Wat Si Saket Vientiane

The rickety bus jolted to a halt and spit us out onto the street in the middle of downtown Vientiane, allowing us to avoid going all the way to the bus station and then backtracking. The road from Vang Vieng to here was the worst major highway that we have experienced in Asia. We were completely covered in a layer of red dust which took two showers …

Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital of Laos and is located on the Mekong bordering Thailand. Its still very small but after several days of walking around it looks like a lot of money is flowing into the city for development – mostly from Chinese companies. Unfortunately things to do in the city were limited to general sight seeing.< …

Llegamos a la capital de Laos y nos llevamos una grata sorpresa, la ciudad estaba limpia, con bonitos restoranes, sin congestión, poco ruido, que alivio.

El bus que tomamos, que era un bus con "cama doble" finalmente nos resultó fatal, ya que no pude dormir considerando el espacio…claro, están hecho para la gente de acá y los …

The night bus from Thakek to Vientiane, though a local bus as well, was incredibly fast, and at 5 am the next morning, we reached the Vientiane bus station. The trip took just 6 hours. Early in the morning it was, and we had little choice but to take a tuk tuk (50,000K shared amongst us three) to get us to the city centre, some 13km away from town …

De aankomst op het vliegveld in Laos ging gepaard met de te verwachten klimaatsverandering. Met een graadje of 25 in de avond kon ik de overkleding die ik zo'n beetje constant had gedragen vanaf Lhasa vaarwel zeggen en die tijden gaan gezien mijn verdere reisplanning ook niet meer terugkomen. Dat wil zeggen: TOT ik weer naar Nederland afreis :-). …

Free breakfast, the friend egg on toast was a good start to the day. April, Helen and Zoe had booked a ticket to go to The Kaeck but I was unsure if I wanted to go with them, might need another day in Vientiane just to figure out what I want to do next...

April struck a good deal with a tuk-tuk driver. For him to take us to see the Wat Si …

Me voici donc depuis hier à Vientiane, capitale du Laos. C'est une ville de 200'000 habitants, mais elle a plus un air de petit bourg de province. Les rues y sont souvent étroites, le trafic pas très dense. Les passants sont un joyeux mélange de locaux, de moines (reconnaissables à leur tunique orange) et de touristes, même si cette dernière caté …

Our flight to Laos didn't depart until 5pm today and so we had the chance to have a final photography wander around the Old Quarter and have some last minute Vietnamese food before we entered the more Indian and Chinese inspired food of Laos. However, the morning did not get off to a good start after I managed to jam the pill crusher. This was a …

Lonely Planet recommended a 'Monument to Mekong Walking Tour', since the hotel let me use the bike for free, and as lazy as I am, I decided to make it a biking tour instead.

The total cost of the day is about 400,000kip (US$51), details see below.

Sights:

Patuxai - 3,000kip
Patuxai, Victory Gate is a war monument in …

Greetings Campers. Well, I always say that no visit to a country is complete without a stop in its capital - though I've not always adhered to this rule myself - Tehran being 1 glaring omission. But anyways here i am in the Laotian capital of Vientane, boasting a mighty population of .... 275,000 approx. About the same size as Cork methinks.
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... and today walked around the city. We managed to navigate around despite there being no street names and saw 5-6 Wats and monuments. One Wat (Wat Si Saket) was very impressive as it had over 3000 Buddhas inside. So up to Vang Vieng next for a few days as ...

... ! First of all was Wat Si Saket which was a walk from where we arranged to meet. Built nearly 200 years ago, Wat Si Saket contains over 2,000 Buddha images. Don't want to sound disrespectful, but i've been hundreds of thousands of buddhas - how ...

... replica, which dominates the commercial district. We walked down the road about ½ of mile or so until we came to the "Wat Si Saket. This temple was built in 1818 by King Anouvong and is the oldest in the capital. The King was educated in Bangkok and ...

... a glimpse of something uniquely Lao. These pagoda's were totally unlike those I'd seen in Cambodia. In fact one of them, Wat Si Saket, was actually the only pagoda that survived the Siamese invasion of 1828. I thought about it a little more, and ...

... to phonsovan, and after riding to the bus station in the morning (and getting thoroughly lost on the way) i checked out Wat si saket, which wasn't really anything that special (feeling templed out, and the heat makes it even harder to appreciate them.) ...

... of the government they replaced, as the park surrounding it is a bit of a better job. We checked out yet another wat, Wat Si Saket, which had the distinction of not getting trashed by the Thais when they invaded in the 1800's (like the rest of ...

... wir einen Treffpunkt um gemeinsam einen Bus zu nehmen. Montag spazier ich noch ein wenig durch die Stadt und seh: - Wat Si Saket (aeltester Tempel Vientianes, seh ihn aber nur von Aussen, da ich keine Lust auf Eintritt, um tausende Buddha Statuen zu ...

... at different Wats, eating at different places and enjoying the relative peace and quiet. I guess the highlight would be between Wat Si Saket and Pha That Luang. Wat Si Saket because of it's obvious age and the way all these different Buddhas were around ...

... of Laos. We had a day and a half there to explore the city and during this time we visited Wat Si Saket Temple which was the only remaining building in Vientiane after the war. The reason for this is because it's a Thai style temple and the Thai's used ...

... us cradling his prize cockrel! So a few days in Vientiane, seeing the sights * Pha That Luang - massive golden stupa * Wat Si Saket - old cloistered temple with 7000 buddha figurines * Haw Pha Kaeo - museum of religious art * Patuxai - arc de ...