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Published: December 12th 2008
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(Day 250 on the road)After our profoundly unsuccessful attempt to reach the Plain of Jars on an eastward path via the former CIA headquarter in Laos at Long Cheng (see previous entry), we started a second attempt going north first on Highway 13 and then east on Highway 7 to Phonsavan (the city closest to the jars). It took us two full days of driving with the second day being bitter cold (we bought gloves to be able to ride our motorbike), but after more than a week after initially setting out to get here, we finally made it!
The jars itself are pretty mysterious: Nobody knows what exactly they are or why they are there, but the whole area is littered with thousands of stone jars of various sizes at some 400 different sites. They are thought to be about 2000 years old, and the two most widely accepted theories about their use say they may have been used as funeral urns or as storage for food. Harriet and I visited the three main sites, and were pretty intrigued at the site of it.
The area here is also infamous for the heavy fighting that took place during
the "Secret War" in the 1960s, and the jars lie amidst thousands of unexploded bombs. The large quantity of UXOs (unexploded ordinances), mostly cluster munitions, means that only the three sites that we visited are are actually open to tourists - the others are considered too dangerous. Also, only the immediate vicinity of the jars and small footpaths around them have been cleared of unexploded mines and bombs so far, and the places where it is safe to walk are marked by white and red way markers. Having been to the army (long time ago though) and being trained as a pioneer during that time (soldiers specialising in mines and bombs), I know very well what these vicious things are capable of, and I was actually quite scared.
The next day, Harriet left on a bus to Vientiane and onwards to Bangkok, and the one thing I still wanted (or rather: needed) to do, was to sell my motorbike. I would have loved to keep it and drive it into Thailand, but it is not possible to take Laos' bikes across the border. What a shame! The sale was pretty interesting: I had seen a signpost for a golf
course and drove there to check it out and hit a few balls, but there was no one around (except a few people walking or biking across the course, funny). A woman in the house opposite told me that the guy who worked there would return in about 20 minutes. So I just lingered around for a while, and after some time I thought why not ask the woman if she needed a bike. Turns out, she did! 10 minutes later we had agreed on a price, she drove to the bank to get the money, and the bike was gone.
Suddenly without my own transport after three weeks on the bike, getting around felt amazingly cumbersome. I had so got used to having my own wheels to go anywhere that I had forgotten how tedious it is to walk everywhere or to rely on tuk-tuks.
Next stop: Luang Prabang (Northern Laos).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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