Laos might be landlocked, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some great water views. Winding through the entire length of the country is one of the world’s great rivers, the Mekong.  From the snows of the Himalayas, the river runs through six southeast Asian countries: Tibet, China, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Down here, about halfway down the length of Laos, the river is wide. And it’s also relatively calm yet persistent–calm compared to further downriver near the Cambodian border, where the river becomes massive raging rapids during the rainy season. Unlike further north in Laos, where the landscape is mountainous and rugged, the topography around Vientiane is relatively flat, and the river banks here are sandy, not rocky.

The nation’s capital, Vientiane, sits on the bank of the river. And the opposite bank is Thailand; the middle of the river markets part of a long border between the two countries. There are no fences of walls or checkpoints here–just the endlessly surging water of the Mekong.

Vientiane’s waterfront seems purpose-built for glorious sunsets. A new park and promenade is heavily used by local families out enjoying the balmy evening air. Kids play and swim in the small, protected lagoons created by the wide sandy islands. And in the evening, vendors at a night market sell the usual wares to tourists.

It’s all makes for a relaxed, friendly, and scenic place to spend the early evening.

Map

For a big city–12 million people and counting–Paris doesn’t have the kinds of skyscrapers you might expect. Aside from a few carefully segregated clusters, most of Paris’s buildings aren’t more than five or six stories tall.

That, of course, is quite deliberate. When the Tour Montparnasse was built in the mid-1970s–weighing in at 689 feet tall–it looked completely out of place, grotesque even. For Parisians, always so protective of their city’s style–it just would not do. They couldn’t tear it down, but they could impose a height limit on any new buildings. Which is exactly what they did. After 1977, the Paris city council decreed that any new buildings could be no taller than 121 feet. It was only in 2010 that that limit was partially relaxed for some areas of the city. ¹

Despite that lack of tall buildings–or more accurately, because of that–Paris has one of the world’s most distinctive skylines. There’s nothing on the skyline to compete with the unique profiles of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and Sacre Couer. And they are oh-so-Parisian.

Map

Even Uncle Ho needs a holiday. Mind you, and as much as I like place, I can think of more picturesque places than Moscow as that city heads into winter. Each year, in October and November, Ho Chi Minh, not exactly under his own steam, ventures to Moscow for some TLC, getting spruced up by the Russian team responsible for preserving Vladimir Lenin’s youthful glow.

When Lenin died in 1924, it started a trend in Soviet-bloc and some Communist countries for embalming their great leaders and putting them on public display. It was, of course, so that grateful and grieving members of public could pay their respects. Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il-sung, and Mao Zedong all received that treatment–although in the anti-Stalin wave in the mid-1950s, Stalin was removed from display and buried next to the Kremlin wall just outside Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square. Recently departed North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will apparently be joining them, with Pyongyang announcing plans to embalm his body in a mausoleum complex yet to be constructed in the North Korean capital. ¹

Ho famously decreed that he should receive no special post-mortem tributes, that he should be cremated and that his ashes should be scattered in the Vietnamese countryside so that he could fertilize the agricultural land. The Vietnamese government respectfully disagreed. Four years after his death, they began construction of this massive marble crypt to house Ho’s embalmed body for public display. It stands on the spot where Ho had read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence on September 2, 1945, and when it opened in 1975, it became hallowed ground.

Apparently oblivious to the ceremonial similarities they share with the honor guards of royal households, goose-stepping Vietnamese soldiers in white dress uniforms stand watch over the entrance, switching out every hour–even when Ho’s away for his annual holiday. Each guard’s personal history has been carefully vetted to ensure that there’s no past blemish on their record (or that of their family’s) that might disqualify them from the special honor of standing guard here. Tourists are welcome to observe the ceremony, but whatever you do, don’t walk on the grass or cross the yellow line. And absolutely, positively don’t try to take photos inside.

Map