Plain of jars. And bombs

---

May 28

Travel over the mountains to Phonsavanh in a minivan driven by a lunatic in charge of a child that retched every half hour or so. My stomach was unsettled, but everyone felt ill at the end of this 6-hour drive, although the scenery was stunning - mountains as far as you could see. Impossible to do anything much with country like this, but beautiful.

Villages were mainly poor, with huts, dogs, chickens and children running about. The five of us travelling together all had headaches and wanted to arrive as soon as possible.

As we arrived in Phonsavanh the landscape flattened and immediately became more affluent. The town itself is no major attraction. With one main street lined with functional, concrete buildings, Phonsavanh is an architectural slop bowl of a settlement, with dingy, overpriced guesthouses and adequate food. Most of the accommodation is damp and musty. I settle for a room with strange plumbing, but at least it has a window.

The next day we tour the Plain of Jars. Thanks to the US bombing the area between '64 and '73, the landscape is littered with unexploded ordinance (UXO). Signs explain where you can safely walk. Bomb craters are also labelled.

The jars - literally they are like large vases of rock - are a mystery. They vary in size and shape and are approximately 3,000 years old, carved from stone from a nearby quarry.

Of all the theories explaining their existence, I support the graveyard model. Especially at the third jar site, surrounded by undulating emerald hills, where the jars remind me of an old English cemetery. We visit three jar sites, plus a still where villagers make rice whisky and an old Russian tank, the top of which has become a chicken coop.

On returning we go to the MAG (Mines Advisory Group) office and watch a film about the US's secret war against Laos. America dropped some 260 million bombs on Laos - the most bombed country per capita in the world - and many of them are still waiting to explode. Unfortunately, many of them are cluster munitions, designed to kill, and they still do. Digging a field is potentially life-threatening when hitting a buried cluster bomb could mean death. Children sometimes find the bombs and play with them - they account for 40 per cent of casualties.

In the documentary 'Bombies' I learnt that when the US withdrew from Vietnam, they stepped up the campaign in Laos, supposedly to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail, and eradicate communism in Laos. But millions of bombies - or cluster bombs - were dropped in poor rural areas.

It's a sobering, experience, but everyone should know more about this. Interestingly, it seems to the be British and the Australians who are doing the most to clean up this dangerous mess. Children in this part of the world even have a song to sing about leaving bombies alone.

---