I ended up in Nong Kiau to catch a bus to Phonsavan and but it just wasn’t happening. I couldn’t find a bus that was going there. People would point to a bus and I would wait for the driver and eventually the driver would come back and say he was going elsewhere. Another driver said he was going to Phonsavan and later changed his destination. A guesthouse said the best way was to sit on the road and wait for a bus. So, I sat for several hours and no bus came. Sigh... It was getting late and I got a room at a guesthouse and met some cool backpackers and stayed up most of the night with them.

The next day I got up early and waited for a truck or bus to Phonsavan and someone pointed to a truck with a “Phonsavan” sign, now be aware that it’s difficult to read the signs as they are in Lao script. Your travel book may list the names of town in the script but if the font on the sign and the book are different, it might as well be in Chinese. So I waited for many hours near a truck that was supposed to be going to Phonsavan. The driver got in before I could react and drove off 150 meters down the road and by the time I arrived, had disappeared into a building. I asked a person at a market stall where the driver was and she indicated it was going to Luang Prubang. That’s it! I’m going to Luang Prubang and I’ll figure it out from there. I catch a bus with the people from last night and went back to LP where I booked a flight to Phonsavan and an hour later they canceled the flight for the following day. D’oh! So I had a few days in this city of temples and certainly didn’t waste the time. Plus, there were killer egg rolls to be had.

I spent some time writing art programs at restaurants overlooking the Mekong and going to museums and having a pretty good go of it. Eventually departure time for the plane comes (and goes) and we’re stuck at the airport waiting for the plane. I met a man who did UXO (unexploded ordinance, i.e. bombs) education. In every Lao village you’ll signs about UXO telling the children what to do if they see it. It’s really sad that people have to live worried that their children will lose a foot or even more.

The plane eventually came and we get on. Lao Aviation had a bad reputation for safety for doing things like plowing into mountains and it didn’t take long to see where that came from. The cockpit door was left open and bags were piled into the cockpit and blocking the emergency exits. The most memorable parts of the flight were flying over schoolyards and the students were doing exercises all lined up in neat rows. The other notable thing was the large number of perfectly circular farm ponds. Later I was to find out that they were bomb craters from the 60’s and 70’s. I guess that UXO education was a necessary thing.

Upon arriving in Phonsavan, the touts were pretty aggressive, at least as far as Laos goes, but they were still among the least obnoxious of any place in the next six months. I met an Austrian woman, Johanna, and we visited the Plain of Jars, which is the main reason to come to Phonsavan.

The Plain of Jars are a series of archaeological sites about 2000 years old. Some of these sites have several hundred large stone jars scattered about. The term “large” means 1-3 meters wide and tall. The jars were all over the area in no discernible order. Archaeologists could offer theories about their use but most things about them are uncertain. It was certain that a lot of effort went into them and the site that we saw was only one of ninety sites, although this was one of the biggest. It was a strange, strange place for sure and worth the trip. Oh, once it started to rain and Johanna and I waited it out in a cave. There were several large bomb craters at the entrance to the cave. One can only imagine about that.

Johanna and I spent the rest of the day around town. We went to a place for lunch that served “Younger Cow Salad”. We figured out they probably meant “Veal Salad”. That evening there was a restaurant that served “Placenta Salad”. We tried to figure out how they mistranslated that one but nothing came to mind and maybe it really was exactly what it said. You never know. Eventually the power was turned off and we went back to our rooms. Oh, about that power thing, the disco next to the hotel apparently had a generator as they went into the wee hours of the night. Curse those private generators.

We were together for part of the next day together until she had to leave. When she arrived two days before, she was very hesitant and unclear how to bargain with tuk-tuk drivers and I gave her some pointers on how to do and how to stand your ground and walk away. I let her bargain with the driver and she did it like a champ and got a cheaper price than I thought likely. Later I fell back to sitting under trees reading books for the rest of the day. I took a long walk out of town and saw a side of town most tourists didn’t see. Everyone had a water buffalo and there would be small huts and then in the middle of them, a large, two to three story concrete houses, followed by more huts. It was unusual to mix the city’s rich and poor so much but it was common in the area.

When it came time for me to get to the airport, I walked the couple km. That way, I didn’t have to bargain and besides, the exercise was nice.