Laos: Vientiane

Continuing on with my southeast Asia backpacking trip, we travel to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos.

We drive another 4 hours in our bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiane. As we enter the capital, our local tour guide shows us the empty airport. I wonder why we didn’t just fly.

Acommodations

Dao Savanh Hotel

We stay in a cute little hotel called the Dao Savanh Hotel. It is quite nice so it is a shame we are only here for one night. I think our room is bigger than the other Contiki members because Julianna and I signed up together. Everyone else is assigned to roommates into single beds.

The hotel didn’t have wifi though, which makes it terrible.

Things to do

Arc de Triomphe / Patuxai 

As part of our little city tour upon arriving to Vientiane, we visit the Patuxai, which highly resembles the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It’s actually a war monument representing Laos’s independence from France.

The contiki includes our ticket to go inside/walk up the Patuxai. We walk up 6 flights of stairs to the top and take a look at the view below. It is quite cramped and the 5th floor is like a mini street market with tourist goodies (way overpriced, do not buy).

Some more photos of our city tour:

COPE Support and rehab centre

Okay so if you know me in real life you’ll know I am not the most charitable person. When I first saw COPE on the Contiki itinerary, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a little. I am here for a vacation, not to volunteer – which sounds terrible and I am a terrible person but this is my blog so if you’re offended, you can leave.

Personally, I would’ve liked to explore more of Vientiane. But I thought oh well, I’ll just go and see what happens. And I have to say, this whole city tour and ending it with COPE is very eye-opening for me.

Before arriving at COPE, our local tour guide tells us a little bit about Laos history. This is the first time in our Contiki so far where we actually learn about a country’s history and Laos’s history is not a nice one.

Laos is the most bombed country in the world ever. This fact surprised me because I feel like I would’ve known about Laos if this is the case. I feel like more people would know about this, but the reality is that most people don’t. This is called the secret war.

From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. 

Legacies of war

Laos was bombed heavily by USA during the Vietnam war. They did this in collaboration with the Royal Lao Government against the Pathet Lao, a communist group associated with Vietnam’s communist party. This fact alone already shows a shitty time in history because the Laos government gave the US permission to bomb their country.

The USA was also trying to stop traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which crossed into Laos from Vietnam and was used to transport supplies for the war effort.

This secret war was kept a secret from most Americans and government. It was only found out after the war was over.

So that’s already pretty shitty right? It gets worse. There are millions of cluster bombs that were dropped but not activated even to today. Laotians living in rural areas do not have the knowledge to dismantle these cluster bombs safely and thus risk their lives when it is farming season. Many people have lost their lives or parts of their body by stepping on cluster bombs left from the secret war.

There are efforts towards the removal of these bombs and funding from the US, but we visited the COPE center, which was a rehab center to help victims of cluster bombs.

The center was a large campus and when we were walking into the center, we saw a basketball arena where rehab patients were happily playing. All of them had some sort of prosthetic leg or arm.

Together as a Contiki group, we donated around $200 USD which is enough for 2 prosthetic legs.

Khop Chai Deu

After quite a heavy day, we eat dinner at a restaurant our Contiki guide recommended, Khop Chai Deu. It is slightly more upscale where laap costs more than $5 USD. Laap is a signature Laos dish consisting of sticky rice and some sort of minced meat or fish.

The live entertainment is wonderful. It is a duo – two teenage/young boys singing and playing the guitar. We enjoy their music along with our giant Laos beers.

SKY bar

Julianna, 2 of our Contiki friends and I visit a rooftop bar called SKY bar and it is a little strange. First of all, the first floor is closed and completely empty. When we went upstairs to the rooftop bar, it is also completely empty except for like 6 servers all dressed in fancy suits and dresses.

We chill outside on the patio and order cocktails, which are a little more expensive than usual ($7-12 USD). It is just so strange for it to be so empty and the place looked fancy as hell.

The servers let us play our own music and we relax until we feel too awkward and leave.

Final thoughts

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Vientiane and I wonder if one day is enough to visit a capital city. The city itself looked more modern than Vang Vieng or Luang Prabang and the buildings were definitely french-inspired. Everything was a bit more expensive.

Although we weren’t given a lot of time to explore on our own, I was very satisfied with our day’s itinerary. It was especially valuable to learn about the history of Laos from our local tour guide, who is a Laotian himself.

Lao’s history is certainly not a pretty one, but it was important for me to learn about it and I really do think more people should know too. I was very proud of our Contiki team for raising funds to change two lives.

Laos only recently opened up their tourism industry to the world (maybe around 20-30 years) and it has helped their economy a lot. I have never thought of me traveling and going on vacation as “helping” out a country, but in many ways I think they are encouraging more tourism in Laos.

This was our last city in Laos before we fly to Cambodia the next day. I can only say good things about Laos and its people, who were all kind and genuine even though their standard of living is not the best. Perhaps it is because of their history that they can be kind this way.

Sincerely, Loewe