Phonsavan and Sam Neua (25 - 29 October)
Normally one would ride in a bus; in Lao you really RIDE a bus (like a horse). You need to hang on for dear life or you will be thrown from side to side. I never get car sick, I do not even get motion sickness on a boat out in the ocean - or so I thought! The bus journey from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan is through the most winding mountain passes that just carry on for hours and hours. I knew we had to be prepared for this as Eon gets car sick quite easily, so I took some medication with me. About an hour into the trip, I thought that my stomach had turned upside down!
Thank you to the lovely lady at the Centurion DisChem - the meds are great and they also knock you out so that you sleep most of the way!
Phonsavan is a very small town with nothing more than a small market, a hand full of guesthouses that also doubles as restaurants and some local entities like a post office and small hospital. The main attraction here is the Plain of Jars. This is a field with scattered jars made from sandstone. These jars are thought to be as old as 2000 years and no one is certain where or how they came about. The jars were carved from huge sandstone boulders, which in itself is amazing, seeing that there is no river in the immediate surroundings to provide the sandstone. Some of the theories include that the jars were used for burial purposes, or that they were used for religious purposes or even for storage of Whiskey. Eon believes the theory that the jars were used as shooter glasses by prehistoric giants
The Plain of Jars has three sites open for tourists, there are many more but they are still covered in UXO (unexploded ordnance left behind by the hundred years of war). We visited all three of the sites with a guide, Mister Ken. I now know everything about Ken’s broken heart and we had to listen to him singing ‘My Love’ over and over again! We also stopped at a local village to watch the making of Lao Lao (Laos Whiskey made from sticky rice). Eon says it is a simple process and we could easily make this from home. So watch out everyone, when we invite you over for drinks, it might be for Lao Lao tasting!
From Phonsavan, we took a bus to Sam Neua. We actually just wanted to get to Luang Nam Tha in the North West of Laos, but off course, there is no direct bus so we had to do this little detour of about five days. The bus stopped for lunch and we ordered a Coke, grilled wild boar and sticky rice. We got a fake coke (called Cola Cola, looks exactly lie Coke, tastes like sweetened toilet water) and the wild boar tasted like liver. But what can we do - so we ate the liver, dipped the sticky rice in the little bit of sauce (salt and water) and ordered a Sprite as the Cola Cola was just too disgusting to drink
I always find it intriguing when you expect nothing from a town and you get so much from it. This was exactly the case with Sam Neua. Our plan was to take a bus from Phonsavan via Sam Neua and Nong Khiaw to Luang Nam Tha and literally just stop over in these towns for a day. So we arrived in Sam Neua with absolutely no expectations and then at dinner, we met Boonthan. He is a local teacher and he and a friend approached us during dinner, joined us for a couple of beers and offered to take us to the local rowing boat festival, Bun Nam, the next day. We gladly accepted and looking back, I am so thrilled that we did!
The next morning at 8:00, Eon and I met up with Boonthan who took us into the heart of the local market to have his sister’s noodle soup for breakfast. Up to this day, I have not yet had a good noodle soup, but I can honestly say that this noodle soup was superb! After breakfast, which cost us only R10 for the both of us, we took a 30 minute walk to the river where the boat racing was taking place. It looked as though the entire town had come to see the event - Boothan explained that this was a very big festival for the Laos people and that the town basically shuts down for the three days.
It was quite apparent that the locals were not very used to foreigners as they were openly staring at us. We were the only two foreigners there, which attracted much attention, especially amongst the kids. Boothan also enjoyed the attention - he walked around with Eon and I next to him, showing us off to his friends. We were also formally introduced to the head of the SOS school. Eon had to pose for a photo with one of the winning rowing teams!
After watching a couple of races, we went to a little stall with tables and chairs and huge speakers blaring out the voice of whoever had the microphone in their hands, entertaining us with a Laos song. The rest of the crowd, who seemed to enjoy the karaoke music very much, was dancing away on the ‘dance floor’. As we walked into the stall, the person on the microphone announced us very boldly and all the locals smiled at us and welcomed us in. We just smiled back sheepishly and took our seats and ordered some beer. We did not have to wait too long to be invited onto the dance floor and I quickly had to learn how to do the traditional Laos dance! Now I have an idea what it must feel like to be royalty
The sun and beer had very soon taken its toll on the Prince and Princess and we retired to the guesthouse earlier than anticipated to have an afternoon nap. After the nap, we walked around the market. This is the most gruesome market I have ever seen - dead squirrels, rats with their intestines bulging out of their bellies, frogs tied together by their legs and the worst of all was the live beavers whose teeth had been removed and who are kept in very small bamboo cages.
The next morning, after I forgot the cell phone at the guesthouse and Eon had to go back from the bus station to retrieve my most prized possession (1920 something Siemens cellphone), we caught the bus to Nong Khiaw just in time.
Click image below to view Plain of Jars and Sam Neua gallery: