Our bus to Phonsavan was the only one in the bus depot and the passenger list was approximately 90% locals and 10% tourists. Glancing out the window, we could see that there were about 5 buses full of tourists only going down to Vang Vieng. Finally we were (sort of) making it off the beaten track a little bit. The bus itself was packed, and strapped to the top of it was a motorbike and about 20 big boxes of toilet paper which I found very amusing. The journey itself was NOT so amusing. We're talking 5 hours going uphill on the windiest roads that I have ever been on, being driven by a man who looked about 18 and who was more concerned about flirting with some girls than he was about the safety of the passengers. Leon was still a bit fragile from his illness so I sat there praying for most of the time that he wouldn't be sick en route (thankfully he wasn't). To make matters worse, the bus driver thought it would be fun to stick on some really loud, horrible Lao hip hop music and I believe it was at this point that I had my first pang of homesickness. Or perhaps I was just fearing for my life. Either way, we were thankful when we started driving along some flat stretch of road as we were nearing Phonsavan, and even managed to appreciate the beautiful country side which bore a very strong resemblance to the hills that you get back in England. Finally we reached Phonsavan and jumped into a van that took us into the heart of town, where we could find a guesthouse for the next 2 days.
Phonsavan is really like something out of the wild west, with a lot of dusty roads and oldish buildings, and not much else. The place was bombed heavily and as a result, they had to rebuild from scratch in the 70s so I imagine that not many places in Laos look a lot like Phonsavan. It's not pretty, but the grittiness of the place made it seem more real, and not somewhere that just catered for tourists. We settled for the Nice Hotel and were just lucky enough to catch a documentary that MAG (Mines Advisory Group)were showing that evening. The film was pretty powerful, and the statistics are pretty horrendous i.e. the Americans dropped 2 tonnes worth of bombs per Laotian during the Secret War. We retired to bed pretty early after a long journey and a pretty sombre evening, as we were off to see the Plain of Jars bright and early the next day.
We visited all three sites within the Plain of Jars (there are others but they haven't been fully cleared off unexploded ordinances to render them safe for tourists I think) and it really wasn't like anything else I've ever seen. Yes, they are just massive stone jars but it's the fact that we really don't know what they were used for that makes them all the more mysterious and quite fascinating. After a while of course they do start to look a little samey, but we were able to take in some beautiful scenery and some funky pictures as well (soon to be uploaded on flickr!) The tour also included a visit to a 'whisky village' where we all sampled some Lao Lao whisky (I thought it was awful) and then to see an old Russian tank as well. All in all it was a memorable experience, although hopefully in future they will do something about the road to get to Phonsavan, as I don't wish that kind of hellish journey on anyone. Given that there isn't much else on offer in Phonsavan, we decided to head down to Vang Vieng the next day, instead of going straight to Vientiane, which was our original plan. I think it was the 20 hour bus journey that put us off more than anything else and I'm glad we went, because Vang Vieng turned out to be a pretty memorable place.
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