Howdy, fellow Hive travel and photography lovers! Today I'd like the share the Buddha Park on the Mekong River in Laos across from Nong Khai, Thailand with ya'll today. It's about 25 kilometers from downtown and past the 🇱🇦Friendship Bridge🇹🇭 border crossing. I wouldn't recommend taking one of those old school ~~tuktuks~~ because the rideshare app will be the same price or cheaper, and you'll have a cooler and more comfortable ride. Besides, the tuk-tuk driver is gonna try to rip you off anyway, so it's better to go with air conditioning. My wife and I took our motorcycle, and that was fine too, even though it was a sunny and hot day. I think she only criticized my driving style a few times, so we both had fun despite the heat.
If you arrive from the Thailand side of the river or 🇹🇭Nong Khai🇹🇭, this is what you'll see when you arrive. There are big trees that will keep you cool in the shade and a few shops in case you're hungry or thirsty after your short boat ride from the kingdom.
The tickets are four times the price for a foreign person than they are for a local. It's not that big of a deal because 15,000 kip is less than a dollar, and the 60,000 kip I had to pay because I'm a Yankee is just over two dollars. I did try to be cheeky with the entrance guard and give him the local 15,000 kip entrance ticket and joked with him about his excellent attention to detail as he saw my wife and me had swapped tickets.
I first came to this park in 2001, but that was so long ago that I can barely remember this place, and the camera I was using that day was one of the OG digital cameras by Sony that saved to a floppy disk. It was cool at the time, but this same exact picture I took at the time was way smaller and pixelated than this and was super dark. It feels like digital cameras are about a thousand times better than they were a quarter century ago. I wish my wisdom, maturity, and bank account had the same exponential improvement over that time. I don't think you can get inside the middle area very easily, but I do remember making friends with a monk, and he showed me how to get in. There are signs that say that people over the age of 50 should not enter this structure. It's less than five years away for me, so that warning made me feel old, but then good again when it was still easy to climb. It's a bit scary at the top, though.
I wouldn't suggest kids, unstably balanced people, or anyone scared of heights go to the top, as the guardrail looks like it was made for hobbits and won't keep you from falling down. I guarantee you that some people have fallen down this pumpkin-shaped roof before, but it's not exactly a statistic they're going to share in one of their brochures.
This is what the ticket sales booth and entrance look like from the 🇱🇦Laos🇱🇦 parking lot. The creator of this temple, back in 1958, was inspired to create a Buddhist and Hindu theme of heaven, earth, and hell after an intense vision he had.
This was sadly the last date I had with my wife. We haven't done anything with just the two of us since we had our daughter over two years ago. We of course go places with Jessica, but things are different when we are in mom and dad mode, so it was nice to have a memory with just the two of us again, but this was in June, almost four months ago, and still has yet to happen again, and now that I'm going back to the states for a few months, it's going to be even longer. I just pray it's not the last moment like this forever because she's a wonderful person and my best friend when she's not mad at me.
The Reclining Buddha is one of the heavenly and more positive messages from the statues. It symbolizes the end, but a peaceful one. Everything has its final curtain, but thankfully, it can come peacefully. This reclining Buddha is over 40 meters long and quite huge when you see it in person.
Choose wisely. Do you want the red wine or the blue wine? Will you drink for Zen or for the dark side? Since this place is inspired by the spirit world, it makes sense we'd see this heart-weighing Saint Peter Morpheus style of spirit comparing our good deeds and sins. Maybe they say that one bottle is evil and the other is good, and it's now time to see from which bottle you have drunk from the most.
Thanks for exploring the Buddha Park with us today. Even though I don't have a fancy camera and was using just a basic Samsung phone, I'm quite happy with how the pictures turned out. I wouldn't say it's worth driving 50 kilometers round trip to see this historic park if you're in downtown 🇱🇦Vientiane🇱🇦, but if you're crossing the border to or from 🇹🇭Thailand🇹🇭, it could be a fun trip. If you use a ride share app, it'll cost about $15 round-trip from town. I hope that I get to share more travel adventures with you and my family, but sometimes we get pulled apart in life, and we don't see each other for a long time. The last time I saw my son, he was Ewok-sized, but now he's taller than me, so I'm afraid it will happen again with them.
