September 19th - 20th
A seven hour bus journey (everywhere in Laos seems to be about seven or eight hours by bus) took us from the picturesque town of Luan Probang to the remote, one-street town of Phonsavan. I quote the Lonely Planet Guide on this one: "the town itself holds virtually nothing of interest." If we had known that currently no direct bus runs from there to Paksa, we would never actually have gone in the first place as we did not want to back track to Vientiane where we had started out in Laos (about five people in Luan Probang had told us that the road would not be open because of water but we lived on the hope of two people, along with web sites we had consulted, who said it would.) Despite the road being closed, I am, however, glad we did go as it was in a little information centre in Phonsavan where I learnt about the huge amount of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Laos.
UXO contaminates rural areas in about half of the country. A MAG team (Mines Advisory Group) is working to try and remove all UXO but it's a hard job as there is such a lot of it, an insufficient number of skilled workers and protest from locals who try to take the ordnance to sell as scrap metal. We watched an hour and a half film on it and saw images of children going around collecting "Bomb Light Units” (bombies) left behind by cluster bombs and grenades in little baskets. Villages often have to be evacuated in order to clear a bomb and this can be difficult when there are elderly, sick or sometimes very drunk people. In addition, the people working for MAG have to be skillfully trained, their decisions resulting in bombs exploding and killing lives or being removed safely. When you walk around Phonsavan, you see old weapons being used for all sorts of things - plant pots or pillars for propping up walls and fences. Even cow bells are made from old bombs. It makes you continuously aware how much war has and still is intruding everyday life here. Some thirty years after the end of the war, people are still suffering: a lot of land cannot be cultivated because of the dangers of unexploded ordnance and there are casualties every year as people still try and collect the ordnance to sell on the scrap metal market. You can see that desperation is driving people to dangerous ways of making money. They put their lives at risk but the irony is, of course, they feel like they don't have much of a life if they can't earn money. It's ludicrous but also logical if you truly put yourself in their shoes.
Phonsavan was also good for exploring The Plain of Jars, which is a large area where huge stone jars of unkown origin are scattered about. There are 56 jar sites in total but only about 5 of these have been cleared of bombs. The jars are thought to date back more than 2000 years and are surrounded by myths. We visited three sites and our guide told us that some people believe the jars were used as wine fermenters. What with hundreds of these things all I can say is that our guide's ancestors must have been very merry on their hilltops if that was the case! Others think they were used to store rice. The most plausible explanation is that the jars are linked to old burial practices. It was kind of nice to be able to walk around them, to look down onto the rice fields and acknowledge that there are some things in life that we will probably never be able to explain.
Phonsavan is also a place where swallows are considered a delicacy. Whilst walking between two jar sites, we saw the traps used for snaring the birds - which are them fermented whole in earthern jars. I don't think I will ever cease to be surprised on this trip at what can be eaten. Basically, if it moves, it will probably be on a menu somewhere in the world.
On the way back from the jars to our guesthouse (which was, by the way, the cheapest to date at $2 for the room - you can imagine how it was), chickens, turkeys, buffalos and cows constantly crossed the road infront of our van. I decided to share the oh so funny "why did the chicken cross the road?" joke with our guide as it kept going through my own head so often. In turn, he shared what must be the Lao equivalent: "Why does a Lao man look right and left before crossing the road? ... Because it is the main road." The stop-off at a wooden house where Lao whiskey is produced made that joke much funnier than it should have been. It's a shame we didn't drink more of the whiskey as it would have made the karaoke night bus to Vientiane, which left at 8pm that evening, a lot more bearable.
