Buddha Park!!!!!!
So today I was very, very, very adventurous. I didn't realise at the outset that I was going to be, but in my newfound way of just 'going with the flow' I set off on my outing without too much thought about what I might entail.
Breakfast at the hotel is delicious and with views like this how can they not be?
After I'd finished my second cup of coffee and another chapter of Hitch-22, I got a tuk tuk to the bus station. This was the start of the adventure, I love riding in these things!
All I knew once I got there was that I must catch a number 14 bus. The whole area was rammed with all kinds of people, tourists, schoolkids, housewives with their bags and bags of shopping - one woman had a huge back of the evilest looking chillies I'd ever seen - gigolos, and monks, lots and lots of monks. As luck would have it, I spotted a number 14 and with only a couple of empty seats I figured it was about due to leave.
Silly me, it was far from ready to set off, after all there were not only empty seats but also empty floor space and copious amounts of oxygen not being used up yet! The fare to the Buddha Park was 5000Kip, about 40p, for a journey that was a fair way out of town. My tuk tuk to the bus station was 25,000Kip so to say this bus was cheap was an understatement! The best bit, and a really telling part of my experience of this lovely country, is that you paid when you got off. How trusting!
The driver began to re-arrange people's limbs and luggage in order to cram as many passengers as possible in, and he succeeding in doubling the amount of people this 15 seater mini-bus could transport! Nobody complained, young men got up off their seats so that old women could be comfy, I tucked my enormous western limbs up inside the tiny space my single seat afforded me so that people could crowd in and hold on. Soon enough we were off! There's a lot to be said about a country where the phrase 'health and safety' means sod all. I guess the fact that it's Buddhist country helps, if your bus crashes, it's your karma innit?
Random people shouted out something that sounded like "whoa" when they wanted to get off and the bus would just stop, they would then pass their Kip through to the driver via the other passengers, before he lurched off again. The big disembarkation spot was Friendship Bridge which is the border crossing for Thailand. This was an incredibly well developed spot, with even a massive Duty Free shop. Sadly there are no photos because until half the bus got off I couldn't move my hand to get my camera out of my bag!
Not long after the bridge we were close to the Buddha Park. I could tell because soon there were only three of us left on the bus and we were all westerners. We didn't have to shout "whoa" cos the driver knew we were getting off. He stopped and I paid and I was so excited!
I also was in desperate need of a loo. Ooooh now there was another adventure! I paid 20p for the privilege of pissing down my leg! Here's a tip, if you're gonna build a squat toilet, at least put a window or a lightbulb in there! God bless the Wet Wipes that I'd bought in the Japanese Pound Shop back in Borneo!
This is the first thing you see in the park, I'm not entirely sure what part of Buddhist mythology it portrays, or indeed if it is Buddhist, because there's some Hindu statues here too. You can however climb inside it's mouth and crawl around in the dark up to the peak. After the loo, I'd had enough crawling in dark holes, so I declined this treat.
The park is perhaps the most bizarre thing I've seen, ever. It's kind of like a "Buddha World" dozens and dozens of statues that look thousands of years old but are in reality around fifty years old, all built by some bloke who was run out of town not long afterwards. He moved to Thailand and built another park full of statues there. Odd.
Fabulous though and while there's no money being left as offerings on the statues here, there are other gifts left for the Buddhas including weirdly, this half-eaten Cumberland sausage!
I took photos of every statue but even as I looked back at them to choose ones for this post, I was unable to count just how many there were, its crazy, but it's fabulous.
If you ever find yourself in this part of the world you must visit!
Once I'd had my fill of Buddhas, I went out and the up the road was a 14 bus heading towards Vientiane, I stuck out my hand as I'd seen the locals do, and shouted "whoa". I think I may be fitting in here!
The bus back to town was a bit quieter!
Breakfast at the hotel is delicious and with views like this how can they not be?
After I'd finished my second cup of coffee and another chapter of Hitch-22, I got a tuk tuk to the bus station. This was the start of the adventure, I love riding in these things!
