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Published: January 31st 2010
I set off today on my first full day of travel mixed with work, alongside my travel guide writing companion, Keith, renting a motorbike for the day for $12. I had no idea what was in store for me; turns out this guy is tireless. He works from dawn to late at night, running around all day investigating, then typing up all he’s learned during the day in the evening. I had no idea what rigorous work travel guide writing is! Actually, I had read that it was hard work, but this was my first time seeing, personally, that it truly is hard demanding.
We began the day by stopping in at a few guesthouses to look at the rooms and get prices and telephone numbers. While Keith was inside one guesthouse, I stayed outside to buy some sticky rice for breakfast from a restaurant next door. There was a group of locals drinking at a table outside, and one man came up to tell me he was flying by helicopter to Vientiane that day. Therefore, I must chug a beer. I tried to protest that it was 11 am on a Monday but he wouldn‘t have it. This being
forced to chug a beer with locals who are drinking is a surprisingly common occurrence around Laos. If locals are celebrating something, they want you celebrating with them, whether they know you or not. It’s touching, although often you don’t really want to chug a beer. Like on Monday morning perhaps.
Driving towards the Plain of Jars, just out of town, we saw a big sign pointing down the road towards a golf course. Fascinated, we took that turn but ended up at a small wooden shack, on the end of a dirt road, where three people with luggage sat outside locked doors on a covered porch. We noticed a sign on the building, "Lao Aviation", and realized this was the town's airport. But the next flight was two hours away, so the airport wasn't open yet. We didn’t see any planes, any security, any airline personnel, any planes or really even any runway. Nothing remotely reminiscent of an airport. We wished the passengers luck.
Driving back up the road towards the supposed golf course, we passed a parade of 15 cows walking down the street. We came upon a padlocked fence, looking like some kind of army
base on the interior, but didn’t see any golf stuff. We decided this couldn’t be the golf course, but later found out from a local ex-pat that this was the golf course but it was only used by very high level government officials. When officials became very high level, they learned how to play golf here. Before that no one knew how to play, say, if they were just medium or low level officials, or local people. But it was the new hot sport, replacing the ever popular petanque, a French game very similar to boche, played all over Laos.
We also drove past many Vietnamese tit cho restaurants, a term I remembered well from my time in Vietnam, meaning dog BBQ. Apparently Lao people do not traditionally eat dog, but the Vietnamese came in and brought their dog eating ways with them, on the way converting many Lao to the art of dog eating. There is only one type of dog good for eating, apparently all the other types are not for eating. Locals can look at a dog’s teeth and tell you if it’s good for eating. Since all the dogs here are mutts, it’s a little
confusing to me what makes one type so different than the others.
The Tourist Info building, spotted from the exterior by a massive pile of spent bombs in front, gave us all the directions we needed to drive to two more Plain of Jar sites, as well as a lot of information about the area. Although Julie, a Belgian woman we met in town, who has lived and worked on the Plain of Jars for the past ten years, gave us the best information on the sites.
2500 to 1800 years ago these jars were built as cemeteries by the local people who made their living selling to the numerous traders who passed by on crossing trade routes, coming from China, India and Burma. The jars are always found on lower-hill locations, not on plains and not on mountain-tops, because this was a strategic spot where all the traders had to cross to trade. The locals got rich catering to these passing traders and constructed these lavish stone jars for their dead. The jars are remnants of this ancient lost civilization which the experts know nothing else about. 91 of these jar sites have been found in the
The Locked Airport
and the waiting passengersarea and only 9 cleared of UXO and even less than that fully excavated, due to a lack of money and archeological expertise.
It is believed that the locals put their dead in to these jars to decompose, under cover of stone lids. The jars are porous so the fluids would leak out, leaving just the bones, which the locals would later take out and bury near the jars. Thai royalty does this now and Burmese did this in ancient times so its not an unheard of practice. It is believed the jars would bring the dead back to the womb where they had begun life, a belief bolstered by the fact that the Sanskrit word for womb and urn is the same, the Lao language evolving from ancient Pali/Sanskrit.
In 1935, Madeleine Coley, a French archeologist, was the first to excavate and really study these sites. She found bones in or around every jar, a little known fact today, as we’d heard bones were only found at one site. There is a surplus of misinformation and lack of information surrounding these sites, surprising as they are a popular tourist destination already. As of now, there is no
information listed at any of the sites, but in a long-term project spearheaded by Julie, information will soon be posted at each site.
