Day 18: The Plain of Jars

Today was one of the highlights of my trip.  I finally visited the Plain of Jars and it was simply awesome.

I organized a group tour yesterday with three other people in my van from Luang Prabang, an Indian couple and an Ozzie. We organized with our driver from Luang Prabang to take us today to the Plain of Jars sites 1, 2, and 3, and then to the War Spoon village Naphia and then a Hmong whiskey village.

I’ll start out by saying that it was an amazing day, but also longer than I expected.  I’ve read accounts where people say they can easily see all three jar sites in one afternoon but I don’t think that’s possible.  The roads outside of Phonsavan are absolutely terrible dirt and gravel roads and our van had difficulty going faster than 30 km/hr most of the time.  Even though these sites are between 10-35 kilometers away from Phonsavan (in the same direction), it takes a good 30-40 minutes to get to each one.  Additionally, the parking lot and “ticket office” of these sites is usually a good 10-15 minute walk from the site itself, so you need to add in time to actually hike up to the different sites.  But we’ll get to all that in a minute.

We started our tour at 9am.  We first went to the Phonsavan Visitor Center, which had a display of informational posters on visiting the jars sites and information on other local sites, like local villages and tribes, as well as commentary on ordnances and bombs in the area.  Behind the visitor center is a space that contains numerous deactivated bombs and artillery.  These were among the many weapons/bombs found by locals after the Second Indochina War and Secret War (i.e. the wars that the U.S. waged in Vietnam/Indochina and Laos between 1964-1973).

Display behind the Visitor Center of bombs and military weaponry

Cluster Bombs

More bombs and artillery

Ever stare down the barrel of a tank?

The map below is particularly telling. The red shows the areas in Laos that were bombed and where UXOs (unexploded ordnances) are still located. Note that on this map it says that the Xieng Khouang province was the second most bombed province in Laos between 1964-1973, the years during the Secret War and Vietnam/Second Indochina War.  Other accounts I’ve read said that Xieng Khouang was the most bombed province.  Either way, there are still thousands if not millions of UXOs in the countryside of this province alone.

Map showing UXOs in Laos

After the visitor center, we made our way to Site 1.  The entry fee was 15,000 kip (about $2 USD).  We walked up a road for about 10 minutes to arrive at the proper entry of the site.  Jar Site 1 is the largest of all the sites and the most visited.  Most tourists will just go to Site 1 and not bother with the other sites.  It is very impressive indeed.  One of the most stunning (and possibly most well preserved) jars is located here.

The impressive 2 meter high jar on the left at Site 1

The site has various clusters in a few different places.  We moved counterclockwise through Site 1. In the middle of the site is a cave with a small shrine, which we also visited.  It should be mentioned that Lao PDR military operated within this Jar site between 1964-1973, and created trenches for protection.  The photo below shows one of these trenches. There were several around the site. Because the U.S. knew there were operatives in this area, they dropped several bombs here and there are still many craters around the site.

Trench near the jars

Jar Site 1; there are over 300 jars in Site 1 alone

Though difficult to discern, this is a bomb crater

A bomb crater just beside this jar

After roaming the groups of jars, we visited the cave in the middle of the site.  This is thought to have been the crematorium for the dead who were then placed in the jars 3,000 years ago. Today there is what looks like an altar or shrine inside.

Cave at Jar Site 1

Interior of cave

We did an entire loop of the site, walking up a hill to see another cluster of jars before taking a scenic route back to the van.  The view was rather nice.

View from Jar Site 1

Next we made our way to Jar Site 2.  This took a little longer to get to.  We pulled into the parking lot and each paid our 10,000 kip ticket (about $1.25 USD).  From there we had to walk uphill along a dirt road.

Dirt road leading to Jar Site 2

This road was first built out by French colonialists over a hundred years ago, and apparently it has had detrimental affects to the jars at site 2, exacerbating the erosion there.  Because of how the road was built, there are two main clusters of jars at Site 2 separated by the road. We decided to visit the cluster on the right side first.