All I knew once I got there was that I must catch a number 14 bus. The whole area was rammed with all kinds of people, tourists, schoolkids, housewives with their bags and bags of shopping - one woman had a huge back of the evilest looking chillies I'd ever seen - gigolos, and monks, lots and lots of monks. As luck would have it, I spotted a number 14 and with only a couple of empty seats I figured it was about due to leave.
Silly me, it was far from ready to set off, after all there were not only empty seats but also empty floor space and copious amounts of oxygen not being used up yet! The fare to the Buddha Park was 5000Kip, about 40p, for a journey that was a fair way out of town. My tuk tuk to the bus station was 25,000Kip so to say this bus was cheap was an understatement! The best bit, and a really telling part of my experience of this lovely country, is that you paid when you got off. How trusting!
The driver began to re-arrange people's limbs and luggage in order to cram as many passengers as possible in, and he succeeding in doubling the amount of people this 15 seater mini-bus could transport! Nobody complained, young men got up off their seats so that old women could be comfy, I tucked my enormous western limbs up inside the tiny space my single seat afforded me so that people could crowd in and hold on. Soon enough we were off! There's a lot to be said about a country where the phrase 'health and safety' means sod all. I guess the fact that it's Buddhist country helps, if your bus crashes, it's your karma innit?
Random people shouted out something that sounded like "whoa" when they wanted to get off and the bus would just stop, they would then pass their Kip through to the driver via the other passengers, before he lurched off again. The big disembarkation spot was Friendship Bridge which is the border crossing for Thailand. This was an incredibly well developed spot, with even a massive Duty Free shop. Sadly there are no photos because until half the bus got off I couldn't move my hand to get my camera out of my bag!
Not long after the bridge we were close to the Buddha Park. I could tell because soon there were only three of us left on the bus and we were all westerners. We didn't have to shout "whoa" cos the driver knew we were getting off. He stopped and I paid and I was so excited!
I also was in desperate need of a loo. Ooooh now there was another adventure! I paid 20p for the privilege of pissing down my leg! Here's a tip, if you're gonna build a squat toilet, at least put a window or a lightbulb in there! God bless the Wet Wipes that I'd bought in the Japanese Pound Shop back in Borneo!
This is the first thing you see in the park, I'm not entirely sure what part of Buddhist mythology it portrays, or indeed if it is Buddhist, because there's some Hindu statues here too. You can however climb inside it's mouth and crawl around in the dark up to the peak. After the loo, I'd had enough crawling in dark holes, so I declined this treat.
The park is perhaps the most bizarre thing I've seen, ever. It's kind of like a "Buddha World" dozens and dozens of statues that look thousands of years old but are in reality around fifty years old, all built by some bloke who was run out of town not long afterwards. He moved to Thailand and built another park full of statues there. Odd.
Fabulous though and while there's no money being left as offerings on the statues here, there are other gifts left for the Buddhas including weirdly, this half-eaten Cumberland sausage!
I took photos of every statue but even as I looked back at them to choose ones for this post, I was unable to count just how many there were, its crazy, but it's fabulous.
If you ever find yourself in this part of the world you must visit!
Once I'd had my fill of Buddhas, I went out and the up the road was a 14 bus heading towards Vientiane, I stuck out my hand as I'd seen the locals do, and shouted "whoa". I think I may be fitting in here!
The bus back to town was a bit quieter!
Labels: Travel
posted by JoJo Smith at Friday, November 19, 2010
4 Comments:
Oh, that sounds quite devine! Excellent pictures as well. Would like to see more of them at some point when you're back and can upload em. So pleased that you're having a lovely time. :) xxx
Thanks Phil. I got to post some more photos this morning, must be less people surfing!
I want to know why he got run out of town? Is that Buddha with the split legs doing some kind of yoga actually Kama Sutra and highly sacrilegious?
Never 'Woah' on the gossip girlfriend, or one day the bus might not stop!
Fabulous blog!
Hey Fiona. The park was built in 1958 by Luang Pu and he left Laos during the revolution in 1975 for Thailand where he built another sculpture park in Sala Keoku according to Wikipedia. I read somewhere else that he was chased out but it was all to do with the communist revolution so I guess his brand of Hindu/Buddhist shamanism wasn't welcome.
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