Bob's First Time to Laos

As soon as we landed at the Vientiane City airport I could feel that we had arrived at someplace unique. Unlike the Seoul and Bangkok airports through which our long journey took us, this airport had the refreshing character of not having hundreds of shiny, over-lit shops selling all manner of upscale and probably overpriced merchandise. It feels nice to be in a quiet peaceful little airport, one not disguised as a shopping mall.

We arrived during the hot season just before the Lao New Year and when we got off the plane we could feel the heat and humidity hit us in the face. Back home it’s early spring so this was a bit of a shock, but not an unwelcome one.

After passing through immigration we proceeded to where our checked baggage was already waiting, loaded it onto a free (!) luggage cart and whizzed through customs. We met our friends at the curb, loaded up and off we went.

As we drove to what will be our home for the next three weeks my head must have looked like I was watching a tennis match as I looked at all the sites that were passing by. My first impression was that this is not a city that grew according to some grand corporate or architectural plan. The city has a more natural organic feel to it. This is not your typical steel, glass-and-mirrors, high-tech, architectural-competition, zoning-approved city. It seems more like a place where necessities and perhaps the small and not so small dreams of countless people that all resulted in the streetscapes I was seeing. There are little business of all sorts mixed in with and many combined with places to live.

The road was buzzing with an eclectic bunch of various motor vehicles, from motorbikes and tuk tuks to, believe it or not, Hummers. Tuk tuks are something like a three-wheeled motorbike with a canopied place for up to six people to sit behind the driver. But if you load it up with all six it doesn’t go very well. The engine is small. Later in the trip I discover that they are a fun and cheap way to travel around when you get tired of walking.

Home Sweet Home
We arrived at our home, which like many homes here is surrounded by a gated concrete wall. Within sits a somewhat contemporary looking ranch-like house made out of concrete. Wood is very expensive so only the much older houses are made of wood.

Inside I found a very comfortable home with all of the amenities one would find in a home in the States. We even have air-conditioning and cable TV. And we have something most homes in the States don’t have, a live-in house keeper! I don’t think I ever saw her wash windows. And the floors are laid with teak parquet tiles and there’s a terrazzo patio leading to the entrance. It felt good to be inside this house.

The exterior is surrounded by a mixture of beautiful plantings and a fish pond with a fountain. It’s a place where it’s easy to be at peace. The neighborhood immediately surrounding our house is made up of a mixture of things. There are some houses that are similar to our concrete ranch. And there are wooden houses nearby that looked very old and seemed to have the build quality of a kid’s tree fort. There are also some small businesses nearby such as a hair salon, the Lao version of a convenience store and places to buy fruits, vegetables and live chickens. And there was a temple right nearby where, later in the trip, we would make offerings. I really liked the idea that you could walk to many of the things you need everyday. It felt like a real neighborhood.

Market This!
The morning market or Talat Sao in Vientiane city seemed to be the place where you go to get just about anything you want. They have everything from washing machines to Buddha keepsakes to stereo stuff and even a bank.

What we took advantage of here were the great deals on clothing. Knock-off Lacoste is just a couple of US dollars each. There are also high quality brand name garments that were made in Laos for big name brands, some of which somehow made to the market for us to buy for cheap.

On the streets around the Talat Sao are plenty of street vendors selling food and various handmade items. What I liked the most was the fresh, hot and sweet soy milk. Other tasty treats I liked were the roasted bananas and the steamed peanuts and something called roti, which is a thin pancake wrapped around bananas or eggs. These things I don’t find here in the states. Laos is indeed a different kind of place.

All of the foods I ate out or at my adopted home in Laos were very fresh and the taste confirmed this. No three thousand mile Caesar salads or rubbery, tasteless “injection molded” chicken here.

Temples and Monks
Get up early enough and you’ll get to see the monks from the local temples walking the streets accepting offerings of food from the local faithful. I found it to be a very peaceful and comforting site to see these orange robed, bare footed men calmly roaming the early-morning streets collecting bags of sticky rice.

Another way to make an offering is to show up at the local temple at lunch time with various dishes. This is what we did and is a much more personal and involving way to make an offering for a loved one who has passed on.

Get Splashed
It was very hot in Laos while we were there. Luckily our stay included the three days of the Lao New Year. This is a time for cleansing out the bad stuff to begin the New Year fresh.

Everyone cleans out their houses sort of like spring cleaning and clean their Buddhas by splashing water on them. And people walking the streets during this time also get splashed, very refreshing when it’s 100 degrees outside.

Not only does the Buddha at home get cleaned but so do the ones at the temples. On day two of the Loa New Year many people flock to the temples to do just that. In one day we watered the Buddhas at nine temples. It was kind of like a “temple crawl”.

All day and most of the night the streets are dotted with groups of people armed with water hoses, water balloons and “super soaker” water cannons ready to “attack” passing vehicles. And there were “mobile H2O attack vehicles”. These are pickup trucks that roam the streets armed with weapons of mass soakage. These were frequently seen rolling side-by-side attacking each other like a couple of pirate ships. .