Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital that forgot to hurry: a small city of a few hundred thousand on a bend of the Mekong, with Thailand on the far bank, where the great stupa of That Luang stands gold against the sky as the emblem of the whole country, a concrete arch built with cement meant for an airport runway looks down an avenue that wanted to be the Champs-Élysées, a temple of 1818 keeps six thousand eight hundred and forty Buddhas in the niches of its cloister, and the evening belongs to the riverfront, where the night market opens as the sun goes down over the water and everyone, it seems, is drinking a Beerlao slowly. The Lao have a phrase, baw pen nyang — no problem, never mind — and the city runs on it.

The traveller sees That Luang in the morning light and Patuxai from its own top; walks Wat Sisaket's cloister counting nothing, and crosses to Ho Phra Keo, where the Emerald Buddha lived before Bangkok took it; visits COPE, quietly, to understand what the bombs of a war that never officially came here still do; wanders the morning market; and, at five, goes to the river for the sunset, the night market and the food carts, and lets the evening be long. With a day, the Buddha Park, twenty-five kilometres out — a concrete garden of giants built by a mystic — and the Friendship Bridge to Thailand beside it.

The Guide's honesty: Vientiane is quiet, safe, cheap and small, and two days are its measure — Luang Prabang, the other postal, is the country's beauty and this is its front porch —; the heat from March to May is serious and the city empties at noon; tuk-tuks quote high and settle fair; the temples ask for covered knees; the Beerlao is the best beer in the region and the Lao will tell you so; the war's unexploded ordnance is still in the fields of the north and east, not here, but COPE explains why it matters; and gentleness is the local currency — spend it and it comes back.