It's my birthday, too!

(It's not my birthday anymore; that was on the 15th. But I had a lot of blog posts scheduled in the meantime.)

If they exist, the travel fairies gave me a birthday present they knew I would appreciate (and I'm not being facetious.)

I had breakfast in Phonsavan with three Danish girls that I met at the Plain of Jars. They asked where I was going next, and I said "I'm taking a minibus Luang Prabang at 8:30" and they shared that they were leaving for Luang Prabang on a minibus at 8:30 too! What a silly assumption it would be if you thought we'd all be on the SAME minibus at 8:30 (I'm sure theirs was less of an adventure.)

After checking out from our guesthouse, we ventured to the travel place. The fella there said that the three Danish girls would go on one bus, but I would go with that guy over there. So I went with that guy. I briefly feared that I might be making this 8 hour journey in a songthaew, but his songthaew just took me down the street to the bus station.

I got in the minibus as instructed and waited. A nice lady came by and said, "you are the only one on this bus going to Luang Prabang, so they will take you half way and then you will get on another minibus and this bus will go to Vang Vieng." This will be an adventure!

I settled down with my book and waited. There was a little boy running in between the minibuses (I had the door open, since it was hot) and generally being a little boy and thus causing me irritation, but soon, soon I would be off!

The driver got into the bus, and made it a family outing as his wife, daughter, and the little boy got on too!

Mama is really nice, but she turned on Lao music really loud and would frequently burst into sing-along with it throughout the ride. Unfortunately, loud Lao music was disruptive for my attempts to read. Little girl was inoffensive except that twice on the windy road she had to vomit into a plastic bag and then throw it out the window. Little boy was my mortal enemy. He kept...moving and making noises and touching things. And I gave him dirty looks. We had fun.

Well we wound along mountain roads for a bit until Mama noticed that there was a bamboo shack by the side of the road with a woman selling... what I can only assume was firewood impregnated with fragrant resin? It looked like bacon. But she's a very discriminating buyer and purchased a bundle only after some conversation. There were four stands all visible from the first stand, about 100m apart. And they stopped at all of them. They only purchased from the first.

We drove some more, and Mama burst out in song and Little Boy threw random pieces of garbage out the window and Little Girl was quiet when she wasn't puking.

And four hours later we came to a crossroads. It was kind of an Old West town with a guesthouse and a market and a man in a uniform directing the traffic of buses and minibuses as they came from the three streets (I guess that means it's not a crossroads, really, it's a roundabout with three legs. Or something.) We all got out of the bus. Papa went and sat in the roundabout, and Mama said she was going to go find out which bus I needed.

I waited. I bought some banana fritters. They were soggy.

Mama came back and conferred with Papa and Papa got in the minibus and drove away, while Mama and I waited in the roundabout and she asked each passing bus if they were going to Luang Prabang. After a number of no's, she gave up and went and bought some long beans. Then she came back, and I got my bus! And my bus, the first bus passing through Podunk, Laos for Luang Prabang, was a super awesome VIP bus with more leg room than I've ever had in my LIFE and so few people that I got TWO SEATS. Where was this bus on that 16-hour trip from Rayong to Nong Khai?

I took this picture of my old mini-bus, from the plush seat of my new VIP bus. The lady in red appears to be buying soggy banana fritters.



I sat on my awesome new bus, and the music was quiet enough that I could drown it out with Donovan on my ipod (Wear Your Love Like Heaven!) and four hours later, I was at the Luang Prabang bus station!

their bombs and their guns

Unfortunately, the wicked awesome mysterious history of the Plain of Jars is intertwined with the horrifying history of the Secret War in Laos. Other tourist areas have a lot of evidence of the war (one of the ceremonial bells at the Elephant Cave in Vang Vieng is made out of an old bomb shell) but Phonsavan is famous for two things: jars and bombs. There are a couple of UXO information centers in town with more information about the effort to clear mines.

Before entering the Plain of Jars sites, there are signs indicating, basically, to stay on the trails to avoid being blown to smithereens. Good advice.



Many of the jars are damaged by bombs and there are bomb craters labeled alongside the jars. The Lao army used this cave (next to Jars site 1) during the Secret War.





The standard tourist circuit in town also includes a visit to an old Russian tank left rusting in the forest, and the tourist information center itself greets visitors with this:

whisky in the jar?

I came to Phonsavan to see the Plain of Jars, and that's exactly what I did. No one knows who built them or for what reason, but my pet theory is that giants used them to serve a ceremonial cocktail made from Lao-Lao and human blood.

Site 1 is also home to the biggest jar in the world and I had my picture taken with it. Oh, yeah.



Site 1 also has a jar with a lid! The only giant stone jar with a lid in the world.



I like to think that this one is full of cats.

Site 2 is a little smaller and more secluded, and this tree decided that it was perfectly acceptable to carry out lewd acts with stone jars as if no one was looking. For shame!



No witnesses, indeed!



And site 3 could be anywhere in the world.



But is, in fact, in Laos. Just like the other two.

the next whisky bar

Lao-Lao is rice whisky distilled in rural Laos. I visited a distillery shed where someone had set up a still and tried some. At eleven in the morning.

This simple still is made partially from a war plane.





Here's Emily before a shot of Lao-Lao



And after:



It's not exactly good, but it is flammable.

over the hills where the spirits fly

It takes 7 hours to reach Phonsavan from Vang Vieng, and the minibus traveled past the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. I felt like I should be in Middle Earth (after eschewing The Hobbit in favor of something a little more embarrassing for my minibus reading material, even!)







The landscape changed from these glorious karst mountains to rounder, softer hills and then suddenly there were pine trees! And it smelled like cattle and pine and I could have been anywhere, if not for the occasional banana tree and valley full of rice.



And then it was just soft, rolling hills, and I saw a larger-than-I-expected flat city of shop houses, and I hoped that it wasn't Phonsavan, but it was. The end of the line, for now.