bombastic..

Phonsavan

Paradise, I haven’t seen the last of it, I suppose.

I decide to step away from the french cafes with their fresh croissants and toasty baguettes, banana pancake stalls, restaurants with backpacker’s, California, and American breakfasts on their menu and view the other side of laos, the one which exists without the oui influence. So I head to the northeast.

Vieng Xai is the kind of place where you want to empty your backpack and air it out for a bit. There are man-made lakes with the limestone karst peaks as the backdrop (man-made by the bomb craters), hidden waterfalls, paddy fields, white and yellow wildflowers, (and hence) drunken butterflies, a fresh produce market with a buffalo head, and mangoes and bananas.
Every restaurant in town has a net submerged in the lake for the “fresh catch of the day”, for your order of fish soup. There are no cafes- internet, french or others..

This is the birthplace of Laos PDR, the former headquarters Pathet Lao (Land of the Lao) revolutionary headquarters. The evidence is the caves – the former meeting rooms, houses, hospitals, printing presses, a theatre - all housed in caves. Around 23000 people sought shelter in them for 9 years during the war.

After three days of playing catch up with history and then playing cards, arranging my itunes music, reading, relaxing, I head to Phonsavan.

On the way is Hintang Archaeological site with ancient stone pillars, a mini Stonehenge- a 6 Km hike from the main road. Christian, whom I met in Sam Neua, and I keep our backpacks at a motorcycle repair shop in the village and begin on what, at times, seemed to be an endless hike.

The lonely planet mentions the way to get here, some history, but what it forgets to mention is that the hike is all uphill (and it is 8 km, I am convinced). So, with my daypack with one soymilk, 3 bananas, one mango, a laptop, 2 books, a big camera, a 5 lb. poncho, more snacks (for the bus ride), extra batteries, memory cards, I drag myself up a muddy trail to the mountain top.
The site itself is a small one but spooky, with 1.5m upright stones, stone discs. The views are spectacular.

Of course, coming down is the best part on a hill. Christian walks by a little snake on the trail and doesn’t flinch when I mention the snake. “Do you know how many snakes they have in Australia? They are everywhere.” he says. Hmm, one country I might have to think twice about visiting.

Once in the village, we flag down a bus to phonsavan. I doze through most of the 6 hour journey.
In Phonsavan, I am handed a key with a bullet as a keychain. I have reached the most devastated province in the most bombed country (per capita) in the history of the world.

Here, Cluster Bomb Unit casings are used as fence posts, planters or plain decorations. Bomblets, which can be bought for as little as $2-3 are used as lamps and ashtrays. There are warnings about UXOs (unexploded ordnance) everywhere. There are songs about UXOs, which are a part of school curriculum.

I don’t quite realize the gravity of the situation till I see a bomblet (click on the picture!) – by the road we were driving on, in a ditch.

Our van had a flat tire on our way back from the customary ‘Plain of Jars’ tour and that’s when a girl in the group discovers it.

For a brief moment in time, I feared the ground I was walking on. I can’t imagine living with this fear. But the people here do, and sometimes, they pay a price for their own land, a heavy price- with their life or a limb or an eye. 30% of the bombs dropped were estimated to be unexploded.

After a 10 hour bus ride, my eyes constantly searching for more bomblets in the roadside ditches, I am on safer ground- Vientiane for a quick trip to Thailand, to get another 30 days in laos.