Hugging a bend of the Mekong River,
the low-rise capital of Laos is a
quaint and easygoing place compared
to Southeast Asia's other frenetic
capitals, looking more like a
rambling collection of villages than
a city. However, in the mere decade
since Laos reopened its doors to
foreign visitors,
VIENTIANE
has changed with dizzying rapidity:
new businesses are popping up all
over the place, and scores of old
shade trees have been cut down to
accommodate an ever-multiplying
number of cars and motorbikes. The
city's
history has been a
turbulent one, as its meagre
collection of structures from the
past suggests. It had been occupied
and subsequently abandoned by the
Mon and then the Khmer long before
the Lao king Setthathilat moved his
capital here from Louang Phabang in
1560. After that, the city was
overrun or occupied several times by
the Burmese, Chinese and, most
spectacularly, by the Siamese who
levelled the entire place in 1828.
By the end of the nineteenth
century, the French controlled most
of what is now Laos, Cambodia and
Vietnam and had rebuilt Vientiane as
an administrative capital. As with
other urban centres in the region,
the majority of modern Vientiane's
merchant class are ethnic Chinese
and Vietnamese, whose forefathers
immigrated to Laos during the French
era. Though the city was left
relatively unscathed by the Second
Indochina War, a large percentage of
Vientiane's population found it
necessary to escape across the
Mekong after the formation of the
Lao People's Democratic Republic;
they were replaced by immigrants
from the former "liberated
zone" in northeastern Laos,
further changing Vientiane's ethnic
make-up. Not until the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991 was the
government forced to rethink its
opinions of capitalism, paving the
way for the explosion of new
ventures and businesses.
Two days is sufficient to see
Vientiane's sights. High on your
list should be the museum of Lao
art, housed at the Haw Pha Kaew
, and the socialist-era Lao
Revolutionary Museum . The
placid Buddhist monastery known as Wat
Sisaket offers a good half-day
diversion, and you should take a
ride out to That Louang ,
Laos's most important religious
building, to admire the effects of a
sunset on its golden surface. The
most popular day-trip destination is
Xiang Khouan or the
"Buddha Park", a
Hindu-Buddhist fantasy in ferro-concrete
on the banks of the Mekong. Off the
beaten track is the eco-resort of Lao
Pako , on the Nam Ngum River,
while further afield, the laid-back
town of Vang Viang , set amid
spectacular scenery on the road to
Louang Phabang, has recently become
a travellers' favourite.
The City
A humble fountain in the middle of
Nam Phou Place marks the heart of
downtown Vientiane, where you'll
find the greatest concentration of
accommodation, restaurants and shops
catering to visitors. North of Nam
Phou, on Samsenthai Road, the ...
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