After a 5 hour journey on a real bus (the most comfortable we have had in Laos) and not a tuk tuk, we arrived in Phonsavan. The touts were there to meet us at the new bus station about 4 kms from the town centre. They offer free rides to guesthouses and are really touting for you to take one of their tours to the Plain of Jars. We did a tour to Site 1, 2 and 3.
There are many theories as to what the jars were used for- distilling bodies, burial, storage of rice etc. Some bones were found under some jars and they hope more evidence will be found to shed some light on the purpose of the jars.
We saw many signs of where our NZ tax dollars went. In Luang Nam Tha we funded a tourist office, in Luang Prabang we funded a building for monks and here we funded the clearance of unexploded ordinances. According to our guide book, it will take 100 years to clear Laos of
UXOs (unexploded ordinances) with the resources available.
Our guesthouse had these in the foyer! The bird (a falcon?) was in the yard tied up.
We had a noodle soup lunch cooked here in this kitchen!
This lady with all the barrels was the local lao lao (rice whisky) maker, and this is the inside of her still.
