Today is our last full day together as a trio before we split off on our separate paths through Laos. Our morning programme takes us back out towards the bus station to check out the city’s food market. It takes a bit of detective work to find the right place, and by the time we get there, we’re a bit late: most things have been packed up. It’s perhaps as well though as the few remaining stalls are a bit hard to stomach for us: live frogs in a covered basket, catfish flailing in only a few centimetres of water, a pile of pork skulls on a wheelbarrow, and some offal so strange we can’t even identify it, although Ollie suggests sheep faces (!).
Leaving the merchants to finish packing up their wares, we continue on towards the Patuxai, about a kilometre away. We manage to avoid the main street in favour of crossing through a vast temple’s grounds - a nice leafy interlude between busy roads. The temple is very grand, with series of pretty buildings surrounding it (probably monk housing if we go by the display of saffron laundry nearby). As we walk through, a young monk runs out and rushes to a long standalone bell, ringing it for about a minute before disappearing back inside: a call to prayer perhaps?
Coming out of the temple, we’re right next to the Patuxai. Just like its French counterpart, it’s set in the middle of a hard-to-cross roundabout, and we have to run in between two bouts of traffic to reach it - we heard we should be able to climb to the top for some nice city views. Unfortunately, we’re denied access to the stairs we can see in one of the corners of the arch, and, not being in a mood to argue with fairly official-looking uniforms, we back off. We settle with a closer look at the “World Peace Gong”, a massive metal contraption with all of the world’s flags on it, recently offered to Laos by Indonesia.
Our last stop for the morning, That Luang, is much further, although we can glimpse its golden spire at the end of a long straight avenue. It’s also getting hotter so after checking out the local buses (next one in forty minutes…) we bargain for a tuktuk - as usual, we secure half the first price quoted by grabbing a moving one. It’s a choppy ride in a little three-wheeler but it beats walking kilometres in the sun, and we’re soon dropped off close to our destination. Before reaching it, we still need to cross a square so vast we wonder if it perhaps doubles up as a local runway for the nearby parliament. Past this tarmac desert, we finally approach That Luang, Laos’ national monument. Set at the end of a pretty brick plaza, it’s surrounded by beautiful temples but the towering gold spire outshines them all. Our guidebook describes the current iteration of the oft-renovated monument as “a bit glitzy” and it is indeed that, but remains very impressive especially in the shining midday sun.
We can appreciate the scale of the shrine better from outside, but visiting inside the cloister is well worth it for the secluded views and the decent art collection lining the walls. We particularly love the series of drawings and paintings of the monument in various periods, showing the evolution from a ruined chedi to the golden splendour of today. The collection of Buddha figures is also interesting as it is the first one that explains the significance of the various poses: peace, victory, meditation, Nirvana, praying for rain… After a full tour, we take the time to check one of the nearby temples before heading back to the centre. The compound is kept in immaculate condition and includes a large reclining Buddha, as well as nice views back to the That Luang - not bad.
Back near our hotel, we are looking for an affordable option for lunch that doesn’t limit us to bland noodles. We strike gold at La Cage Du Coq, a little french restaurant just around the corner from us. It’s not super cheap but better value than our Belgian escapade yesterday, with an all-you-can-eat brunch for 10$ featuring a selection of home-cooked small dishes - delicious!
All very full and quite sleepy now, we let Ollie get back to some work and set out for our afternoon activity: I’ve convinced mum to try out the much-lauded traditional Herbal Sauna (doubling up as massage parlour) just five minutes from our lodgings. This tiny shop kept popping up in all the articles about Vientiane and the revues rave about the lovely local experience and the expert hands of the masseurs. They also mention that it’s quite hard to find - and indeed we do walk in circles a bit before finding it hidden away in a little alleyway. The frontage doesn’t look like much but as we walk in we can glimpse a pretty courtyard where people are cooling down, drinking tea or rinsing themselves with cold water from a fountain.
I’ve read up on the process and so we secure two robes, towels, passes for the sauna, a body scrub and book our slots for a massage in ninety minutes. We’re given a locker key and pointed to barebones changing rooms to get into our robes - just a tube of fabric secured around our chests with an elastic band. After a quick first rinse, we mix and apply the body scrub: it’s simply a supermarket yoghurt and some coffee grounds, which combine in a dark brown mixture leaving marks all over as soon as we apply it. It does leave our skins nice and smooth in the end though, so I might try this at home! Once suitably covered in scrub mixture, we head into the sauna. It’s a quiet day today and the normally segregated men’s sauna is closed so everyone is together in the same room. This does give us a bit of a scare as it’s so steamy we can’t see anything, but there’s two of us so we figure we’ll be ok, and indeed everyone is just here to relax. The room is incredibly hot and full of boiling steam, but it does smell lovely and you can almost taste the mixture of herbs that have been thrown in. Within seconds we are sweating and we barely make it to five minutes before running out for a breather! After a cold rinse, it’s time to repeat the cycle. Even sharing between us we have enough scrub for three cycles and end up popping into the sauna for a bonus, scrubless round at the end. Mum’s not quite convinced (she’s not a fan of saunas) but she goes along with the experience - the place is nice and quiet and obviously catering to locals as well as tourists, which feels lovely compared to some of the very segregated experiences we’ve had on this trip.
Once we’ve thoroughly sweated our toxins out it’s time for a shower to rinse the last of the coffee off, and then the massage. This is reputed to be a proper deep massage - “almost osteopathic” according to some reviews, and I’m very excited. The two masseurs are both men and obviously very experienced - mine picks up on my various aches and pains almost immediately, and obviously thinks there’s a lot to fix with my wonky back, but he gets going and manages to undo some deep knots I wasn’t even aware of. He also gets a worrying amount of cracks out of my spine and neck through various twists - but a week later I’m still standing so no harm done! Mum’s not having as much fun though - this is the first massage she ever had, and she’s so tense that it’s quite painful! She powers through it though and comes out with a smile. We’re both feeling exhausted after that, just like with a session at the osteopath, and have just enough energy left for a short stroll to the riverfront to check out the night market.
Stalls completely cover the Chao Anouvong park, selling an wide variety of clothes - I wish I had more space in my bag to justify a bit of shopping as there’s a lot of very cute things! But other than that it’s quite a standard market, albeit frequented mostly by locals, and we press through. At dusk, the riverside road calms down, and we can cross it to finally reach the Mekong banks. Those are being redeveloped into large paved plazas housing everything from a formal food court to a full funfair - but our favourite bit is the improvised Zumba class which is getting everyone bopping along while admiring the sunset. After a few pictures of the signature red sky (less nice than in Thailand though, as we have a less good view of the river itself) we head back to our hotel for a good night’s sleep!
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