Vientiane

We have a rough semblance of a plan for this trip, but we’re kinda making it up as we go. It’s the first time that we’ve been travelling and haven’t had a time constraint. If we want to stay a day or two longer in a place we like, such as Hoi An, we do. It’s a nice luxury to have. Anyways, we were planning on taking that long 30-hour bus ride from Sapa into Laos, but were gonna split it up over 2 or 3 days. Still, it sounded unbearable. In the end we’re glad we decided to fly, since this put us in Vientiane and thus in a better position to do a loop through Laos into Northern Thailand. We weren’t expecting much of Vientiane, and it did not disappoint. Actually it wasn’t bad, there just isn’t much to see. It’s wonderfully quiet for a city in Southeast Asia, especially considering it is a capital. If you don’t know much about Laos, you now know the capital is Vientiane. In English, it is actually pronounced "Laos" with the s, much to my dismay (I've always thought you were supposed to drop the s and I'm having a hard time adjusting). It’s full name is Lao PDR for People’s Democratic Republic. I’m sure a quick google search would explain this to me, since Laos is a communist country, but I’m currently on a boat.

We spent just a couple nights in Vientiane, enjoying the empty sidewalks and a few Western comforts. For such a small city, it seems to have a large expat population. There were Swedish and Italian pizza places, Scandinavian bakeries, and western-style coffee shops. We indulged in a few. Our first night we met back up with our friend Susie, who had taken that horror 30-hour bus ride and was traveling the other way through Laos but was flying back to Switzerland the next morning. We met up for dinner, she shared some tips for Laos, and we said goodbye. It's always strange meeting people while traveling, who you consider new friends but you'll probably never see again. Lao food seems to be kinda Thai-lite with some standard Asian dishes also available. There are curries, but usually only red or green (there’s lots more in Thailand). They have the green papaya salad we love in Thailand, but it tastes much fishier. If all else fails, every restaurant has fried rice or a wide variety of stir-fried veggies/mean/sauce combinations.

Bringing in food for the night market

Grilled fish from the Mekong

It’s been so hot on this trip that we haven’t been able to exercise, or at least that’s our excuse. We’ve looked at getting day passes to gyms in some of the larger cities, but they are always at least $20 each. So, we walk everywhere. We met a Kiwi family in Vietnam where the mom wears a Fitbit wristband. She said they average at least 10 miles a day, and I believe it. I’m sure we walked at least that far in our one full day in Vientiane, first to something called Patuxai, or the Victory Gate. Exactly what it celebrates the victory of, I am not sure. It’s a huge concrete monument similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (and just a bit higher to trump the French). It had nice views over the city from the top, but the best part was the sign at the bottom that calls it “a monster of concrete.” Apparently the concrete was donated by the US to build a new airport and they built that instead.

Patuxai - good from afar, but...

Pha That Luang is the national symbol of Laos – a big golden stupa, kinda like a round pyramid. Somehow we managed to time it to show up during the one hour they are closed for lunch, but we could still take our pictures and get out of there. It was surprisingly dirty considering it’s their national symbol. Somebody get a pressure washer.

The most memorable visit we made in Vientiane was at a place called the COPE Visitor Center. COPE stands for Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise, and it’s not a happy place. Flash back to the 60’s during the Vietnam War. The North was using Laos as a supply route to get supplies to the Viet Cong in the south. Despite signing a treaty to not have any military presence in Laos, the US quickly set up a secret base somewhere in the north of Laos and proceeded to bomb the crap out of Laos. In over 580,000 bombing missions (yes, you read that right), over 2 million tons of explosives were dropped on a country that wasn’t even in the war. Laos is sadly the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita. The targets would have been the Communist Vietnamese, but as you can guess there is always collateral damage. Many innocent Laotians were killed or lost everything they had when their homes were destroyed. Horrible as that is, it gets worse. A lot of these bombs being dropped were cluster bombs, which are big bombs that open up in mid-air and release lots of little bombs (called “bombies” here) that scatter over a larger range. The problem with cluster bombs (or, one of the problems) is that they don’t always go off. Of the 270 million bombies dropped on Laos, 30% failed to detonate. That means 80 million of these things are sitting on the ground waiting for some unsuspecting person to eventually stumble across it. Even now, 40 years later, 100 people still die every year because of these. 40% of those are children. So now the good news, if you can call it that. The positive news maybe. Luckily there are good people in this world that are trying to help, cue COPE. One problem that COPE is helping with is supporting the people who are injured by unexploded ordinance (UXO). About two thirds of people in UXO accidents don’t die, but they will amost surely lose at least one limb. So, COPE makes prosthetic limbs for these people and also helps modify their homes for their new handicaps. The BIG problem facing Laos is removing all the UXO from the country. As you can guess, this is a very slow and extremely dangerous process. Pretty amazing people that sign up for a job like that. Our visit was a sobering one, to say the least. If you want to help out, check out the COPE webpage (www.copelaos.org) and consider making a donation. If any of you were planning to give me a gift in the future, feel free to donate to COPE instead.

Okay, sometimes we do take a tuik tuik, or "jumbo" as the big ones are called here

It sometimes feels strange or out-of-place to have such a somber experience while traveling. Traveling is supposed to be fun! As much as I’d like to bury my head in the sand and skip visits like we had at COPE, or had in Cambodia years ago, I’m very glad we got to experience it. If for nothing else, it’s important to see the real effects of war, still very real 40 years later. And again, I’m just thankful I don’t have to experience it first hand.