Vientiane (1), Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha: Part 15 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

A Day Tour of Lao's Small, Friendly Capital

Laos

Introducing Vientiane

With a population of three quarters of a million, Vientiane is a small capital city. There are monuments and modern developments, but it is largely a city of narrow streets, low rise buildings and abundant temples. Relaxed, friendly and built on a human scale Vientiane is immediately appealing. The view from our hotel was typical; to our left a street of low, slightly ramshackle buildings; to our right a small temple with the Mekong River behind and Thailand in the hazy distance.

Chou Anou Road Vientiane, Looking left from the Laos Orchid Hotel

Last night we dined in a street restaurant a brief step to the left (hidden in the picture). The restaurant was busy, the service was slow and the dishes arrived in random order but the warm fish salad with chips and chicken in sweet sauce were well cooked, the night was warm, there was cold Lao Beer and all seemed right with the world.

Chao Anou Road, Vientiane, Looking right from the Laos Orchid Hotel

Vientiane - pronounced Vianchang (the Latin transliteration is French which has no hard ‘ch’) - was an ancient Khmer settlement. In the 7th century, migrating Lao and Thai people from southern China arrived and made Vientiane a city state until the formation of Lan Xang, the first Lao kingdom, in 1354. In 1560 King Setthathirath moved the Lan Xang capital here from Luang Prabang.

In 1707 disputes over succession fragmented Lan Xang. Vientiane became the capital of its own small kingdom which subsequently became a vassal kingdom of Siam. In 1828 King Anouvong rebelled and the Siamese responded by taking the city, carrying off everything of value and razing the rest to the ground. Devastated and empty, Vientiane was reclaimed by the jungle.

Vientiane, the Lao capital is just across the Mekong from Thailand

When the French arrived they chose the site of the ravaged city to be the capital of the landlocked portion of their new Indo-Chinese protectorate. To their credit, the French carefully rebuilt much of Vientiane’s cultural heritage, but inevitably the oldest buildings are (with one exception) crumbling colonial mansions.

Wat Si Sakhet

The Sim, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane

Wat Si Saket is that one exception, and it was there S, our guide, began his city tour. Built by King Anouvong in 1818 in Thai style, it became the Siamese army headquarters in 1828. Perhaps they could not bring themselves to destroy a Thai temple, but it was the only building of note to survive the year.

Modern tomb, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane

Outside, the graveyard is still in use and there are some expensive new stupas raised by wealthy families. Inside, a cloister surrounds the simple sim. Stupas punctuate the cloister....

Cloister, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane

while the walls are filled with Buddha images.

Buddha images lining the cloister, Wat Si Saket, Vientiane

Wat Pha Keo

Wat Pha Keo, just across the road, is a French rebuild of a sixteenth century original, and photographs inside show how much work was required to breathe life back into the shattered shell. The now beautiful building sits in a lush and peaceful garden.

Wat Pha Keo, Vientiane

Formerly the king's personal temple, it is presently a museum whose main exhibit is elsewhere. The temple once housed the Pha Keo, the ‘Emerald Buddha,’ but it was carried off to Thailand in 1799 and now resides in Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. Considered one of Thailand’s most sacred images, it is touched only by the king when he changes its robes three times a year. There is little or no chance of it returning (and, to be fair, it may well have been Thai originally) but Wat Pha Keo is ready just in case. Cambodia also has a claim; they keep a replica in the Wat Preah Keo in Phnom Penh pending the original’s return. (see The Story of the Emerald Buddha, posted April 2015 for the full story)

Inside, the collection of Buddha images includes an unusual ‘rain beckoning’ Buddha, he stands with his arms at his side, his fingers pointing to the ground.

That Luang

Driving across the city centre took us to That Luang, Vientiane's largest stupa, most important religious building and the symbol of both the city and the nation.

That Luang, Vientiane

There may once have been a Khmer Hindu temple on the site, but in the third century BC the Indian Emperor Ashoka sent missionaries equipped with one of the Buddha's ribs to convert the locals to Buddhism. They built a stupa to entomb the sacred relic.

A later stupa was built by King Setthathirath whose statute sits in front of the current construction like a short limbed Baden-Powell in full Scout uniform. A 1641 account by a Dutch traveller gives an awe-struck account of his gold-covered pyramid.