Cluster of jars at site 2

A stone lid or marker with a carving in the center with concentric circles

There was a path leading away from the jars heading east.  We decided to follow this path for awhile to see if it led to another cluster of jars.  We ended up amidst trees, and though the view was nice, we didn’t find any other jars. We turned back before getting to the end of the path, and apparently there is an abandoned and eroded stupa at the end.

View from the path to the stupa

Path through the trees

As I mentioned, we didn’t see the abandoned stupa since we decided to turn back and visit the other cluster of jars on the opposite side of the dirt road. These jars are hidden amidst beautiful trees.  The whole place felt very mysterious.

Jar Site 2

This tree grew underneath a jar, and broke it in half.  You can see the fragments of the jar embedded within the trunk.

I love this massive tree and the jars around it

Throughout all of the Jar sites, there are markers on the ground showing you the path you should take to get to the site or to walk around the site.  Sometimes the markers show you the perimeter of the site so that visitors don’t go wandering off into the countryside and potentially encounter an UXO. The white markers are the ones indicating that the path is clear of UXOs.  Red markers indicate the area isn’t cleared.  We never encountered red markers at any of the three sites, but we also made sure to stay on the marked paths.

White marker on the path. MAG stands for Mines Advisory Group, which is a non-profit that clears mines and UXOs worldwide

Next we visited Jar Site 3.  Upon arrival, we paid our 10,000 kip ($1.25 USD) entry ticket and crossed a bridge over to a rice paddy.

Bridge to Site 3

Then we had to traverse a series of rice paddies and walk up a gentle slope to Jar Site 3.

Rice paddies to Jar Site 3

More rice paddies near Site 3

Jar Site 3 was probably the smallest of the site we visited, and it also had the least number of tourists. There was only one cluster of jars, as opposed to two or three at the other sites.  But there were a lot of jars crammed close to one another in this one site.  It felt more claustrophobic than the other sites.  Even so, it was very remote and peaceful.

Jar Site 3

Overturned jar in Site 3

Jar Site 3

After Site 3, we made our way to Ban Naphia, which is a War Spoon village.  Since the 1980s villagers from Naphia and other villages started making spoons from the aluminum UXO scrap metal. In fact, several of the eateries and restaurants in town use these spoons. At a family home in Naphia, we saw the process of how these spoons are made.  They break down the UXO aluminum metal and melt it, then pour it into a mould. In the photo below, you can see the “kiln” in the middle where they melt the metal.  The box on the right wrapped with an orange rope is the mould used to create the spoon.  There is a hole on the side where the liquid metal is poured into the mould.

At the War Spoon Village, Naphia

The family also had a series of deactivated/defunct artillery shells and ordnances in their backyard on display.  These were all found near their home and village.

Scrap ordnances at the War Spoon villager home

We bought a few souvenirs from the War Spoon village, and then moved along to a Hmong village that makes Lao Lao whiskey.  On the way, our driver pulled over on the side of the road to point out a tank from the war.  This one is sitting half buried in someone’s backyard.

Tank across the road

We arrived at the Hmong village to taste our whiskey. I had already tasted the Lao Lao whiskey during the Mekong cruise at one of the villages we visited, so I knew what to expect.  We each took a little taste and decided we were all set.

Our host: Hmong woman who let us taste her whiskey

After that we came back to Phonsavan.  It was a little after 5pm.  I decided to take a stroll around the local market thinking that I might buy some more souvenirs.  This was, truly, a local market so there were absolutely no tourists around.  So no souvenirs.  Mostly it was a food market.  There were all sorts of things going on there.  Fruits and curries were on the simple end of the spectrum.  I also saw live chickens and ducks getting suffocated and sold to customers, dead and live guinea pigs, and fried rats. It was rather a lot for one day so I decided to take it easy for the rest of the afternoon.

