I spent my first full day in Vientiane exploring museums and temples. My first stop was the Lao National Museum which, I have to say, was one of the worst national museums I've ever seen. One of the reasons for this may have been that English descriptions were available for only on about a third of all exhibits, making it appear a little disorganized and confusing for a non-Lao-speaker. Another reason was the feeling of propaganda that permeated parts of the museum: especially the section on 20th century history seemed to present events very much from the communist party's viewpoint. As a consequence, the US were always referred to as "imperialist", as in "US imperialist government", or "US imperialist army", etc.
The museum's worst part, however, was the current developments section. From its makeup and the few dates I saw on descriptions, the section's last update was more than twenty years ago. The section basically consisted of one display case for each ministry. Above the display case were pictures of the ministry's members, and the display cases had a few seemingly random exhibits: the ministry for health had an assortment of pills; a few others had selections of old reports; the ministry for trade had some silk samples; and so on. Despite (or maybe even because of?) my growing feeling of bewilderment, I found it quite interesting to wander through the museum, and the propaganda parts were almost funny.
Next, I walked to Patuxay, a building resembling the Arc de Triomphe. From afar, the arch and the surrounding park look quite nice, but once you get closer it gets increasingly obvious that the building is a concrete monster that lacks a few finishing touches. Ironically enough, that is almost exactly the description you can read on a sign inside the arch.
After lunch, I went to visit Hor Phakeo, a temple-turned-museum that exhibits Buddha statues in sizes from 2 centimeters to 5 meters. The building's layout and decoration are typical for Buddhist temples in Laos - beautiful, isn't it?
The gallery running around the temple's single room was decorated by Buddha statues placed in regular intervals. There were many local people who stopped to pray at every single one of them.
Directly opposite Hor Phakeo was Sisaket, the oldest temple in Vientiane. All the other old temples were destroyed in one of many wars and invasions. The reason why Sisaket survived is simple: it was used as administrative building by the occupying army.
Sisaket also houses many, many Buddha statues, but in a separate gallery that surrounds the temple building at a few meters' distance. All of the statues were clothed with an orange scarf - orange being the traditional color of monks' clothing.
