Today was a forgettable day for me. Absolutely nothing happened. Well, with the exception of a 7 hour mini van ride to Phonsavan from Luang Prabang.
To be transparent, over the past couple of days I haven’t been feeling 100% terrific. Some of the Lao food has disagreed with me, and while I haven’t felt sick, I did have some semi-minor tummy troubles. This is normal for me when I travel, but it was exacerbated today by a horrendous 7 hour mini van ride to Phonsavan.
The primary ways to get from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan is either to fly or take a bus/mini van of some kind. Unfortunately, flights between the two cities only run during the high tourist season. Since it’s off season now, the flights are not currently running. This left only one real option to get to Phonsavan: bus. Yesterday I went to a travel agency near my hotel (they are everywhere in Laos, like Thailand) and booked a ticket on what they call the “VIP Mini Van.” The other option is to ride on a huge bus with lots of Lao people, which stops numerous times along the route. There was no way in hell I was going to stick out a 9 hour bus ride with a bunch of locals when I wasn’t feeling terrific. I had heard horror stories about these long bus rides to Phonsavan and had no interest in getting the experience first hand.
No, instead I booked the “VIP Mini Van”. It cost a bit under $20. I will start out by saying that there is nothing VIP about this van. It is a van with several rows of seats. There were 7 other passengers inside, including me, plus the driver. The air conditioning on the bus did not work, even though they advertise these vans as having AC. We had to open the windows, but because there are ass holes throwing water from the side of the road to celebrate the new year, we didn’t keep the windows all the way open. And I get car sick, particularly when it’s hot. Luckily, I decided to lay out on the back seat, which I had all to myself. Oddly enough, lying down actually helps me with the car sickness. Even so, it was a pretty dreadful ride.
The mini vans were supposed to leave at 9am. We left closer to 9:30am for whatever reason. We stopped after about 2 hours for lunch. Because my tummy wasn’t feeling great from the ride, I decided to skip lunch. No need to introduce more Lao food to an already delicate situation. It’s a real pity that I was feeling so gross. The scenery was actually quite lovely on the drive and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have on a shorter ride. The road from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan is crazy: all hair pin turns through the mountains. Just hundreds and hundreds of turns. The road is somewhat paved, but not great. Definitely not as good as Thailand. But it makes for some stunning scenery. The place we stopped for lunch, for example, was at the top of this mountain overlooking other mountains and a deep valley. It was really beautiful. Because I was so sick I didn’t even think to snap a photo, which I’m sad about. Ah well. I think I’ve got plenty already from other days.
The last 4 hours of the trip we did in one stretch without stopping. We arrived in Phonsavan around 4pm. I am staying at what is supposed to be the best hotel in Phonsavan, but it’s very basic and I’d say only a 2 star establishment. At least there’s wifi in the rooms. It’s called the Anoulak Khen Lao Hotel. I had heard that Phonsavan has sub-standard lodging, considering the attractions that are here (we’ll get to that in a minute).
The town is very small. There’s the main drag just outside my hotel, where there are some restaurants and shops and tour operators and things. Pretty standard for a small town. It’s annoying because there are a lot of people still throwing water by the side of the road late into the evening flanking my hotel on both sides along the main street. I didn’t want to try and brave through the water-throwing bull shit, so instead just went to the local convenience store to buy some munchies and call it a day. I figured I can take the day off from eating local food and just nosh on some packaged goods. Breakfast is included with my hotel rate so I’ll have a big breakfast in the morning.
I must say that because of the water-throwing, I’m sort of thrilled I’m getting out of this little town after 2 nights–I’m hoping Vientiane will be more civilized since it’s a bigger city. The Lao kids are off from school all week, so even though the Lao new year technically ends today, there are apparently still some ass holes throwing water through the rest of the week. Awesome. Tomorrow I’ll spend the day site-seeing and probably grab a quick bite at the hotel and call it another early night. I brought a thumbdrive with lots of TV shows and movies and I also have numerous books downloaded on Kindle, so I am more than happy to hole up in a hotel room for a couple of nights to read and watch some flicks.
