The wine was good, the atmosphere was great, the setting was perfect, it was shaping up to be a beautiful evening.  Suddenly everyone around us jumped up, abandoned their dinners, and ran for cover.  It took us just a second to realise what was happening before we also cleared the decks and ran for shelter.  The incredible speed of how it happened left us wet and laughing.  How did such a beautiful evening suddenly go so very south?  Well, given the time of year you might say it was very Vientiane. 

This is the rainy season but we’ve never seen rain come this hard and this fast, so fast that the people sitting outside in this beautiful restaurant in downtown Vientiane lost their drinks, their dinner and their dry clothes before they made the overhang around the bar.  The glasses of abandoned wine quickly filling with rain brought a tear to our eye and that says nothing for the instantly soggy laap gai and papaya salad at the table next to us. 

Vientiane might be one of the sleepiest capitals in the world (after at least Canberra) but it is easy to find its unique charms and special features on a long weekend from Bangkok.  It’s only a one hour flight to the capital of Laos, one of the poorest countries in the world and one that is – at least in part – locked in a bit of a time warp while the rest of the world races forward.

There is much to learn about Laos.  For instance, do you pronounce the ‘s’ in Laos or not. Well, it seems to be most correctly pronounced the way the French did it when they were the colonial overlords – you don’t pronounce the ‘s’ – it’s just Lao.  Now you know.

Either way Laos doesn’t have the profile, attractions or allure to draw in the tourist crowds. For one thing, it is landlocked so no sun-drenched islands.  It’s biggest historical moment is being bombed to hell and back in the Vietnam war. And then there’s the socialist military government thing which doesn’t work for foreign investors and kills the tourist dollars.

Laos is a single-party socialist republic, run by the Pathet Lao communist party after they came to power in 1975.  Half the economy is based on subsistence agriculture and the country’s biggest export is Beer Lao – an excellent drop.  Their per capita GDP is only about $1,200 per year, beating out only Myanmar in the region and only reaching a fifth of Thailand’s. 

Vientiane has a very small feel to it despite having about 700,000 people, perched on the banks of the mighty Mekong River across from the northern reaches of Thailand. There is still a hint of French influence in the bakeries and architecture but those colonial days are 60 years past. The ‘downtown’ area has a couple of high rise buildings (six stories!) being built but most of the town is low rise and low key. And you know it’s small scale when they boast of their first air conditioned shopping centre and you find it to be almost lifeless. 

 

We visited the four key attractions of the town – Pha That Luang, a beautiful golden stupa which the buddhist Lao people hold most dearest; Wat Si Saket, the oldest temple in Vientiane; Patuxai, the Arc de Triumphe-type monument with a strong Asian touch (and plenty of shopping inside as you climb to the top); and the Laos National Museum, dusty though it may be, because nobody knows enough about Laos and this is a good place to get the local perspective. 

Not satisfied with just Vientiane, and curious of what lies further afield, we hired a car for a full day excursion north to the popular young tourist spot of Vang Vieng.  The 160 km drive took us four hours, partly because the road was crap and partly because we kept stopping at the local markets and scenic spots to absorb all the sights and sounds. In one particular spot local fishermen were throwing out their huge nets at the base of a dam overflow to catch whatever small fish were too slow to get away.  The colourful scene kept us watching for almost half an hour. 

Vang Vieng is on the Nam Song River nestled amongst the dramatic limestone karst mountains with the interesting feature of an old runway built by the Americans during the Vietnam War running right through the middle of town (and now partly used as a popular market place). 

But Vang Vieng is now famous for tubing.  Not just any sort of tubing but tubing with style.  Operators in town will transport the large backpacker crowd upstream and send them adrift with the idea they stop at many of the lively (and loud) riverbank bars along the way.  These bars will do anything to attract the tubers as they float by – large signs of free beer, huge rope swings into the water, even a giant water slide that flings the willing victim high in the air before making a splash.  And helpful staff will throw long ropes out to catch the tubers and pull them in, lest the current may take them to another pub instead.

These are the moments when you need to pinch yourself.  In the middle of an extremely poor communist country young foreigners are irreverently having the time of their lives – but pouring big bucks into the needy economy at the same time.  And since Zach did exactly all this on his trip with friends two years ago we think it’s a great idea too. 

 

Not quite fitting the tubing demographic, we hired a long tail boat and motored upstream, past the fishermen, past the bars, past the rope swings and the water slides and the very loud music….and maybe wished just a little we could join them.  Instead we had a pleasant lunch overlooking the river and visited the impressive Tham Jang limestone cave near town before hitting the winding road back to Vientiane. 

Evenings in Vientiane can be fairly quiet unless the rain attacks you.  We enjoyed the food, which was very similar to Thai, and browsed the night markets more out of curiousity than intent.  But all conversations and negotiations were done in Thai instead of Lao, the local language, and the bill for our restaurant meal was quoted in four currencies – Laos Kip, Thai Baht, US Dollars and Euros.  For something different we paid in a combination of Kip and Baht.

The next day we managed to fit in another wat, Wat Ho Phra Keo,  which is significant in Thai history because it once housed the famous Emerald Buddha that eventually made its way to Bangkok and is now the star attraction in the Royal Palace complex.  We also did a bit of shopping (one cannot have too many Lao Beer tee shirts) and enjoyed our daily massage – because that’s the sort of town Vientiane is.  And to bookend the weekend we enjoyed the services of Lao Airlines, my new favourite airline for short flights. 

Vientiane is not the sort of town most people go out of their way for but we found it subtly alluring, at least for one long weekend.  There was history, there was culture, there was the great setting on the Mekong and there was a wonderful drive through the rice paddies and hills to Vang Vieng which was super.  If we ever come back this way again we will probably head straight into the countryside again but we’ve surprised ourselves with enjoying a very Vientiane weekend.