Yes!! We finally broke down and got the face masks... and some pretty cool ones at that!
If you haven't been following my blog, Kristen and I are traveling all over Asia for a total of 5 weeks. On my very first day in Shanghai (where we landed from the US) I developed a cough. And it's been with me for 12 days now. It took me a while to realize that it's "Shanghai lung" or a chronic cough from the poor air quality of this region. But we're at least a little safer from the pollution now. 😷
Today Started at the US Embassy
I would love to show you the cool picture I took of our embassy here in Vientiane, Laos, but the officers guarding the facility didn't take too kindly to me snapping pics around the building. In fact, they made me delete my photo. They were really kind about it though, and Kristen was able to get an emergency passport which will get her into the next couple of countries we're visiting. When we pass through Bankok, Thailand in a couple of days she'll apply for a full visa renewal which we hope (and pray) will make it back to Thailand before we head to Bali. Indonesia is one of a few countries that will not permit those holding an emergency passport to enter.
While we waited on the embassy to print the emergency passport, we walked up the road a little ways to a cafe. It had been raining pretty good and the streets were flooded. But the hike up to the cafe was well worth it. We ordered up coffee, tea and chocolate croissants. It reminded us of Paris a little.
After the appointment at the embassy, we hopped on the local bus to head to a place called Buddha Park. Also known as Xieng Khuan, it is a sculpture park situated 25 km southeast from Vientiane in a meadow by the Mekong River. Across the river you can actually see Thailand.
One of the concrete structures has three stories representing three levels - Hell, Earth and Heaven. You enter through a demon head at the bottom and work your way up to heaven. I got bit by fire ants on the ground level. Go figure.
There's some interesting history about his park. It was started in 1958 by Luang Pu, a priest-shaman who integrated Hinduism and Buddhism. After the revolution in 1975, worried about the repercussions of the rule of Pathet Lao, he fled from Laos to Thailand where he built a similar sculpture park called Sala Keoku in Nong Khai. Both of the parks are located right next to the Thai-Lao border (Mekong river), only a few kilometers apart from each other.
Quick Lunch Before Exploring the City
Kristen and I have noticed that the prices here in Laos have been much higher than Cambodia or Vietnam... which is kind of surprising. At least our hotel. taxi and morning coffee had been high. So we thought we would head into the market area of Vientiane to see if that held true at a local restaurant where normal, everyday residents ate. This is how you really find out the value of your currency!
We stopped in at a restaurant that had almost zero English. I still don't know what the name of it was because it was written in Lao. But we both ordered up some food and a couple of drinks. As you can see, I got the mixed seafood and rice which came with soup. Kristen got the pad thai (not pictured). For both entrees and two drinks we ended up paying less than $8 USD. I'd say that was a pretty good deal. 😁
Wat Hopping
What is a Wat you might be asking? It's a type of Buddhist or Hindu temple in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. We've become pretty familiar with the term as we've seen several on our travels so far, the biggest being Angkor Wat. There are many here in Vientiane and we stopped by two today on the walk back to our hotel.
The first was Wat Phra Kaew which used to be a Buddhist temple but now houses a museum and shop...
And the second one we stopped by was Sisaket Temple which is a temple that houses thousands of buddhist figures. We witnessed several monks come in to worship and view the temple grounds.
Both were very cool and I'm glad we decided to stop and pay the 10,000 Kip ($1.18) to get in. I'm sure we'll be visiting many more on our travels here. One in particular I want to see is Pha That Luang (or the Great Sacred Stupa) which is a symbol of the country.
So that was our first day in Laos. It's funny how this morning we set out to take care of the passport situation at the embassy, and planned to come straight back and sleep some more. But since we were already out near Buddha Park, we decided to go ahead and stop in which really set our day into motion. Anyways, we came back after all of that and got a nap. We'll probably take it easy for the rest of the night and maybe actually watch some TV or a movie. We haven't done that in two weeks lol.
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