Transient by Nature: Phonsavan, Laos (The Plain of Jars)

When the time came to leave Luang Prabang, I really wanted to go see the Plain of Jars which is in Phonsavan, Laos.

Phonsavan is south-east of Luang Prabang and not far from the Vietnam border.

This is a rooster that a local was taking on the bus. Because they can be aggressive, roosters are kept in these cases so as to protect them and others.

About a half-hour outside of Luang Prabang our bus got a flat tire. All the Lao men got off the bus to try and help fix it. It became apparent that it was more than simple a flat tire, it was a blown tire.

They spent the next hour melting rubber from the spare to try and patch it since the spare was no good either. Nice and comforting since we were about to embark on a long bus ride.

This is the place we stopped at while fixing the tire. This is the local school where class was in progress.

After awhile, they managed to patch up the tire enough to get us back on the road again.

The bus ride was pretty intense…8 hours of incredibly winding narrow roads over high mountain ranges.

So many people on the bus got sick. Including Leang. I felt terrible, I couldn’t help him at all because my motion-sickness medicine was in my bag under the bus, and when the bus stopped at a restaurant I couldn’t get my bag because it was too deep in the compartment.

So I bought him a 7-up to help his stomach calm and it worked a little, but monks just aren’t so used to traveling like this. Same with locals, they don’t do this often and their stomachs don’t have a tolerance built up. I was fine, but the smell of other people vomiting was pretty bad. When you get on the bus, they hand out plastic barf bags to the locals. Nice welcome.

When we arrived in the afternoon, I checked into a guesthouse where some girls I met on the bus were also going to stay. The girls were also going to do a tour the next day at the Plain of Jars, so I booked Leang, and I on the same tour group.

Our first stop was at the war information center that educates people on the impact the 'Secret War' had on Laos.

The impact of the war is so huge and incredibly heart-wrenching.

Lao people harvest rice 3 times a year while Thailand typically does one harvest. This area of Laos is close to Vietnam, so like them, Laos has a lot longer wet season than Thailand, and so they are able to cultivate the land more times per year. This is a huge risk when the landscape you are attempting to cultivate is littered with bombies that are active. These people rely on the land as a source of existence. They have to work this way, and yet any given day the Lao worker knows that day he/she may not come home from the farm.

Not only the farms, but continually at schools and homes the bombies are discovered and removed safely.

Bombies are the size of a tennis ball and so tempting for a child to play with. Therefore the children are educated over and over through out their schooling about how dangerous the bombies actually are.

Pretty eye-opening, and tragic to say the least. Shame on the USA for the current lack of responsibility.

Next we took a mini-van to Site 1 of the Plain of Jars.

You have to be very mindful when walking in Laos because they say over 30% of the bombies that were dropped are un-detonated and hundreds of people are hospitalized every year from accidental detonation of these.

Throughout all the sites, you can see craters where bombing occurred during the war.

Site 1 is where the largest jars are.

No one really knows the true reason the jars were created, some think they were to collect water, some think they were used as funeral urns, but what ever the reason, they are phenomenal.

I discovered this little one that made a home inside the jar. I have read about spiders that build webs like these, but I had never seen one until now. So beautiful.