It was back to Vientiane in February and March, the temperatures were starting to increase but this year there was not much pollution from burning of crops – for which everyone is very happy about.
We had not been on the Chinese funded high-speed railway since it opened back in 2021, so I booked tickets for the 1 hour journey up to Vang Vieng. This is a tourist party-town neither of us had been to since the early to mid 2010’s. It has cleaned up its image since the height of tourist deaths from drink and drug excesses. It remains more touristy than real, but the scenery, with the tall karst mountains and the other natural features remains the real drawcard
The train station is a good 30 minutes drive from downtown Vientiane. I had an off-site appointment before meeting Andrew back at the office for us to take a car out to the station together. Sadly the driver for the local equivalent of Uber, didn’t use the address in the app and manually programmed my destination into google maps but he got it wrong. Initially I thought he was taking a shortcut around traffic – before having ask where he was going as we basically kept heading in the wrong direction. After a mad-dash through lunchtime traffic, I met up with Andrew and we got to the station with very little time to spare. But with the efficiency of the Chinese rail system from then on it was smooth sailing.
We only had a weekend in Vang Vieng, but managed to fill it nicely. Not wanting to do the tubing down the river, we hired bikes and explored our way out to one of blue pools the area is known for. There were lots of tourists eating lunch when we got there but it was a good ride for us and nice to be out exploring and interacting with wandering cattle.
Another new place to explore was the Lao Art Museum, It doesn’t have “art” per se, instead over 10,000 wooden sculptures and artifacts. It is located nearly 20km outside the city center. Being the relaxed travelers we are, we took the local bus out to location, for about 50 cents each and returned to the city by uber-equivalent for 20 times that price. The Art Gallery was funded primarily by one man, began construction in 2021, and had a budget of USD 50 million.
The scale of everything is suitably grand, to showcase works that were also generally enormous in scale.
One good thing was it’s clear statements on not supporting the illegal harvesting of hardwood. There were a number of rose-wood slabs that had been purchased to keep them out of the illegal markets.
While I spent too many hours in the office(s) – multiple company offices – Andrew spent his time visiting temples and other spots during the day. Generally he wandered in the cool of the morning, met me for lunch when that was convenient. Then in the heat of the afternoon he rested or swam, before getting ready for dinner out somewhere.
While I went went south for a visit to plantations and a plywood mill, Andrew sent me lots of photos of him visiting markets.
