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Days 50-51 Veng Xai - Phonosavan
The following morning after the football and circus fun we got up early to go and see the caves surrounding the town where the Lao communist party was based during the secret war, this was the key reason why we had come to Vieng Xai.
The caves are based over a number of sites, many of them joined together with secret passageways. The caves included living quarters for all the leaders of the party and also headquarters, barracks and even a theatre. The tour was very interesting and it was really good to see a part of Lao not many westerners get to and to spend some time getting a better understanding of the recent history of laos.
The rest of the day was taken up with the 7 hour bus ride to Phonosavan, as the north of Laos mainly consists of twisting mountain roads this was not the most pleasant journey and felt more like a 7 hour rollercoaster ride, particularly as our driver seemed to be the lao version of Michael Schumacher...I think it is fair to say Tina did not enjoy this journey! Phonosavan was the first place with a decent choice of restaurants we had been to for 3 days so a few of us headed out for a curry in the evening, this brought to an end three days straight of cold sticky rice with chilli sauce....a much needed change.
The following day we went to see the main attraction in Phonosavan, the plain of jars. This is a site covered with hundreds of jars which have been carved from stones. The jars vary from about 2 tons to 20 tons in weight and are all over 2000 years old. As the jars are in such close proximity to each other it makes for a really interesting visit. Once again like most historic sites in Laos nobody is quite sure why they are there and how the jars got to the site, this is because Loas' written history is relatively recent. But if you listen to most of the guides working in the area the seem to put anything which is hard to explain down to drunk giants...which works for me as a theory! the theory here being the giants had a big victory in war and therefore needed to brew lots of Laolao (local rice wine) to celebrate and in order to do this then had to make lots of big jars........must have been a pretty heavy evening.
From Phonosavan we had another 7 hour journey back to Luang Prabang, this one was not as bad as the previous day and we managed to pass the time with a few quizzes, cards and pictionary..all good fun. By the end of the trip we were pretty tired, but glad we decided to do it as we had made some really good friends.... but we were also very happy to get away from the twisty roads of northern Lao and Schumacher!
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