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Monday, 17 August 2009 09:10 |
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So did you figure out the jars? Neither did we.
After scratching our heads for a bit we headed to Vang Vieng where we hooked up with Liam whom we had met a few weeks before. He has been traveling in South-East Asia on his little honda and we decided to all go south together. We don't travel often with others but we usually have a good time when we do so and this was no exception. We spent a few days in Vientiane, the capital, before making our way to Paksé in the far south. Here is a picture of our temporary partner in crime...
Although the setting at this restaurant was nice (on the shores of the Mekong), the place was infested with very well fed rats so we wisely skipped eating there.
As for the rest of Laos, we kind of did an express visit as we had already spent a good deal of time in the south several years ago.
Brian |
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Friday, 31 July 2009 10:20 |
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From the north-east of Laos we headed to the Plain of Jars which is just that, a plain full of jars. I would like to give you a nice long explanation of the story behind this historical site but nobody knows why the jars are there and what they were used for. So I will just go ahead and post some pictures and perhaps you can figure out this little mystery. Good luck…
Giant hole, courtesy of United States Air Force who bombed the country during 1964-73.
Brian
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Tuesday, 28 July 2009 10:36 |
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Again and again on this trip we have seen the effects of war on local populations but never to such an extent as in Laos. Whereas in other countries the evidence of violence is often limited to stories told by local residents and retold in guidebooks, here in Laos you see it in the form of bomb craters, shell casings and missing limbs. Below are some pictures of our visit to the Pathet Lao caves in the northeast of the country. It is here that the communist forces (then fighting a civil war against the Royal Lao Government that was running the country) hid from intense aerial bombardment by the United States which lasted for 9 years. Since the US did this despite having signed a treaty in Geneva to the effect that Laos was “off limits” they simply did not inform anybody and few people today have ever heard of the “secret war”. As a result of this secret war, Laos has the distinction of being the most bombed nation in history. And the lasting legacy of this war is the millions of UXO (unexploded ordinance) that litter the countryside and continue to kill to this day.
Brian |
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Wednesday, 22 July 2009 11:43 |
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For Laos we decided to slow things down a bit and “get back to basics” so to speak by taking unusual routes and seeing out of the way places. But since we arrived right in the middle of the rainy season our options were a little limited due to bad road conditions. Still, we managed to take a northern route into the country from Thailand and made our way to the extreme north-east, an area seldom visited.
As with many of the countries we have visited recently, this was our second time in Laos. The first was 10 years ago when, on a whim, we decided to bicycle from Vientiane to the far south. What we learnt back then and what was confirmed for us once again is that getting around with your own means of transport provides a whole new perspective on this fascinating place. This was reinforced again and again as we rode past small villages and were greeted with enthusiastic smiles and waves almost every time. Sure, most of the waving was done by little hands as opposed to those made ragged and creased by years of toiling the land in the hope of harvesting enough to eat. But even the older folks would flash a smile and a quick wave as they would see us zip by.
But the real magic would occur when we would stop in a small village on the way to something bigger and more jaded. There are still places in Laos, admittedly out of the way places, where the only whites faces that the younger residents have ever seen were those of tourists sitting uncomfortably in overcrowded buses and they rolled through town at breakneck speeds. So when we would stop in these little pockets of humanity we would invariably draw a crowd sometimes counting into the dozens of men, women and children. But it was the kids who would have the strongest reactions to our presence. It would range from excited curiosity to outright fear on more than one occasion. Such purity in those reactions. It is what kept us going when the roads became a bit more challenging then what we had bargained for.
Brian |
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