Phonsavan

Day 1 – Travel Hell

Today we got up ridiculously early at 5.30 as Shell wanted to see the Buddhist monks call to alms at 6.00.  Walking bleary eyed through the food market we found a bench on the main strip and waited, eventually groups of monks came along collecting food in their pots from people on the roadside and doing the odd bit of chanting.  However this was a bit of a bun fight with all the tourists sticking large lensed camera’s in their faces as they went by and we had seen more respectful ones whilst we were in Myanmar.

 We then returned to our room to catch a bit more sleep before we had to get our transport to our next town.  Waking up again around 8.30 we then waited for our transport which turned up late and was a little Tuk-tuk van which they managed to cram about 14-16 us in and taking us to the mini-bus station.

 As we had now become expert in this form of transport I waited for our baggage to  be unloaded whilst Shell made a run for the van to secure our seats ensuring they were not in the back row (a real bone-shaker in those seats!). 

Once on board it became obvious that they had oversold the seats, after the driver checking our tickets  again, one old French guy getting upset and not getting a seat and kicking off then deciding to not go and one of the locals being forced to sit on a table between two of the seats we were finally off.

The journey was pretty horrendous despite bagging the decent seats, it took around 6-7 hours along very potholed roads and a couple of comfort breaks, one of which involved me having to use a squat toilet and because I am not that flexible I have to adopt a reverse crab position and not think about what I am putting my hands in!!

Anyway definitely shaken and stirred we arrived in Phonsaven bus depot where we were met by the hotel manager and after booking some overnight bus tickets for the following day we then got taken to our accommodation for thee night which was pretty nice and very cheap.

We then headed out and found that Phonsaven wat a bit more rustic than the last couple of places we had been and so we had a walk around and then sat in a café/restaurant and had a couple of drinks.  We were deciding on whether to take a tour the next day (which seemed slightly expensive) or rent a scooter and do it ourselves when we got speaking to another tourist who said it was much better to do it ourselves.  So we found a bike rental place and booked a scooter for the next day.

Whilst we had been travelling on the slow boat we had read up in our guide about Laos’s involvement in the Vietnam war and were interested to find out more and we found the XPO Bomb Museum which had more detail on this and showed daily films.

 We walked around the Museum completely amazed that we knew nothing of this ‘Secret War’ and then we watched one of the documentary films which was very informative and harrowing at the same time.

 Basically the situation was that during the Vietnam war Geneva convention had declared that Laos was to be considered a neutral country as far as this conflict was concerned.  However America didn’t worry about that and they trained, paid and armed the people of northern Laos to be an army to fight communism (i.e. Vietnam).  Whilst the Vietnamese used the Mekon River as a supply route through Laos and also set up a large number of army base’s within Laos to escape the heavy fighting in Vietnam.

 The upshot of this was that the Vietnam war expanded throughout Laos and the Americans ended up carpet bombing massive parts of Laos with cluster bombs, even to the extent of if they had not dropped their payload in Vietnam they just dumped it on Laos on the way back to their base so they did not have to land with it.  The unbelievable fact is that Laos is the officially most bombed country per capita ever in the world – and we knew nothing about this.

 The problem they have now is that a vast amount of the country is now still covered with ‘Bombies’ (the bombs that are sprayed out of cluster bombs) and it is currently estimated that it will take 150 years to clear all the Bombies from the land.  So basically what is happening every week is farmers trying to till new land (because they have to so they can grow enough food)hit one of these whilst they are digging and they blow up or locals try to defuse them for scrap metal resulting in the same outcome.  Also small children find them and as they are the size of a tennis ball they play with them and also get blown up.

 The locals have now been trained in clearing the land (with the assistance of some European charities) of these bombies and after what we had just learned we were more than happy to donate £12 which paid for a plot of land 10 metre square to be cleared.  I was also happy to see that The States of Jersey had made a donation to this cause, the USA have donated a small amount to this project but they view it as charity and not an obligation!!

 So as you can see we do actually do a bit of cultural stuff and not just drink our way round the world, despite what this blog portrays!!

 That being said we headed back across the road and had a couple more drinks whilst discussed what we had just seen and also had a very large noodle dinner (something we do once in a while).

After dinner we headed back to the hotel for a fairly early night and watched a couple of episodes of The Soprano’s on my laptop before lights out.

Day 2 – In Search of Jars!

Up earlyish as we were going on our road trip to see ‘The Plain of Jars’, so we went to the bar/restaurant from the previous night and had some breakfast before picking up the scooter.

The Laos people we have found speak less English than their neighbouring country’s and also do not seem to be that big on sign posts.  So after enquiring with the locals we were met with quizzical faces and vague pointing which resulted in me driving about 20 Km into the countryside – we thought as this was the towns major attraction there was going to decent signage for it – we were wrong.  So thinking we were going the wrong way we turned round and headed back in the other direction passing town and we still had no idea where we were going.

 So turned round and returned to the restaurant and had a beer whilst we gathered our thoughts.  Whilst we sat there we were fortunate enough to speak to an American tourist who had done the same thing the day before so he gave us the exact directions to Jar site one and vague directions to sites two and three.

 Finishing our beers we then headed back out with a purpose and after another 8km we just about saw the minutest sign for Jar site one and eventually found it (only took around 4 hours to find – but the scenery was nice).

 We dismounted paid the entrance fee and then were chauffeured to the main site by a golf cart!

The plain of Jars is basically a piece of countryside that is peppered with very large stone jars (and bomb craters) that date back thousands of years, however no one really know what they were for, used for or who created them.

So we wandered around the site for a while taking pictures and enjoying the ambience of the place.

The only disconcerting thing was during our visit to the museum the previous night we found out that the bomb clearance teams laid down demarcation stones which were red one side (bombs have not been fully cleared) and white the other side (bombs have been cleared) and we learned that you had to walk on the right side of the white………..or is it the left???

As the heat was taking its toll we decided to get back on the bike to find sites two and three and get a bit of wind through us.  However once again these sites were neigh on impossible to find and after about another 20Km we gave up looking (once you've seen one jar...) and instead headed for the former old town of Phonsaven.

When we got there we had a quick look around, pretty much local people only so we found a restaurant to have some local noodle soup, which is quite nice as you get a basic chicken noodle soup and then can pimp it up with various vegetable and spices they give you on the side.

It was getting late in the afternoon by now so we headed back into town and retuned the bike and then went to a small bar across the road, which was decorated with massive US bomb casings.  I forgot to mention the Laos people use a lot of the war debris to fashion them into other things such as Chairs, cattle drinking trough’s cooking pots and the like.  Whist sat there we spent a couple of hours speaking to a nice French couple who were also travelling before going back to the hotel to pick our bags and head off to the bus station.

 Unfortunately my normally good sense of direction was off and after getting a bit lost, Shell saying ‘are you sure you know where you are going’ and me getting annoyed and saying ‘of course I do why do you question my brilliant sense of direction’ we had so ask a few local follow a few dark alleys and then we got there with 20 minutes to spare and eat a bit of humble pie!!

 We found when we got there that they had changed our seat/bunk numbers and we were now in top bunks (I think the locals get dibs on the lower ones as they are more convient).  Anyway after a very awkward slow flosbury flop into our bunks I discovered that it was a bit like wedging yourself into a metal dodgem car built for midgets (or most likely Laos people!) with a blanket and cushion for comfort – methinks not much sleep will be had on this coach. 

After a while we got speaking to an American lady who had travelled quite a bit and gave us some useful information in Orangutan experiences in the wild in Borneo – so every cloud I suppose!

We got moving into the night and hoped to get some sleep despite the bumpy road and cramped conditions.