To the Victory Monument!

After finishing our shopping at the Morning Market, we headed off to the famous Victory Monument also known as Patuxai (Anousavary).

Along the way, I saw this beautiful gateway to a Temple.
It is Naga Muchalinda protecting the Buddha. Muchalinda Buddha is very popular in Indochina regions, I personally have one at home with a Sukhothai Buddha under the Naga.
The beauty of this archway is that instead of coiling itself under the Buddha like typical Muchalinda Buddha artifacts. This archway shows the long body of the Naga Muchalinda which becomes part of the Archway. Lovely!




As we walk slowly to the Victory Monument I took lots of snapshots of it. This one is when ran in the middle of the road and took this. Nice eh?Of coz i did all the safety procedures before doing something sucidal like standing in the middle of a busy road.

Speaking of roads and cars. In Laos, the car are not our usual Right hand drive, The cars are all Left hand drives. So its "look left first then look right before crossing" here, instead of "look right and then left" in Singapore.

From far doesn't it look like the French Arc De Triomphe?It really does if we look at it from far.



We walked pass a school near the Victory Monument. They still have students doing the road marshalling. I remembered we had that in School last time.


See the hordes of students pouring out. The real policemen are also around to control the traffic.



The Patuxai (Anousavary) - Victory Monument. Beautiful eh?


Of coz we have to take our photos here. we took loads!We asked some students to take this for us.





On closer look, the victory monument is French from far, but near, its very Laos.
The doorways are decorated by Garudas, and other Laos emblems.




This is the ceiling of the Arc.very intricate designs and very Laotian. Elephants, Nagas, Dieties are very much part of the Laos symbols. Very pretty!




Of coz like any Developing country......u get signs of commercialism EVEN in this communist country. There are shops inside the Arc selling souvernirs!haha
We managed to make our way up finally and the view is beautiful!
The bottom of the arc is fountain and a space for people to rest. Its relatively clean and nice.



This is one of the main roads, Its well kept and very nice. Lots of cars here as well.



This is the highest part of the arc.



On the roof.



China is a good buddy to Laos and they donated the fountain to the Laos government.
Well done China. haha.





There are many seats around the park below the arc. I found it funny that on every chair, they have advertisement! Amusing.