King Setthathirath, That Luang, Vientiane

French explorers, Garnier and Delaporte, stumbled across it in 1867 and found it overgrown by jungle but largely intact. A few years later Chinese bandits stripped the remaining gold and reduced the stupa to rubble. The French built a new stupa in 1900, but the result was widely derided as looking like a railway spike stuck on end, so they had another go in 1930 using Delaporte’s sketches of Setthathirath’s stupa.

The cloister, That Luang, Vientiane

The 45 metre high stupa is surrounded by thirty small spiky stupas and a crenelated wall. The stupa is painted gold, but an ever increasing area is gilded.

That Luang, Vientiane

It is surrounded on three sides by monasteries, the decorations and the flowers being typically Lao and, I thought, more pleasing than the stupa itself.

Monasteries round That Luang, Vientiane

On the fourth side is a military parade ground, but parades are out of fashion so it is no longer used. Nearby a woman was grilling bananas and sweet potatoes. I asked her for a photograph and her reply was this beaming smile. Laos may be a poor country, but it is mercifully free of aggressive beggars, hustlers and scam-merchants. The default attitude of most Lao is a big smile, as though a sunny disposition was a condition of citizenship.

A Lao smile

We bought three bananas. I am not sure we needed bananas on a stick so soon after breakfast, but a model needs a modest reward. We ate them it anyway.

Patouxai, Vientiane's Arc de Triomphe

As Vientiane was built by the French it naturally has a Champs Elysées. Lan Xang Avenue may be a country cousin of the Parisian original, but it is one of the city’s few wide roads. The French, though, failed to provide it with an Arc du Triomphe (see A Collection of Arches de Triomphe post 1900) so the Lao built that for themselves ironically to celebrate their victory over the French in the 1950s. Called Patouxai, it was allegedly constructed from concrete donated by the Americans to improve the airport and is popularly known as the 'vertical runway'.

It is a quirky edifice and not exactly beautiful, but everyone up from the country must come to see it. The formal garden is the haunt of a dozen or so official photographers in numbered hi-vis jackets who record the memorable visits. They were doing some business, but digital cameras have become so cheap and widespread their days must be numbered, even in Laos.

Patouxai, Vientiane

Patouxai is bigger than it looks and two floors packed with stalls must be negotiated before reaching the roof. We bought a tee-shirt for our grandson with a hammer and sickle on the front. It will take him a couple of years to grow into it but whether he wears it with pride, irony or, most likely, incomprehension (he is only three) his mother will appreciate the opportunity to be controversial.

Inside Patouxai

From the roof we looked down the Champs Elysées one way.....

Avenue Lan Xang, Vientiane

...and over the garden the other.

The garden, Patouxai, Vientiane

S next suggested we visit the mall. Neither of us regards shopping as a recreational activity, and a mall is a mall wherever you are. We went to the morning market instead which was at least different. The market sells household goods and handicrafts, including some wonderful, but appropriately expensive, carvings.

The Remarkable Story of S

Afterward we chatted with S while the driver extricated his vehicle from the car park. His English was fluent, albeit with an American accent, and his listening skills were those of a native speaker, not someone who had learned English at college. He was born, he told us, in 1978 in a refugee camp on the Thai border. We had heard a similar story from C, our second guide in Phnom Penh. C’s parents had been fleeing the Khmer Rouge, S's the Pathet Lao. Unlike the Khmer Rouge, the Pathet Lao were not homicidal psychopaths, but they were revolutionaries and those connected to the old regime had good reason to flee.

Sponsored by a Catholic group, the family moved from the refugee camp to Peoria, Illinois, and then, five years later, to California in search of a more familiar climate. By 1990 the situation in Laos had normalised and his parents decided to go home. S, who was eleven and had spent almost all his life in the U.S., arrived in Laos believing he was there for a holiday. Understandably he found it difficult when he learned the truth, but in time became reconciled to his new life. His sister, however, returned to California and when he attended her wedding in 2006 she suggested he might stay. S, though, had made a life in Laos and did want to uproot his wife and child. Compared with laid back, amiable Laos, he said, the pressures of Californian living did not appeal. I could understand his point. Financially the gulf between California and Laos is almost unimaginable, but if you count wealth in smiles not dollars, Laos is richer.

Lunch was in a simple noodle shop, and very good it was, too.

Vientiane noodle shop

That Dam, The Black Stupa

Nearby, on a quiet roundabout by the American Embassy, is That Dam (the Black Stupa). All sources agree that it is old - though none will say how old - and that a nine headed dragon is reputed to live beneath it. Currently dormant, he last appeared to defend the city during the Siamese attack of 1828. Considering the state Vientiane was left in, it was hardly an effective intervention. Some also suggest that the stupa may have been covered in gold, and if so, the Siamese nicked it.

