Vientiane - Saturday

Here's some

 pictures and some video of what we did on Saturday 18 Oct. We took a tuk tuk 1 hour out of Vientiane to a place called Xiang Khuan. Its a smallish park area filled with many concr

ete sculptures of a buddhist and hindu nature. One man was the mad mastermind behind it all, and I think began in the early 1950s. So nothing ancient really - but very bizarre forms and images. The giant pumpkin shape has three four levels within which can be explored. Insie on the bottom level you can circle the inner perimeter, but have to go up a level, and then down again to a representation of hell.  It was quite cramped inside and kind of reminded me of a haunted house ride or something.

Often temples have murals around the walls on the 1st floor depicting the appropriate puni

shments in hell to those who get there. This thing had 3D scu

lptural depictions. Very crude sculptures, but more creepy for that reason, and because of the dim

 lighting. Up a level was Earth, where we live, and above this heaven of course - where in buddhist teaching the people who attain this level a represented with the form of a half snake. I beli

eve this signifies that space/time is not the same in heaven and we dont need legs to get around. 

Quite a goo

d metaphor for a complex idea I 

reckon.  

We ended up with a free tour guide of sorts because a guy from a local village (unfortunately I forgot his name) was there with some of his students of English. He took them there to practice their English on foreigners. It was nice to meet some local kids, and they were pretty good for having only been learning for 8 months. I also asked the guy to do a bit of an introduction to the location in the Laos language, so you can hear what it sounds like.  Catch his short speech in the video below. Oh, the young girl with the blue eye we spotted while waiting for the bus that afternoon. She was in the 

back of a 'Jumbo' which is basically a truck with seats in the back with her Mum and friends/siblings. They were waving at us and saying hello so I took some snaps. They found it very amusing to see themselves on the screen when I showed it to them.  You can hear them saying "Sabaidee", which is hello. 

Laos_Day06_vientiane from tgoodwin on Vimeo.