Phonsavan, stopping point for the Plain of Jars, an education in UXOs and the coldest hotel room in Laos. But only a brief stopping point, of a single day, so the impact of the latter wasn’t too painful. Despite good intentions to move from place to place less frequently and absorb our chosen destinations better, we worked out that with there being a further four parts of Northern Laos that we wanted to visit, less than two weeks to do so, and a full day’s journey separating each, we would, after all, on average only have a couple of days in each. Anyway, seriously, our hotel room, ironically in a place called “Nice Guesthouse”, was utterly freezing! It was colder inside it than out! As it turned out, the rise in altitude in mountainous Northern Laos, during almost the coldest time of year, meant the nights were to be cold for the whole of our time there (Luang Prabang, in fact, at about seven hundred metres above sea level, wasn’t hot, but it’s all relative, of course, and a T-shirt and blanket were enough to stave off discomfort there). But Nice Guesthouse in Phonsavan took the biscuit, for some reason. Thinking about it, the architectural decision to have large windows, shaded and orientated to receive precisely zero hours of sunlight per day, might have had something to do with it.

Phonsavan was a good stop, though. Cold nights were a good excuse to eat more curry and then snuggle up in bed early with a good film (we had the luxury of cable TV and the HBO channel again), and the Plain of Jars was pretty interesting. The jars themselves weren’t spectacular, but were certainly something different to check out. Hollowed out stone objects up to about a metre and a half high, dotted across the landscape in clusters of up to three hundred, and the mystery of their existence, Stone Henge-esque, creates plenty of intrigue. I think their age has been estimated at about two thousand years old, but none of the theories on their one time function, such as burial sites, wine fermenters, rice storage or, I’m sure, the work of little green aliens, has been universally agreed upon.

We cycled to “site 1”, which I think contained about a hundred of them, and messed around there for an hour or so. Along with a number of well dressed young Laotians, signalling, previously unbeknownst, although admittedly irrelevantly, to us, that it was a weekend. Interesting how we discover the presence of weekends in different ways these days! And we also took in the multiple bomb craters, provided courtesy of the officially not there American military, before moving on towards “site 2”. Fifty yards down the seven kilometre rock strewn, bumpy dirt road leading to site 2, however, we quickly concurred that not only would it take hours to get there, but the likelihood of a puncture was high, and it would do any good to either the suspension of the bikes nor the health of our spines and behinds. So we sacked it off and opted for a home-made tour of Phonsavan instead. After all, we figured, a jar was a jar, and having seen approximately a hundred, a few hundred more wouldn’t add much more to the overall experience. I’m actually now typing this up some weeks after, and I can confirm I haven’t at any time kicked myself for not seeing more ancient stone jars. Jar lust fully satisfied.

And it was a good decision, as fortune had it, as, after seeing a lake, a viewing point and a German so drunk he could do nothing more than lie by the side of the road, we were back in the centre of Phonsavan in time to see the free documentary about UXOs and mines at the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) central office (I believe they’re British run, in fact). It was excellent, and gave us a full picture of both relevant historical events and current impacts. Neither Paula nor I had previously realised that Laos had been bombed the crap out of on account of its own communist headed political uprising, and were under the impression it was all to do with the Ho Chi Minh Trail impinging on Laotian territory and the American battle against the Viet Cong. But no, Laos’ popular communist insurgents were perceived as the unacceptable spread of the communism rooted in China and Vietnam, so received the B52 treatment in their own right. And with the brilliant plan to not bother using anti-communist propaganda at home to justify the war, but instead just not tell anyone, no restraint or particularly focussed targeting were deemed necessary. Hence, as mentioned earlier, eventually earning Laos the not-so-coveted title of most bombed country in history. And the battle goes on, and will do for decades to come, to clear the Laotian countryside of UXOs and educate the people as to the dangers of handling them, in particular, the orange, tennis ball lookalike “bombies”, which alone injure or kill scores of Laotians annually.

So all in all, a pretty full day (earning more blog space than four days in Luang Prabang, I suspect!), and the next day we left for Sam Neua, up in the far north eastern corner of Laos, feeling very well educated