That Dam, Vientiane

The National Museum

It is a short hop from That Dam to the National Museum, but nothing is very far in Vientiane. Housed in a fine, if ageing, colonial mansion, it covers everything from dinosaur bones through the clothing of Laos' ethnic minorities to the revolution. The captions date from revolutionary times and are long on condemnation of the French Colonialists and American Imperialist but short on balanced analysis. They make amusing reading, though, and the revolutionary spirit of certainty even seeps into the archaeological captions. The jars on the Plain of Jars, they state categorically, were used to house bodies until they had rotted away and the skeletons were then cremated. This is plausible, but in truth, no one knows.

Wat Ong Teu, The Heavy Buddha

Wat Ong Teu, the Temple of the Heavy Buddha, stands to the side and a little behind the temple opposite our hotel. It was built in the 1560s by King Setthathirath after he moved the capital here from Luang Prabang. Despite being destroyed and rebuilt several times it is still in its original Luang Prabang style, with a sim, drum and bell towers and monk's living quarters. Here, in front of the Heavy Buddha – the largest Buddha image in any Vientiane temple - King Setthathirath’s nobles swore allegiance to him. Two centuries later they were summoned to swear allegiance to Siam and 150 years after that they gathered here to swear allegiance to the French.

Drum Tower, Wat On Teu, Vientiane

The temple was deserted except us and a young monk sitting cross-legged in front of the Heavy Buddha reading sacred texts. As we looked around a stray dog wandered in. The monk paused in his devotions, selected a pebble from a pile beside him and threw it at the dog. The dog looked at him quizzically. He threw another and the dog ran off, yelping. ‘Would the Buddha have done that?’ I asked silently, though stray dogs are a nuisance here as they are in many other cities.

Young monk and the heavy Buddha, Wat On Teu, Vientiane

In search of a Beer Garden

That was where S finished for the day. We took a stroll down Setthathirath Road towards the city centre, then cut down to the Mekong and walked back beside the river to an area where the Rough Guide claimed there were a collection of beer gardens. They were strangely elusive. It was hot, Lynne was reluctant to continue and several times I suggested we should just go to the next corner. Lynne did not fall for this ruse and was nearing open rebellion when we eventually found not the promised line of beer gardens, but one on its own. It was all we needed. Chilled Beer Lao on a hot afternoon after a slightly longer walk than intended is immensely satisfying.

Setthathirath Road, Vientiane

The Belgian Beer Bar

Later we headed for the nearest section of the Mekong. Passing the food stalls in we made for a Belgian Beer bar in Fa Ngum Road we had spotted in on our earlier wanderings.

Food stall, Fa Ngum Road, Vientiane

Sitting in front of a life size cardboard Tintin we drank pastis which caused us to muse briefly on the unintended benefits of colonialism. They had a full Belgian menu including (at a price) moules-frites, but after my lapse in Phonsavan I was back on local food and enjoyed my minced duck with mint and chilli. Lynne had pork fillet with mushroom sauce, chips and salad, which is hardly Lao, but at least she was eating properly again after her earlier problems. Despite their impressive range of Belgian beers, we stuck to Beer Lao. Were I an expat rather than merely a tourist, I might have made a different choice.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Part 1: Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music

Part 2: Through the Mekong Delta by Sampan
Part 3: Chau Doc
Part 4: Phnom Penh (1) Royal Palaces and Museums
Part 5: Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers
Part 6: Across Cambodia to Siem Reap
 Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
 Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
 Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell

Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and Unexploded Ordnance: Part 14 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

An Enigmatic Archaeological Site and an Appalling Indictment of US Policy in SE Asia

27-Feb-2014

Laos

Muang Khoun, the Former Royal Capital of Xieng Khuang

After breakfast we set off with N on the twenty minute drive from Phonsavan to Muang Khoun, the former provincial capital of Xieng Khuang, and before that the royal capital of the Kingdom of Xieng Khuang. The drive took us through a rolling landscape of rich agricultural land. Although many fields had been planted with rice, many others were fallow and some contained lines of ponds. These features - and the state of the Muang Khoun - are consequences of the Hidden War.

