Phonsavan- Plain of Jars

April 29-30Phonsavan is in the north east of Laos and has a completely different landscape to the rest of the country. Rolling hills with fluorescent green pastures and gum trees not to mention grey clouds made us feel surreal, like we were back home in Oz outside of Melbourne in a little country town seeing these ancient jars.

This area was also the cause of much fighting for Lao people in the last 100 years. Against the French, amoungst themselves, and then against the US who outdid themselves by going for a world record in dropping the most bombs on Laos then on any other country in the world in the history of warfare to kill the Pathet Lao. Phonsavan was actually completely destroyed during the 70s by the bombing and was rebuilt. Unfortunately this meant alot of the jars were blown up to, and very dangerous to visit due to the thousands of unexploded ordanances scattered around them. Bizarrely now people display all the leftover shrapnel and bombs in their front yards, if they aren't selling them as scrap metal to make a quick buck.

This means that although there are over 400 sites with over 100 jars in each site, only 4 have been demined and are safe for visitors. The jars in this picture have been partly damaged by bombs. And can you see the gum trees in the background???

All along the path to the jars it marks where it's safe to walk and where they aren't completely 100% sure they got all the mines..oohhh the danger.

Our local guide explained that no one is really clear on what the jars are for... he himself liked the idea that they were ancient whiskey ' Lao Lao' fermentation/storing jars.

Another theory is that they're ancient coffins, that the ancient tribes cremated the dead and placed them in the stone jars. Alot of the jars had lost their lids, we only saw one lid on the ground. The jars are dated from 500BC to 800BC and crafted by and ancient Khmer-Monh race, there are similar jar sites apparently in India and Vietnam. They were all different sizes the jars 'some for skinny lady and some for fat man' our guide wisely told us.

At site number 2 a group of tourists had hired a monk to walk around while they snapped away at the poor bewildered boy. He just walked around looking startled while the amatuer photographers got in his face, barking orders and positioning him and snapped him down low, up high, looking spiritually (?!) off in to the distance, very bizarre.

The last site we saw it was raining and misty and we walked through rice paddies, but much the same as the other two sites.

It was definately worth seeing, as was seeing all the great work NGOs are doing with the demining fields and helping the people of the region get back on their feet, because they are only now just recovering from the war.

Still Phonsavan is a pretty sleepy town (Guesthouse curfews were 10;30pm!) so we moved on to Sam Neua.....