Must-Visit Vientiane, LAOS - Buddha Park + Textile Museum

Yo, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, we're Peter and Yen travel vloggers from New Zealand and if you've been following along this is our second vlog from Vientiane, Laos. Today we're going to be getting in some arts and culture by visiting a textile museum and then later on a sculpture park. Yeah but the sculpture park is actually quite a far ways out from the city center. It's about one hour by public bus which is what we're gonna try and catch later on today. See how we go. Yeah but right now we are already here at the textile museum so let's go check it out. Even just coming here and arriving, you know you're gonna be in for a good day because the garden here is really beautiful. Lots of nice plants and interesting trees. Just purchased our tickets. They're 30,000 kip per person and we're ready to start our tour. Over this way. This way. So this textile museum is the first private museum here in Laos. And we're already starting to get... It's very informative in here. There are a lot of signs that are also in English which is always very helpful. We're just having a read and also observing the lovely lady over here weaving some of the garments and it looks like a very labor-intensive process because she's hand weaving it and she needs a porcupine needle to actually get the patterns in the garments. So there was one that's like an example over here and it looks very intricate and it's all done with the silk material. Yeah must take so much skill to do these and time. Yeah. So Yenna's gonna actually try to get a few rows done on the scarf. Oh I'm so worried about messing it up. This lovely lady's going to help teach me what to do. Oh that's so cool. My first time trying to weave a scarf. Takes a little coordination but apparently this one's the easy one and I don't know how I did but thank you. Only two words. What have you found here? Well this is kind of explaining how the silkworms are turned into garments and for me it's always been like a bit of an ancestral interest I guess you could say. Because it's always something that I've imagined like my great-great-great-grandfather might have done on the silk road or something like that. So I've watched many hours of videos of this exact same process but basically what happens is you come here you get a really giant basket like this right and then you cover it with all the worms as well as mulberry leaves on top and then the worms will actually eat all those mulberry leaves and turn into cocoons here and later on when they're and then spin them so that you get the silk yarn and then you're ready for turning them into garments. So it's quite an intricate process and it's the best cocoons that produce the best silk apparently. Which I believe is what they do here. Yeah. Up here in the museum we can see various antique silk displays made by different ethnic groups here in Laos and you can just see and appreciate all the different intricate and sophisticated designs that would have gone into making these pieces. Well I know we're meant to be admiring all the textiles but I can't help also admiring the beautiful home that we're in as well. The wood smell is like so nice and scented throughout wherever you're walking you just get a nice whiff of it and if you've been watching for a while you know I love my interesting homes and this definitely ticks off that list. And we're also right next to a pond. Very peaceful surroundings. Absolutely lovely. I can't wait to explore more of the garden too just down there. Yeah let's head over. You can see Hua Van doing all her craft here and she was saying that it looks green here at first but after about 15 minutes and you leave it out to dry it becomes more blue. So you're making indigo dye is it right now bud? So all these different materials here make different colors as well. So you've got coconut and mangosteen and even jackfruit which makes yellow dye. It's really nice to see and just never really thought about where all the different colors can come from but makes sense to get all these different natural dyes. We've finished having a walk around and we've made our way over to the souvenir store so I can't wait to actually go look at all the products but we've been given some lovely butterfly pea tea. It's a very pretty blue color and if you're familiar with butterfly pea you know that if you drop a little bit of lemon juice into it it'll change color. Look at that. Magic. It's turning purple. So pretty. I reckon Yin might like this one. What do you reckon bud? I think you are right. Let's try it on. How's it look? Cute. Cute. Yeah I like it. You like it? Yeah. It's good for the heat here. We're over here to Talat Sao bus station so I think someone's just pointed us down that way to get onto the bus number 14 and then we're making our way over to Buddha Park. Let's go see how we get on. We read that the bus comes pretty frequently. I think it was every 15 or 20 minutes and it's all very clearly marked if it's number 14. It also says Buddha Park so we're definitely on the right bus and I believe payment comes once we're starting in on our way. We've just arrived at Buddha Park and the bus ride was over about 50 minutes. There was no traffic for us so that was good and we even passed the Thai-Laos border