Bomb crater 'ponds', Xieng Khaung Province

From 1964 to February 1973 Laos was bombed by the Americans, at first to support the Royalists in the civil war against the communist Pathet Lao (now the government) and later to disrupt the movement of men and materiel down the Ho Chi Minh trail into South Vietnam. Despite never declaring war, nor officially fighting on the Royalist side, the United States flew 580,944 sorties and dropped 2,093,100 tonnes of high explosive on Laos – an average of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes for eight years making Laos, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in the world. Even these staggering figures conceal a further truth; there was no bombing in Vientiane, where the Lao government was the recipient of huge quantities of American aid, nor in Luang Prabang. The vast bulk of this deluge of death fell on a small corner in the south east and on Xieng Khuang province in the north east. The ponds we saw were bomb craters, the fallow fields were too full of unexploded ordinance to be safely worked.

Phonsavan is a small town and provincial capital in northern Laos

I shall return to the UXO (unexploded ordinance) problem later, but for the moment back to Muang Khoun. In the sixteenth century, as the royal capital of Xieng Khuang, the city boasted 62 gilded stupas. Only a couple are left and That Dam, the largest and best preserved, sits, blackened and holed, behind a row of wooden shop-houses at the town’s entrance. It was damaged by invaders and the ravages of time not American bombs. Thai and Vietnamese armies marched across this plain and Chinese bandits pillaged it, stripping the gold from the stupas and digging a hole right through That Dam in the belief it contained treasure. These marauders may have lacked the Americans fire power, but they did not lack their destructive zeal - though most lacked their sanctimonious self-justification.

That Dam, Muang Khoun

Muang Khoun just about survived these depredations. After the Kingdom of Xieng Khaung passed it became the provincial capital until it was destroyed by American bombing and the provincial capital was moved to Phonsavan. Muang Khoun is now little more than a village.

Muang Khoun

The locals still pay reverence to a Buddha statue that once sat inside a temple. There is little left of the temple, but the statue has been carefully reassembled, as fas as that was possible, leaving it with an enigmatically lop-sided smile. N was keen to tell us the Amerians deliberately targeted the temple, but I am sceptical about that; more likely they did not give a 4X what they hit, and that in a way makes it worse.

The remains of Muang Khoun Temple and Buddha statue

A short distance away we visited the remains of a house built by the French and destroyed by the Americans. N said it was a hospital, other sources describe it as a colonial villa, and the colonial administrators certainly found these cooler hill stations preferable to the steamy plain. It looks more like a villa than a hospital to me, but whatever it was it was comprehensively destroyed.

Whether it was a French hospital or villa it has been comprehensively destroyed, Muang Khoun

The Plain of Jars: Jar Site 1

From Muang Khoun we drove back towards to Phonsavan to ‘Jar Site 1’. Large stone jars anything up to two metres tall are found all over Xieng Khaung province, but there are three major agglomerations of which Jar Site 1 is the largest.

Among the jars, Plain of Jars, Site 1

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of jars sit on undulating grassland. Who put them here and what for remains a mystery, but it was a time consuming task and obviously important to someone. Best current guess is that they were placed here some two thousand years ago. Local legend has it that a race of giants stored their whiskey in them - there are many jars which explains why no-one remembers the party. Archaeologists, prosaic as ever, suggest they were used in funerary practices - the largest jars would easily accommodate a full grown man in foetal position, but exactly how they were used is anybody's guess. Any information held in the archives of the kingdom of Xieng Khuang went up in smoke along with rest of Muang Khoun in the 1970s.

Lynne with one of the larger jars, Plain of Jars, Site 1

N showed us a cave used as a shelter during bombing raids. A direct hit, he told us, led to the deaths of some 200 people and it is now a shrine. It may have been used as a bomb shelter, but the holes in the roof N pointed out are, according to other sources, natural and ancient. It may once have been used as a crematorium, and the human remains found outside were of people not important enough to qualify for a jar. Like everything else about the Plain of Jars, this is conjecture.

The cave which may have been a crematorium, Plain of Jars

N sat in the shade while we wandered about the site. He had not been the most active of guides and his information seemed as unreliable as his work ethic.

A jar with a lid. Did they once all have lids? Nobody knows. Plain of Jars, Site 1

I do not, though, doubt the intensity of the bombing, which is corroborated by many sources. It was also obvious. Jars lay on their sides, many smashed or damaged and although some of this may have happened over the centuries, there was no doubting the grassed over bomb craters liberally scattered amongst them.

