Blogs from Plain of Jars, East, Laos, Asia

2000 years old stone jars and 50 years old bombs In north central Laos there is a city named Phonsavan. We went there because we wanted to visit the archaeological site Plain of Jars and Phonsavan is the city of choice to do that from. The Plain of Jars consists of possibly as many as 100 separate sites where there are large stone jars standing or lying on the ground. Some of these sites are small, maybe having only a handful or so of these old artefacts, where as others are bigger with several hundreds of jars. The jars are believed to be between 1500 and 2500 years old. Only a few of these sites are today open for visitors and many of the other sites have not even been researched properly. However, a strong recommendation ... read more

My pickup finally arrived at Laos Haven Hotel, half an hour late, in a beat-up old bus. He dropped me off at the bus station where I was told as I was the only person travelling from Vang Vieng to Phonsavan that day, I had to wait for the local bus travelling through from Vientiane to arrive. I couldn't pin him down to an arrival time - 'sometimes early, sometimes late' is as good as it got. So, the ticket I bought for a seat on an air conditioned mini bus has now become a much cheaper seat on an un-airconditioned local bus, but nothing I can do about that. When it finally arrived, I was relieved to see one vacant seat along the back row, which I claimed, and I was the only Westerner on ... read more

Aujourd'hui, changement de guesthouse. Pas de chambre pour 3, alors on se prend une chambre double. Un lit pour 3, au-moins on a des chances d'avoir moins froid et en plus ils nous ont prêté une couette en plus, eux. Un café vite avalé et on part pour la plaine des jarres. La Plaine des Jarres, ben, euh, c'est une plaine avec... des jarres. L'intérêt, c'est que comme les Moaïs de l'Ile de Pâques ou l'alignement de menhirs à Carnac, un grand mystère entoure ses jarres. Elles seraient vieilles de 2000 ou 3000 ans et plusieurs versions existent pour expliquer leur présence. Tout d'abord, il faut préciser que l'on n'a retrouvé ces jarres que dans cette région précise du Laos, à l'Est du pays, et que sa proximité avec le Vietnam fait que cette région a ... read more

We had a brief stay in PHonsavan which was so interesting learning a bit about the Laos recent history, and the "secret" war with America. This area was heavily bombed for 9 years when America was at war with Vietnam and is still heavily affected by millions of unexploded bombs (UXO's). The Plain of Jars that we visited is one of the few sites which has been completely cleared, for tourism purposes and while we there we had to keep within markers so we didn't venture into uncleared territory. It was a very mysterious place with stone jars from 500BC which no one is too sure why their there. Archaologists guess that it may have been to do with burial rituals. There are myths of giant gods who used them for making Lao Lao (a famous ... read more

Thursday, 12th August Now then. Bus journeys. Usually uneventful and usually no-one gives a sh*t so I just gloss over them. Today's was testament to the absolute ineptitude of the South East Asian transport system so far it would be a complete injustice to every other transportation system in the Universe (including the cross Saturn X34 route) to not document it. It started early (as always), 20 minutes before scheduled. No I will not get on the bus in just a towel Mr. Busman. Waiting on the bus for us to show up was an Israeli girl with no ticket and was bullied onto this minibus in the greatest miscommunication since sitcoms were banned from mocking deaf people. She had a ticket for a real bus in 45 minutes, and the bus station is not close ... read more