Vientiane 

Vientiane  is the capital city of Laos, situated in the Mekong Valley. It is also Laos's largest city. The estimated population of the city is 200,000 (2005) while the number of people living in the Vientiane metropolitan area (the entire Vientiane Prefecture and parts of Vientiane Province) is believed to be over 730,000. Vientiane is located at 17°58' North, 102°36' East (17.9667, 102.6).  The city will host for the first time the 25th Southeast Asian Games in December celebrating the 50 years of SEA Games.
Sri Sattanak, or Sisattanak is a former name of Vientiane. It is often confused with Sri Sattanakanahut, the Pali name of Lan Xang, the Kingdom of the Million Elephants. Sisattanak now is the name of one of the five districts of the city Vientiane.

Nam Phou Place 

The district surrounding the fountain, known as Nam Phou, is the city’s oldest. However, although the roads and girl system were devised by the French, few of the structures in this district actually date much past the mid-twentieth century. In fact, most of these buildings were hastily constructed during the free-wheeling days of American aid in the 1950s. Many of the oldest buildings surrounding Nam Phou place have been remodeled in the last decade and their facades are plain and uninteresting. An exception is the National Library, located due south of the square, which was carefully restored with Australian assistance. Nam Phou place is dominated by one of Vientiane’s tallest buildings, the abandoned French Cultural centre.

Lao Revolutionary Museum

North of Nam Phou Place, on Samsenthai road, is the Lao Revolutionary Museum, housed in the former mansion of the French and set in grounds generously landscaped with plumier trees, the delicate blossoms of which are the national flower of Laos. As its name suggests the museum deals primarily with the events, both ancient and  recent, that led to the inevitable victory of the proletariat in 1975. Inside, Laos’ ancient past is depicted on canvas. Among the scenes portrayed are crimson-clad Lao patriots of yore liberating the motherland from Thai and Burmese feudalist.

Wat Sisaket 

East of Nam Phou Place, on Setthathilat road,  Wat Sisaket is the oldest wat in Vientiane. Constructed by King Anouvong in 1818, the monastery was the site of a ceremony in which Lao Lords and nobles swore an oath of loyalty to the king. During the 1828 sack of Vientiane by the Siamese, this was the only monastery not put to the torch and once the smoke had cleared, the Siamese brought the surviving Lao nobility here and made them swear another oath of loyalty, this time to their new overlords. Later, in 1983, the whole ceremony was repeated again before new masters – the French.

The Lao Wat

The Wat of Buddhist monastery is the centre pies of most village populated by ethnic Lao. Here, a contingent of monks and novices lives, providing the laypeople eighth an outlet for merit-making. The wat also serves as a hub for social gatherings and during annual festivals and Buddhist holy days, a site for entertainment. Sometimes referred to as a temple in English, the Wat is actually composed of a number of religious and secular structures in the monastery grounds as it house the monastery’s principal Buddha images, as well as being the place where monks are ordained. The that, or sputa, is generally a pyramid or beel-shape structure which contains holy relics: usually a cache of small Buddhas.

The Presidential Palace and Haw Pha Keaw

 Located opposite Wat Siake stands the Presidential Palace, an impressive French Beaux Artx-style building, built to house the French colonial governor and nowadays used mainly for government ceremonies. Just west of the palace, the Haw Pha kaew, once the king’s personal Buddhist temple, now functions as a museum of art and antiquities. Said to date from the mid-sixteenth century, the structure was destroyed by marauding Siamese during the sack of Vientiane in 1828 and was later earmarked for restoration by the French.

Wat Simuang

Roughly 1km from the Haw Pha Keaw, down Setthathilat road, sits Wat Simuang. While Vientiane has its share of Buddhist monasteries this wat stands out in terms of the number of worshippers it receives, the numerous vendor stationed outside the walls giving some indication of its popularity. These pavement stalls sell all the ingredients for a proper tray of offerings: flowers, fruit, incense and candles. The monastery itself was built on an ancient Khmer site, the ruins of which are piled behind the sim and consist of late rite bricks with traces of stuco or namentation.

Patouxai

It has been said that, along with coffee and baguettes the  Lao inherited a taste for pompous town-planning from the French. Lane Xang Avenue, leading off north from Setthathiat Road, was to be Vientiane’s. Champs Elysees and Patouxai its Arc de Triomphe. While it would be impossible to mistake seedy Lane Xang Avenue for Paris’s most famous thoroughfare, if you were t stand at fair distance and squint, you might  be able to convince yourself that Patouxai resembles its Parisian inspiration.

