Editor’s note: when we last left our hero he was bemoaning a possible one-week stay in a remote and isolated part of a seriously backwards nation. Stomach cramps were on the liminal edge of his senses and a trip to Laos’ famous Plain of Jars was on the horizon. Let’s pick up with our brave adventurer at the end of the next day.
At 8:30 I was waiting for the Lao Airlines to open. Today is day three of the three-day New Year celebration so common sense suggested that the office wouldn’t be open. But my hotel owner insisted it would be. WRONG. No ticket to Luang Prabang. I’m now looking into the option of taking a bus out of here tomorrow. Bus travel is a mixed bag: its cheap and you get to see the countryside but it can be very long and dangerous due to the flat pay the drivers get for each trip. The faster they drive, the higher their hourly take.
At 9:00 I had to catch my van to the Plain of Jars. The jars were nice enough but I won’t bore those of you that don’t give a shit about 2,500 year-old mysterious artifacts. Instead, I want to tell you what its like to go through a stroll through the Lao countryside. In short, never leave the path.
We visited three cites of these strange, large, sandstone jars and walked the distance from site three to two. There is only one way to walk in Laos: on the path clearly delineated by MAG stones. The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) has been safely clearing paths of unexploded cluster bomblets, 750lb bombs, land mines and the like in Laos for a decade or more. As we took a one hour hike through the rice paddies we were careful to always step in between the markers they left. But of the hundreds of square kilometers that we could have walked on, our path was narrow. MAG has only cleared about 2% of one single square kilometer.
From a hilltop above the countryside, the effects of the US bombing campaign are surreal. Hundreds of craters are visible next to the jars, near homes, in rivers, in rice paddies, in trees and on the hills. Some cavernous craters could hold a large house and others were as small as a garbage can. My guide took me into one of them just a few feet off the path and showed me two unused mortar rounds just sitting on the ground. He told me, “Before MAG came, we would constantly find mortar rounds, bomblets, and land mines.” I didn’t leave the path again.
So now I’m a bit sunburned from my long walk (more than a bit, actually) and very excited about the prospect of the hotel owners making me dinner. The receptionist claims that if I show up at the bus station tomorrow at 7:45 I’ll easily get on the 8:30 bus for Luang Prabang. That would be the best. More from Luang Prabang, if he’s right.