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Published: August 9th 2007
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The bus to Phonsavan possessed that rarest of qualities - it never filled up. This was enough to raise the spirits after countless crowded journeys without the luxury of space. I was sufficiently boosted by this that even the drawbacks of the guesthouse in Phonsavan - a flexible wooden floor that nipped the skin of one's feet painfully and a hot shower that only lived up to its name if the flow was a trickle - seemed inconsequential.
Phonsavan is the main base for exploring the Plain of Jars. This stretch of rolling hills takes its name from the clusters of stone containers dotted around it. The jars themselves are about 2,000 years old and the consensus is that they're funerary urns, though local legend states that they're fermentation vessels constructed by a race of giants to brew their favourite wine. I had an image in my head of jars stretching as far as the eye could see, but the reality was of merely several hundred in any given area. The largest of them are 2m high and weigh 10 tons, but this is hardly on a par with the Easter Island statues or the Pyramids.
The plain was
of strategic importance to both the US and Viet Minh in the late '60s and early '70s and was bombed extensively. As a result, there are many pieces of unexploded ordnance (UXO) scattered around the landscape. The main jar sites have been predominantly cleared of UXO, but the safe paths are still marked using white/red stones. This is one part of the world where going behind a bush to answer a call of nature could have explosive results. In the guesthouses and restaurants in Phonsavan, pieces of military hardware are casually displayed, sometimes converted to more peaceful uses but still evidence of a violent past.
Our tour group consisted of the 2 of us, a driver, a guide, and a random guy who just seemed to be along for the ride. The guide's English wasn't so hot, even for general conversation. Worse, he had a written description of the plain that was in fairly complex English, even for an advanced speaker. We had to keep telling him how to pronounce words, resulting in the description being so stop/start that we had to read the whole lot by ourselves at the end as there'd been no continuity and I couldn't
remember how it had begun.
The tour started at the old city at Muang Khoun, which had been bombed sufficiently flat in the war that the population had moved to the current site of Phonsavan. There were echoes of its past in the ruins and rubble but not enough to sustain interest. We spent more time trying to take photos of a guy who was smoking a cigarette while playing volleyball.
As mentioned, the jars themselves were a little disappointing. However valuable they may be from an archaeological point of view, that doesn't translate into valuable from a sightseeing point of view. Both LA Woman and I were of the opinion that this hadn't been a worthwhile stop, though an unexpected bonus was that the restaurants in Phonsavan were among the best that either of us had encountered in Laos.
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Heinrich
non-member comment
"Tour de Laos support vehicle" That´s a good one! I enjoy reading your blog. Thanks