The Plain of Jars

Hi All

Back with part two of our post of the last few days offline! 



      












Yesterday we set out on our tour of the Plain of Jars, first stop is known as Site 1 (original eh!) which has over 300 of the jars scattered in two adjoining areas. Most of the jars are just plain sandstone jars, but a couple have carvings on. It is really weird to see these huge lumps of hewn rock and not wonder why anyone would spend so much time creating them without leaving any clue as to why they exist. Another mystery is how any of them survived the sustained bombing by the Americans albeit some have been completely obliterated and buried in bomb craters.

 

Next stop was to see a burnt out Russian made tank which had been left randomly on the side of the road (& not a single tinker had picked it up on his van!!).  We had a lunch of Laos Noodle soup by a lovely lake followed by some extremely strong Laos Coffee! Off to the next site which was a Cave which is used as a temple, but during the secret war was temporarily used to defend the Ho Chi Min Trail and provide a hospital for both the local people and those in the cave.

About 3000 soldiers were posted there. Below this cave was another used as a medicine storage area and the floor is literally covered with hundreds of old discarded phials of morphine and other medicine bottles.  A walk up the hill nearby gave us a very good overview of all we had seen and learnt, when we realised we were walking through an area where mortars, bombies & shell casings were still lying around on the hill side marked up ready for 'disposal'! The view from the top also afforded us a view of another legacy with the paddy fields all showing the scars of being bombed.

Our final destination was to a local village to see what how the war had impacted on them. These people didn't seem to hold anyone to account as we might have done, but had managed to salvage some good things from their situation, mainly in the form of recycling the casing and detritus of the was & boy was there a lot! We also had the opportunity to see how Lao Lao is made and to sample some more !!

Back to the tour company HQ where we watched another film entitled The most secret Place on Earth. This was far less emotional, but far more political and takes the Laotians situation up to date. It was a fascinating couple of days and ones that will stay with me for a long time.



Night and thanks for looking

Sara