Tapdancing on a land mine

Just got off a flight from Phonsavan to Vientiane--a 35 minute hop instead of a 10 hour long bus ride on roads designed by race course architects for the super g ski race or luge track/bobsled track designers. Had a 50% shot at being on a Chinese made aircraft (which is what I was hoping for) but was on an ATR72--a plane operated by such carriers like American Eagle. Got to the airport two hours before departure--and the airport was basically a shack that only serves this one flight that is 4x weekly in the low season, 1x daily in the high season. Plane was less than half full, but as we started to take off, we started swerving back and forth, which was a little unnerving. Flew across the spine of the various mountains in Laos, allowing for some spectacular views, and the ride was surprisingly calm until we got into the Mekong flood plain near Vientiane, where we hit some turbulence, and we landed well off the runway centerline. The last five minutes weren't for the faint of the heart. But I'm alive, and that's all that matters.

I don't know why, but soft, cheesy rock from the 80s is extremely popular in Cambodia and Laos. Everywhere I've been, I've heard songs from two artists: Richard Marx and Chris Debarge (lady in red). I've even heard remakes of these songs that make the originals sound like grammy nominees. Talk about bizarre.

So, the minivan ride to Phonsavan was quite an adventure as our driver tried to set a land speed record on a winding road. The view was simply spectacular--northern laos is covered in green forested mountains and ricefields, and there is an untouched, wild quality about it. I tried to take some pictures, but most of them didn't come out.

Arrive in Phonsavan in the heaviest rain storm I've experienced since arriving in SE Asia, which makes finding a guesthouse kind of hard. Six of us (out of the 8 on the minivan) agree to stick together, and head to Lonely Planet's "our pick." The place was closed--and was off the beaten path--no surprise. After wandering around, we find a place that we initially thought was quite sketchy because of the broken glass bottles on top of the fence, but it was actually quite nice (except for some of the bugs). Of course, all of us have do three shots each of whiskey from a johnnie walker bottle that is definitely not johnnie walker whiskey, which the guesthouse owner drinks first just so we know that it wouldn't blind us or wasn't actually paint thinner.

There's not much going on in Phonsavan--its a remote, not very touristy town, and while there are plenty of restaurants along the main drag, it definitely has a frontier, dusty feel to it--its also slightly cooler, being at 3600 feet elevation. In Laos, surprisingly, the more rural the place, the faster the internet. In vientiane and luang prabang, the internet can be painfully slow, but in vang vieng and phonsavan, it was american-speed.

After drying out some of my clothes and my bag from the rain, AJ and I decide to exploring a little bit, and stumble in on the MAG center for Phonsavan. MAG is an NGO that is dedicated to clearing mines and unexploded ordinance, and the Lao that work there all speak very good english. Tipsily, we joined a group of several other westerners (the non-tipsy ones) to watch the Lonely Planet popularized "Bombies" documentary about the Secret War in Laos and the cluster bombs. It was actually a fairly decent documentary, although it was definitely biased as I would later find out according to some information provided by our tour guide the next day. Probably the most disturbing piece of information to my ears was the fact that US bombers flying from Thai air bases to Vietnam that were unable to attack their targets were simply told to dump their live ordinance over the Lao countryside to avoid the possibility of a mishap on landing with a belly full of live bombs. The reason why UXO is especially dangerous is that when the U.S. did decide to attack planned targets in Laos, they focused on the flatter areas--near the main roads, and where the best farmland was. All and all, being an American in Laos is definitely a little odd, especially when you see places that proudly display old, defused bombs and use them in all sorts of manners, and you realize that most of it was manufactured in the U.S.

BTW, MAG is definitely worth supporting--they have a website--but they should really get the word out more in the U.S. In Phonsavanh, they are taking the wise tactic in getting donations: donate $10, get a free tshirt with their name on it for some free advertising. Guess who has a new tshirt to add to his collection?

After meeting up and having dinner, and running into the australian father and daughter that were at our same guesthouse in Luang Prabang, we head back to the guesthouse, and I try to take a shower. Much to me and AJ's dismay, the water had been turned off for the night. We also saw a giant bug the size of a man's palm right next to one of our travelling party's door.

Next day, we all decide to split the cost of hiring a tour guide and driver to go around the Phonsavan area to see the Plain of Jars and some other interesting sites. We go back about 40 km on the same road where we stop at a limestone cave filled with a buddha that was only recently rediscovered, but was looted by the Chinese in the 1880s. The cave was also used by the Pathet Lao (the Lao Communist party) as a hospital during the war, and there is one leftover "bed"--which is actually a former aircraft maintenence platform manufactured in the U.S., and still has the manufacturer's serial number on it. I'm sure somewhere in a government archival warehouse, there are records of this exact platform being shipped over to Laos.

