Blogs from East, Laos, Asia - page 12

After two weeks on the remote Island in Thailand we were ready to continue our travel up north through Thailand into Laos. We decided to pass through the rest of Thailand as quickly as possible as we were keen to spend more time in Laos. Within 36 hours we traveled with speedboat, minibus, plane, bus, overnight-train and tuktuk to the friendship bridge connecting the city of Nong Khai in Thailand with Vientiane in Laos. It was a quite exhausting trip but everything worked out fine and we even accumulated only 3 hours delay at the end. Quite good for Asia... First we enjoyed the layed back capital of Laos - Vientiane - for two days. With just 300.000 inhabitants it is just a little town. Then we headed north to Luang Prabang with a one night ... read more

(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 ... read more

We hadn't originally planned to go to Phonsovan, but we met a French/Laos couple who had worked as tourguides in Laos during the 70's before fleeing to Laos during the revolution. They suggested we should go here to learn some interesting history - and we certainly did. Phonsovan's regular attraction is the Plain of Jars, a series of huge stone jars scattered across various sites. The one we went to had over 300 jars. Nobody is really sure what they are for or indeed who put them there. The most common view is that they are burial jars and that the ashes of the deceased were put in here. Phosovan's less regular attraction, but far more interesting to me was their recent history during the "Secret War". During the Vietnam War, many Vietnamese troops hid in ... read more

Laos again We love this country can you tell....... read more

Unlike most of the other towns we have visited Phonsavan has not reached a level of friendliness to it's tourists. The locals are alright but the tour operators are arseholes. There are some great things to do here but it is overshadowed by a darker side. There are quite a few aid agencies based here with many expat personnell and we got talking to them about some of the local issues. It seems Laos is the most bombed country in the world (per capita) and around 30% of all the stuff dropped didn't detonate. This is collectively known as UXO and there are many signs advising tourists to keep to marked safety areas when moving around the countryside. At 1st I thought it quite humorous that the locals had taken to turning the UXO into everything ... read more