Museum of the Revolution, Vientiane

This is the Lao Democratic Republic's Museum of the Revolution, Vientiane. Notice the huge hammer and sickle.















Choppers are big.


Pose in front of the tank, Marnie.














I was not supposed to take pictures inside the museum, oops! But the first floor of the inside mirrored the outside -- old heavy military equipment. This side of the hall featured old artillery guns, which I can't imagine moving around easily in mountainous Lao. The other side featured old military vehicles whose battle scars were rather evident. The upstairs was an exhibit on the history (delineated through a collection of stunning photographs from the French era through skirmishes with "ultrarightists" in the 1990s) of the liberation of Laos from the "imperialists" (French, Americans) told from the perspective of the Communists in Laos. The upstairs exhibit also had old military equipment. This equipment was more interesting to me, radios, personal affects, firearms -- even reckage of an American F4 fighter jet (I took a bit of a jump when I saw that and wrote down as much of the number on the plane as I could identify). Although I can't verify the authenticity of any of the materials in the museum or the story (it is a propaganda museum after all -- no more skewed than our own propaganda about the indochina war), it was one of the more interesting, time consuming single events of my trip. I had to go twice.