No treasures from this rich civilisation have yet been found near the jars, but this area was frequently raided, plus only a small amount of excavation has yet been done. What an exciting place to be as an archeologist! Knowing all these sites where treasures and two-thousand year old remnants remain, yet they are barely yet being studied or excavated! Yet Julie, an archeologist who has been here a decade and works with the government advising them on tourism to the jars, does not even have the right to dig. It seems to be a complicated situation as their are protections on who can dig, yet the locals don’t seem to have the money, interest or expertise to dig. One would think foreign experts would be allowed to come in and work with the locals excavating. But who would have known that one day excavations of these sites would become so tricky, polluted by dangerous land mines?
Phonsavon is located in Xieng Khouang province, and Xieng Khouang is confusingly the name used by most Lao
for the town itself. The province was the site of extensive battles and aerial bombardment from the US during the Vietnam War. Many craters, bomb relics and military pieces remain. As we drove out of town, we saw loads of military era trucks, some still working, others used as homes. Spent bomb shells were being used as garden siding, shovels, spoons and house posts. MAG, the international mine advisory group, works to clear the land here and destroy unexploded ordinance, called UXOs, recovered. There are MAG signs at each site telling you where to walk and where has not been cleared yet. Very little has been cleared, sadly, as its laborious and expensive work, not to mention dangerous. About 300 people are injured and about 100 people are believed killed by UXO a year, but that only counts the people near roads who make it to town to die at hospital. People not near towns just die in their villages or in the woods.
We drove to the Plain of Jars Site 2, ten minutes out of town on the main paved road and then 20 minutes up a rocky dirt road, past gorgeous huge valleys with adorable though
poor diverse types of homes and neighborhoods, fenced in. This valley felt so spacious, with open flat land for miles and mountains in the far off distance, lakes spotted across the landscape, beautiful massive cloud formations in the sky and cows and horses grazing in the flatlands. We could have been in Montana. The horses, the first I’d seen in the country, were fat and out of shape, as well as mangy and uncared for-looking. All the locals stared and smiled as we passed, although I believe these sites receives tourist visits everyday.
Site 2 was an extremely peaceful spot, atop a hill, with gorgeous 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside, valley and mountain. And there was a second part to Site 2, on a shaded hill, under lovely trees just across the way. The site was so quiet and un-commercial. Just 25 jars on the hill and 25 jars under the trees and a man and a woman in an empty little hut selling tickets a quarter mile before the jar hills. A tiny sign on the main dirt road told one to turn off. Very few tourists. Unremarkable though lovely and we pondered why this site
has become so famous.
We drove on to Site 3, another 10 minutes down the road, with an even smaller sign, just a 3 mark on a telephone pole. This one had a small restaurant in front of it, about 5 officials sitting by the ticket booth, and a 10 minute walk through rice paddies, past buffalo, up a field, to another very peaceful spot, with stunning 360 views, sweeping all around, and about 40 jars.
We drove back to the main paved road and continued 30 km out of town to the ancient capital, Muang Khoune, completely destroyed by bombing during the war. On the way we passed tons of construction, noting particularly that everyone had built a new nicer cement block home on to the front of their old bamboo home. This allowed them to live in their old home while they personally and often slowly constructed their new home. Supplies would be bought as the money to was made to buy them. Sometimes the house would be built just by the husband and the wife, with kids helping if they are old enough.
Many people had babies strapped to their backs with a piece
of cloth, yet they continued working, whether in the fields, or pushing something along the road, or cooking, or washing. This area has such a small population that sometimes American bombers, returning from bombings in Vietnam, when they could not drop their payloads due to weather, would drop their bombs here, so as not to return to base with the dangerous cargo, and assuming so few people lived below that it didn‘t matter. Other times the bombs were dropped very much on purpose. There would have been no where in this flat valley for locals to hide.
Arriving in Muang Khoune, we visiting crumbling ancient stupas, a giant bullet-torn Buddha in a completely destroyed temple and we checked out a guesthouse. At the guesthouse, Keith got the info while I held a tiny puppy, implausibly created by nearby mama and papa dogs who looked nothing like him, ate sour tomatoes dipped in chili, sliced my finger cutting a tomato and drank shots of smooth lao-lao whiskey forced upon me by the proprieter. As we drove back to town, the sun was setting and it was a cold, cold ride but we were lucky to be on a motorbike. All
around us, groups of local people, lacking a car, a motorbike or even a bicycle, were carrying heavy baskets or pushing massive loads, walking back towards their villages, on foot.
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fred appel
non-member comment
JARS
Another fascinating place.The jars 2000 + years old! Those UXOs are an endless problem being plante like tiny seeds the world over ,watch out for going off the beaten trail. I liked the sleepy airport too. Cold here now,down in the teens,ehh.Love Freddy.