Tomorrow I head off to Vientiane. And yet I still can’t believe that my Phonsavan adventure is over and I’ve finally seen the Plain of Jars!

Day 14: Trekking in the Hills to Kuang Si Falls

I signed up for a one day trek today to see a couple of Hmong villages in the hills and then see the Kuang Si waterfall and a few other sites in the area.  No one else signed up for this particular tour so I took a private tour, though I was able to negotiate down the price to about half of asking price.  My guide, Guim, picked me up at the hotel with the driver at 9am.

Mountain view on the drive to the trek

We started our trek at a Hmong village called Ban LongLao high up in the hills. The Hmong are the high land villagers, who typically live 1,000 meters above sea level. The Hmong houses differ quite a bit from those in the Khmu and Lao villages, the main difference being that they are built on the ground and not on stilts (with the livestock and animals below). Similar to the Khmu, the Hmong are animists and believe in and worship spirits. Over most of the house doorways there are wood carvings or charms hanging to keep away the bad spirits.

A typical Hmong house in the Ban LongLao village

After we passed through Ban LongLao, we made our way along a dirt road for about 20 minutes, where we passed through groves of teak trees, corn and vegetable fields, and rubber trees.  On the rubber trees, the villagers make a deep cut in the tree’s bark and then attach a can to the tree to catch the rubber oil that drips out of the bark. They collect these cans every day, filled with rubber oil.

Rubber being collected from the rubber tree

We walked further through farm land with some nice views of the mountains and forrest.

View of mountains and farm land on the trek

We passed through this sliding door gate to get to the jungle trail.  I love this bamboo gate, and it slides open and closed so easily! The reason for this gate is to keep the villagers’ cows from roaming off their land.

Bamboo fence and sliding door gate to keep the cows in

We entered through the bamboo gate into the area where the cows graze, so we passed a number of cows in the forest through this stretch of land.

Cows grazing in the forest

For the next hour or so we walked along a shady path in the jungle.  We didn’t really have scenic views of mountains after awhile, but it was nice walking through the shade.  Since it had been raining on and off for three days, most of the path was still quite muddy, but the air smelled fresh and clean.

Path in the jungle

After about 2 hours of walking, we arrived at a cave.  Unfortunately I don’t know if this cave has a name, but at this point we were about 4-5 kilometers away from Kuang Si falls.  There was a road and some signs pointing down to the waterfall.  The cave is located at the top of a small hill, next to a big golden Buddha.  At the bottom of the hill is a man who rents flashlights for people to borrow to go into the cave.

Entrance to the cave with little Buddha figures nearby

My guide Guim in front of the cave showing me the snake sculpture over the entrance of the cave. This gave me quite a scare!

We grabbed our torches and went on up the hill into the cave.  The wonderful thing about caves I always seem to forget is how incredibly dark they are inside.  Within a few paces we were wrapped in darkness. Local villagers apparently used to hide in this cave during the second indochina war.  It’s quite a deep cave.  We walked inside for awhile to see some of the Buddha statues there.  We never reached the back of the cave.  There was a really detailed carving a man’s head that my guide pointed out.

Head of a man (a monk?) in the cave

Just at the bottom of the cave around the side of the hill is a spring, which is the water source for the Kuang Si Falls.  You don’t actually see a spring coming out of the ground–it’s really just an overflowing pool of water, but beneath is apparently a cave where the spring is located.

Spring, the source of the Kuang Si Waterfall

Now it was time to see where the waters flows down the mountain.  We followed a dirt road that led to a path that brought us to the pools at the top of the Kuang Si falls.

Peaceful pools at the top of the Kuang Si Falls

Looking over the edge of the Kuang Si Falls

The view over the falls was nice, but now it was time to go down a steep path to the bottom of the waterfall.  And by steep I am STEEP.  This is what we were navigating most of the time:

Path down to the Kuang Si Falls

And the view at the bottom was nothing but spectacular. It’s a beautiful place.  There are several layers of pools and smaller waterfalls leading away from the main one.

