Dear All,

You'll never guess what. Nisha Indian Restaurant is actually a chain, with branches in Vientiane, Vang Vien, Luang Prabang, and... Phonsavan. So I have seemingly not been following a free spirit through Laos in search of curiosities, fascinations and general enlightenment, but in fact have been conducting a tour of Laos style Indian eating establishments. As such, I have had two curries in two days, and sampled three different kinds of indian flatbread. It's going well. I might skip the curry tonight, however.

I believe I left you two days ago, readers, as I headed off to wander Luang Prabang. Well, I tried to go to the Royal Palace Museam again - this time I was foiled by a large 4x4 blocking the entrance, which the signwriting on the side informed me was "A Gift from the People's Republic of China". Laos is pretty dependent on Chinese Aid. I climbed half way up Phu Si and sat on a bench, getting mauled by ants (that bit, I discover..), reading, and observing the stream of black cars and officaldom that piled into the Royal Palace, a grand old building from the days of glory when Luang Prabang was the capital. I'm not too sure what was going on, but it foiled my final attempt at visitng...

Instead, I had a conversation with a Lao child who was trying to flog me stuff out of a cardboard tray. His heart really wasn't in it (unlike the girls!)so on my initial refusal we fell into conversation about my bengal tiger print buff, which he told me was 'cool', gave me a thumbs up, and assured me that 'Tiger! Same Same!'. 'Same Same', I responded, 'Same Same... but different'. The little boy laughed... 'Same same but different' is an absolutely ubiquitous phrase in SE Asia. In Malaysia, after saying 'Terima Kasih' - Thank You, they respond with Same Same, although it is pronounced 'Sam-uh Sam-uh'. I'm not sure what it means in Lao, but everybody wears those damn T Shirts with 'Same Same' on the front and 'But Different' on the back. It's just so.... I don't know... same same?

I indulged and had a facial. It was a beautiful thing. I came out so relaxed that it occured to me that if everyone had massages and facials more often there would be no war. I'm not sure if this theory would stand up to rigourous testing, but people should get massaged more.

My last night in Luang Prabang... I stayed uppast curfew and went bowling. Yes folks, ten pin, electric systems, hire shoes. It is the only place open past cuirfew, serving Beerlao and bowling till half past two... Genius. I walked home, but we never got that far, and sat by the Mekong for several hours under the stars. The stars weren't so great, but we stayed so long that the spectacle was soon the sunrise. As I was up, I pottered to a nearby wat and watched the monks processing through the streets as local people offered alms. Really charming...

Come half seven and my nine hour plus local bus journey to Phonsavan, I might have wished for some sleep... As I tried to doze on a seat that didn't fit this hulking western giant, the sun beat in the windows each time we stopped and the breeze was cut off. Combined with the driver honking the horrendously loud horn for goodness knows what reason seemingly every five minutes I was a very grouchy Trish. When I came to a bit a realised that we were traversing tight, tight hairpins on the wrong side of the road (the other side of the unsealed road was too badly potholed) I was suddenly thankful for the rather loud horn he honked at each corner...

About eight hours in, we stopped. The bus was overheating. It made a very amusing picture... a string of people from small lake to the bus, passing bottles of water to a couple of Lao guys uder the bus, pouring it onto I have no idea what, producing large clouds of steam. Just on the mudguard next to them, there was a big red sign. It read, "Safety First". Brilliant.

Today, the Plain of Jars. The presence of UXO in this area is really brought home to you by both the littering of the streets with cluster bomb shells (fence posts, plant pots, school bells...), the top of a Russian tank outside the tourist information centre, the Mines Advisory Group info centre, and the fact that the 3 tourist sights we visited were only cleared of UXO in 2005. This is the most bombed province of the most bombed country on earth, were over 30% of the bombs that were dropped didn't detonate, because they landed in rice paddies and other 'soft surfaces'. There are bomb craters all over the Plain of Jars sights, and concrete 'MAG'markers showing you where you can walk.

I've seen bomb craters before, I've seen shell cases before - but that was in Europe, the war was near enough a hundred years ago, and it seemed a bit more... equal? You can never justify atrocities of this scale, but half a tonne of ordenance for every person living in Laos was dropped here during the Indochina war. To them, UXO is as much as a problem as rocky soil is to farmers at home, without anything like the kind of technology that we have to protect themselves. I saw a cave by the Plain of Jars that was used as a hospital during the war. My God, what a grim look out. Today, this is a blissfully undeveloped country. Thirty years ago the contrast would have been just as dramatic, if not more so. And yet they were bombed and bombed and bombed in a war the world still doesn't know about in a country that people still barely knows exists. There is something seriously wrong with this.

Luckily, there are groups like MAG working here. MAG is a UK charity funded by aid organisations and governments all round the world that train teams of local people to clear areas of UXOs. They use mixed and all women teams, because women will have a different take on what needs clearing first... (football pitch or rice paddy? ). It was these people, with funding from the New Zealand government, that cleared the three main Jar sights between 2003 and 2005.

Ah yes, the Jars... what I actually came to look at!! Well... there's lots of big jars set in beautiful scenary, and it's pretty damn cool. We also visited a 'Whisky Village'-where the locals make Lao Lao, rice whisky, and a russian tank that's sort of... lying around, after an American bomb disabled it whilst it was being used by the Lao communists during the Indochina war. The Jars are really interesting though, because they could be anything between 2500 and 1500 years old, there's loads of them, made from granite and sandstone and up to three metres high. I met an American archeologist last night, living and working here for nine months, who told me it is known they were used for some sort of crematory function. However, plenty of the locals still believe they were used for holding the LaoLao and sticky rice for a banquet of the Gods after a cosmic battle...

...I like the cosmic battle explanation.

Tomorrow... to Vang Vieng (argh!) for a night, to break the journey to Vientiane. My cocyx can't handle 11 hours plus... Then - down south!!

Love to all - Stay in Touch!

Px