Phonesavan - Plain of Jars

We arrived into a very wet Phonsevan in Laos, very excited to see the mysterious & largely unknown, Plain of Jars.  We quickly placed our bags in a dirty, cob-webbed $25 room & set out to explore.  Our driver took us to the Plain of Jars site 1, about 15kms from town.  There are over 60 sites in this region including the 3 main sites, 1, 2 & 3, although the general consensus seemed to be to visit Site 1 or Site 3.  We chose Site 1 with a large number of different-sized & varied-shaped jars in 3 different areas of the site, some with lids.  It also has a cave which was a burial area with an altar.

The Plain of Jars are ancient stone jars, amazing to look at & really quite bizarre.  They have only been studied a couple of times in modern history; in 1930 & in the 1990s.  Local theories range from the ordinary to the bizarre to explain the presence & purpose of the jars.  The most discussed reason is ancient burial chambers.  This area was on ancient trading routes & was a wealthy area.  Many of the jars were adorned with jewels, trinkets, glass beads etc.

A large visitor centre & people-movers are in place at the entrance to Site 1, made possible by a contribution from the New Zealand embassy.  The jars at this site are set amidst bomb craters.  This area was one of the most-bombed sites in the Vietnam war as bombs were dropped over this & surrounding Laos sites when planes were moving back & forth from Vietnam. It is known as the 'Secret war.'  Walking through Site 1, you have to keep to the paths marked 'No Live Ordinances' as there is still a lot of Unidentified Ordinance (UXO) that has yet to be cleared.  This clean-up process has been stalled because the US funding has been cut.  Hmmm, Laos wasn't in the war & the US dropped the bombs; there are still deaths every year as farmers & others move about this area, surely the money should be available?

We were pursued throughout the site by several Laos who wanted to have photos with us standing on the burial sites or in front of the jars which was a little surreal.  It was further quite odd that these jars are as mysterious as Stonehenge, older & are not at all protected, except for some signs with rules of behaviour listed on them.  While it will be sad when these jars are more protected, if they are to last, they will need more effective means of conservation.

There is evidence of the secret war everywhere in Phonesavan.  Bars use weapons for decoration, for flower pots, for lights.  There are overt constant reminders of the Vietnam war everywhere, one of the worst kept secrets in history.

Top 5
1. We were delighted to see these jars & enjoyed walking around the plains.
2. Being in the presence of things so old & so mysterious is humbling.
3. It was a very freeing experience being at this site, it is open & one can touch, look & stay as long as one would like
4. We stayed on the paths & were thankful for the directions & happily left the site without any UXO sighted
5. The resourcefulness of the Lao people is evident in repurposing of war ordinance

Vientiane zumba

While R stayed in the hotel & worked on his app, 'Got a Team,' C & I decided to join in the Mekong-facing zumba fun at Vientiane.  This was great fun & really hard work.  There were so many people doing this exercise class & people kept joining until almost the end of the session.  It was a little difficult to keep up with the class because of a few factors:
1) general unfitness
2) unfamiliarity with the moves & timing of particular exercises
3) the fact that all of the teacher's calls were in Lao & we only know a few words
4) the various levels of capability of the people within view.  It took a bit of time to try out various people to watch to follow the moves.  After a few tries, I settled on a woman who had the timing right & who was easy to follow
5) the small amount of space in which to exercise which got smaller as the class progressed

Despite these challenges, it was a great use of time & something that I was happy to repeat in our time in Vientiane.

Vinh

We (or many other tourists) have never been to Vinh in Vietnam.  Vinh is the closest major town when crossing from one of the northern Laos borders which is why we are pitstopping here a couple of days.  We had 3 long days of winding mountain road car travel & short visits to different places in Laos to make it across the border without doubling back over several of the places we had already been in Laos so we need a little break on stable land for a couple of days.  

Arriving into Vietnam from Laos, there are immediately observable differences.  The Lao are loud - they shout everything.  We were unable to discern a reason for this from Loa or foreign people but all acknowledged that yes Lao shout about everything but it is in no way associated with being angry or with heightened emotion, it just is. Vietnamese people are relatively quiet.  Traffic management however, is the exact opposite.  Vietnam is LOUD with traffic, everyone uses their horns for all sorts of reasons, all of the time.  Laos traffic, while no more ordered, doesn't seem to rely on the horn as a standard operating piece of equipment as they do in Vietnam.

