Phonsavan, a dusty, one-street kind of town, is the base for exploring the Plain of Jars, a hilly valley area dotted with clusters of ancient stone jars dating back some 700+ years and not-so-ancient B-52 craters dating back to the cold war era.

Phonsavan, and the Plain of Jars in general, seemed to be in the midst of a nasty cold snap. Come nightfall I was freezing my cahoonies off. I took a whizz and there was so much steam you'd think a hot shower had sprung from my jap-eye. Not so nice. But it wasn't all so bad. Cold aside, they were also in the midst of some kind of annual fair, which involved fun things like gambling tables and shooting galleries. With the BB guns I won me some mini-bottles of sugary orange juice, a stuffed ballsack with fluffy ears, and at the dart throwing table (you throw them at balloons, not living creatures) I won a bottle of lime soda. Which I may have also paid for first, I'm still not sure.

The next morning, at the horrifically early time of eight in the a.m., we, some eight or so cold and bedraggled travellers (a hodge-podge of Spanish, French, American, German, and whatever else) slurped down some noodle soup to warm up and found ourselves some bikes. We'd been warned about the roads by the guy from our guesthouse ("If you go by motorbike, you will have accident, I am sure"), but we'd laughed him off. The guy wasn't lying. Between us and the jar sites were some of the most bone-jarringly atrocious dirt-and-rock rutted roads I've ever had the misfortune of traversing. You'd find smoother riding on Mars. I think I may have sprained my wrist a little bit just from trying to keep my hand steady on the throttle. No good. At one point someone's chain guard almost shook itself apart and had to be welded back together again. At another, a German couple bit the dust after trying to dodge their way past some chooks. Lucky I brought my remaining gauze bandages and iodine. The spare tape I used to stick back on their indicator light. Mal as.

The Plain of Jars is pretty much just that, these huge massive jars cut from solid stone, on a plain. The other interesting thing about the jars sites, at least site 1, is the proximity of B-52 craters, some which are right next to, and no doubt in the position of where previously stood, these mysterious ancient jars. Ancient history and modern warfare, side by side, baby. After the jars we checked out a waterfall, goofed around throwing rocks and pushing tree trunks down it. By the time we got back in the late afternoon everyone had procured a heavy layer of dust and grit, on pants, on backpacks, in eyelashes; dust everywhere. And the worst part was having no hot water to wash ourselves off with afterwards.

The other thing the Plain of Jars is famous for, other than the eponymous jars, the dust, and the bad roads, is unexploded ordinance, or UXO. The Plain of Jars claims the unglamourous title of being one of the most bombed places of any time, any where. Ever. During the height of the Vietnam War, Laos was being bombed at the rate of a plane-load of bombs every eight minutes of every hour of every day. For, like, nine years. So much, in fact, that more bombs were dropped on Laos then on all of Europe in the Second World War, combined, making Laos, per-capita, the most bombed nation in history. Now that's a hell of a lot of bombs. They got bombs coming out of their ears here. They use the casings for all sorts of things. As garden beds to grow herbs, as stilts to hold up houses, as hotel ornaments. I saw three man-sized bombs lined up outside a restaurant on the main street of town named "The Father," "The Son," and the "Holy Ghost", which had been scrawled onto them in paint or permanent marker.

Unfortunately, the legacy of all these bombs still continues to kill and maim the local populace, even after all this time. On average one person is still killed or wounded every day here. The main culprit are 'bombies', little tennis-ball sized pieces of evil that were packed into bigger bombs by the hundreds and designed to not explode on impact, but rather to wait until disturbed by soldiers or famers or their livestock (and most commonly today, and most sadly of all, their children) whereupon they detonate in a blast of rusted shrapnel. The idea being that it's harder for the enemy to deal with their wounded than with their dead. And perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this practice is that the United States still produces these things today.