Blogs from Phonsavan, East, Laos, Asia - page 8

We arrived in Phonsavanh on Wednesday at about 4pm, the public bus wasn't as bad as I had expected although there was a man with a rooster & several sacks of rice down the aisle. We got a lift to a guest house with a local man called Mr. Kong, (the guesthouse owner), along with several other people from the bus. We met Giles who is originally from Birmingham but now lives in South Wales, his accent drifted between Brummie & Welsh; it was quite funny as I could mimic both. Mr. Kong swore like a trooper in English, although it was funny & he was a very intelligent man. In the evening we sat around a fire in a six foot long bomb shell & he told us about the secret war against Laos by ... read more

After all that, we finally arrived in Phonsavan (of Plains of Jars fame) with frayed nerves and a lovely Aussie gent in tow. Let's call him dodgy Uncle Steve (note: *contrary to his nickname, Steve is a very accomplished fellow who speaks half a dozen languages (including Vietnamese better than I can) and is currently working for an NGO in Cambodia that deals with such hot topics as landmine removal, aids education and water conservation). I can't really say that the Plains or the Jars contained within were all that spectacular. Historically, they're interesting enough. Jar experts speculate that they were used for ancient cremation rituals. Being the irreverent, godless person I am I naturally took the opportunity to jump into one of them. I instantly felt quite melancholy and jaded about being a young woman ... read more

The day after I arrived in Phonsavan I visited the Plaine des Jarres, it was really pretty boring. Had I known, I would have skipped Phonsavan and taken the long way to Luang Prabang through Nam Nouan and Nong Khiaw...oh well, perhaps next time. Le Plaine des Jarres ne vaut franchement pas le detour, quelque vielles jarres en pierre et puis c'est tout. Si j'avais su j'aurais pris un autre chemin pour Luang Prabang en passant par Nam Nouan et Nong Khiaw...peut etre le prochaine fois.... read more

After 4 days I left Luang Prabang and took a bus to Phonsavan. Its a good 8 hours to the east and is the site of "The Plain of Jars." I have heard good and bad things about this attraction but since I have over three weeks still in the country and was going to do a whole tour of the north it seemed like a fitting stopover. As usual on the bus I met some fellow travellers and we stuck together on our Phonsavan adventure. Many guesthouses will have a van or hire a tuk-tuk to pick up passengers when they get off the bus. Since having people stay at their establisment is a good portion of their livelyhood, their days activities seem to funcion around when buses get in from different cities. The one ... read more

Phonsavan, Plain of Jars. We left Luang Prabang and headed on down to a little dusty town where, scattered in the surrounding highland hills, lie huge jars that where carved from heavy stone boulders and somehow dragged to these sites and left to rest on these evergreen grassy hill sides. It is amazing that these jars survived the Vietnamese / American war, as over 2 million tons of ordinance was dropped on Loas during this time - more than what was dropped on Germany and Japan in WWII - and most of the world never knew, go figure. We took these sites in with a few other couples: Irish, American and British. The day was one of interest and wonder as we were transported from site to site in our super swift van. Locals always know ... read more