Phonsavan - 11/16/11
So we arrived for Phonsavan in the evening of 11/15.
Since we wrote about transportation in Thailand, we'll add a few interesting details here as well. First - Thailand's transportation is well ahead of Laos's. This is the "VIP" bus we took to Phonsavan:
Here's the kicker. While we were waiting for the departure of the bus I was walking around and noticed the bus's rear tires. The driver noticed me taking a picture of it, and came over. I pointed my finger, and said "Not good". He said "OK!" and smiled.
Lucky for us the bus had 2 rear wheels on either side, so when we lost a large piece of the outer thread on one of the tires, all the driver had to do was rip off the flapping piece, deflate the tire a bit so it would not make a noise, and we continued on. Also lucky for us by then we passed over the mountainous road:
Once in Ponsavan we searched around for a hostel. At some point we were following the signs towards a hostel that we read about in our guide book, but we missed one of the signs and kept walking in the wrong direction for a good 10-15 minutes. Then when we finally found the place we were quite disappointed. The building that was recently remodeled and described in the guide book was completely full and the lady placed us in one of the older rooms. It was quite disgusting, but we were tired and decided to stay there for one night anyway. However, after Levka found (and threw out) a half-dead frog in the bathroom, we changed our mind, returned the keys and went out on a search. We were lucky to bump into some people who were on our bus and they had already found a decent guesthouse which had one last room that we happily took.
Few words about Phonsavan:
We wouldn't classify this as a city, more of a large village. It has *nothing* there. One road with restaurants, guest houses and travel agencies. Only one of the restaurants seemed decent enough and had an English-speaking owner, so we ate both dinners there. There are no coffee shops (the guide said there was one, but we did not see it), no Internet in most guesthouses, barely any tourists, generally very poor and completely unremarkable town.
However, the town has an insane amount of construction all around it. We were amazed by the amount and type of construction. We are talking about huge hotels being built on every corner. This is completely uncommon in everything that we have seen of Asia. Only huge cities, like Bangkok and Hanoi have large hotels to support the insane amount of tourists. The smaller cities, tend to have guesthouses and tiny hotels all built in the style of the neighborhood. And we are not sure why they needed the big hotels because the amount of tourists was so insignificant. We kept thinking that this town has some secret industry that it was developing. But since we didn't find a single person who spoke English who could explain it to us, this point will remain a mystery :)
We have to mention one form of entertainment that's apparently very popular among the Ponsavanians. It's karaoke. First night we were there as we were exiting the restaurant we heard "singing", and decided to check out what was going on. It turned out to be a wedding, or celebration of sorts with a makeshift outside sitting/eating area and a karaoke setup. Some guy was singing extremely loudly, and a bunch of women were trying to dance. We had to cross the street to another side, and hide behind a car because we could not stop laughing, it was so bad. The next day we heard at least 2 more places where karaoke was sung, and neither one of those singers did it well. You know, how they say that all Chinese have perfect pitch? Well, it's definitely not the case with the Laotians.
On the next day, unwilling to take a group tour, we rented a scooter and were on the way to see the one attraction that we came there to see which was the Plain of Jars. Its several sites of huge stones carved out in a form of jars. They have been around for several hundred or thousand years. And their original purpose remains unknown and is a matter of debate. Either way, we were interested.
You can check out more information about the Plain of Jars here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_of_Jars
There are 3 nearby jar sites. The first one we found rather easily. It was about 10 km out of town on a straight paved road with the signs leading up to it.
This site was also heavily bombed during the Vietnam war and there are clear reminders of that:
We only had to remember to stay within the white markers that showed us the area that has been cleared off of the unexploded bombs. The rest of the area was marked as "Walk at your own risk".
The real fun started when we were going to the second site. Apparently its another 10 km of unpaved, washed out road. The drive looks something like this:
After 20 km (there and back) we decided not to go further to the 3rd site.
We had some fun at the first and the second site though, climbing rocks and playing "where's Waldo?"
Upon our return back to Phonsavan, we went to the only restaurant and that's when we noticed a sign with the rules about the Plain of Jar sight. Apparently, we are not allowed to climb the stones. Too bad we didn't see that ahead of time.
After only one day at Phonsavan, we felt like we covered everything that was worth seeing and that same night we were off to Hanoi.
Here are the rest of the pix:
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| 2011.11.15 Phonsavan |
