noodles | travel blog

Three months to the day after arriving in Bangkok for the first time, I’m sitting on a bus outside the airport, waiting to go to the Kho San Road, the city’s main backpacker area. A pale, sleepy English guy sits down in a seat and accidentally knocks his bag into a Japanese guy who's chatting to his friend. The following utterly absurd exchange ensues.

"Oh, sorry mate!"

"No problem. Are you from Australia?"

"No, England, mate."

"England. Oooh."

"And you're from Thailand, yeah?"

"Yes, we're going to Kho San Road. Are you going to Kho San Road?"

"Uh, yes. Are there any, like, places to stay there?"

"First Thailand, and then we go to Australia."

"Uh, right." (Pause) "Travelling the world then?"

"Yes. And then Firenze!"

"Valencia! Great football team."

(Silence)

"Any good football teams in Thailand, then?"

(Silence)

(Louder) "Football. Thailand."

"We're from Japan.“

"Oh, sorry, I thought you were from Thailand.”

"Oooh. We've just arrived from Japan."

"I've just arrived alone. I was supposed to go with this girl, we were going out, yeah? But yesterday we broke up."

"Ooooh."

The seven-hour bus trip from Vang Vieng to Phonsavahn was a winding journey through a landscape on fire. The forests, mountains and valleys were draped in smoke, and the sun looked like a shiny coin at the bottom of a murky well. In some places the flames were right next to the road, and as the bus passed you could feel the heat and hear the crackling through the open windows. Specks of ash swirled around the cabin and got in everyone’s eyes.

During the weeks before the rainy season, farmers all over Laos scorch the land to allow new things to grow when the rain comes. Not great for the environment, but then, neither is my lifestyle. And it's their country.

I was the only falang on the bus. I also belonged to a small, exlusive club of passengers who were able to hold on to their breakfasts.

In the mountains, we would sometimes pass an armed soldier walking alone in the roadside. A few years ago this area apparently used to be the scene of frequent robberies. Across the aisle from me there was a guy in an Adidas tracksuit with a big smile on his face and a machine gun on the floor by his feet. I obviously smiled back.

As we slowed down through tiny villages, the local children ambushed the bus with water pistols, spraying us through the open windows. This was a couple of weeks before the New Year's festival, where the whole country engages in a three-day national water-fight. The guy in the Adidas tracksuit just kept smiling.

The next morning I was sitting outside Mr K's guest house waiting for the minibus driver, who would be taking me on my tour of the Plain of Jars. The sky was a mix of clouds and smoke, and there was a pleasant breeze.

As I was the only new tourist that day, there was nobody to share the cost of the tour with. The local government no longer allows tourists to explore the area alone on hired motorbikes or bicycles, for fear of accidents involving the large amounts of unexploded ordnance which has been lying about in the area since the Vietnam War. During those years, American planes secretly dropped more bombs on Laos than anyone has dropped on any country before or since.

I had decided to splash out and go alone in the guest house's 15-seater Toyota HiAce, on a tour that took in all the three sites of jars around Phonsavahn. The jars were, after all, my only reason for being in town.

As I waited, Mrs K came over and asked if I would be needing a guide for the day (a cool 50% on top of the price of the minibus). From what I've read about the jars, the experts hardly know anything about them. They're not sure how or when they were made, by whom, or for what purpose. They don't know much about the jars beyond the fact that they're there.

"Will the guide be able to tell me much?" I said.

"Maybe not," she said and laughed. "You can take my brother with you for free."

Minutes later, Mr K appeared from the garage, dragging behind him a golf bag not much smaller than himself.

"It's going to rain," he said as he looked up at the sky. "Yes, it will definitely rain. At about 10:30".

He heaved the bag into his car and drove off. I wondered if Phonsavahn had an indoor golf course.

Mrs K's brother turned out to be great company. He also turned out not to be Mrs K's brother at all. A year earlier, Mr K had brought some tourists to my friend's village, and during the visit he had offered my friend a job at his guest house. This, as far as I understood, earns him the title "Mrs K's brother" (possibly as a way of bypassing the problem of having an unmarried man in his early twenties permanently around the house).

My friend belonged to the White Hmong ethnic minority. He was a rice farmer before he started working with tourists. He loved rice farming, especially the growing season, as this was a great time to meet girls. Neighbours take turns helping each other out on the land and apparently there are a lot of water-fights. I've later realised that there must be some connection between the rice and the New Year's festival, but it didn't occur to me at the time.

"Do they grow rice in your country?"

"No."

"No. Why not?"

"Well, uh, I think it's too cold."

"Too cold. What do they grow in your country?"

I mentioned a few things, among them were potatoes. He wanted to know everything about the different ways that potatoes were prepared. He knew about chips.

As I told him about mashed potatoes, we drove past a field where some people were building a small house using six man-sized bomb casings as pillars. It’s one of those things you know you’re never going to see again.

At the first and largest site, my friend showed me a jar that was teetering on the edge of a bomb crater. The jar had been split in two by the explosion, with the half nearest the crater still standing, and the other half lying on the ground where it had toppled. It looked like it had happened yesterday. Along the path there were little signs telling you not to step outside the area that had been searched and cleared for unexploded bombs. (The area outside the markers had been "visually" cleared, so it was all pretty safe.)

The second site of jars was on the top of a small hill. On the way through the rice fields my friend showed me a bomb crater that had been filled with water and was being used as a fishing pond.

The Plain of Jars is a large area containing groups of anything from a few dozen to a few hundred jars standing or lying around on a number of sites, several kilometres apart. The jars are carved out of stone, some are waist-high and some are over two metres. Apart from one or two, none of them have any decorations. One of them has a lid. There are inconclusive findings to suggest that they were used as burial urns. I don’t mean to get philosophical, but the best part of the experience for me was just to walk around and wonder about why people end up doing the things they do. The people who made the jars, the people who made the craters, the people who were building a house from bomb casings.

We were the only people at the third site. The sun was shining weakly through the haze. We had lunch in the shade of some ferns, using an overturned jar as a table. I told my friend that Mr K had said it would rain. I asked him what he thought.

"What do you think?" he said. He had a way of repeating the last thing I said, probably one of the reasons his English was so good.

I looked at the sky. "I don't think it will rain".

"I also don't think so," he said, smiling. He didn't have to look at the sky.

As we returned to the guest house, I met Mr K.

"How was the golf?" I said.

"Not so good," he said. "I only won 27 dollars."

I was impressed. This was more or less the same price as I had paid him for the minibus. "You play for money?" I said.

"Of course!” he said, with surprise. “Golf is far too expensive otherwise."