Wat Si Saket
The hiatus in blogging has been because for the past 4 days, I’ve been playing host to someone else, though I still have much to figure out here myself. My college friend Andrew, who is doing Princeton-in-Asia in Singapore, decided to come see Vientiane from Tuesday to Saturday. His first introduction to Vientiane was trying to follow me across the city on bicycle at night, from one PiA house to the other. This was only my second time biking in the city and my first without someone to follow, but it went relatively well. Near-death experiences were few, and when I got lost, I soon found my way again without having to stop. We spent the next few days biking everywhere and my understanding of the layout of the city, as well as its traffic patterns, has improved exponentially. One step closer to being ready for a motorbike…which will be incredible, because I had no idea until now just how much you can sweat when biking in 90 degree weather, with the sun beating down incessantly. The answer is a lot. I think there have been several days in which my hair has never dried at all, between showers and sweat.
Tat Luang
I am far from establishing a routine here, but I get the sense that my lifestyle will waver between typically ex-pat and Lao. The first night Andrew arrived, we experienced some of both. We got to the PiA apartment where I’ve been staying and discovered a gecko hanging from the threshold of the kitchen. Apparently when they die, they take awhile to fall because their hands are so sticky. This one was dangling by a couple of fingers. From there, we checked out the night market, whose offerings include the ubiquitous generic grilled meat (more on how this smell will forever remind me of Laos at another time), along with skewered frogs, various chicken body parts, gelatinous blood, and steamed fetal goose eggs. From there we visited the other side of Lao culture, the brand-new Star nightclub and karaoke bar, where we had bottle service, the private VIP karaoke room, and a run-in with a has-been Lao rockstar (who announced the arrival of the falang—foreigners—over the loudspeaker). Some of my Australian coworkers have lived in Vientiane for several years and have an in-depth knowledge of the hot spots of the Lao “high-so” (upper-class Lao), like this one. It’s made the transition so much easier to have so many different guides from the moment I arrived.
I guess there’s a reason “sunset on the Mekong” is iconic.
For the next days of Andrew’s visit we did some of the typical tourist activities in Vientiane (which admittedly are few) that my other friends here have seen long-ago. Watching the sunset over the Mekong while drinking a Beerlao was obviously one stop, since this is one of the only Vientiane tourist clichés, found in every backpackers’ guide. We sat for almost two hours and spent only $2 (one beer each), without getting hassled by the waiter once. It’s just not done here, and everytime I go out, I find myself appreciating the fact that I can relax without getting asked “how everything is.” The next day, we hit the major temples: Wat Si Saket, which has an enormous collection of differently-sized Buddha statues, and the iconic golden Pha Tat Luang. Both were fascinating, though I understood so little of the significance of what we saw there. Luckily, I have the rest of the year to find out. We also climbed to the top of Patuxi, Vientiane’s version of the arc de triomphe, which lived up to the self-deprecating description at its base that admits: “From a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete.” This is one monument that is definitely better viewed from afar, since it does impress when just driving past, especially at night.
Patuxai
Now I have a few more days to move to a new house (aside from touristing, I have been busy dealing with housing and just signed a lease—more on this in a future post), and finish getting oriented as best I can before teachers’ workshops and the start of the new term next week.