Buddhas, borders, and Buddhas again - just another day in Vientiane

Since I only had a little over 24 hours in Vientiane (the capital of Laos), I was determined to make the most of it. After looking at the map I calculated that my destination was about 5k away, which would be perfect for me to run there (literally), check it out, and run back. Luckily, I double-checked with my guesthouse first, where I was informed that the map was not drawn to scale, and my destination was a good 20k away. So much for running there! After getting to the bus stop and realizing that the bus wouldn't be leaving for a while and would be slow and crowded, I caved and ponied up the money for a tuk-tuk driver.

First stop was "Buddha Park" a collection of cement sculptures, including one that you could climb into and then view the whole park from the top! After marvelling over the sculptures for a while ("what the heck was this guy smoking!?!:), I went on to my next stop. I had decided that I missed Thailand, so I would go back for a quick visit. Thus, my next stop was "Friendship Bridge", which connected Laos and Thailand. I wandered over, and spent a very nice 3 seconds in Thailand before hopping back to Laos ( in order to cross the border on the bridge I had to climb over a sign which was completely blocking the sidewalk that said something in Thai or Lao which probably said "you'd be better off NOT going any further", but I decided to go for it - I hadn't walked across that long bridge just to SEE the border, I wanted to cross it!

Finally I went back to Vientiane where I explored a few temples and a museum. One of the temples (Si Saket) had a series of hundreds of cubby-holes, each filled by two Buddhas statues. Made for some good photos.

Speaking of which, it's photo time! Enjoy:

cool multi-armed statue at the Buddha park

temple-like sculpture

I have no idea what this statue means, but it appears to be a pig-man attacking some guy. Just par for the course at the sculpture park - apparently there were also wolves on vespas, but I didn't see that sculpture - bummer!!

bird's eye view of the park - sculptures galore!

cool set of sculptures set around a multi-armed, multi-faced entity. Not sure about the symbolism (if there was any), but it looked cool

me being devoured by a sculpture. Note that this photo is a good example of what happens when you ask a random person to take your photo - not sure why he decided to cut off the top of the head and include a huge amount of the dirt in front of me, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

the plaque marking the Laos/Thailand border. I hung out in Thailand for only the seconds needed to take this picture, as I may or may not have been entering a restricted

cool artsy shot of the cubby-hole buddhas at Wat Sisaket