Vientiane

The unassuming, provincial capital of Laos

Visits to Vientiane tend to be short. People start their scenic road trips here or are passing through on their way to Luang Prabang, or perhaps they’ve just hopped across the border from Thailand for the day to renew their visa.

The city’s rather small for a national capital with roosters and chickens roaming the lanes and an absence of high-rise buildings, although plush hotels built with foreign investment have recently begun to sprout here and there. Investment, especially from China, has seen an unprecedented development in Laos, and if you read my newsletter on Chiang Rai, you’d have seen images taken at the Golden Triangle from northern Thailand across the Mekong to Laos. Where once there was unspoiled natural beauty lining the riverbank, there are now multi-storey hotels, shopping malls and a massive casino. In response to my enquiry about what people thought of this development, my driver had replied, “Most ordinary folk hate it, no matter on which side of the river they live, but rich Thais love the casino, that’s a fact!”

Images: a minibus visa run from Thailand across the Mekong. Vientiane; its traffic, temples and monuments leave space for roosters ranging freely down grassy lanes.

Vientiane’s downtown area is similar to larger towns in Thailand with the same tuk-tuk and traffic congestion and an array of lovely temples to visit, along with day trips offered into the surrounding countryside and to Wat Xieng Khouane with its park full of Buddha statues. Two main architectural monuments dominate the landscape, both regarded as the most significant in Laos. One exemplifies the strong Laotian spirituality, while the other expresses the nation’s desire for peace amid memories of its civil conflict and involvement in the Vietnam War.

The first, Vientiane’s main drawcard is an enormous, golden Buddhist stupa called Pha That Luang. Considered the most significant monument in Laos, the site dates to the third century AD, although the structure has undergone many reincarnations the last in 1930. It’s quite spectacular and well worth a visit. To wander through and see it all, there’s an entrance charge of 30,000 Kip. All those zeros can make your head spin until you acclimatise to the exchange rate and realise that it’s only US$1.78. Nevertheless, it does take a while to get used to spending 100,000 on a sandwich!

Images: Pha That Luang and some of the many temples around the city.

The other monument is the Patuxai War Memorial which was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Building commenced in 1957, four years after Laos gained its independence from France. Although it bears some similarity in overall shape and ‘presence’ to the Parisian arc, it is very Laotian in all its decorative features. To imbue it with meaning and symbolism, its builders used both Buddhist and Hindu images and its five towers represent the five essential Buddhist principles: thoughtful amiability, honour, flexibility, honesty and prosperity, as well as “The Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence” (among the nations of the world, drafted in 1954). These are: mutual benefit and equality, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression and peaceful co-existence. The fifth is non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Images: colonial architecture, a reminder of French influence, the local way of erecting new buildings, the Arc de Triomphe-inspired Patuxai War Memorial, formal gardens.

The Memorial’s focus on peace is interesting because it also serves to remind of tragic, violent history. Viewing the arc is more meaningful when you know its construction continued during the Laotian Civil War (1959-1975), the war in Vietnam (1955-1975), and the 1965 US-led bombings of Laos (to cut supply lines to North Vietnam). A summary of events over those years would reveal that Laos was initially drawn into the Vietnam War when North Vietnamese troops invaded between 1958 and 1959 to set up a communist presence in Laos. The Laotian Civil War then started in 1959 between royalists supporting the king and the communist ‘Pathet Lao’ with the latter winning the war in 1975 and abolishing the monarchy. 1975 also saw North Vietnam taking control of Saigon which ended the Vietnam War. By then, both the US (1973) and Australia (1971-72) had withdrawn their troops. However, the fighting in this region continued in Cambodia between Vietnam and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces resulting in Vietnam occupying Cambodia from 1979 to 1989.

From a civilian point of view, millions of people across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were killed and tens of thousands displaced because of political conflicts essentially between communist and non-communist forces. The legacy of those losses lives on in the hearts of the families involved down the generations on all sides. The conflict between free democracy and communism continues, most notably in Ukraine. Today, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are all peaceful nations with communist governments. However, when measured on a scale that rates the political rights and civil liberties of a nation’s citizens, Sweden scores 100, Australia 95 and the US 83. Under communist governance, Laos scores only 13, Vietnam 19 and Cambodia 24. Still, those figures are higher than Cuba at 12, China at 9, Belarus at 8, and they are certainly better than Tibet’s extremely concerning overall rating of only 1.

It’s always more interesting to experience a nation when you know something of its past and its politics as this puts many things into perspective. The following explains the indicators used by Freedom House to rank nations. <https://fredoomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores>

Now, it’s off to Luang Prabang. Come along for the ride …