Bomb crater on the Plain of Jars

There were also many small concrete markers. MAG (Mines Advisory Group - web site here) are a British based charity who, as part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, were co-recipients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. They are currently taking the lead in clearing mines and unexploded ordnance in thirteen countries, including Laos. Each plaque represents an item of unexploded ordnance removed by MAG - the whole jar site has been meticulously swept as foreign tourists will, the authorities hope, bring in money, so not blowing us up is a priority. We were, though, advised not to wander into the long grass, nor to pick up or kick at any unidentified object or piece of metal lying around. We took the warning seriously.

Mines Advisory Group marker, Plain of Jars

We walked all over the site, spending an hour or more, but the only other visitor we saw was a middle-aged Frenchwomen talking to N. She had come from Vientiane and wanted to go to Luang Prabang and N was arranging to take her next day after dropping us at the airport for our flight to Vientiane. She seemed a brave lady travelling on her own, but we were sure she would be safe with N and his driver, so it seemed a good idea.

The jars stretch of into the distance, Plain of Jars, Site 1

Back to Phonsavan for the Afternoon

Back in Phonsavan we dropped in on the Tourist Information Office. They were closed, but we had only come to see their collection of shells and bomblets, just a tiny fraction of the UXOs that had been collected locally and made safe.

Shells outside the Tourist Information Centre, Phonsavan

We lunched in a Phonsavan noodle shop, basic Lao fare but tasty and wholesome.

Lunch in Phonsavan, I have no idea why am I looking so sour - we had not opened N's envelope yet

N's Informative if Accidental Missive

After an active morning, at least by his standards, N had the afternoon off, but first he handed over the travel agent's assessment sheet. He had been the least impressive of our guides on this trip and we intended to write a mildly uncomplimentary report, but on opening the envelope we found he had given us the wrong piece of paper. What we had was an email from Laos Airlines to the travel company informing them that our plane to Vientiane the next day had been rescheduled from 11.00 to 15.00. Our wondering about when he intended to tell us turned into the unworthy thought that perhaps he meant to drop us at the airport at 10.00 and head off to Luang Prabang with his new fare, leaving us to discover the rescheduling for ourselves.

Phonsavan

Deciding to leave tomorrow’s problem to tomorrow, we took a walk through Phonsavan. If Luang Prabang was the epitome of cutesy charm, Phonsavan was an exemplar of the plain and workaday. There is a building boom, but that did not deter a donkey from wandering down the main street searching for something to nibble. We passed shops selling tyres, car parts, clothes, shoes, religious objects and football shirts - the tentacles of the Premier League (and Barça) reach even to this backwater.

Football shirts on sale, Phonsavan

That evening in the hotel restaurant, after a nourishing glass of pastis I cracked and ordered a European meal, the pork steak and chips Lynne had so much enjoyed yesterday. I was disappointed with myself, I do try to eat local all the time, but I enjoyed it.

28-Feb-2014

MAG - The Mines Action Group

N arrived in the morning aware that he had given us the wrong document. His plan was leave to us at the hotel for the morning and send someone to pick us up for the flight. Meanwhile, we suspected, he would be taking his unofficial fare paying passenger back to Luang Prabang. This was not acceptable; without transport we would have been stuck in the hotel, so we demanded he show us more of Xieng Khaung province. The countryside, dotted with villages of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities, would, we felt, be worth exploring.

Reluctantly he agreed and after a delay while he phoned the airport in the vain hope that the situation might have changed, we set off. We drove around for a while but N failed to find anything interesting, maybe he did not want to, or maybe he did not know the area well enough but an hour later we were back in Phonsavan.

We took charge and directed the driver to the MAG Visitor Centre which we had spotted earlier.

MAG Visitor Centre, Phonsavan

While looking around their exhibition we were asked if we had seen the film Bomb Harvest. We had not, so we sat alone in their thirty seat cinema and watched the 2007 documentary by Australian film maker Kim Mordaunt.

It is a powerful piece describing why local people are living with danger and how it affects them. It also shows MAG training up its local bomb disposal teams, including several all-women teams, and those teams in operation.

Unexploded ordnance is a problem after all wars. A hundred years after the First World War the so-called ‘iron harvest’ continues and both the French and Belgian armies maintain facilities for dealing with it. Casualties are now rare, but last March two Belgian construction workers were killed by a WW1 bomb.

With 22,000 casualties since hostilities ended, the problem in Laos is far greater, partly because the war is more recent and the country less developed but mainly because of the wholesale use of cluster bombs, a technology unavailable in 1914-18.

