Vang Vieng to Phonsavan
We took a two day road trip from Vang Vieng to a town called Phonsavan. You can get one of the many buses in town, but where's the fun in that!? We found a place across the street from out guesthouse that rents motorcycles. Sounds good to me. So we got ourselves a nice new Zongshen 150cc off-road motorcycle. Relatively huge compared to the scooters you can rent elsewhere.
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| The Zongshen at our first butt break! |
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| Hello Kitties Angels rides again! |
The road from Vang Vieng to Phonsavan is 235 KM's. Shouldn't take too long right? Wrong!? I have honestly never "worked" so hard riding a motorcycle in my life! I'm not complaining, it was awesome! But these roads run through pretty craggy mountain passes, and there are hairpin turns all over the place. On top of that the condition of the road is very poor and full of pot holes. In a few spots the road just disappears to a sort of red dirt clay pothole/speedbump combo. You really have to watch it because there's usually a surprise around each corner. Cattle, pheasants, children. We actually had a very close call with a chicken at one point! Again, don't get me wrong, I HIGHLY recommend riding this route by motorcycle, just make sure you do it on a good adventure touring bike! (As you'll read later, maybe not on a Zongshen!)
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| Mooooove over please! |
The route passes through many small mountain villages, high altitude roads and through pretty dense jungle. Every so often you'll pass a group of kids with machetes cutting some crops along the road. We got some great video.
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| The view as we were climbing |
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Kids working along the road
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So, SIX hours after our departure from Vang Vieng we finally arrived in Phonsavan. Butts a bit worn, but heads spinning from the scenery we had just seen.
The Plain of Jars
There are really two notable histories at the Plain of Jars. The name sake is that there are these huge granite "jars" here that are somewhat mysterious in their origin. They were once thought to be large vats that ancient people used to distill rice for wine. Of course there are local legends of them having been used by ancient giant warriors for drinking in celebration after victories.
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| The scattered jars |
Recent discoveries of bones buried in the area have more likely concluded that in fact they are ancient funery earns. They have been dated to approx 2500 years old. Not a heck of a lot is known about them beyond that. Pretty interesting. (Although giant drunk warriors are also pretty awesome...)
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| Close up of a jar. |
The other historical tie to the Plain of Jars deals with something a little more recent. Laos has the unfortunate distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the world. All thanks to the Second Indochina war (AKA The Vietnam War). Laos was used by the North Vietnamese Army as a transport route to the South which is the majority of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This resulted in massive carpet bombings for years. Nine years actually. So many that there were bombing missions every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day for nine years straight. Pretty astounding! And to add to that, when bombing missions were called off, pilots would actually unload all of their bombs over Laos to avoid having to land with them. This has resulted in a county that is absolutely littered with landmines and UXO's (Un eXploded Ordinance).
The war in Vietnam may be in the history books in our minds, but these people are dealing with it, and dying from it today. Most of their land cannot be farmed, but they try. They find missles, guns, tanks! And unfortunately landmines daily. Click below to read more about it.
UxoLao
You actually see many old missiles and bombs on display in front of restaurants and guesthouses all over Phonsavan. It's a bit strange, but at least they're making something of it. There is a foundry there that melts down all of the scap ordanace and they also make things like jewelry, spoons and bottle openers from the scrap.
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| Missiles and bombs on display. |
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| Top gun portion of a tank, some machine guns, a jet fuel tank and various bombs. |
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| More bombs. (Rust in peace I say!) |
There is much "Ant-American" sentiment from tourists to go around surrounding this.
Some of it deserved, but I don't believe it's that simple. The North Vietnamese Army are very responsible for most of the mines. Either way war sucks, and focusing on the blame doesn't do much for cleaning all this crap up!
Oh yeah! So, The Plain of Jars. Well it's pretty much smack dab right in the middle of a bombarded battle zone, so there are huge bomb craters and battle trenches right between all of these ancient jars. You can actually see some of the jars have been blown apart from the shockwaves. We spent an hour or so just wandering the area. Walking between these ancient jars and these bomb craters, all along a "MAG" trail that's not very well marked. MAG is
Mine Advisory Group, and are basically in charge of the de-mining activities all around Laos. Even this area, as touristed as it might be, is still littered with potentially live UXO's and you're advised to stick to the trail. Sounds good too me!
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| Me standing at the edge of a bomb crater. |
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| Very overgrown now, but this was an actual trench line. They are scattered all over and you can see some were blown apart from a direct hit. Chilling! |
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| A jar blown open from the shockwave. Large crater right behind it. |
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| Mag trail marker that guides you along the path. There are likely more mines and UXOs in the area. |
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| Some pretty disturbing statistics. Phonsavan is in the middle of the red cluster in the Northern part of the map. |
Zongshen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Now, I'm not really a brand loyalty type guy when it comes to motorcycles. They all make good bikes and they all make bad bikes. The rest is just cost and marketing...blah blah blah..."live the dream" etc... However I think I'll make an exception for Zongshen motorcycles. I don't think quality is what they're going for...lol!
As we were driving away from The Plain of Jars the bike suddenly got louder...uh oh! Dy say's "that can't be good". The next thing you know half the exhaust system slides right off and onto the road. Clink clink clink! I stop and Dy goes running back to pick up the pipe. It was a nice clean break about halfway! This bike is pretty much new!
She hops back on holding half the exhaust (not hot yet, we weren't driving long at that point) and we go the visitors center. We show some of the employees and have a good laugh. One employee gives us the directions to a place where he thinks will fix it.
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| Holding the portion of the exhaust that fell off. |
After our short visit we head to the sort of garage in a shed place we were directed to. We pull up on the sidewalk, our presence being announced loudly by the lack of a complete exhaust system, and along comes the owner/mechanic. It didn't take much miming for me to explain the problem! He enters the shed and comes out with an arc welder. Zip....zzzziiiiip.....zzzzzzip. Ok half fixed. Out come some wrenches, off comes the exhaust. Zip.....zzzzzzipppp....zzzip, with the welder, on goes the exhaust and we're done. All right there on the side walk and not a word of English spoken. We ask how much, using the international sign language of rubbing your thumb and index finger together. He writes 30,000 in the dirt on the sidewalk (about $4 CDN). We pay the man, thank him many times (this we can say in Lao language) and we're off...done! (Take that Canadian Tire!)
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| Holding the pipe in place while he makes the first few tack welds. That's as useful as I got! |
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| Zzzziiippp zzzzzziiiiippppp! |
When we arrived back to the rental place we were ready for the potential "negotiations" on how we damaged the bike. Instead the owner at the rental place simply thanked us for having it repaired and apologized for it happening in the first place.