That Louang

One and half km east of Patouxai stands the Buddhist sputa, That Loang Lao’s most important religious building and national symbol. The present building dates from the 1930s and is a reconstruction. The original That Louang is thought to have been built by King Setthathilat in the mid-sixteenth century, and it is his statue that is perched jaunily on a pedestal in front of the stupa. Archeological evidence suggests that, like most centre and ancient Khmer site.

Wat Sok Pa Louang

Approximately 3km south of the centre, is mainly of interest to enthusiasts of herbal sauna and traditional massage. Originally outside the city limits and surrounded by forest, the wat now lies in a suburb of Vientiane that spreads out from the highway south to the village of Tadua. The easiest way to get here is by tuk-tuk. Wood-fired saunas are started early in the morning and tended all day, enveloping bathers in clouds of healing stream

Buddha park and National Ethnic Cultural park

Located some 25km from downtown Vientiane on the Mokong river, Xiang Khouan or the Buddha Park is surely Lao’s quirkiest attraction. This collection of massive ferro-concrete sculptures, which lie dotted around a side riverside meadow, was created under the direction of Louang Pou Bounleua Soulilat, a self-styled holy man who claimed to have been the disciple of a cave-dwelling Hindu hermit in VN. Upon returning to Laos, Buddha that dominates the park, there are concrete statues of every conceivable deity in the Hindu-Buddhist pantheon and even a handful of personalities from the old regime.

The Kaysone Memorial Museum

Lao’s tribute to the man who led the Thirty Year Struggle. The Kaysone Memorial Museum lies on the northern edge of Vientiane in the former American compound known during the Second Indochina War as Six Klicks city-after its location, 6km from the centre. Once a slice of American, with ranch-style homes with swimming pool round the back, nicely paved roads, bars, duty-free boozo and stag films, Six Klicks city was an oasis in a quagmire during the years that the US embassy was the seat of power in Vientiane.

Lao Pako

A journey out to Lao Pako, an environmentally friendly resort located on a bend in the NamNgum River, 50km northeast ò Vientiane, is perhaps the best quick trip you can make out of the capital. You could easily spend two days soaking up the laid-back atmosphere at this Austro – German-owned woodsy getaway, spread across 50ha and affording ample pasture for swimming, bird-watching and day hikes to nearby villages. You can also follow a pair of self-guided natural trails, along one of which is a herbal steam cool spring.
Getting to Lao Pako involves a combination of bus and boat travel. Catch the blue Paksap bus at the Morning Market and get off at Somsamai, where boatmen will be on hand to ferry you down the tranquil Nam Ngum river to the resort.

Wat Phabat Phonsan

The somewhat is located monastery of Wat Phabat Phonsan 80km east of the capital, is best known for its “Buddha’s footprint”, probably one of the most elaborate of the handful of examples to be ground in Laos. As with most so-called footprints of the Buddha the one at this monastery was originally a larger-than-life recess in stone that vaguely resembled a human footprint.. In ancient times, the sandstone bluff upon which the monastery now sits was submerged by the nearby river and over time, the swirling currents carved deep bowls into its surface. When the water receded, one if these indentations looked enough like a footprint for it wanderings through Laos.. Never mind that there is no record of Gautama Buddha ever having got this far east, his footprints have been found all over Laos wherever there is a population of Buddhist

Ang Nam Ngum Reservoir

90km north of Vientiane, the vast Ang Nam Ngum Reservoir lies on the northern edge of the Vientiane Plain, separating the rice-growing flatlands surrounding the capital from the mountains terrain of the north. Created when the Nam Ngum river was dammed in 1971, the deep, green waters of the reservoir are dotted with scores of forest-clad islands stretching to a dramatic horizon, the dam – the driving force behind Lao’s production of hydroelectricity, the country’s largest export earner until the late 1980s – provides electricity for Vientiane and surrounding villages on the Vientiane Plain. Most of the power, however, flows across the Mekong into Thailand which has an agreement to purchase Lao’s surplus electricity.

Don dok Khoun Kham

10 minute boat ride away from Na Nam, small, densely forested Don Dok Khoun Kham the most accessible of the islands, features a pleasant restaurant and a rapidly decaying guest house that will surely be a hit with horror-film fans. The two-storey house has eight rooms of varying shapes and the house can at times be without water or electricity, although this usually only the case if  you’ve arrived after sunset and the caretaker is off spear-fishing for the night. If you don’t mind roughing it a bit the island makes for a pleasant, quiet place to spend an afternoon and a night.

DanSaVanh Nam Ngum Resort

Located on the southwestern shore of the lake, the two-hundred room DanSaVanh Nam Ngum Resort is billed as a two-star hotel with four-star service. Besides its spa and restaurant serving Chinese and Thailand food, it also has a newly opened casino, the only in Laos. While hardly a return to former days when casinos were in full swing in Pakxe and Thakhek, it does signal a slight softening