Ban Phonsavan Things to Do

When I visited the old capital of Xieng Kouang on riding into the built up area I noticed a chedi sat on a hill overlooking the road. I decided to go and have a look by riding up a small track to the left and going the rest of the way on foot, although I later discovered there was another track that went right up to it which was evidenced by the young man roaring about on his scooter in an obvious attempt to impress a couple of young ladies who were also there.

I have tried in vain both by asking locally and use of the internet but I can find absolutely no information about this place, so I am not in a position to give much background to this tip. There is not really that much to do or see in the old capital but this place is worth a visit with it's slightly decaying structure and the hill it stands on affords decent views of the surrounding area.

Update, the same day.

How incredbly stupid of me. The one place I didn't look was VT and, of course, I found the answer there. If you go to picek's excellent Phonsavan page, all the details are there. I am not going to blatantly plagiarise them here.

There just is no getting away from the bombs in this area. The area to the front of the tourist information centre looks lke a military scrapyard (see photo) and there are the obligatory bombs on either side of the door. Having negotiated the rusting ordnance, the office itself has quite a good stock of information, although I visited a couple of times and the standard of English spoken varied a bit. However, the young lady with the less-perfect English was most helpful and by dint of a bit of miming and ingenuity I got the information I wanted. I offer this as no criticism at all. In Lao, it should be incumbent upon me to learn Lao and not the other way round. I just don't have the facility with languages to do it.

Having just visited the UXO survivors Centre (see seperate tip) I still had bomb victims very much on my mind as I made my next call. It is a very evil concept of warfare that it is better to maim an enemy than kill him as that then drains resources retreiving them, caring for them etc., and many of the munitions dropped on Lao had exactly this intention. Most people unfortunate enough to come in contact with UXO are either blinded and / or lose one or more limbs. However, there are still those who are not so lucky, if you could call that luck, who die as a result. Add to this the poor health structure in Lao and the relatively short life expectancy, and the net result is a lot of orphans.

This is where SOS Childrens villages (amongst others) come in, and I visited the Vilage in Phonsavanh, where I was greeted warmly by the Director, a charming man whose name I could neither pronounce nor attempt to spell. He was more than happy to show me round the village, which indeed is a place to gladden even the most jaded heart.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, SOS Childrens villages were founded some years ago by a German man and they differ slightly from other orphanages. In Phonsavanh, the 161 orphans currently there are housed in the buildings you can see, ten to each one under the supervision of a house mother who lives on site. I was shown round one of the houses and they are immaculate. Ther is a boys dormitory, a girls dormitory, the house mothers room, toilet / washing facilities and a kitchen. Children of varying ages live in each house and they cook for themselves and keep the place clean, indeed it was absolutely spotless.

There is a prayer room onsite where the children apparently gather every night to give thanks for the people who assist the charity and a kindergarten for the younger children. The older ones go to the public school next door.

Apart from the very pleasant central grass ares you can see in the photo, every available bit of land is put to cultivating vegetables and flowers. The Director told me that it is a very democratic place with the children having quite a say in the running of village, the better to suit them for later life. As they get older the Vilage supports them until they can gain employment or, for the more academically gifted, gives assistance with further education. I have to say the children were very well turned out and appeared very content. They were also exceedingly courteous, with each child offering a Saibaidee (welcome) and even rising if they were seated.

I believe there are six such villages in Lao now, with a new one having just opened, and I certainly saw the sister establishment in Vientiane, it is on the road to the bus station.

Although the Director did not ask for a donation, and ther is no obvious box, I asked if I could make one and he produced the donation book. I gave money, not having really thought about it beforehand, but I noticed other visitors had donated toiletries, books, clothing etc. so this may be an option if you prefer. I know they will all be gratefully received.

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This is the smallest of the sites called Hai Hin Lat Khai and, although compact, the walk to it is very pleasant over the dykes between rice paddies and a small bamboo stile and it is aesthetically pleasing with many trees to shield you from the heat of the day. Like all the sites it is very photogenic, perhaps the most of the three although my amateur attempts hardly do it justice.

To get there, continue down the unpaved road from site 2 and then you need to keep your eyes open. I will break my one photo per tip rule here as I need to show you the "sign" for the site. It is the second photo and, as you can see, is a little basic, to say the least. Go down the road indicated a couple of hundred yards and then there is a better sign indicating to the right, and it is a few yards down there.

Admission is 10,000 kip although there is a lady at the noodle stall who will attempt to extract a 2,000 kip fee for parking your bike. I subsequently checked on this and it is not legitimate but it is, after all, only pennies.

I have made mention in various other places on VT about the appalling and continuing devastation to human lives caused by the American bombing of Lao in the 1960's and 1970's and I don't need to re-rehearse all the grim statistics here, although I still find it hard to comprehend this level of violence against a country they were not even at war with. Appropriately, this place is directly opposite the Mine Action Group (MAG) office and whilst MAG are doing their best to remove the problem, the Survivors Centre are doing their best to assist those for whom that help came too late.

For those of a sensitive disposition I warn you that some of the photographs and stories tld within the Centre are pretty harrowing and I have decided not to post any of them with this tip.

