Sunday 8th November 0857 - Vientiane, Laos

it gets dark early in laos and most shops close early. combine that with the fact that the roads are very poorly lit, i'm back in the hotel by 8 most days, and sleep by 10. today i am up at 8 and i have the very plain breakfast of tea and a small pastry with jam at the hotels lobby. there are a group of elderly french people sitting next to me but we don't look at one another.
i take a shower and walk to the laos national museum. the entrance fee is 10 000 kip, and i was given a key to a small plywood locker to keep my bag in. there are 16 exhibits in the laos national museum and most of them are quite interesting. however there are a few sections with no english text, just in french and laos, so i have no idea what the exhibit is about.
exhibits included the development of the ministry of education, ministry of agriculture and forestry, the laos revolutionary youth union, a big wall of lao national heroes and many more. one exhibit stood out, an extremely grotesque picture of Vang Pao commander of special forces, the key henchman of the US imperialist. he was standing in front of two detainees, one had just been shot in the head and the other was awaiting the same fate, smiling as though he was in a birthday photo in front of a cake. in the same section where i saw this, were walls full of photos of monks killed by US bombs, little children with horrific wounds, sacred places of worship bombed to rubble, all courtesy of the US.
there was an interesting section on communism in laos with lenins communist ideals translated into laos. however this did not have english texts so i just made up my own stories to the pictures and exhibits.
my 2nd favorite exhibit is a tai leu masterpiece budda carving made out of teak wood from the 1850s, carved in the hongsa region. the statue of buddha captured him with sloping shoulders and a pot belly. the one remaining eye on the statue is a piece of cloudy old mirror, and as the english text states, 'the most unusual aspect is the two hands down on his knees on folder legs, the pose buddha assumed when he gave his last teaching. not one buddha in 100 000 is in this provocative death pose.' i looked at this immense carving for a long time.

my favorite exhibit though was the development of public security corner. behind a thin glass counter, not unlike the kind you find at a provision shop, and in the glass counter lay 200 amphetamine tablets, a palm sized packet of black tar opium, a fucking kilo brick of cannabis (seized in 1997), another 50 gram baggy of weed with the sticks and seeds very visible, 358.48grams of heroin, skeleton keys for stealing motorbikes, a pistol, and a home made meth bong made out of an old moisturizer bottle, tape and aluminum. bong making seems to be quite similar internationally. i wondered what it would be like smoking 12 year old weed and considered for a moment performing a kung fu kick on the display, tucking the kilo of weed into my shirt and sprinting my motherfucking ass off. but of course i didn't do that.

there were many other interesting exhibits like dinosaur fossils found in laos, to be precise 16 parts of a sauropods tail and 65 million year old wooden fossils from luang prabang. i left the lao national museum glad that i visited.

i legged it from the national museum to wat sisaket. along the way i stopped at some small local eating establishment and for 13,000 kip i had a tasty bowl of pork noodle soup, an omelette, and a bottle of water. when i was done with that i smoked a cigarette and spoke to some indian swedish guy. just friendly mandatory conversations when you share a table with another traveler like 'how long are you going to be here?' or 'where to next?' and 'where are you from?' such and such. when i asked which part of sweden he was from and politely suggested gothenburg, which was correct, he reacted as though i discovered gravity.
another 20 minutes from where i ate was wat sisaket. when i reached at 11:58am i was informed that they close for an hour at noon and reopen at 1pm again. so i trudged off in the wicked noon sun to talat sao morning market which did not have many stalls open. i bought a new empty book to write in for 70 cents and returned to wat sisaket to wait. it was a good half an hours wait. i found a cool spot under a large old tree with big branches that stretched far out and took a seat next to a group of policemen and women. actually they might have been trainee police as they were all so young. a pleasant looking policewomen in a well ironed uniform said to me, 'hello hello, what is your name?'
and i told her my name.
something about my name made the entire group break up into laughter. when they asked my age and i told them i was 19 turning 20, they broke into infectious laughter, and soon i was laughing at my own age too.
'do you have girlfriend?' asked one young policeman who had taken his uniform off to reveal a thin white cotton shirt. when i smiled and said no, instantly the 5 male police officers suggested that i 'love you to her', pointing at the female police officer who i later found out was 20. she giggled and looked away.
a few minutes later another female police officer rode in, and all the guys once again suggested that i 'love you to her', which made her face turn redder than strawberries.

wat sisaket is actually pretty small. half an hour is more than enough to take a leisurely stroll around and make small talk with youthful monks eager to practice their english. i removed my shoes and stepped into the temple to observe the lovely architecture. i thought a hundred years back, wondering what it was like to be a teenager in the 1800s. what would i do for recreation and leisure man! maybe i would have a girlfriend, maybe i'd be born into a farmers family to work the fields. i don't know.

i left wat sisaket and walked for 20 minutes to a japanese restaurant i had passed by the day before. it was called osaka and it advertised as being 'open by japanese.' i ordered a nigiri sushi set and a large bottle of beer. the sushi was not much to shout about. the meal set me back by 11 USD, my most extravagant meal in laos so far.

i had to wash my hands before teh meal so i went to the aft of the restaurant in search of a washroom. very common in laos and countries in south east asia are toilets that are built in the limited space under the gradient of a stair case. this one was by far the smallest one i've been in. the ceiling over the toilet bowl was so low you had to assume a limbo dance position, arching back as far as you can to take a piss. for ladies it would have been just nice, with about 10cm between your head and the ceiling if you sat on the toilet bowl. so i did my little limbo piss, nearly falling back and cracking my head on the aged porcelain sink.

to be continued