I’ve made some hints at my feelings toward the Lao New Year, so I might as well go into it with some detail. I have some very strong feelings about this. Here’s the thing with the Lao New Year: the symbolism of throwing water is fairly obvious–it’s about purification, and cleansing oneself (soul and body) for the start of a new year. That’s why there are a lot of ceremonies taking place at the temples. I get it. I read the brochure at my hotel about the Lao New Year ceremonies, parade, etc. The concept is pretty strait forward. The problem is that the local Lao teenagers as well as the idiot Western tourists (I’m just not going to hold back here) take the whole concept to an extreme and turn it into a drinking fest, an endless and outrageous party where they throw buckets of water ferociously and with impunity at strangers regardless of who they are. I saw groups of teenagers, essentially gangs, just hosing down elderly folks trying to walk through the streets to get to their jobs or hotels or wherever. What’s worse is they blast horrible music all day, starting early and through the night. The noise pollution is simply unnecessary. Traditionally, the music that would play through the city streets during the Lao New Year would be traditional Lao classical music played by bands in the streets. This was 10 plus years ago, from what I’ve heard from older travelers I’ve encountered. Instead today the revelers blast rock music on huge loud speakers. It’s inconsiderate and inappropriate when you consider the important religious ceremonies that are taking place in all the temples nearby. The Wester idiots are as bad–in their case, they don’t even understand the significance of the ritual of Lao New Year. They literally refer to it as “the water fight” and don’t even realize the significance of the water–I know because I’ve asked them. Also, they tend to target other westerners more because they think we’re “friends” because we’re foreigners together. Hey jackass, you and I are not friends.
Ok so enough of my ranting on Lao New Year. All I would say is: reconsider if you’re going to be in Laos for the Lao New Year, which falls in mid-April. I don’t think it’s worth the experience unless you’re the sort of idiot who likes to spend their vacation walking around with a water gun in swim trunks/bikinis and drunk, rather than thoughtfully engaging with the local culture. The parade was nice and the costumes were lovely, but in general the cities are too unruly and because the entire week is a school holiday it’s just very disruptive in terms of trying to visit and walk around any city. I’m really glad it’s almost over. It’s a pity because I’ve loved Laos otherwise, but this whole New Year mess has somewhat soured my experience here.
Hopefully that will change tomorrow when I do my tour of the Plain of Jars.
Here’s my secret with Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars: this was the entire reason for this five-week trip to South East Asia. About a year and a half ago, on a typical Saturday morning, I was in bed pursuing one of my favorite hobbies: googling interesting places around the world with particular cultural or historical significance. The plain of jars came up on one of my searches. I couldn’t even believe this place when I saw photos and I became obsessed. I made it my mission to come to Laos to see this mysterious place.
In a nutshell, the Plain of Jars is exactly what the name connotes: a plain, filled with jars. This plain, or series of plains, is located just outside of the small town of Phonsavan. These jars are massive, ranging from a few feet wide/tall to several meters. The general belief is that they are neolithic funerary urns.
One of the reasons these jars don’t attract as many tourists as they should (which is why Phonsavan doesn’t have a particularly good hotel infrastructure for tourism) is because of the land mines and ordnances in the area. There are three plains, or parts of plains, that have been cleared of land mines, which are the areas that tourists can visit to see the jars. Until all the land mines are cleared from the area, however, UNESCO won’t designate the site as a World Heritage site. Who knows how long it will take to find all those mines. In the meantime, I’ve organized for a tour to take me to all 3 of the plains tomorrow to see the jars. I think we are also going to see a Stupa that was exploded by a bomb and visit a Hmong village, which I hope is one of those War Spoon villages. There are villages in the area called War Spoon villages, where they sell spoons, cutlery and other souvenirs made from scrap metal of unexploded bombs and ordnances found in the area. To give a little background, a surprising amount of the Vietnam War was fought around Laos. The country essentially became a battleground between the US forces and North Vietnam in what was known as the Secret War. Laos was massively bombed. Many of these ordnances have been dug up by local villagers and the material has been recycled and repurposed for other things, like spoons. Hence, these are called War Spoon villages. As the local saying goes: Make spoons, not war.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to my tour tomorrow and should get some rest since I have to get up early!
Jules Traveler 