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Published: April 12th 2007
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Plain of Jars
Peering into a giant jar Phonsavan is an unassuming town east of the capital, Vientiene. Although it may not look like much from the window of a bus, it has a lot of history. It is known for two famous things. The first being that it is home to the Plain of Jars, five sites of huge sandstone jars dating 2500-3000 years old. They are not quite sure what they were used for, but most agree they were for their dead, a kind of cemetery. The people of this time must have had to drag the sandstone boulders from many miles away and then carve them into shape. Most of them had lost their tops and only two have carvings of figures on them. You have to go on a tour to see the jars because, the other reason Phonsavan is famous for, is that the area is heavily littered with UXOs and walking off the marked paths could be fatal.
On the bus from Vang Vieng I met the other three western travelers also en route to Phonsavan. We checked into the same guesthouse and booked the tour together. We chose to do the three main sites, stopping off at a small village that
Site One
A field of jars from site one does weaving and makes Lao Lao whiskey and a Russian tank left over from the war. We were picked up at 9:00am in a small minibus with three other travelers to see the jars. We stopped off at an information station and our guide, Khen, explained the history of the jars and where and where not to walk. The jars are gigantic but the impressive thing about them is the mystery that surrounds them, a lot like Stonehenge. Our group walked around the fields, each with their own theory about the jars. Between sites one and two we stopped off at the village to see the whiskey distillery (a free shot included, it was only 10:30 in the morning) and the weavers. After the last site of jars we went to see a Russian tank. It was lying almost on its side in what appeared to be someone’s front yard. It was rusty, filled with pine needles and the top had been blown off and was lying 10 meters from the tank itself. Khen pointed out machine gun marks on the side and the identification mark it had of being a Russian tank made in Vietnam. I didn’t fully understand
Our Tour Group
Convinced we were going to solve the mystery. Why does this jar have a top? and it’s times like these when I wish my dad, who knows everything about military history, were there to explain it all to me.
I soon discovered that I was more interested in the history of the “secret war” that United States carried out in Laos between 1965-1973 than I was in the Plain of Jars. Our guesthouse lobby was full of old grenades, bomb shells, bullets and other rusty metal bits. There was even a bomb casing outside they used for BBQ. My guesthouse wasn’t the only place you’d see remnance of the war, most of the restaurants and cafes had reliques as well as using bomb casing to use to pot plants. At one restaurant we ate with aluminum spoons that were most likely made from scrap metal salvaged from planes (I read this later in my guide book).
In these eight years, the US military dropped two million tons of bombs. It is the most bombed country in history. The US was threatened by Laos’s ties to Vietnam and Phonsavan’s proximity to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was also believed that there were groups of Vietnamese and Laos troops hiding artillery in underground reserves. Most of
Me Stew
Potted in a giant jar the bombs were rocket shaped and contained 600-700 cluster bombs called “bombies”. Sadly, 30 million of these bombies never went off and are still scattered in farmland, under houses, on school grounds, you name it, everywhere. There are thousands of deaths every year, many are children. In my guesthouse there is a poster illustrating how not to treat bombies. Poor farmers often try to crack them open to get the gun powder and children think they are fun play things. MAG (Mines Advisory Group) try to educate people about the bombies and have trained many people to blow up the bombies found on people’s property. They receive money mostly through donations, charity organizations and private grants. America has never taken responsibility for what happened in Phonsivan. The first ones on the scene back in the 70s were a group of Mennonite missionaries from Canada. They helped victims and raised money to buy the farmers in the area shovels to turn over the soil instead of the hoes they usually used which caused the bombies hidden under the earth to explode on impact. They have no other choice but to farm land that has not yet been checked by MAG and
Jarred Tree
This tree grew in the middle of the jar causing it to break into several parts. parents live in fear that their children will find one while playing or walking off the path. Cluster bombs leave a village living with war many years after the fighting has stopped.
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D.L. Pappy Hicks
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U.S. Army, Retired
It has been a number of years since I've seen these monster jars. I was with the Hmong and Lao during the war when they were fighting the North Vietnamese Army as they raided into Lao. Of course, no one knew where the jars came from. They were there long before the Lao, Hmong and other ethnic groups arrived in Lao. Great pictures.