Road Trip - Phonsavan, Laos

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 27 Feb 2012 03:02
19:27.07N  103:13.03E

January 20, 2012 - January 21, 2012

The Footprints guidebook says, "Route 13 is now safe, with no recent bandit attacks reported, and the road has been upgraded, shortening the journey from Vientiane [to Luang Prabang] to eight or nine hours."  This should have been our first clue.  The distance from Vientiane to Luang Prabang is only about 140 miles.  On the highways at home, driving 140 miles would take a little over two hours, right?  Not so here.  It's true Route 13 is the most important highway in Laos.  Why 13 was chosen as the route number is a mystery, but most likely the number 13 doesn't carry the same negative baggage in Laos as it does in the western world.  Parts of the highway were completed in the 1930's, but only for use in the dry season.  It runs mostly north/south almost the full length of Laos - following the Mekong River from the Cambodian border in the south, through the capital Vientiane, to Luang Prabang in the north.  At Luang Prabang, the Mekong and Route 13 part ways; the road continuing north nearly to the Burma (I should say Myanmar) and Vietnam borders, the Mekong turning west to the Thailand border.  The piece of Route 13 we became intimately acquainted with (Luang Prabang to Vientiane) was completed under French colonial rule in the early 1940's, paved at some point later on (maybe by the Americans in the 1960's?).  It currently exists in a state of scary disrepair, making us wonder what it was like before the upgrade.  The word 'highway' is used loosely when describing Route 13.  It is a two lane road, with no markings, no lighting, 13,000 twists and turns up and down the sides of mountains, and expansive stretches of missing pavement.  We're not talking potholes here, we're talking no pavement - humongous pitted red dirt patches.  We estimated 50% of the pavement was missing in portions of the Luang Prabang to Vientiane road.  The good news is, just as the guidebook said, we saw no sign of bandits.

After arriving back in Luang Prabang via river boat from Nong Khiaw, we stayed one last night in the posh Mekong Riverview Hotel before the four of us set out bright and early in the same slightly tired minivan with the same tiny, horn-tooting driver for the town of Phonsavan located in an area called the Plain of Jars.  To get to Phonsavan, Route 13 must be followed south for about 4 hours.  Then, upon arrival at the junction of Route 13 and Route 7, noodle soup must be eaten (with recycled chopsticks) and Lao Beer drunk at one of the roadside restaurants (equipped with squat toilets for your comfort), before turning east on Route 7 for another three-hour mountainside ride to Phonsavan.  As tiring and uncomfortable as this may sound, we loved the ride (minus the occasional waves of car sickness).  None of us realized we would be treated to such fantastic scenery.  Laos is a rugged, beautiful, mountainous country.  It's no wonder there are so few roads.  It's much easier to travel by river boat than by land, so the river people get around fairly easily, while the highland dwellers tend to live very isolated lives unless their village happens to sit alongside one of the handful of highways.

The mountain villages literally cling to the road, which clings to the mountainside.  Small, traditional, thatch-roofed homes, some built on stilts, others not depending on the ethnicity of the village, line the road on either side.  If the huts are built on the uphill side of the road, the land immediately soars up behind them.  Likewise, if the huts are built on the downhill side of the road, the land drops off dramatically immediately behind.  There are no backyards, the road serves as a communal front yard, and this is why our driver's horn-tooting was so essential.  Parents, grandparents, kids, toddlers, and domestic animals of every sort were walking, talking, working and bathing in the road, or darn close to it (the animals weren't talking or bathing, but you get the picture).  When tooted at, universally the toot-ee barely acknowledged the horn (and certainly never smiled or waved), however, they did seem to move slightly, allowing our driver to successfully dodge them.

As we drove along gazing at the mountains and the road's precarious position on it, we noticed the remnants of hundreds of landslides.  Truly, there had to have been hundreds of red dirt gashes in mountainsides above the road, barren of all vegetation.  We traveled through one village where the line of huts was interrupted by barren red dirt.  "Landslide?", we asked our driver/guide.  "Yes, very bad." he said, "It happened very fast at night when people asleep and homes were swept away.  Only one family died."  One is a bit many, we thought.  The monsoon season can be a very treacherous time in Laos.  Most roads become impassable and landslides are common.


One of the river villages near Route 13.


Laundry day.


After eating our noodle soup and Lao Beer lunch at the junction of Routes 13 and 7, we strolled through the local market.  Look closely at the pile of….hmmm….not sure what those giant tuber-looking things are.  Anyway, look closely.  Yes, that's a rat on top of the pile.  A dead rat.  For sale.