Bomb casings, like some of those stacked outside the Tourist Information Office, are designed to open as they fall scattering small bomblets into the ground. 270 million such bomblets were dropped on Laos of which around 80 million failed to detonate and remain live to this day. Locally called bombies (pronounced bom-bees), they are painted yellow and slightly smaller than a tennis ball, the sort of thing a child would pick up and play with - to deadly effect.

Cluster bomb casings, Tourist Information Office, Phonsavan

They lurk on the ground and in the wet season they work their way down into the soil, and the next wet season they may work their way further down or back up unpredictably. Bombie education is an important topic in all schools, children know what to do and who to tell when they find one, but still 40% of the casualties over the last decade have been children. Farmers live in poverty because their fields are too dangerous to plough, and even in those that have been returned to use, a plough share can one day hit a bombie that it has missed every year for the past decade or more.

The MAG teams are clearing ten thousand bombies a year – at this rate Laos will be free of the things in 8,000 years. The work is funded by the government of Laos, some international governmental aid and charitable donations. Only very recently has the United States made any contribution, and even then it is pitifully small.

We left the film impressed by the work of the clearance teams, marvelling at the stoical acceptance of the local people, and angry about the earlier actions and present inactions of the United States. You do not have to spend long in Southeast Asia to realise that American policy in the sixties and seventies was disastrous. Their interventions in support of corrupt regimes prolonged civil wars and ratcheted up the death count without affecting the eventual outcomes. But I doubt that even the fiercest hawks intend to be killing people forty years after hostilities had ceased, nor did they intend to blow apart children whose parents were not even born when the fighting stopped. If I am right, they should accept their responsibility and make a serious contribution to clearing up their deadly mess.

Cluster bombs are an indiscriminate and vindictive weapon and in any sane world they would be banned. It took until 2008 to produce the Convention on Cluster Munitions that does just that. It has been signed by 89 countries, including all members of the European Union but excluding the US, Russia and China. Wikipedia quotes Stephen Mull, in 2008 the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, as saying "Cluster munitions are available for use by every combat aircraft in the U.S. inventory, they are integral to every Army or Marine maneuver element and in some cases constitute up to 50 percent of tactical indirect fire support. U.S. forces simply cannot fight by design or by doctrine without holding out at least the possibility of using cluster munitions." To which I say, ‘Shame on you Stephen Mull; shame on you USA.’

Back upstairs we bought some MAG tee shirts, made a donation and staggered out into the sunshine still feeling angry and upset. To restore some normality we told N to ask the driver to take us to the town market.

[Update: In 2019 MAG marked 25 years of working Laos. By Late 2020 they had cleared over 250,000 mines and unexploded bombs and freed 70 million square metres of land to be returned to agriculture.]

Phonsavan Market

It was a typical market selling agricultural tools - unlike the gardening department at B & Q you are expected to provide your own handle - ....

Tools, Phonsavan market

…and a wide selection of fruit and vegetables, some we recognized and some we did not.

Fruit and veg, Phonsavan market

And at the end were a couple of local specialities, squirrel and swallows.

Swallows (on the left) and squirrels, Phonsavan market

After that it was time for lunch where, sadly, neither squirrel nor swallow appeared on the menu.

Departing from Xien Khoun Airport

It was finally time to go to the airport and let N get on his way. A kilometre of two outside Phonsavan, Xieng Khoun airport is a contender for the World’s Smallest Commercial Airport. We mistook the hut below for the entrance, but actually that is all there is - and with one flight a day to and from Vientiane it is probably enough. Small it might be, but it is a powerful job creation scheme requiring two people to check us in, a third to pick up our cases, place them on the scales and then move them to the X-Ray machine. Someone else moved them off the machine and onto a trolley and yet another person drove the trolley out to the plane. There was also an official to check everybody’s identity card (or passport in our case) and stamp our boarding cards.

Xieng Khuon Airport

All this to put thirty passengers on a small turbo prop plane. Laos Airlines do not have the finest safety record, but our Chinese designed and built MA 60 aircraft took off on time (according to the revised schedule anyway) and landed in Vientiane an uneventful hour later.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Part 1: Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music

Part 2: Through the Mekong Delta by Sampan
Part 3: Chau Doc
Part 4: Phnom Penh (1) Royal Palaces and Museums
Part 5: Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers
Part 6: Across Cambodia to Siem Reap
 Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
 Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
 Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell

Luang Prabang to Phonsavan: Part 13 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Driving from Luang Prabang up to the Xieng Khouang Plateau

Laos

The Monks Morning Begging Run, Luang Prabang

Waking around six and hearing the gong that signals the monks barefoot walk through the streets, we pulled on some clothes and for once went to watch from street level instead of from our balcony. Most of the kneeling women (and they were all women) were placing small handfuls of cooked sticky rice in the monks' begging bowls.

