to that for transplanting in the wet season – about 50,000-70,000 kip/day, or around AUD $10/day.

Construction, Dec 14: top two floors not yet concreted in

Construction, Jan 2015: all floors concreted in, lots of bricks added!

Workmen loading wheelbarrows with bricks to be lifted up

Lao women who work for the government or in business wear a sin: a tube of silk or sometimes cotton with a decorative bottom border. The sin is often worn with a tailored blouse out of a thicker cotton or silk. Schoolgirls wear a dark, fairly simple, sin and white blouse, while boys wear dark trousers and a white shirt. I have a few sin: I wear them when I work with my government-employed colleagues or when I give a presentation. According to one of my colleagues (spoken when he was severely hung over!) one of my sins in particular is “very falang” (i.e. western) in design. I guess that’s why it appealed to me – it still looks ‘very Lao’ to me!!

I bought most of my sin at the morning market, where the raw material is sold in sin-lengths. You then take the fabric to a tailor to get it lined and a waistband, darts and a couple of hooks and eyes added to fit you.

(Very hard to take a self portrait of a skirt in a hotel with a small mirror!)

The morning market is the place to start looking for just about anything in Vientiane, from a haircut to devotional offerings, from crystals to souvenirs, herbal medicines, stationary, washing machines, and everything in between!!