The rain in Laos falls main on the plain... of jars

I am now kicking it in Vang Vieng: the fabled backpacker watering hole midway between Luang Prabang and Vientaine. At this point I’ve pretty much decided to scrap going to Vietnam and spend an extra week and a half in Laos, I’m just loving to too much to leave.

After leaving Luang Prabang I made a quick two night stopover in Phonsavan to see the plain of the jars. The road between these two towns is cut right along the mountainside and goes from the Mekong base up to about 1200m (where apparently in the winter it actually gets down to zero). I swear the bus driver along the way was playing a very unsuccessful game of operation as he honked around every corner to warm of our passage. The views however were great and most of the 8 hours was taken up by me just looking out the window.

The town of Phonsavan, which is spelt differently every which way you look, was quiet small and basically geared to bring in travelers: show them the jars and some bomb craters and then stick them back on a bus. The people were still on a whole extremely nice and welcoming though. Basically everyone I’ve meet from Laos is kind and has a smile, that of course could be because I look like an ATM machine to them but I’d prefer not to be that cynical, it does actually seem genuine. After out tour I was playing soccer with some of the local kids and the owner of the guesthouse brought me over to have some shots of rice whiskey with him and our guide and driver from the day to celebrate our new friendship. It was quite amusing to hear him talk about all of the foreigners and the ones he liked and didn’t. After about 3 hours and around 15 shots later the owner and guide had to retire for the night after attempting to drink me under the table. I on the other hand set out with the girls to search for some more food. Good times had by all!

Perhaps a little history lesson is needed in describing the plain of jars. The jars themselves are scattered across several plains around the area. The site I visited was one of the larger clusters and had about 250 of them I believe. What they are is large jars made out of stone ranging from quite small to 3.5 meters in width and a couple tons in weight. As for why the jars are, no one really knows for sure although the Laotians joke that their ancestors used them to make large vats of rice whiskey. We were actually supposed to go see another two sites but it was raining too hard and our minivan couldn’t make it up the mud road. It actually blew out a tire attempting to do so. Instead we went to several bomb craters and a local village. The other major history behind the area has to do with the bomb craters. Laos, as it turns out, is the most bombed country in history and much of it occurred around the plain of jars as it was a major supply route during the Vietnam war. Official figures say that the US dropped 2 093 100 tons of bombs on 580 944 sorties or, 2 million dollars worth of bombs a day for 9 years. Many of these bombs didn’t explode on impact so many people still die each year s they unearth live bombs. This war was fought in secret by the CIA and the Vietnamese with Laos just stuck in the middle. One upside is the local villages have adapted to their surroundings using pieces of the bombs to hold out their houses and gardens. The downside being that some f the bombs they try and use explode, and I’m not actually sure what they bombs are made out of but it probably isn’t the best thing to be handling in general. Needless to say I didn’t wander far off the beaten track in this area.

On a lighter note, one of the British girls made an astute and rather cynical comment about nothing on our travels ever being quiet. There’s the hum of the bus or boat motor, the sounds of frogs, crickets, roosters, and geckos, and if you are really lucky only the sound of the fan or AC. It’s a bit strange to think about as you’d think a smaller town would be less noise but it actually seems to have more. It’s weird what a city drowns out, or maybe it’s just the sounds we are used to filtering.

That’s all for now, it’s time to find some dinner. I’m sure I’ll run into everyone I know in this town again. It’s always fun to see the bastardized family gets created as the travels wear on, complete, of course, with sibling spats.