Plain of Jars

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We woke up early the next morning to head for our complimentary breakfast before lugging our bags back to reception and our awaiting tuk-tuk. It was probably the coldest morning that we had experienced since being in New Zealand with the frosty car so with multiple layers donned we arrived at the bus station. There were a few other westerners waiting to catch the same bus and we got chatting to a few of them as we waited, it was good to be meeting lots of people again! The local bus pulled up a little later than expected and we climbed aboard to take up the back seat with all of the bags (not just ours, all the western backpacks) and took up a seat next to the large wicker basket in the aisle. The bus was fairly cramped since it was busy with Laos people and the music was an interesting accompaniment to the journey (if only we spoke Lao). The road was pretty windy and we were feeling a little bit shaken by the time we descended from the mountain roads. As we pulled onto the first straight the inner rear tyre blew off its tread which caused us all to panic a bit and wonder what we had let ourselves in for. We all got off the bus and the tourists wandered back up the road to look at the debris while the locals crowded around the front of the bus. They were obviously used to these occurrences and found the shade pretty quickly. In fairness to the bus driver (and crew) they were pretty quick at changing a tyre and we were delayed by about half an hour. We arrived in Phonsavan at about 5pm, 7hrs after leaving. Feeling very tired we checked into the guest house and had a bite to eat in the town center before heading to bed.
The following day we had a slight lie in before heading into town to find a tuk-tuk out to the plain of jars. We managed to barter the driver down from 100,000 kip to 80,000 which was pretty close to what locals can expect to pay for the 30km round trip according to lonely planet. When we got to the entrance the driver did lots of pointing since he spoke very little English and we set off on the final few meters up the hill. Having not paid him at this point we were fairly sure that he would be waiting for us to take us back somewhere. The jars were impressive sizes of boulders that had been carved out many years ago (to summarise LP, no-one really knows when because they don't contain any organic matter to date them, but they reckon 2000yrs?) for an unknown reason/purpose. Assuming that it wasn't some sort of recent tourist trap we found them pretty strange! We left the site and grabbed a drink (it had become a warm day) before walking out to the car park. When we had left the tuk-tuk we had kind of managed to work out that he had meant that he was going to nip down the road for tea/shopping/sleep and when we were finished we should start walking down and he would meet us as he drove back. We were right! He drove us back into the town, where we realised that there wasn't much else to do, and we headed for dinner before heading back to the guesthouse. Having asked the owner to book our bus ticket for the next day we found out that he hadn't bothered, but his friend had a minibus that was going that we could take for the same price as the local bus. We smelled a rat, it seemed too good to be true and his friends/family were speaking Lao and laughing when we had offered us this. Not wanting to be conned we turned down his offer and decided just to head to the bus station in the morning to get our tickets.
Another early start and the tuk-tuk drove through the cold fog to the bus station. There were still plenty of tickets so we climbed aboard along with every other westerner that had arrived with us, I guess we weren't the only ones to find little to hold us here!

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Photos

Jars 1
Weird jars in a field

Jars 2
Stephanie by a jar

Sunset
The picture doesn't do it justice, believe us that it was very red!