Getting to Phonsavan and The Plain of Jars

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The plain of jars is fascinating and interesting historically - both for the 3000 years they've been there and the damage done during the American War. But the bus ride was even better!
I visited the plain of Jars with two Slovenian girls (later I was to check out the CIA factbook to find out where the hell Slovenia is) and two Austrians that I met on the most interesting bus I have ever been on.


Friday 3rd March, 2006

Woke up, stood up, and collapsed in agony as pain soared through my lower back; I knew immediately that my old army injury had returned to haunt me. Back in 1995 during fire and movement drill on an officer training course I had put my back out and had limited movement for 8 years until, on an island in Thailand where I had been sleeping on a hard bed on my back because of a broken clavicle, I woke up one morning after a few medicinal joints of ganja the night before and with a loud crack my back was cured. There was no crack this time, but the pain was familiar.

I realized that my pics from the boat trip were still on a computer at the internet café so I hobbled over there as fast as I could and burnt a CD. By the time I returned to my lodgings I had missed my taxi and just had time to get my shit together and jump in a tuk tuk to grab my bus.

During the bus ride I met Anja and Anja, two cute girls from Slovenia, Alex and Renate, a mother and son from Austria, and Dimitri, a crazy French guy.

It was great to have company during the many stops with whom to laugh at the bus.
I think it was Chinese but may have been Indian, either way it should have retried years ago. It had the typical shortcomings of old Asian buses - lack of knee-room (let alone leg-room), an engine to power a medium sized lawn mower, and just enough of what was left of the original parts and more numerous back yard fixes to get it from A to B. Slowly. Most of the time.
The best modification, we thought, was the 500 litre water tank on the roof. The ancient cooling system which seemed to be made up of original parts and replacements of a similar vintage simply wasn’t able to cope with the mild temperatures up hills. Maybe it was a Russian bus.
Every 40 minutes or so, the driver would be engulfed in a sea of steam and stop the bus. We would all pile out to watch with undiminished fascination as the bus crew of three connected a hose from the roof top tank to a funnel system on top of the dash and feed cool water into the engine while the hot water was drained out another hose poking out of the engine cowling. After about ten minutes the water and engine would be cool enough to move on.
After about five hours of this we ran out of water and stopped at a village while the bus crew ferried buckets from the village water supply up the side of the bus and into the water tank with a makeshift funnel. It took just under an hour.

About 6 ½ hours into the 6 hour bus ride the bus ran out of fuel - having done 200 km since filling the tank in Luang Phrabang - and coasted to a halt in the middle of nowhere.
Instead of a two way radio, buses in Laos seem to have a motor scooter installed on the roof. Our was no exception. After a cigarette break the bus crew lowered the bike off the roof and one headed off with a jerry can that they had handy. I guess this is a reasonably common occurrence. An hour later he was back and an hour after that we were in Phonsavat and very hungry.

After checking into a guesthouse and having dinner we went to the local nightclub to check out the scene. It was Friday after all!

The club was the same as every other club in regional cities in Laos - a mixture of Thai karaoke, old American pop, and Thai house/rock/pop. After the karaoke finally finished the dance floor filled up with about 50 Lao guys, two Lao girls and us four falang. WE had fun despite ourselves.
Back at the guesthouse we walked around battering on various doors for 40 minutes trying to get in. I think the night manager was the last person in the guesthouse to wake up.


Saturday, 4th March, 2006

PLAIN

OF JARS

Having negotiated a rate of $6 per person plus $2 entrance fees the five of us (Renate & Alex, Anja & Anja, and I) jumped into a minibus with six others for the half hour journey to site 1.
At the entrance we had a rude surprise - our guide knew nothing of us paying the entrance fee the previous day so we snuck in without paying, much to our guide’s chagrin and the annoyance of the ticket sellers.

The entire site was pick-marked with craters from US bombs amongst the jars and two hillocks still had trench lines around them, winding around large jars and interrupted by bomb craters.
The jars themselves are something of an enigma. The only things known about them are that they served some sort of secondary burial purpose and date from between 3000 and 1500 years. That’s a bloody long time for any tradition.

Most of the stone lids and smaller jars have been removed by private collectors, but some hundreds still remain in various positions and in a fairly good state of repair. The most serious threat the jars faced seems to have been the US bombs which damaged and destroyed dozens.

UXO (Unexploded Ordinance)

The US (and US supplied Royal Lao bombers) dropped a bunch of scatter bombs (bommies) in the area, many of which didn’t explode on impact and still remain lurking just below the surface. MAG has cleared a narrow pathway to and around the site and the area immediately adjacent to the jars. The rest of the area has only had surface munitions removed and still has dozens of UXO waiting for their time to come.

Sites 2&3 had similar battle scars and marked cleared areas that for the most part coincided with the walking tracks. Although we generally took the warnings lightly, our short tempered guide, after threatening to have us physically removed from site 2 for not paying the entrance fees, told us that 200 UXO had been removed last year from only 10m from where we stood. We still took the warnings lightly but nobody strayed from the marked cleared areas after that.

The only other two jars that had been damaged from an obvious culprit had trees growing through their remains, creating an Ankor Wat type feel, albeit on a micro scale.

LAO

LAO

We also visited a Lao Lao factory which was probably the most basic factory I have ever seen, and I have seen a few. It consisted of steel 44 gallon drums where rice was fermented into wine and the most basic of stills - a 44 gallon drum with a round bowl on top filled with cold water and a tray and pipe to feed the condensate into another sawn off 44 gallon drum. Having tasted the stuff on previous encounters it met my very low expectations.

TANK?

The last treat for the day was a Russian tank. It was actually an empty hulk with part of the turret; everything that could be removed with less than a commercial blow torch had been removed, including the wheels, sprockets, and tracks.

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