Art Teaching Adventures: Day 3: Vientiane

On our third day in Vientiane we took our time to explore the city. We hired a Tuk-Tuk driver for the morning and he took us around to various sites and temples.

In the back of our tuk-tuk

This is what the tuk-tuks look like.

That Dam, it is a stupa located in the center of the city that the roads have been built around.
The belief is that it is inhabited by the seven-headed Naga, who help the Laotians defeat Siamese.

Pha That Luang, a golden stupa, originally created in the 3rd century,
it has under gone renovations every 50 years.

Main Temple or Wat at Pha That Luang

One of the other temples

Doors to the Wat

Patuxai Arch, also known as the Arc de Triomphe of Vientiane.
It was created to celebrate the freedom of Laos from french rule.

Originally this sign said "drawling" they removed the "L" to be more inclusive to Southerners.

The best thing about this guard rail was that everywhere there were signs that said "Safety First".

The view from the top. Up here I was corned by some asian tourists who insisted that they get to take my photo.

Haw Phra Kaew

While trying to take this photo of the staircase, I once again became to tourist attraction.
Several Koreans all gathered around to take my photo, and have their photo taken with me.

Around the outside of the temple are all these Buddhas, all of them have individual faces.
They were dressed up especially for the festival that was going on, which is the end of Buddhist lent.

After all our site seeing we picked up a fruit shake, basically a smoothy with ice instead of yogurt.
Dragon Fruit & Pineapple, the best combination yet.

After this we went to go get massages at a spa, which was by far one of the oddest experiences yet. In Laos, not a lot of people spoke english, so we finally found a spa where there was the hostess on staff who was able to understand us. We got traditional Laos massages, which are similar to Thai massages and involve a small asian woman bending and stretching your body into weird poses to help work out kinks, and then walking on your back.

My girl spoke no english, but the entire time she was obsessed with my skin colour. Something that I may not have mentioned before is that asian love to be pale. It is their ultimate goal in life to be my colour because it symbolizes being of a higher status where you do not have to work outside. Because of this every skin care product you find is bleaching, skin whitening moisturizer, skin bleaching hand soap, whitening hand sanitizer, and then there is just skin bleaching bleach. Trust when I say its nearly impossible for me to find normal soap.

Because I'm pastey and it leads to asians taking my pictures, asking me what product I use and how I got my skin to be so light. Well this girl who was giving me a massage couldn't speak english, so she just kept putting her arm next to my skin and smiling, then she would call out for another girl who would do the same, then they would discuss something, most likely my skin. Which then meant there was a parade of girls coming into my massage room to look at my skin. Its even better when you think that I paid for that experience.