From a small bar in Vientiane we were reliably informed (those three Americans and I) that the only thing worth seeing in the city was the Buddha park. This may have come from a drunk, cynical ex-pat Laotian who held only a Canadian passport all his life, but who were we to argue?
We were about 3 buckets into our nightly bender and just about anything short of picking a fight with old testament God (y'know the one; vicious, evil sadistic bearded motherfucker, hated everyone who loved him, spited his most faithful servants, bit of a penchant for killing children etc. etc.) would have sounded just peachy.

The ride there was educational - a goddamn bumpy road to yet more, bumpier roads eventually (20km of spine-jarring tuk-tuk travel later) took us to the Buddha Park; but my, was it worth it.

Almost all these pictures are un-reduced (irreduced?) because they all look rather cool

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You thought you had a bug problems? Guess things were a little overscaled back then:

More statuary:

A stupa- like structure featuring one Greg (giving me the finger, if you can spot it) and one Jaime, featured above thine Gregory and trying not to let him look up her skirt. Too much, anyway

This is a statue of some god eating the moon. Or the sun; some planetary body anyway.
T%his is whay I a) love ancient achitecture and scultpture and b) have less than no time whatsoever for any kind of religion )

Looks cool though.

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The view from up on high, after climbing inside a giant bouldrous stupa temple thing representative of hell - inside there were about 5 levels, the lowest being hell (lots of skeletal guys being pitchforked by happy-looking nasties) and mountains of skulls; the usual shebang.
The middle levels represented, or depicted, the earthly world - regular levels of pain and pleasure, normal stuff, cooking, cleaning, messy divorces etc.
The upper levels had a bunch of guys in the lotuis position - apparently sitting cross-legged so your knees stretch to snapping point is some kind of heaven or something.
Again, organised religion can take a long walk off a short cliff as far as I care.
Once you'd climbed the innner layers of moral rectitude and achieved the summit the view was nice though:

This was particulalrly cool - the pentagular arrangement of walls, buddhas and assorted religious staturay looked mighty fine from up there:

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The reclining buddha - second largest in Thailand apparently, and pretty damned impressive:

A badass snake statue - the name Nagini is given to the snake gods of both Hinduism and Buddhism, or in the buddhist case it ain't a god, more an arbitrary character that has to be fitted in with Hindu legend. Either way J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame ripped the name of a 2000 year old deity for her snake charatcter in her books.
What would life be like without art imitating life imitating art, eh? :

Here's the gumph on the buddha park and all it's monuments and statues by the way:

Here's me, morecambe & Wising it in front of a scared Buddhist monument.
Have I no shame?
NO. Really, you should have clocked that much by now :

Me again caught pre-pisstake:

Some guy with too many arms for any practical use - now come on, I know Krishna used to have hi way with 8 milkmaids at a time (lucky f***ing bastard...) but really, is it at all necessary to give so many appendage sto all these guys? There's one incarnartioan of some god or other (probably Vishnu - afetr a time you find it usually is) with, get this, 22 arms and 11 heads.
Well really, What the fuck is he supposed to do when he want to get some sleep "Oh, sorry honey I'll just put these 6 arms around here and then the other 16 will have to..," well, you get the idea.
As for the heads, well, how the fuck does he choose his hats??!

There is no merit in this other than the interesting and rather attractive different scripts. They probably all mean `keep off the grass1 but hey, it looks purty:

That god eatingthe sun/moon/earth thing again, this time from the front:

Ah! Giant crickets!! It's okay they're only stone:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/154.jpg

This guy is pretty sweet - a giant stone crocodile! :

A three-headed elephant - because one is, quite frankly, never enough.
As any good junkie/nymphomaniac/serial killer will tell you :? :

A collection of assorted statuary:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/141.jpg

Some god guy. Your guess is as good as mine! :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/140.jpg

That three-headed elephant again:

More planet-swalling activity (anyone reminded of that original animated transformers movie from 1986 here yet? That shit gave me nightmares until I was like 13...) :

I don't know what this really is to be honest:

Nor this:

But hey! I sure hope they look pretty!!! :d

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Now this, I know. It is a big statue. Anything mnore clever than that is beyond me so hey, just look at the nice evvil demon statue thing and appreciate :

This is a guy on a horse. I'm good at this aren't I? :

Cool statues No. 3546:

Reclining buddha from anoher angle:

And another - yes it is big, isn't it:

Cool statues No. 3457:

And ookay, yes, I do kinda remember this one; it's a thing of great awesomeness. Just take a look - pretty nifty multi-limbed weird god-dude, huh? :

A line of things, possibly gods, maybe demons. I'm beyond caring. Not through lack of respect, you understand, but because I just had life made quite hard for me and bitterness if my key emotion right now. Anyway - this looks cool, n'est pa? :

And this is that big round stupa thing I climbed - it represnt the buddhist hells and nirvana, guess where they thin my ticket get's stamped with?? :

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Second to last; the guy with too many arms to sleep comfortably, once again:

And last but not least, the outside, first view of that big rounf heaven-hell temple ball thing. Damned impressive aerial sculpture, if you ask me:

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And that's it from Buddha park. Next up Vang Vieng where all the photos are from Greg (he insisted I gave him credit, of course, and then I thin Laos is done, so it's just onto Thailand, then Cambodia, then we're done - woohooooo!!!!

laters people