Phonsavah is home to the Plain of Jars, another one of those Stonehenge type worldly mysteries. No one knows how it came to be or what its purpose was. There are 23 sites, only three that are open to the public, and the jars appear as if out of now where - scattered across the landscape. There are two major theories on their usage: one that the God Spirits used them as containers to hold their rice wine or two that they were used as funerary urns.
Phonsavah is an eerie town with little aesthetic appeal, possibly because it was razed to the ground during the Indochina and Vietnam wars. The land and community are still raw and there has been no effort to cover up the old scars. Fences, hotels, restaurants and shops are all adorned with old bomb casings. They have been made into plant holders, seats, fire pits etc. So raw in fact that the war continues to destroy the surrounding communities. The farm land is still covered with bomb craters and alters set up for the spirits of those who died. An alter with unusual offerings for the spirits lay in front of a cave. Our guide informed us that, “the spirits like candy, soda and cigarettes”! These must not be your typical spirits!
Cluster bombs are apparently everywhere. These bombs were not created to destroy tanks, machines or planes - they were created to kill people. They are very successful and these small, spherical bombs at first glance seem like a perfect toy for children. They continue to wreak havoc on the communities in this province, which was the most heavily bombed area in Laos. During the Vietnam War, the US flew hundreds of thousands of aerial missions over Laos into Vietnam, dropping over 2 million tons of bombs. If targets could not be acquired or pilots needed to abort their missions and turn around, they would drop their munitions within the Laos border instead. Planes were not equipped with enough fuel to return to Thailand fully loaded and landing with that many ordinances still on board was dangerous. About 30 percent of the bombs dropped on Laos did not detonate, thus leaving the hills, farm lands and mountains loaded with UXO’s (Unexploded Ordinances). There are efforts to uncover them, but the work is long and tedious. Even when we went to visit the Plain of Jar sites we had to stay on a marked path as the ground had still not yet been cleared, nearly 40 years later. Creepy!
The market in town housed the most unfamiliar smells, and as we walked along its stalls my stomach began to churn and ache with discomfort. Large shallow buckets with frogs, eels and small crabs were followed by deeper buckets chock full of large fish flapping water onto the aisles. The usual fruit and vegetable stands stood on the outskirts, but as we approached the small dimly lit interior new sights began to immerge. On a concrete raised platform stood long meat stalls with rows of fresh slabs of furry muscle and innards amongst the occasional whole squirrel. Behind the stalls were discarded pieces of bone and fat, even a cow jaw.
Around the corner we accidentally stumbled onto the live market. As we quickly passed I did my best to ignore the squealing pig being jammed into a bamboo tube flush to its skin. Four more bamboo tubes stuffed with pigs lined the street along with larger containers filled with chickens. Alan was taking his time walking through but I got so frazzled I didn’t notice where I was going and began taking another road that was leading us back to the market. Little did I know that this was going to be a common site all over Laos.
We left Phonsavah just as quickly as we arrived. We headed back to Luang Prabang to collect our things, meet back up with Jonah and Alicia and head up North.
-Mika
During our tour of Plain of Jars, we had the pleasure to stop by a local whiskey village. This village consisted of no more than a bamboo hut and an old lady that manned the distillery. She was making the famous, or infamous, Lao - Lao. Lao - Lao is a rice whiskey made by fermenting sticky rice. It tastes a lot like moonshine, burning the back of your throat on the way down and warming your belly for a while after. The distillery process is fairly simple....the sticky rice is mixed with yeast and water and fermented over several days. The mixture is then boiled and the alcohol (Lao - Lao) removed. In Lao style, the distilling occurs in an old 50 gallon drum and the alcohol ends up in old motor oil containers! I quote our guide in saying that the "first shot of Lao - Lao does not taste good, and the second shot is not much better"!
-Alan
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