Back to Indochina: Vientiane

Anyone who has read the Great Railway Bazaar (or for that matter browsed the most recent edition of the Lonely Planet) will be familiar with the way in which Paul Theroux once famously described Vientiane: 'the brothels are cleaner than the hotels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco and opium easier to find than a cold class of beer.' The cleanliness of the hotels is still up for debate but the heady days of post-colonial Vientiane in the 1970s is very much a thing of the past.

That isn't to say that Vientiane now lacks charm, but like Phnom Penh, the tourists have arrived and happy days are (economically anyway) here again. I had high hopes for Vientiane, visions of it having all of the charm of Phnom Penh but with fewer tourists. I was dead wrong. Vientiane, and for that matter Laos, is firmly on the Southeast Asia backpacking route. Fortunately - and in spite of the explosion of posh coffee shops, bars and cafes; the locals seem utterly unperturbed - even a bit aloof. Vientiane is so laid back and utterly unpretentious that at first it was quite inconceivable to me that this was a capital city of an entire country.

We set our sights on one of the few actual sites to see in Vientiane, Pha That Luang.

Pha That Luang is the most prominent national monument in Laos. The building seen today only dates from a French reconstruction in the 1930s, but there has supposedly been some form of temple present on the site from the 3rd century. Unfortunately, Laos has been invaded - a lot - so stuff gets destroyed - a lot.

Our first day was happily spent wandering Vientiane on foot and taking in the sites, mainly temples (interspersed with frequent Beer Lao beverage stops.)

We spent day two exploring some of the local markets a bit further afield and were richly rewarded. Not only did we return home with bundles of lovely Lao coffee and fresh green peppercorns, but the markets are almost completely devoid of tourists. All the usual South Asian fare was available: bananas, mangoes, rice, chillies of all shapes and sizes and a few oddities as well, courtesy of the French I suspect.

Vientiane has large ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese minorities, so Chinese New Year celebrations were in full swing. Some friendly 20-something Vietnamese - who either didn't speak a lick of English or were far too intoxicated to remember how to do so, stopped us on our market crawl and force-fed us beer and coconut sweets. I'm sure they would have had us all evening, but we were on a motorcycle and had to make a gracious escape. We also encountered some young kids doing a Lion Dance through the market.

One of the very best things about market shopping in Laos is that while there is indeed all the usual junk - Laos has an absolute abundance of really lovely (not made in China) textiles. The amount of silk is astounding and I resisted the urge to buy some absurdly exotic silk wall-hanging (a lesson learned the hard way some years ago in Morocco when I came back with two silk rugs for the home I still don't have.)

My only real complaint - and this is coming from someone who enjoyed a truly delicious steak (for a whopping $7) at a nice little Belgian bistro - is the food. Or more specifically, the lack of proper Lao food. Burgers, pizza, pasta, sushi are all available to no end - but, except for the odd noodle-soup stand, good local food is far too difficult to come by. There are a handful of street bbqs and a few upscale Lao-fusion restaurants, but on the whole the selection is rather disappointing. We did try a sausage from one of the street food stalls, it was delicious, but we both paid for it a few hours later.