Younger monks receiving their alms, dawn in Luang Prabang

I assume all this donated rice gets eaten, but although rice alone may have sustained monks - indeed most Lao - a hundred years ago, people today expect a more varied diet with rather more protein. Where the monks get their protein I have no idea.

The line of monks stretches into the distnce, dawn in Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang to Phou Koun

N and the driver arrived at 8.30 by which time we were, breakfasted, checked-out and ready for the long drive to Phonsavan.

South East Asia. In this post we drive through northern Laos from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan

We set off down Highway 13, heading south towards Vientiane on a two lane tarmac road, largely in good condition. Not far out of Luang Prabang we started to climb into the mountains; there were few hairpins, but mostly the road twisted and turned as it hugged the valley sides. Some dwellings clearly showed that northern Laos has more than its share of poverty, but there were a surprising number of satellite dishes on display.

Yet another satellite dish, Highway 13 south of Luang Prabang

Villages lined the roadside. Some were equipped with water pumps, clearly labelled as donations from the Singapore based charity World Vision. They were being put to good use; we saw several people washing themselves or their children under the pumps, while elsewhere villagers were carrying water home in buckets on carry-poles – sometimes with a child in a sling as well.

Two water buckets and a child in a sling, Highway 13 south of Luang Prabang

The driver put his foot down where he could in an endeavour to keep the long journey as short as possible, but the continuous breaking and accelerating, not to mention twisting one way and then the other left me feeling queasy. My request for a halt meant that we could walk through a village and take a nosy gawp at the houses and people, who seemed happy enough to wave and smile as we passed.

Roadside village, Highway 13 north of Phou Khoun, Laos

Approaching Phou Khoun we passed a convention centre. Surrounded by a phalanx of heavily armed soldiers, groups of men in suits and senior army officers, their uniforms dripping with gold braid, were talking as they waited for their drivers.

Phou Koun

The junction of Highway 13 and Highway 7, Phou Khoun

Phou Khoun is a small town on the junction where Highway 7 to Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars leaves the Luang Prabang to Vientiane road. In July 1964 Phou Khoun had been the objective of Operation Triangle, an attack carried out by the Royal Lao Army and allied Hmong militia, covertly financed, organised and ‘advised’ by the Americans. The intention was to remove the communist Pathet Lao from Phou Khoun and open up the road to the Plain of Jars. Three units with air support and a Thai artillery battalion converged on Phou Khoun, one from Vientiane, one following the route we had taken from Luang Prabang and the Hmong Militia approaching down Highway 7. The Operation was partly successful, Phou Khoun was taken but the Pathet Lao remained in control of the road to their stronghold on the Plain of Jars. A couple of days later the Gulf of Tonkin incident provided the pretext for the US to become more involved in Vietnam and they lost interest in the ground war in Laos.

Phou Khoun Market

Although we had been travelling slightly slower, or at least at a more even speed, we reached the town too early for lunch – at least by our standards; locals will eat any time after eleven – so we took a walk through the market, which was interesting, as all such markets are.

Taro in Phou Khoun market

We ate beef and noodles – not quite Vietnamese pho, but pretty good anyway - at a basic restaurant. Like Cambodians, the Lao tend to use fork and spoon for rice dishes, but chopsticks for noodles and except in European orientated restaurants a cache of chopsticks is available on every table.

Noodle soup, Phou Khoun

Several large cars with tinted windows rolled down the street, and gold braided soldiers walked past with their bodyguards, but there were also a few old men dressed in rarely-worn suits, a little crumpled and a size too large, but with a medal, sometimes two, pinned to their lapels. These, unlike the self-important men with gold braid and a chestful of medals, were the real heroes of the revolution.

A soldier sat on guard outside the restaurant, a Kalashnikov across his knees. I never like seeing people with guns, even if they are supposed to be on my side - if there is no danger why guard me? - but I assumed his presence was part of the heightened security for the convention rather than a reflection of the local situation generally. The man slouched beneath the shade of the restaurant's awning – we found his relaxed attitude reassuring.

