Buddha Found

Back in January, on arriving in Vietnam, I had a blog post entitled “Where’s Buddha?” Well, I found him! On my last day in Vientiane, I visited more of the wats (pagodas) which seem to be in every square kilometer of the city. At Wat Sisaket - the oldest original one (most were destroyed by the invading Siamese army in the 17th century), I saw, literally, piles of Buddha images, recovered from underground ruins all over Vientiane. In niches of the walls of the courtyard around the wat were another 2000 images, in addition to many bigger brass images. The place is quite remarkable, and I tried to capture it a bit with my camera in the setting sun.

So far, Laos reminds me a lot of Burma, in the prominence of Buddhism in the culture, the gentleness of the people, and the poverty. But there are a lot more foreign aid dollars here, which you don’t see in Burma. You see it everywhere, and certainly the large number of ex-pats helps local economies too.