Vientiane to Phonsovan

We flew from Vientiane to Phonsovan through Luang Prabang. Phonsovan and the eastern side of Laos is a UXO area. But as long as you stick with the well worn paths, you’re probably going to be fine.

Saw a little boy playing with a giant sharp knife.

Had dinner at Phone Keo Restaurant.

This is a very small town. As we walked from the Guest House (Maly Guest House) towards the town we came across a section of the road that had been entirely dug up for road work. It meant we had to walk downone side of the steep bank and up the other.

There are not many Farang here.

We found a driver /guide and car for touring the Plain of Jars. There are 3 official sites around the town that we are allowed to visit. Today we visited site 1. It was a little disconcerting to see the mine clearing team walking around the area we were just about to visit. It’s a well worn area which I would have thought was clear of mines by now. Our guide told us that they still find about 4-5 UXO per day around the area. I’m thinking it’s probably not on the well worn areas, but then why were they checking it?

The Plain of Jars are a series of stone jars that could be about 3,000 years old. The limestone they are carved from is not available at the site, apparently they were carved at a limestone quarry some distance away and carried to the hilltops to be set down. Our guide told us it was elephants that moved them. He also told us several stories about what they were used for. One story tells of giants who used them as rice wine cups. Another says that they are for funerals. Most experts are supporting the theory of funeral jars, but there’s no evidence one way or the other to indicate that’s true.


Plain of Jars, Site 1

Some local Laos teenagers were dallying with their girl-friends around the area. Eventually one of them plucked up the courage to talk to us and ask that we take their photo. Which we very willingly did. It was hilarious to see the girls pretty themselves up first for the photo. They were laughing and giggling all the while.

We promised to print the photo for them, but that proved difficult as the town doesn’t have a digital photo printing capability. After searching around we found a photocopy and traditional film developing place that had PC’s with a color printer. We printed it on the color printer and left it at our Guest House for the teenagers to pick up.

Our driver’s name is Le, but he kindly said we can call him Lee if we can’t pronounce it the Laos way. But we managed.

There are 11,000 kip to a $1. This is a very poor country.

The town has very little street lighting at night and after we had finally got the photo printed it was pitch dark, most of the tuk tuks or other forms of commercial transport had gone home. The town was very quiet. It was too dark to walk back to the Guest House along the road. Eventually a tuk tuk that was obviously taking some locals home after they’d been out on the town stopped to help us. They didn’t speak any English but we were able to communicate the need for a ride home, and they knew the name of the Guest House. The driver communicated the amount of money he wanted by showing us the bills, and that worked fine. A ride home was negotiated.