Banna Plain Of Jars Guesthouse Phonsavan

... province: The Plain of Jars, a strange scattering of 2,000 year old giant boulders carved into 'jars' and scattered around various sites. The biggest site being around 250 jars. The purpose of these? It's all speculation. The second 'attraction' is the remnants of the Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) and various other shells that the Americans dropped during the 'secret' war of the 60's and 70's This was in direct violation of the geneva convention, saying that Laos was a neutral country ...

... farmers are only able to produce enough rice for half of the year because their land has not been cleared. Lots of the bombs were only dropped here because the Americans couldn't drop them in Vietnam sometimes so they would just dump them in Laos so that they didn't have to go through the procedure of landing a plane with Unexploded bombs on it. We found it shocking that we were all unaware of the war in Laos, we only ...

... that price. The local man only wanted 150,000kip ($18) for the same tour, so we snapped up his offer. <br><br>Mon 12th Oct.<br><br>We met our guide and were the only people on his tour that day. Feeling very much like VIPs we boarded his brand new Mercedes people carrier and off we went. <br>We arrived at site one where the biggest jars are. The plain of Jars is an area where thousands of mysterious stone age jars are found ...

... that focused more of this story than that of the Jars. Later that night we watched a good documentary movie at Kongs about the war and the clean up efforts that are ongoing today. The following morning we set off on the tour and were taken to sites where huge bomb craters are still there, to villages where shells of old bombs are used are stilts for houses and for flower beds, to sites where MAG ( Mines Advisory Group) are clearing areas of land ...

... and our guide played some lovely romantic music for us on his phone while we sipped water and talked about our boyfriends and how we couldn't go out to the 'discotheque' that night because we had the bus in the morning. There wasn't much putting them off though! We had lunch in a little shop/house/restaurant where the menu consisted off sticky rice or noodle soup. We had the soup but didn't eat much of it! Bought some nice popcorn there though.<br><br>After much ...

... backwards since we arrived the afternoon before. I spot a place of interest within walking distance and we make our way towards Keo Khong restaurant. The place shows a documentary every evening on the secret war and the destruction it caused. <br> We cautiously make our way down a back street full of potholes. Mopeds scream by bobbing and weaving to keep from getting air born from the holes in the street. We stumble upon what appears to be the remnants of a carnival. Maybe it ...

... us there too. We all l had dinner together in the hostel watching the documentary Bombies which is all about the impact of the US led 'Secret War' and the remaining unexploded ordinance left over from the bombings.<br>It was quite an education for us as we'd obviously heard of the Vietnam war but didn't realise that alongside that Laos was suffering too. The US dropped 2 million tonnes of bombs on Laos over the course of 9 years 1964 - 1973 at a cost of $2.2 million per day ...

... think they'll get a good deal, but we have been able to negotiate with hotels before we arrive, get a discount and usually a free pick up and check out reviews on the interweb to make sure the place is ok. Maybe that's the project manager in me, stupidly well-organised, but after 6 hours on a hot bus with no air-con who wants to turn up and find everywhere full, or that the bargain room you find is full of cockroaches.<br><br>The Maly Hotel is owned ...

... it became difficult to find recruits. Boys as young as 12 were sent to war. <br><br> In the 1970's President Linden B. Johnson called a ceasefire from the US bombing Vietnam, but the US continued to dump all left over bombs in Laos even though the war was not meant to be with Laos but for Vietnam. The US dropped 2,093,100 tons of bombs on 580,944 sorties over communist Laos. The total cost was US$7.2 billion, or US $2 million a day for nine years. Most of ...

... was quite long and a lot of the same mountainous, windy roads that we'd kind of got used to in the north of Laos. We arrived at Phonsovan and were set upon, as ever, by five or so touts. They are a lot more polite than in Cambodia, and especially Thailand, but equally as annoying. We opted for a guy who said we could see his place for free and under no obligation to take the room. We agreed (mainly because the bus station was another 5km walk into town - so aggravating how they do ...