Kuang Si Falls

Kuang Si Falls pools

Even though you can’t really see it, there were a ton of people at the falls.  I’ve heard that going early in the morning is the way to avoid the tourists. We got there right at peak hour at around 2pm when everyone goes to the falls to eat lunch, drink, and hang out in the pools.  I myself took a quick 10 minute dip in one of the pools.

I took my dip in the pool just beyond the bridge. I had it all to myself too because it was hidden behind the bridge.

After my quick dip, we walked back to the entrance of the park where we passed the bears conservation center.  Twenty-seven Asiatic black bears were rescued and now live here.  It seems that some tribes hunt bears to use their bile and other parts of their bodies for medicinal purposes.  Since the early 2000s, local authorities have rescued several bears and brought them to live.

Asiatic Black Bears bathing

After visiting the Kuang Si falls and park we took our van back to Luang Prabang, stopping off first at another Hmong village on the way.

Hmong village on the way back to Luang Prabang

And we also stopped so I could take a photo of Luang Prabang from a hill on the road back to town.

View of Luang Prabang from afar

It has been an action-packed couple of weeks.  I’ve decided that tomorrow I will hang around town and visit the local Royal Palace/National museum and the other temples I haven’t seen yet.  I’m hoping that this won’t take more than a couple of hours so I can spend the rest of the day relaxing.

Day 9: Hill Tribe Trekking

I was able to book a one day hill tribe trek for today. This was a remarkably difficult feat as it turns out because its the off season at the moment in Chiang Rai, there are few tourists and not a lot of them are booking trekking tours. I spent my last two evenings in Chiang Rai going from tour office to tour office looking for someone organizing a one day trek the next day. Last night I made my way to a tour office — called Japa Tour — where the office manager Charlie told me that he had a client currently on a 3 day/2 night trek of the hill tribe villages, and that the next day would be the last day of this trek.  If I was interested, I could join on for the last day and catch a few hours of trekking with the client and the guide.  The plan seemed a little makeshift, but I didn’t mind.  I wanted to see these hill tribes around the Golden Triangle I had heard so much about, and a few hours of trekking seemed like a nice way to get the full experience.

We started at 8am.  The guide picked me up at my hotel and off we went to an Akha village to meet with the client, who we’ll call F, finishing his 3 day trek.  On the way we passed by an elephant camp, which was a bit sad because the elephants were chained.  I’m hoping to visit an elephant sanctuary in Luang Prabang to see happy elephants there.  We stopped at a tea plantation on the way to Akha so that I could take a few photos.

View of the remote tea plantation. Oolong tea is grown here.

Shortly after the tea plantation we arrived at the Akha village where F was waiting.  After a brief breakfast, F showed me the little guest house he and the guide shared last night.  They were very simple rooms.  This home stay room was at the top of a steep hill.  There was an outhouse nearby.

Outside of the guest house for the tribe village home stay

Inside of the guest house. Behind each curtain are the mattresses for the guests.

We began the trek and left the Akha village.

Akha Village hidden behind banana trees

Shortly after we arrived at a waterfall. Our guide and F had bathed in this waterfall the day before on their way to the Akha village.  Because I had joined the group, we went back so I could see it (I really wanted to a see a waterfall!). I didn’t swim in it since we just started the trek and I wasn’t hot or sweaty yet.  Also, I knew that we would go to a hot spring at the end of the trek so I figured I would take a dip then.

Waterfall outside Akha Village

Then we climbed up a crazy steep path next to the waterfall. It was difficult, but we made it to the top of the waterfall and continued onward.