Thankfully, there are also many stories of hope amongst the horror and these demonstrate the good work the centre, and others like it, does for those so cruelly maimed. One that stuck in my mind was of a farmer blinded by a UXO whilst tilling his land. After training at a Survivors Centre programme, he sold his pigs and moved with his young wife to set up in Vientiane with a new career as a masseur. I wish him success with it, and his is not an isolated story, there are many in similar vein about people being retrained successfully for a variety of new jobs. Remember, in this country there is no such thing as social welfare and if you can't provide for yourself and your family, you starve.

Some of the staff speak a bit of English and are keen to show you round. Entrance is free although, like me, you will probably wish to make a donation, which will be greatefully received.

Whilst Site 1 is the most visited and largest in terms of area, I think Site 2, called Hai Hin Phu Salatao (Salatao Hill Stone Jar Site, would you believe) may well be my favourite.

Certainly it is smaller but has the most scenic location of the three for me. If these arere funerary urns as has been suggested, the ancients certainly picked a lovely place to spend the afterlife. I had the whole place to myself and the silence was complete, it really was most beautiful. Eventually my ears picked up the distant clanking of a cowbell on the plain far below. You really had to be there. As you walk up the track from the carpark and "ticket booth" there is a site on either side. When I say ticket booth I mean a small shack staffed by a delightful old couple who were extremely charming.

A look at the photo gives some indication of the size of these things. I am 6'5" (1:93 metric) and it was a bit taller than me If, as legend suggests, these were built to hold lao-lao (rice whisky), I wouldn't like to be the man trying to drink it!

Don't restrict yourself to just the jars themselves, beautiful as they are, there are cleared paths for a good distance in either direction and the views are simply beautiful, stretching for miles.

If you are making your own way there, the road is unpaved but accessible for scooters although I would not really recommend it for complete novices. The track does improve after a while.

Admission is 10,000 kip for foreigners and there is ample parking.

I make no apology whatsoever for cutting and pasting the next paragraph from my Plain of Jars 1 tip as it is that important.

When you walk round the site, I cannot stress this enough, you must keep to the marked path. I do not wish to sound melodramatic but the place is literally strewn with unstable unexploded bombs and you could easily be killed or maimed.

For those of you not familiar with the Plain of Jars, there is an area of about 50km East to West near Phonsavanh that contain literally thousands of huge stone jars, stone discs and arranged stones which have archaeologists completely baffled as the jars are dissimilar to any other Indochinese pottery. For those of you who watch the excellent "Time Team" on TV, the presenter Tony Robison has a theory that archaeologists attribute anything they don't understand to "ritual" and such is the case here. Current thinking is that they are funerary urns, although I prefer the local legend that a mighty army coming from the North used them to brew industrial quantities of loa-lao, the local rice whisky. If that is the case there must have been a monumental hangover as the largest of the jars weighs over six metric tonnes and stands over two metres high.

Unfortunately, of the 136 documented sites, visitors can only access three, prosaically named Sites 1, 2 and 3. Unexploded ordnance and incomplete research by experts keeps the other sites closed although maybe some day................... Site one, called Thong Hai Hin is the site nearest to Phonsavanh and is the most impressive in terms of scale with about 250 jars there. You have to walk on a path cleared by the MAG bomb disposal people but that is sufficient to get a good look at the place. Almost as impressive as the jars are the monstrous bomb craters everywhere. It is difficult to overstate the devastation wrought on this area by a nation they were not even at war with.

Admission to the site is 10,000 kip and there is a small shop selling snacks at the entrance. When you walk round the site, I cannot stress this enough, you must keep to the marked path. I do not wish to sound melodramatic but the place is literally strewn with unstable unexploded bombs and you could easily be killed or maimed. Don't worry about having to retrace your steps round rather a long way if your time is short, if you follow the path it brings you round in a loop to the start point.

Also worth having a look at are the trench emplacements and the large cave where the Pathet Lao used to shelter from the bombing. The latter appears to be a small shrine now.

Due to the nature of the site it is not suitable for mobility impaired visitors. Please note that for now I am only putting one photo per tip on VT. Given time and bandwidth on my return home there will be full tavelogues constructed.

I have made mention in various other places on VT about the apparent religious tolerance in Southeast Asia and the old cemetery in Phonsavanh provides ample proof of this. It is set on a hill Northeast of town and is worth visiting solely for the fine views over the city one way and the countryside to the North in the other direction.

However, it is the very nature of the place itself that appealed to me as there are animist shrines (basically Chinese), Buddhist graves and Christian (Roman Catholic) graves all sitting side by side in the same peaceful place. I felt it said something quite profound about Lao.

Whilst looking round I noticed something peculiar. Quite a number of the Christian Vietnamese graves all had the same date on them, 27/04/2009. I have no idea what happened, although some sort of disaster like a bus or plane crash suggested itself to me. It struck me that all those people had died only months before I visited, and I wondered what sadness must have fallen on the city at that time.

To get there is a bit tricky as it is not signposted. Go to the East end of town and take the left hand fork onto Highway 6 heading towards Muang Kham. Go for about a mile until you see the UXO Lao provincial office on the right hand side and about 100 yards further on the left side is quite a decent looking white house. Take the small track up the side of this and follow it past the two small factories round to the left and up the hill. I would suggest that if you are a novice rider you leave the bike at the botom and walk aws the track gets a little rough towards the top.