Laos has more cars on the road, especially in Vientiane & Luang Prabang which is surprising. Laos has been enjoying a rapid increase in wealth (relative wealth) over the past few years & this seems to have resulted in an increase in car ownership.  The problem with this is that neither city nor country roads are set up for this many cars so it can be chaotic & slow driving all the way.  Vietnam has better roads, more lanes in cities especially but also fewer cars than Laos but more motorbikes, e-bikes, mini-buses, buses & trucks - all using their horns.

The border crossing we chose is not well patronised, except for enormous trucks taking gigantic trees from Laos across Vietnam for sale in China.  China is certainly a spectre in Laos with lots of discussion about what China buys & owns in Laos.  China was spoken about often, never fondly.
South Koreans are the number 1 tourist group in Laos at present so lots of signs & tourist information is in Korean.  They are a tourist group that seem to be well respected in Laos as they seem quite fun & spend a lot of money.  We met a few Koreans on our various journeys & they seemed bright & happy if a little crazy on the quad bikes in Vang Vieng.  Western foreigners are seemingly rare.  We are causing a sensation wherever we go with people stopping vehicles to look at us, people calling out 'hello' whenever they see us & being asked to pose for pictures several times a day, as well as the standard grabbing of my arms & poking my belly which seems to have become the thing to do.   We are also having the chance to dig into the phrase book as there is very little English about which is nice as it makes us do a bit of work.

Vinh as a town doesn't have much to offer except a 4 lane highway, some big hotels, Ho Chi Minh's ancestral home & Cua Lao beach which is 14 kms away.  For us, it is offering a swimming pool in the hotel, a place to rest & do laundry & to catch up on our colouring, games, tv-watching & sleeping. We move on from Vinh tomorrow & will say thank you, we are unlikely to see you again.

Top 5
1. Vinh traffic noise has confirmed for us that we are definitely back in Vietnam.  It is gratifying that we are starting to be able to better understand the different regional ebbs & flows
2. It is nice to be able to call out 'sin chow' & 'hello' to all of the people happily calling out 'hello' to us.  This simple exchange makes both sets of people happy
3. The excitement of communicating & being understood in another language is gratifying.  It is great seeing Miss C becoming more adept at using different words in different places & for her being able to understand that the world speaks so many languages
4. The pleasure of a hot bath, clean sheets, freshly laundered clothes & some TV (for C) cannot be underestimated
5. We are laughing thinking about all of the photos that we are now in for people in this region.  We are certainly objects of curiosity

Food dropping from trees

Everywhere we have been, food has fallen at our feet.  SE Asia is largely verdant & fecund, with some areas of central Myanmar & Vietnam experiencing unseasonal drought.  Fruit & vegetables are literally dripping from the trees.  We have eaten mangoes that have dropped at our feet in all of our destinations.  We observed a multitude of plants & trees bearing fruit especially in Laos & in particular in the jungle hotel & when touring the minority villages.  The fruit & vegetables are obviously seasonal but there seems to be a lot of food growing all the time.

We have seen:
- small green bananas growing on banana trees
- larger yellow bananas growing on palm trees
- coconuts on plam trees
- eggplant trees
- beautifully-shaped & dippled custard apples
- grapes on vines
- rice grown everywhere - in small plots, over massive fields, grown vertically high in the mountains
- corn grown on flat & vertical fields
- papaya
- white & red-fruited dragon fruit grown in trees
- pineapples in trees & in ground-based shrubs
- all kinds of nuts grown in palm trees
- guavas on trees

Top 5
1. We have a new appreciation for food & its origins, we are living much closer to the source of our meals
2. Eating local is de rigeur.  We haven't seen any refrigerated vans on the road but I am sure that there are some but we have seen lots of local & roadside food stalls selling food grown in that particular area
3. Sustainability seems to be part of the overall process when growing in a controlled way, however much of the growth when in the jungle seems to be haphazard with items growing with little intervention so we are unclear as to whether proactive sustainability practices are in place
4. There seems to be food sources available for people to eat, we hope that this helps with managing hunger in this part of the world
5. We feel blessed to be able to enjoy the richness offered by this region

Khe sanh

We saw a real piece of history on our journey from Hue to Pakkse, Laos - Khe Sanh, one of the most remote outposts in the Vietnam war is just a few minutes from the Vietnam/Laos Lao Bao border. 

History is written by the victors & the Khe Sanh museum certainly captures one version of the Vietnam war.  The photos, images & reporting depict a gloriously powerful victor who easily scared off the US foe. Photograph captions are adorned with phrases such as 'Image of the petrified & desperately weak Amercians scurrying from the might of our troops' & 'The Americans had to toilet in their bunkers because they were hemmed in by firing.'  The Allied troops evacuated this battleground in a hurry & left a lot of equipment behind, some of which is displayed in the museum & some of which still stands where it was left. There were of course, the obligatory Vietnam war paraphernalia sales touts at the site.  We chose not to buy anything but are amazed that there is still so much 'memorabilia' left behind from a war 40 years ago & that so many people seem to believe it to be authentic.  While some of it might be, Vietnam & other SE Asian countries have the means & wherewithal to be able to recreate anything so there seems a high likelihood that these items may have been created too!

I had never really identified with the lyrics of the Cold Chisel song but have since googled them & found them depressing & confronting.   

Top 5
1. Bearing witness to history is always humbling
2. The bunkers & equipment in situ provide a unique insight into the size of the conflict
3. Photographic evidence of an historical event is compelling 
4. We are thankful that it is 40 years since this event & it can be remembered (in the streets of Vietnam) but hopefully never repeated
5. We have been provided with the opportunity to reflect on this war & the commercialisation that has been borne out of it.  It bears thinking about. 

Oops we did it again!

We vowed that after last year's exploits & our recent train experience in Vietnam that that would be the end of Vietnamese train travel for us.  However, we found ourselves again, waiting for a train. We were leaving the Hoi An/Danang region to journey to Hue.  This is ostensibly a short journey but unfortunately it is not!

it is 42 degrees, the train is late (we are coming to understand that this is normal) & the waiting room is filling up so much, with more people crushing in that I need to escape outside.  People are armed with all of the typical accoutrements of Vietnamese travel - bird cage (check), many cardboard boxes (check), lots of little plastic bags carried & tied onto other boxes & bags (check).  Amongst the impending passengers are a husband & wife with just-born twins.  The woman is clearly just out of hospital, still wearing a nightie, dressing gown, slippers & an odd, shower-cap-like hat.  Goodness me, what an inauspicious beginning to life, having to wait for a train in this heat & then take it.  I hope that they are at least in a cabin rather than a seat.

Finally, the train arrived.  We clambered aboard, having to scale over 2 sets of train tracks & walk on rock as the train hadn't pulled up near the platform.  The new parents & twins were in the cabin berths with us - whew, a small mercy.  We walked into our cabin to find a mother & 2 small kids on the bottom bunks.  The woman indicated that we could take the top bunks but unfortunately for her, we had paid extra for the 2 bottom bunks & had also paid for a third bunk as you need to pay for a bunk per person, except if kids are very little (as indicated by height rather than age).  The key issue that she hadn't appreciated was that there was little hope of R or I being able to scale the top bunk & we also needed a bunk to store our 6 bags.  The lady moved up to the bunk, we got all of our stuff sorted finally & settled in, waiting for the train to depart.  I went to check & alas, the last carriage wasn't yet adhered & several people were waiting on the platform for this to happen before we could depart.  
The art of patience must first have been cultivated in Vietnam!

After a long time, we left - hurrah! We were treated to picturesque scenery of beach, green vegetation & mountain ranges.  It is known as one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world & having done it a few times, I can agree.  

We spent the journey watching the world go by, sleeping (some of us) & playing with the kids in the top bunk.  It was pleasant enough until the end when it was seemingly the end of days & everyone tried to get out of the one narrow corridor with their bags, boxes, birdcages & babies - at the one time.  Only horizontal queueing works here, with order being survival of the pushiest. 

The Hue station taxis are effectively mafia-controlled so we had little choice but to take the price offered as all of the other taxi drivers we asked provided the same amount.  We were very thankful that the journey was a short one as it was only in getting into the car that we realised that there were no door handles in the back seat & the door & window controls in the front were locked (because I tried them after some signalling from the back seat).  We gladly exited the taxi at our destination & paid the driver to go away.  We had planned to have 2 days & two nights in Hue before having to leave at 6am on the third morning to start our journey into Laos.  However, the seemingly quick & simple train journey meant that we actually just arrived into Hue, sweaty, exhausted, tired & hungry, just in time to go for dinner & bed.  We had decided to take the train because it was so much less than driving ie $20 compared to $80 & ostensibly the same amount of time.  On reflection, there's a reason that we like to take private cars, because even though they cost more, they generally mean you have a little more control of the journey & the time & state of arrival at our destination.  