View from the top of the waterfall

We continued along.  F and our guide told me that there was a lot of burning in the forests over the past few days.  The farmers in the area, apparently, burn the land so that they can do their crop rotations and plant new seeds before the rainy season.  The problem is that often times the burning interferes with the trails within the forest.  We saw quite a bit of burning and hiked along several trails that were covered in ash.  Needless to say, my legs were covered in soot and ash within just an hour of walking!

Burning in the forest

Onward we went, through fire, ash, and gorgeous scenery.  We saw pineapples growing in the fields.

Pineapples growing in a field

We made our way through the forest and hills to a Lahu and Yao village (apparently both tribes live there together). We visited a home, and sat on the porch drinking water and relaxing for about 20 minutes.

In the Lahu – Yao village

Yao – Lahu village. The space beneath the homes is where the families keep there animals and livestock

View of the Yao – Lahu village

Yao – Lahu village in the hills

Next it was lunchtime.  We arrived at a point in the trail where there was a little spring.  This is where our guide started a little fire to boil some water.

Guide starting fire for cooking

He took a long bamboo piece, filled it with water, stuffed a banana leaf in the top and put it next to the fire to boil the water. He cut a few pieces of bamboo and tied a chicken around it and placed it to cook over the fire.

Cooking: F is holding the bamboo cooking the chicken. You can see the bamboo boiling water just next to the chicken in the upright bamboo

The water took awhile to boil, but once it got there we put in some noodles and then some chopped eggplants.  We washed banana leaves and laid them on the ground to use as a strainer for our eggplant-noodle dish.

Noodles with eggplant

So our meal was noodles with chopped eggplant and roasted chicken.  It was quite good too!  It’s been several hours and I’m not feeling sick or anything so it looks like our guide did a good job cooking everything.  There were small cut pieces of bamboo nearby that had already been fashioned into little cups by previous cookers.  We used these as little bowls for our noodles and chicken.  Our guide sliced some pieces of bamboo into small sticks that we used as chopsticks.  It was a lot of fun.

Once we cleaned up, it was time to move on.  We were at the last stretch of our trek for the day.  Unfortunately our trail was blocked by smoke from the fires the farmers had lit, so we had to take a detour into fairly uncharted forest.  We found another path through the trees and made it to a backroad. After walking for about 5-10 minutes we arrived at the spot where our taxi was waiting for us.  The taxi took us to the hot springs and the three of us took a well-earned dip in the hot spring pool.

Hot springs area

The trek had come to an end and it was time to go back to Chiang Rai.  It was a fun day.  Back at my hotel I took a little dip in the pool and just had an hour long Thai massage.  Tomorrow I travel to Laos.  I started taking my Malaria pills here in Chiang Rai so I’m ready to get there!

View on the drive back to Chiang Rai after our trek

Traveler tip: If you’re looking to do a hill tribe trek and you are a solo traveler on the off season (like I am), I would recommend one of the following options: the first option would be to take the trek from Chiang Mai where there are A LOT more tourists and a lot more organized treks happening.  The downside is, there are a lot more tourists in Chiang Mai than Chiang Rai so you won’t get away from the crowds as much.  The other option would be to do what I did and go around to each tour operator and see if they’ve had other travelers sign up for treks the next day.  The reason I had trouble with a one-day trek is that most tour operators won’t take just one person for a one day trek.  If I wanted to book a 2 or 3 day trek, I probably could have done so as a solo traveler–I would have had to pay a lot more, which would make it worth while to the tour operator. I was open to doing a 2 day trek, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of doing it alone with a guide, hence why I decided to trek with other folks.  Luckily, my tour operator made room for me on a trek in progress and called the guide at the Akha village to work out the details of picking me up at my hotel the next day.  As it turns out, because we were cooking lunch in the forest on the third day, the tour guide had to come back to Chiang Rai anyway to buy the chicken and other food supplies–errands that I ran with him after he picked me up at the hotel.  I guess it all worked out in the end.  If I come back to Chiang Rai in the future I think I would sign up for a two day trek.