Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital of Laos, on a bend of the Mekong River where the far bank belongs to Thailand. Viang Chan, the Lao form of the name, is usually read as city of sandalwood, and Vientiane is the French spelling that English took over.

King Setthathirath moved the royal seat of Lan Xang from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in 1560. In his reign Pha That Luang, a gilded stupa said to hold a relic of the Buddha, rose over an older shrine, and it appears on the national emblem of Laos; its festival in November brings monks and pilgrims to the grounds. France made the town the seat of its protectorate of Laos at the turn of the 20th century, and it remained the capital after independence in the 1950s.

Beerlao, brewed in Vientiane by the Lao Brewery Company, uses jasmine rice grown in the country alongside imported malt. The Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge carries road and rail traffic across the Mekong to Nong Khai, and the railway from Vientiane to Kunming in China opened in 2021, linking the city with Chinese markets. Coffee and silk from the provinces are sold in the city, and handwoven Lao silk skirts called sinh are a common gift.

Wat Si Saket, built under King Anouvong in the early 19th century, is the oldest temple still standing in Vientiane, and its cloister walls are lined with small Buddha images set in niches. Patuxai, a monumental gate begun in the late 1950s, borrows its outline from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but carries Lao motifs of kinnari and Hindu gods. Xieng Khuan, known as the Buddha Park, was filled with concrete statues of Buddhist and Hindu figures by Bunleua Sulilat, a mystic who started work on the riverbank south-east of the city in the late 1950s.