Destination Laos: Part 13 Plain of Jars

Spent the morning wandering around the fresh market next to the post office, quite interesting, the sellers sitting on mats on the floor with their wares laid out in front of them. Definitely very colourful. The highlight, apparently, of it among travellers was looking out for the exotic animals on display in buckets, tubs and boxes, destined more for the dinner plate than as pets. I spotted 2 furry hamster like creatures, but much larger scrabbling about in a wash basin. Cute.

Grabbed some freshly baked, lightly sugared baguettes (khao jii) here for breakfast (1,000 kip, 25 US cents), before going over to Simmaly's for hot coffee with a huge dollop of condensed milk to warm myself up, but succumbing to the freshly made rice noodle soup that is always served with a plate of fresh greens for the diner to add according to his tastes. All in all it cost me 12,000 kip, little more than a dollar. Amazing value for money and i can really agree with people who say, dollar for dollar, dining in Lao is the best in the world. True enough. In Vientiane/Luang Prabang, a French meal with wine would only set you back around 5 -6 US dollars, more if you go for the more upmarket stuff.

After breakfast it was a stroll back to the guesthouse where I waited for the van to pick us up for the tour of the 3 Plains of Jars, with a pitstop at a lao lao making village and a broken Russian tank - what remained was just the chassis, which presumably the enterprising villagers couldn't cart away.

The Plain of Jars were a photographer's dream, and with its vague history and unknown origins there was also nothing much to read about. Yay. Local guides do, however, say that these massive urns, each hewn from solid rock, serve a burial function, and showed us the urn with a human figure carved onto it.

Peering into the jars was one thing everyone did once. Like we expected to be enthralled or make a new historical discovery hitherto unnoticed by experts. Nothing too interesting, stagnant water and the stuff that thrives in stagnant water - algae, reeds, and the odd piece of rubbish. I expect this place is a breeding ground for hordes of mosquitoes, if those little critters can survive this high up into the mountains.