Then I flew up to the north east mountain plateau called the Plain of Jars in a province called Xieng Huang toward the Vietnamese border. A bleak place in winter, some sun during the day but always a cold wind blowing over the plain, gives the provinial "capital", Phonsavan, a real frontier feel. Bloody freezing at night too, and no heating in the guest house! To bed fully clothed again, I really must head south.
This place has about 60 sites of over 600 jars where some civilisation about 2-4,000 years ago (they can't agree) rolled huge lumps of sandstone from a quarry 15km away, then carved them into enormous stone jars on vantage points on the plain. There is also a nearby cave with 3 carved vents in the roof, which was used as the cremation site. Three theories:
- They are funeral tombs (they had close fitting stone lids before the Chinese armies raided them in 12th century, I think) as ashes and a skeleton were found.
- They are offerings jars seated on top of tombs, as ashes and belongings have been found under them.
- Folklore says that they are giants' lao-lao (rice spirit) jars from when a legendary king celebrated victories in battle, and the cave was the distillery! My favourite.
But, roll forward in time to 1965-73 and the Vietnam War, well actually the Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia War. Laos particularly was dragged into the conflict as they allowed the North Vietnamese to create the Ho Chi Minh supply trail right down the mountain ranges the length of the country, and so into the back door of South Vietnam and Cambodia.
Now, both sides agreed under the Geneva Convention that no combat would be fought in Laos - both sides secretly ignored that, the Viets carried on using it as a supply line, so the Americans thought they would close it down. But they couldn't do that publicly due to the Convention, so they created a CIA project to secretly carry out this "alternative theatre" (couldn't name Laos). They put volunteers in from the USAF pilots (the scouts became known as Ravens) and Army trainers, removed their uniforms and dog tags, and built an entire secret city (Long Cheng) in the mountains, which could only be approached by air. Then they recruited a tribe, called the Hmong, who did not like the pro-communist Laos government, 50,000 of them, and armed / trained them and set them as the army to face the Communists. The USAF then scouted by air, and bombed the trail and any communist army troops / bases to bits. Millions of tons of bombs, much of which onto the Plain of Jars area - the Hmong then followed up with land battles there (40,000 killed from both sides). About 30% of the bombs and shells failed to explode, add in the landmines by the armies and you have a place which is still lethal today.
So, there I was in amongst the jars one minute in pre-historic times, then being guided along a signed UXO (unexploded ordnance) / mine-cleared path to the next jars site, passing trenches, tank traps, foxholes, bomb craters by the hundreds and above all live ammunition still coming to the surface! (see pics) Add in the sounds of controlled (hopefully) explosions by the UXO Lao (Lao government agency) and Mines Advisory Group (a British charity) teams and there we have surreal days spent on the plain and in the villages.
You can actualy pick up pieces of metal and equipment as you go. Went to a shot-down T28 fighter crash site where you can just pick up pieces of the plane! Very small pieces as the locals have taken everything for scrap, which sells at 3,000 kip (about 20p) per kilo.
This brings me to the third part of the surreal days: scrap metal at 20p per kilo is worth risking your life for here, and there is a cottage industry (illegal but noone does anything) here where kids and adults scour the bomb craters and battle sites for scrap or UXO's. Now UXO's need defusing, and people are getting killed trying it on a weekly basis - a single bomb can weigh 60 kilos and more! There is a picture in the MAG office in town of 3 guys, 2 dead and 1 blinded when trying to defuse a SAM missile they found in undergrowth! MAG are still clearing farmland to enable it to be used again and therefore get people earning from farming instead of scrap metal hunting. We came across 2 kids digging outside of the cleared areas, so the we wandered over (our guide didn't seem to mind going off the path, so we followed his footsteps) to see what they had collected - pieces of shell casings, live bullets, bits of equipment. Then he said we could go over the fields back to the path, and there we saw live artillery and mortar shells just lying there being walked over by the local cattle (and us)! Took pics and walked on rather quickly.
Part 4: what the locals haven't sold, they use. So, there are cluster bomb casings (which were made to split in half on impact to release hundreds of bomblets) being used as flower pots for onions, etc or as stilts for the villagers' pig pen or rice store, bellows made from mortar shell casings used by the village blacksmith, the farm tools being mnade by the smithy from pieces of iron, aluminium cut up for cutlery. And then the "piece de resistance": a 200lb defused whole bomb had been rigged up as an air pressure tank for the local garage to blow up tyres.
But still we kept coming back to the jars, sitting there for thousands of years, now bullet marked in places as they were used as shields, but still like Stonehenge, a place of real history. Against a war that never was admitted to be happening.
Also went for a trip to a Hmong village in the mountains around the plain. Most aren't open to tourists, you need a permit to visit. The majority of Hmong joined with the Americans for the money and free guns / uniforms, but some villages opted out and stayed on their farms and many got blown up there. All told the reckoning is that 1 million Laos people lost their lives out of a population of 3 million at that time.
Back in Vientiane now, on to central Laos tomorrow to try to get to see some limestone gorges, waterfalls and cave systems.
And on a lighter note, some of Murphy's Laws on Combat Operations (thanks to Craters Bar):
- Incoming fire has right of way
- Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammunition
- The enemy diversion you're ignoring will be the main attack
- If your attack is going well, its an ambush
- When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy
- Never draw fire, it irritates those around you
- Never share a trench with anyone braver than yourself
- Everything being equal, the side with the simplest uniform wins
- The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire, is incoming friendly fire
- Each side is convinced that they are about to lose, they are both right
- Always remember, your weapon was made by the lowest bidder!
Cheers!
Mike
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