Note the unsmiling kids.


Fried rat for sale at the market.  A true test of the 'anything tastes good fried' rule.  We didn't try it, but if cooked up with all those hot peppers, the resulting heat would probably mask the rat flavor and you'd come away thinking it tasted like chicken.


We traveled to Phonsavan in the Plain of Jars to see the jars, but the area is really famous for two reasons.  First, the jars, which I'll get to in a moment.  Second, given its strategic position close to the Vietnamese border, the Plain of Jars was contested more vigorously than any other venue in Laos' protracted civil war.  Lots of American bombs were dropped here - many of them cluster bombs full of smaller 'bomblets' that unfortunately did not always all detonate.  Nearly thirty years later, there is still so much unexploded ordinance (UXO) in this area that those who would like to develop a piece of land must first contact the government to arrange for UXO to be cleared.  For a long time, desperate Laotians dug up bombs, shells, fragments, etc. to sell as scrap metal.  Unfortunately, this activity did not always end well.  Accidents like this have decreased in recent years, but our guide told us 5-10 people per year are still injured or killed by unexploded bombs around Phonsavan.  The town was completely demolished in the war, but has since been rebuilt.  It's not a pretty place (especially after the glamour of Luang Prabang), but it is growing and seemed almost bustling.  Bomb shells and casings left over from the war are used for everything from planters to fences.  The bomb decor was depressing, but you can't help but admire the resourcefulness of the Lao people. 


About the jars.  As you'll see below, they are very large (3-7 ft tall) carved stone urns.  They are said to be 2,000 years old, and no one knows for sure what their purpose was, or who put them there.  One legend claims they were made to hold giant quantities of lao-lao (rice whiskey) to celebrate a victory by troops from Southern China over the locals.  We like this legend.  It's much more colorful than the probable real story, which is that the jars were funeral urns - the larger ones used for the aristocracy, the smaller for their minions.  There are only three places in the world where jars such as these exist.  Laos, Indonesia, and…..we can't remember where.  The point is, they are rare, and an archeological mystery.  There are more than 334 of these jars scattered around several sites near Phonsavan - the largest collection of such jars in the world.  The only trouble is the jars sit on land littered with unexploded ordinance (UXO) from the war, so all the sites had to be cleared before the area could be opened to tourists.  The photo above shows the sign posted at one of the jar sites.  As you can see, 127 items of UXO were found and destroyed here.  We followed the sign's instructions and did not stray outside the white markers.


Not really much to see, but this is one of the many bomb craters peppered around the jar sites.  We were surprised at how much harder it was for us to escape the effects of the Vietnam War in Laos than it was in Vietnam.  Granted, we didn't go to the southern part of Vietnam, but we were in the heart of North Vietnam for their Liberation Day celebration (celebrating the fall of Saigon), and it didn't resonate with us like the bomb craters and caves of Laos.  Perhaps it's the people as much as anything.  The assertive Vietnamese and their much more vibrant economy are moving forward fast, whereas the reserved, laid-back Laotians seem to be stuck in first gear.


The jars.  And our guide - positioned nicely to lend just the right perspective to the size of the jars.  Of course Don makes the jars look a bit smaller... 


Lots of jars.  After hanging around so long, many have sunk into the ground or fallen over.  Their quirky lopsided positions make the scene look like the aftermath of an earthquake.


Our guide having a bit of fun playing 'pop goes the weasel' (or the Laotian version of such) for Michael and Jackie.


Now we get to the good stuff.  Lao-lao whiskey making.  Lao-lao is the preferred drink of Laotians.  It is cheaper than Lao Beer, and definitely more effective.  It's made from fermented sticky rice using an ingeniously simple method involving a charcoal fire, a steel drum (seen on the left) with a convex lid and a condensation collection utensil attached to a tube.  The fermented rice is placed in the drum, the charcoal is fired up, the alcohol evaporates, condenses on the convex lid, drips into the collection utensil and runs down the tube, out the side of the drum and into a lao-lao bottle.  Voila!  We grew to really like lao-lao.  Don and Michael vouched for its medicinal properties as both picked up ugly colds in Laos.

Note that neither our guide nor the lao-lao maker are smiling.


Yes, but Don is smiling.  This is the lobby of our hotel in Phonsavan.  We had a huge room with cable TV (HBO movies, even) all for the low, low price of $25 including made-to-order eggs for breakfast.  The lobby furniture was, well, interesting.

Next up:  Backpacker Paradise - Vang Vieng, Laos
Anne