A temple.
A temple.
A street in the center.
Patuxai.
View from Patuxai.
Wat Sisaket.
We sleep reasonably well in the
La Seine Hotel by Busasari in
Vientiane, Laos.
This is often different when we sleep in a different environment for the first time.
The bed here is also very good.
The breakfast after that is disappointing, there are no cold cuts and no cheese, and
especially Tom misses that.
Today we plan to go see Patuxai (the
Victory Gate), Wat Sisaket and
Pha That Luang, the main
attractions of Vientiane.
According to the hotel staff, everything is within walking distance.
We first walk to Patuxai, and for that we have to go through the old center.
That looks nice, quiet, with some restaurants.
Along the way, we look at two temples, two of many.
It is very hot, and we "hide" in a shopping mall to cool off and then walk along an avenue,
wide and little shade, to Patuxai.
Built with the Parisian Arc de Triomph as an example, Patuxai is a structure of gray
concrete, almost beautiful with ugliness.
For a fee you can climb up, along rickety stairs, and the view isn't great either.
We walk back, take shelter in the shopping mall again, where we also view the covered market
outside the mall.
Then we go to Wat Sisaket, the temple with the thousands of Buddha statues.
Here too we have to pay entrance, but it is worth it, the temple is very beautiful.
It is a pity that we are not allowed to take pictures of the interior.
This temple is to Laos what Wat Phra Keo is to Thailand.
We're a little hungry, and we want to eat something first. When we walk past Khop Chai Deu restaurant we decide to eat something there, it looks attractive. The food tastes good too, and the beer is cold, and it's not cheap.
Given the heat, we walk back to the hotel for a siesta, and after a few minutes we decide to take a tuk tuk.
In the evening we are going to have a look at something that takes place to the right of the
hotel.
It turns out to be a kind of night market, but only with food; too bad we're not hungry
anymore.
A nest of insects seems to have emerged from somewhere, the market and the surrounding area
is full of thousands and thousands of insects.
It's very annoying, but they don't do anything at all.
We walk back to the regular night market and have a drink at Papao Restaurant where we also
sat yesterday.
Written on: 2020-03-11
Disclaimer
We tell what we have done and experienced during a trip and we also tell what we think about it; no more and no less.
This is not a travel guide, nor is it advice to visit a place or not.
There are other sites for that.
Our opinion about places where we have eaten, drunk or slept is not intended as a (positive or negative) assessment,
there are other sites for that.
It is our view of the situation at a certain moment and that view is influenced by our mood,
the weather and many other factors.