Xieng Khuan Buddha Park

Vientiane is into rustic charm. One thing you should not miss is the Buddha park. Or, as they say: "Welcom to Xienkhuan Buddha park was accepted as national cultural heritage tourist site, and it is first site in Vientiane capital!"

The Buddha park is a collection of statues depicting fun times in Buddhism and Hinduism (for good measure) built by a surprisingly well-funded monk in 1958. Correction, the park was made from concrete donated for infrastructure and many of the workers were not paid. This keeps getting better.

This a 40m reclining Buddha, who reminds us to look at the palm trees for scale. Some statues were struggling to battle crumble.

Now, I've seen a lot of Buddha, but there was some extra creativity in this park. The row of skulls is not common.

Barry was at one with the deities.

I, of course, took it very seriously.

Now I have seen the "getting eaten by a fish" idea before, at Haw Par Villa.

But the Buddhist spaceship with mini Stonehenge was new to me. Mystical, and impossible to photograph in a way that makes it look straight and properly vertical.

It comes with its own space deities and a face. Amazing. Better than the Louvre.

The goddess of hair washing, I've also seen before. I think in Thailand. Love how she gets her hips into it.

This one, which I call Physical Support Turtle, is new to me. The rays you see from the top are anti-pigeon, not glorious rays of holiness.

If you have a 4-headed, 2-legged elephant, it will have 8 tusks, and be so top heavy that poor thing has to use 2 of its trunks as extra legs. Bad 1958 Buddhist biomechanical design, but such is art.

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Eyebrow Dog, Skeletal Amulets, and That Dam

Oh my goodness, I'm a bit behind on the blog, and eyebrow dog is surprised.

American donors were surprised in 1957, when Laos took donations for airport construction and used it to build the Patuxia monument, or Victory gate.

It's a mini Arc de Triomphe in Vientiane, but much more Laotian.

Likewise, I suspect Laos was surprised when the US covered their country in bombs during the Vietnam war. We visited the COPE visitor center for unexploded ordinance and learnt that Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.

Nowadays, things are peaceful, although the infrastructure is still not developed.

This sign shows the special friendship between Laos and Vietnam, with most of the enthusiasm coming from the Lao side. We've all had friendships like that.Let's talk about food! Laos has the best sticky rice, and I'm also a big fan of the little sour sausages.

I'm less familiar with the benefits and uses of these various roots.

And what you would do with large tree fungi.

We went templing.

The Stuppa below is called That Dam, and was built in the 16th century.

We found scary bald head man amulets. I don't know what the different colours mean, but I find them a bit too skeletal.