We walk about 500 yards to another nearby cave which served as the Pathet Lao infirmary, and is still littered with old glass medical containers and syringes--to which I remarked that it was probably a bad idea that all of us wore open toed shoes that day. The guide gave us a general background on the history, and what he said that contradicted some of the information presented in the Bombies documentary is that while the U.S. is indeed responsible for the majority of the UXO, the Xieng Khouang province, where Phonsavan was located, was occupied by as many as three different armies during the lao civil war, including by the North Vietnamese, the Pathet Lao, and the Lao Royalist army. Meaning that while it is easy to blame the U.S. for all the UXO, there is plenty of it that was leftover by the other three parties, which means that filing a lawsuit is pretty difficult since you could only do so post-explosion, which would eliminate all pieces of evidence of the bomb in question.

Xieng Khouang was one of the most heavily bombed provinces in Laos because it was traditionally the Pathet Lao headquarters and homebase, as well as being a thoroughfare of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

We drive a little ways back towards town when we stop at a random turnoff along the side of the road. The semi-straight dirt road we were looking at and that is now lined with various houses and shacks, and grazed upon by cows and chickens, was once the site of a CIA airstrip and Lao Royalist encampment. While little evidence remains, you can tell by the flattened and straightened dirt path that it could have easily served as an airbase for some prop planes. We dodge the various cows and water buffalo alongside the road while having our ears decimated by the sounds of our driver's poor musical taste--some really obscure soft rock songs, get back to town, and break for lunch. The scenery is pretty, though--picture a hybrid between the Big Island's paniolo country near waimea and the foothills of the rocky mountains--green rolling hills whose valleys are populated by ricefields. Though not necessarily obvious, you can clearly make out patches of dirt or depressions in generally flat or grassy areas--those are bomb craters, or remnants of land hit by them.

AJ and I try to book air tickets for the next day, but are unsuccesful in finding a place. Hop on the van and drive farther down route 7, and then we hit a dirt road turn off and head uphill. Looking outside the window, we find ourselves on some sort of high plains--a wide valley/basin with rich farmland dotted with rolling hills as far as the eye can see and surrounded by high, tree covered mountains.

The guide decides to first stop at the whiskey village--which all of us politely decline and decide to continue on down the road (the whole concept sounded like disneyland for drinkers--just a manufactured tourist trap). We buy our tickets, and climb up a hill dotted with a wooden stairs and stumble upon Site 2 of the Plain of Jars.

The Plain of Jars are the premier tourist attraction in Phonsavan. The Plain of Jars is a collection of four sites with a cluster giant stone jars, most about the same height as your average person. People aren't sure what their purpose was--various theories abound--but the most likely theory is that they served as funerary urns--which makes sense, when you realize that other cemeteries in the area are also perched on top of hills. The Jars were cool, but the main attraction was the panorama view of the surrounding countryside, which was spectacular to look at.

Though they are well-known, and people think that the Jars are a UNESCO World Heritage site, they aren't for one major reason: the Plain of Jars is one of the most heavily UXO contaminated archaelogical sites in the world, and their application for "World Heritage" status will only be approved once the areas can be certified to be entirely free of UXO. Right now, the sites have only been visually cleared by MAG--and only subsurface cleared beneath a clearly lined path. This is one place where you definitely do not want to go off the beaten path--since you could easily come home in a bodybag.

For whatever reason, US bombers targeted the areas of these sites, with some of the bombs destroying some of the jars. You can still see the flattened depressed bomb craters just yards away from the main jar sites, and it is a wonder how these sites managed to avoid being entirely obliterated. The bomb craters may now be filled with vegetation and trees, but they are unmistakeable to the naked eye. The whole scene--archaeological treasures, rural farmland and the pastoral lifestyle, and war remnants--makes for an interesting, if chaotic contrast, as you try to wrestle with all of these different images and incidents.

There are several sites, and we visited 3 of 4--the 3 which coincidentally provided the best views, and all of us were astounded and awestruck by what we were seeing. Then, we returned to a village where bomb material is used as building material, and returned back to Phonsavan while being serenaded by the sounds of Celine Dion in our ears.

Of course, this wouldn't be a proper end to a post unless I engaged in some Lonely Planet bashing. I reread their descriptions of the various sites, and saw where they stated that the 3 sites we visited were only accessible via steep trails, and one of the three was a strenuous 2km walk. I could have done all three of those climbs in my sleep--they were no different than walking up any other hill in any city. If you can walk on New York's streets, than you can do the Plain of Jars. Plain of Jars "strenuous" while Merapi easily done by people in okay physical shape? Bravo, LP, good job.