Top 5
1. We got from Hoi An to Hue
2. We had yet another fun-filled, adventurous transport experience
3. We got to witness strength in the shape of the just-born twins, just-released from hospital mother, & newly-responsible, protective father on the train
4. We had a chance to relax on our luggage & play some UNO due to the wait time 
5. I got to see how quickly I could go through an entire box of tissues mopping my brow/cheeks/chin etc due to the heat & the compression of other humans in the waiting room (very quickly)

Up, up & away & again...

Miss C really wanted a balloon.  She consistently begged us from the moment we arrived in Hong Kong & then all through Myanmar.  So, when we arrived in Siem Reap & were going to be there for 8 days we thought this was the time for that purchase.

We had our first rest day of the holiday, planning to do nothing much except take a wander around the block.  It was a Sunday so there were lots of Vietnamese people out taking a break & enjoying the day.  We had been told that there was a park to play in so we were excited to see this.  We found some gardens & open space rather than any playground equipment but happily played tag & hide & seek for some time.

As we sat down to eat our cobbled-together picnic lunch, we were very delighted to see several chameleons running by us at different places in the park.  I have never seen one of these & certainly never seen it in the process of changing colour so it was doubly good.  The chameleon in the photo below emerged from the bush green & was in the process of changing to brown to continue its journey in the dirt.

C was having a good time but she knew that balloon-buying was on the cards so she was pretty focused on this.  Two boys about 10 years old were selling a variety of different shaped balloons. C chose an enormous orange fish for which we paid USD3. She was very happy & started running, planning for it to stream out behind her - only it didn't! It flew way above her, escaping into the great clouds in the sky. The fish balloon had come off the string of its own accord & C had been the proud owner for less than a minute.  I didn't even get to take a photo of her with her fish as it all happened so quickly.  She was really upset.

So I marched back to the lads & gesticulated into the air that the balloon had gone & that I would like another one for $1, not wanting to rip them off but to also strike a fair agreement.  They understood the situation because they had seen it happen & said No another USD3 was required,  to which I replied Yes, I will give you USD1. They didn't know that I have 4 sisters & we have had ongoing Yes/No discussions for weeks at a time growing up.  I also had a weeping daughter at my side & a desire to enable her to have a balloon for more than a minutes  One boy quickly relented, however, the other was in it for the long haul. I asked C to point out which balloon she would like.  She chose a round balloon with hearts inside it - lovely.  I paid the boy my $1 & then he gave me the balloon.  It was only when we started walking away that I saw that half of the balloon he had given us was deflated.  I took the balloon back & told them this was not right.  The stubborn one said that was the $1 balloon.  I said, no it wasn't & picked another one out of the bunch.  The nice boy then tied a water bottle to the end of the balloon & gave this to C demonstrating that this would be better to manage the balloon.  I thanked him & again we set off.  C had just crossed the street & was going to run in the pack with her new gorgeous, hard-won balloon when it happened again! The balloon took off skyward never to return.  I couldn't believe it.  The balloon had come off the bottle provided by the balloon sellers.  It didn't seem as if a very good longterm business philosophy was being followed. Again, no photo because I was not quick enough.  I only got a photo of a dismayed soul after having lost 2 balloons.  The boys had been watching & looked a little sheepish.  We started to walk towards them to give them the water bottle back, when they got up & walked away.  Great.  We didn't buy another balloon.

In the park we saw a couple of brides getting photos done - just the brides.  This seems to be an individual shoot rather than wedding day photos.  Each of the brides had a professional encourage of 6-8 people which seemed extraordinary.

After all of this running & chasing, we were hungry & hot & needed a sit down.  We decided that the FCC - Foreign Correspondant's Club would be the perfect spot as it was 2 blocks from our hotel.  We had a lovely cocktaily end to a great day.

Top 5

1. The balloons sold in Cambodia are cheap & cute characters

2. It is better to have loved & lost than to never have loved at all (that's what we told C to console her on her dual losses)

3. Point of principle transcends any language barriers. We were happy to let it go the third time, having learnt our lesson but got to see a little of the Cambodian negotiating style.

4. Each new day presents new observations & new opportunities for learning.  We had several of each of these today even though we literally just went around the block.

5. Life is always better with a nice sit down & a relax at the end of the day.