Main street, Phou Khoun

Highway 7 to Phonsavan

After lunch we turned down Highway 7, which wound its way higher and higher into the mountains. Here many of the inhabitants were of the Hmong ethnic minority. We had met the Chinese Hmong in 2010 (here and preceding posts), and the Vietnamese Hmong in 2012, now we found ourselves among the Lao Hmong. 5 million Hmong live across Southeast Asia speaking a variety of related languages. To the outsider, ‘Hmong’ seems to cover a wide range of people without very much in common.

Dwellings beside Highway 7, east of Phou Khoun

Locally, Hmong houses are constructed with large eaves, some sweeping down the ground, they are usually thatched, and there is almost always a small house facing the main one used for storing rice. Some were very folksy and picturesque, unfortunately the only one I got a decent photograph of was constructed from more modern and prosaic materials.

Hmong dwelling beside Highway 7 east of Phou Khoun

We stopped at a village where a modern concrete bridge crosses the Nam Minh, a small river that comes bouncing along its stony bed from high in the mountains. Upstream children were playing in the water…..

Some get to play in the river.....
Nam Minh River

…while below us two girls squatted by the water’s edge washing up a small mountain of dishes, pots and pans. N pointed out the two sections to the village, one Lao the other Hmong. They live side by side, but keep largely within their own communities.

...while others have to work
Nam Minh River

Up to that point N had been of little use, indeed he had been asleep most of the day, occasionally opening his eyes to point out something of interest. On one occasion he woke up pointed to the roadside, said 'Cow,' and went back to sleep. I am not convinced I need to employ a guide to identify large ruminants for me.

We walked through the village and paused outside a shop where a man was barbecuing small fish and some attractive hunks of lean venison for a hungry customer. N pointed out the deer's head on the table by the barbecue. Poaching is illegal, he told us, but sometimes deer can be legally shot. He looked unconvinced about this one, but as the village police station was directly across the road it was obviously either legal or the local constable was the proud owner of a judiciously large slab of deer.

Barbecuing fish and venison by Highway 7
East of Phou Khoun

As we drove on Lynne was looking at the Rough Guide. 'Isn't this Highway 7?' she asked. I agreed it was. 'It says here,' she continued, 'that Highway 7 has been the scene of much bandit activity.' I had read the guide earlier, so I knew this. I also knew there had been no attacks for over a decade and the authorities believed the problem had been dealt with. 'Can you see any bandits?' I asked. 'No.' she replied. 'Neither can I.' I said, and indeed there were none.

Reaching Xieng Khouang Province and Phonsavan

In late afternoon we stopped climbing. We had reached Xieng Khouang Province, usually described as a plain surrounded by higher peaks. The word ‘plain’ is misleading, it is undulating rather than flat, more like a lowland area than the highland plateau it is. The area seems isolated, but it is rich agricultural land and has been a crossroads on the routes of trade and human migration for millennia. Xieng Khoung is home to the mysterious Plain of Jars, and in the 1960s and 70s it was a stronghold of the Pathet Lao insurgents (who have been the government of Laos since 1975) and a staging post on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This recent history cost, and is still costing the inhabitants dearly (more next post).

We reach Xieng Khouang Province

Phonsavan, the new provincial capital with some 35,000 inhabitants is a long thin town strung out along the highway. If Luang Prabang exudes cutesy charm, Phonsavan is the epitome of workaday dullness. There are large houses at the entrance of the town, well built and elegant but they are set among builders' yards and workshops. ‘Location, location, location’ is not an idea that has reached Xieng Khouang yet.

Phonsavan

Our hotel was up a side road from the main drag, a couple of hundred metres along an unmade road up a small rise. There was a central administration block with a restaurant and a couple of accommodation blocks in what had the potential to be an attractive garden. Our room looked out across the Plain of Jars to the distant hills and a group of trees climbing the skyline like a line of elephants holding each other's tails.

Looking across Phonsavan from our hotel balcony to the 'elephant-like' trees

Not fancying the unlit road in the dark, we decided to eat in the hotel, which we rarely do and is usually a mistake, but not on this occasion. Most of the other European guests made the same decision, though there were less than a dozen of us.

We started with a glass of pastis - a favourite of ours, but hard to find outside France and even harder at such a decent price. The menu was Franco-Lao; we both had pork, mine Lao-style with ginger, while Lynne had a pork chop and chips. It was good to see her eating properly for the first time for a week, and she thoroughly enjoyed her meal.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Part 1: Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music

Part 2: Through the Mekong Delta by Sampan
Part 3: Chau Doc
Part 4: Phnom Penh (1) Royal Palaces and Museums
Part 5: Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers
Part 6: Across Cambodia to Siem Reap
 Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
 Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
 Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell