Blogs from Phonsavan, East, Laos, Asia - page 3

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we left Luang Prabang by express bus for Phonsavan - an eight hour journey down highway 13 and then onto highway 7. Both highways are now paved which made the journey a little less life threatening. We were lucky to have a half empty bus. There were only seven of us foreigners on the bus - and we had all been on the same slow boat to Luang Prabang. The rest of the bus was half full of Laos people. We were able to take two seats each to ourselves, which was going to make for better sleeping. At least, we THOUGHT we would sleep. It is pretty hard to sleep when the road makes a roller coaster feel tame. The road wound through mountains, following the countour of ... read more

After leaving the beautiful Luang Prabang, we took a horrendous 6 hour journey (which felt like the world's worst rollercoaster) to a gritty town called Phonsavan. We found out that until a month before we arrived they didn't have streetlamps, and so tourists would often hurt themselves walking back to their hotel at night! During the Vietnam war, the CIA conducted a secret war in Laos, as it bordered Vietnam. During the 15 years it is estimated that the CIA flew a bombing mission over Laos every 9 minutes! This meant that over the bombed areas 12 tonnes of bombs were dropped per square kilometre. There were also lots of CIA officers in Laos, the most famous of which was Colonel Tony Poe, who used to cut off his enemies ears and staple them to reports ... read more

As I said (briefly) yesterday we’re in North East Laos now, close to the Plain of Jars. This region is well known for two reasons, the jars themselves and the so-called Hidden War. The jars are the subject of much debate and truth is, no-one really knows their history. They range in size from 1m to over 2m high, with a diameter of between 50cm and 1m. The material appears to be limestone and each one has been hollowed out using (presumably) a harder stone. The age? Well, certainly thousands of years but no-one can say for sure. The first theory is that they were used for fermenting alcohol from rice, to be used for celebrations, That would tie in nicely with current day Laos. However in the 1930’s a French archaeologist found human ashes under ... read more

Hello all. Right now I'm back in Luang Prabang but did make the small excursion to Phonsavan to see the Plain of Jars. Odd little town, Phonsavan, loads of Russian influence (sorry, didn't take any photos, can you believe it?!) I found out that during the Secret War, many of the buildings were destroyed so not much thought was put into architecture while bombs were going off all around. The province this town resides in was one of the worst hit with US bombs over a nine year period. The saddest part is many of those bombs dropped, about 30% didn't explode thus the country-side is riddled with UXO (unexploded ordnance). Sad thing is it seems there is only one organization from Britian that is trying to clean things up but at the current rate, it ... read more

Hello!! Just arrived alive in Phonsavanh! Yesterday we got the bus from Vientiane to Vang Vien. We were hoping to catch the local bus but missed it by about 5 mins, and then had a bizarre exchange with some friendly tuk tuk/bus drivers before being driven off to the 'VIP' bus. Very Important People being scruffy travellers (no Laos people, which is apparently meant to be a good thing *insert question mark as can't find it on keyboard*) and the bus contained an assortment of all the typical travelling stereotypes - dreadlocked and bearded scruffies, aging hippies etc. I was sitting next to an emaciated, long haired boy with his guitar. The journey was fine. The scenary became increasingly beautiful as we left the sprawling green (and admittedly quite pretty!) 'suburbs' of Vientiane. Amazing limestone hills ... read more