which was the friendship bridge. The bus ride was also air-conditioned so it's nice and comfortable and a lady did come and collect a payment for the tickets which was 18,000 kip per person. So here the entrance price is what was it? 40,000 kip and otherwise 15,000 for locals. I like your new hat too. Yeah this has definitely come in handy. No way this place has kumara. I cannot pass this opportunity up. Gotta get one. I hope I can talk over all these cicadas and people around me but we have a kumara which will make a fitting snack for while we check out the rest of this park. Oh that is delicious. Nice and hot. Hot, sweet and a beautiful texture. First standout sculpture that you notice the moment you come into the park is this pumpkin-like structure. A giant pumpkin. Yeah you enter through a mouth and then it's a bit low hanging so you just got to be careful and there's some steep steps that you need to climb up but I believe once we get to the top we get to have a view of the park and inside here you can see all these sculptures already which is really interesting and you just think about like how long it must have taken the artist to do all this. What a fantastic view eh? It looks absolutely magnificent from the top. You can see all of the sculptures right behind me as well as the lovely garden as well. Lots of beautiful flowers too and there's one thing to note though if you're coming up on top of this giant pumpkin and you're a little bit claustrophobic it might not be quite for you because there are some very narrow spaces to try and navigate your way up. Yeah but it is well worth it and it's only a few little steps. Very worth it. Hey there's another stairwell. How does it go down? Same way but I guess it's on the perimeter side of it. Okay. Let's try this way. Because yeah we came up through the center but looks like there's this side entrance too. I think these side ways are maybe a little bit easier too so good if you're claustrophobic because it might be slightly wider for you rather than going up the center but both ways are all good and definitely worth making your way up to the top. That was fun. Yeah. So besides from buddhist statues inside this park there are also various hindu deities and also some creatures like this giant crocodile right behind me as well as some mythological ones for example that seven-headed naga that's just over there. Oh yeah. And another really cool one is this three-headed elephant which I've never even read about in a book before so that's really interesting. We have to do some googling later on. This bee has to go all the way into the flower. Look at this. Oh my gosh that's so cool. We've made our way all the way to the back of the park now and right at the end you can see the Mekong river as well as Thailand right over across from it. We also passed a couple of long canoes that reminded me of Wakad back home in New Zealand and then you've got these elevated little wooden huts which I imagine you can probably just sit there and enjoy some food which is where we're headed to right now because I can see a restaurant just over there. I'm hungry. I was asking the nice waitress what she would order if she was going to eat here like a traditional Lao dish and she said the noodles so even though it's a very hot day the noodles is what we have and I've got the pork variety right here. I'm gonna get some veggies, some soup and a chaser of noodles and let's give this a go. Very excited to eat. Very hungry. Oh that is so good. Oh I wasn't expecting that but the noodles have a really nice silky texture to them. It's got a lot of bounce. I can see why that would have been the local favorite because it's very comforting and delicious. She also recommended fried rice too. I may have a second fried rice too. See how you go. Yeah. I am super excited to try my dish not only because I'm pretty hungry now but because it is a lap chicken the national dish here and this one looks amazing. I've also managed to get myself some sticky rice. It comes in a cute little basket. Let's dig into this lap. I'm kind of jealous now. You can have some too. Oh yeah that's true. The sticky rice is very sticky. Here we go. Absolutely delicious. It's so tangy and has a real zestiness to it and it's only a tiny bit spicy so it's definitely easier to handle than some of the dishes that we've had in Bianjiang so far. It is delicious. Very fresh as well and I love that we've got a view of the river right next to us. Okay. Yeah so I spoke way too soon about that lap because it was actually a bit spicy. It's when I bit into some chilli. You needed some emergency water. I did but it was incredibly delicious and we also did some little souvenir shopping as well along the way. Yeah it's been a really really fun day today and I think Ian and I both really enjoyed ourselves. Yeah we sure did and we met a lot of nice people too including this couple that was on the bus who were from Adelaide but they are Laotian people so that was very nice. Shout out if you're watching this. Hi. So if you guys enjoyed following along with us today please remember give our video a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't already and leave us a comment. We love reading them. Yeah we're gonna take the bus back. Yeah. Till the next one everyone. And the next vlog. See ya. Bye.