Bottles, Jars and Bombs

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Are all things you will find in abundance in The north east region of Loas.

Before I explain the title I must warn fellow travelers about the 8 hour very windy road up to the high plains. It seem like the maxium road grade over here is a lot lower because we only gained maybe 3000 feet or so in 150 miles and it took 8 hours. Do the math, we were going fairly slow because we were practically doing figure eights to get up the mountains. Luckily I popped some motion sickness pills before we headed out and Cara did the pressure point cool '70 style wrist/sweat bands and we had no problems. Unfortately several of the passangers weren't so lucky, several of the passengers filled the barf bag that was conviently placed in the seat pocket in front of them. Another oddity for tour buses and a norm for Loas is the side of the road reststops Alaskan style, yeap the bushes.

As some war and history buffs may know the US has the world record for the longest sustained aerial bombardment and probably the most bombs dropped in a single country during the secret war in Laos. The US flew over 580,000 bombing runs over the Boarder of Vietnam and Northern Loas betweem 1964-1973, dropping 2 million tons of bombs in Laos alone, costing us over 10 billion dollars. Not only did these bombs devestate the country side, 30% of them never exploded so they are just lying around the country waiting for a trigger. So now there are organizations from around the globe funding or participating in finding and destroying the millions of unexploded ordinace (UXO) around the country. Unfortunately, at the current rate of disarming, it will take over 100 years to make the country safe. We actually met some US military guys, one of which is from Anchorage, who are over here in Laos searching for MIA soldiers (remains) and destoying UXO in the process. It was nice to see some normal Americans again, as the last few we have talked to were a little weird.

So the reason we traveled to this part of Laos was to see Jars - the largest man made jars in the world and probably the oldest too (500 bc-ad). Yeah these aren't your ordinary masonary jars theses are huge jars carved out of stone. When I say huge I mean 4 feet wide and 6 feet fall, now that's a jar, weighing between 300 lbs and a ton! There are several theories on what the purpose of the jars was but none that are conclusive. THere are actually 60 known sites in the region that have similar jars, we just visited 3 of them. Site 4 is almost ready for visitors but is not open yet. The remainder still have yet to be cleared of UXO and/or have not been excavated and studied yet. The theories about the jars range from storage for wine or whiskey (or rice) to water collection to "coffins" for the dead. Because they are so old, nobody knows for sure. Of the sites, site 1 is the most spread out and has 250 jars, but at sites 2 & 3 there are fewer jars but they are more grouped together and the views are much better. Site 2 was our favorite because we got to enjoy a better view of the rural setting and some of the natural landscape of the region. Jars will be jars though and they were essentially the same at each site.

I should also mention that the tour we went on, which we picked from several options, had a special add-on that none of the others had. After the 3 jar sites, we got to go on a road that was only 1 week old which took us over to the "old city". This is where the capital of the area used to be (versus where Phonsovon is now) but it was pretty much all destroyed by the bombings. There are still some remains there that show the destruction of the bombs, mainly an old Wat with a big buddha statue, and an old chedi which was damaged mainly by tomb robbers. There is also a town in this old city area now but most of it is newer. The name of the tour company we used was Laos Youth Travel and our only complaint was that our guide did not speak english very well so we spent the day trying to translate his rough english, which was somewhat entertaining but I think we missed out on some information.

Last but not least are the bottles of alcohol. This country is worse than Canada, people start drinking shortly after they start to walk around here. So the bottles refer to bottles of alcohol. A 24 oz beer at a restaraunt commonly sells for a dollar and the same size bottle of 40% whiskey or rice alcohol sell for $2, yes you can buy a bottle of whisky in the bar. Last night we witnessed some locals that seemed like they threw back a few before racing down the road on motor bikes and each of them had 3 teenagers on one bike, pretty crazy.

Anyway this region is beautiful with many mountains partially untouched by farms and large grassy plains feeding the ever hungry cattle and water buffalo, boardered by rice fields as far as the eye can see. The region is a little cooler at night but it is still 90 degrees by day, but it is cold enough to keep the geckos away and the evergreen trees fairly abundant and the aroma that comes with them.

The people in Phonsovon are very friendly and while there are not a lot of restaurants to chose from we found one that we highly recommend for other travelers to the area. It's called Simmillay (I probably totally butchered the spelling) and seems to be one of the busiest restaurants on our street (mostly with locals which is always a good sign). The food is good, the helpings are huge (really one serving is enough for two people), and the owner (we think she was the owner or manager) is really helpful and friendly (as are the staff). The most commonly ordered dish is the noodle soup which comes in a huge bowl that you then add as much spice and leafy herbs and stuff to as you want. On one of our visits there we had saw a little homeless boy hanging around. We had a half plate of food left and full bellies ourselves so we asked him if he wanted our leftovers to which he replied with a huge smile and wide eyes and a big nod. He pulled a little plastic baggie out of his pocket and held it out for us to dump the food into. We also gave him the rest of our bottle of water and he quickly found a spot nearby in front of a closed storefront to have his meal. It was pretty sad, but also neat to see him light up like he did. A couple coming out of a nearby place saw him and gave him a big package of cookies that was half full. After finishing his meal he opened the cookies and brought them over to us to share, it was really sweet.

We were going to go further to the northeast part of Laos but after our 8 hour bus ride here and finding out it would be another 8 hour ride to Sam Neua and then a bit further to Vieng Xai (to see the Pathet Laos Caves, used during the war as a hideout), we decided it wasn't worth the two days of travel for the 3 hours of sightseeing that we read was there. Thank you to you other bloggers who mentioned that, you saved us a lot of bus travel!

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Photos

Bombs!
Lots of bombs every where

Making whisky from rice!
Actually they call it Lao Lao and there are several variations, none of which we cared for, the strongest of which was like drinking rubbing alcohol.