Plain Of Jars

I had a fantastic time at the Plain of Jars in Phonsavon, Laos. We spent three days there. Phonsavon reminds me of the Wild West. It’s very quiet and small. You can practically see the dustballs rolling down main street.

We hired a guide for the day and we had a private driver for a week. Our driver drove us from Luang Prabang to Phonsavon and then we went on to Vang Vieng. It was a terrific way to see Laos.

I’ve heard that most travelers think the Plain of Jars is boring, but I found it fascinating. In addition to walking through the fields, we were able to explore some caves in the area that once sheltered residents during the war.

We had to stay on a marked path and were told not to wander too far away for fear of buried bombs exploding underneath our feet. As we were walking, we could see bombs exploding in the distance. It was all the warning I needed.

Our guide told us that the area is going to be made into a World Heritage Site. The landscape is breath-taking with rolling green hills and cattle grazing in the distance. It was a terrific journey and one that I would gladly make again.

I was there a few years ago, and I got this guide who presumably excavated the thing without being an archeologist and had big plans on how to turn this into a money machine, just as soon as there was a real road leading to Phonsavan. He also had some magnificent stories about the place which are hard to forget. I wonder how it worked out for him…

It’s really quite impressive and fascinating to wander around all these carefully-crafted artifacts – some of them huge, others much smaller – without really knowing what they were used for. The variation in size and material (they’re all made of stone, but different types of stone) makes it even harder to fathom what they might have been made for.

If I had to make a guess though, I’d probably opt for a ceremonial usage, possibly combined with food storage (similar to how Buddhist temples in Tibet have stores of tsampo and butter, both of which are food but also used for various ceremonial practices). But if there are no traces of what there was inside these containers, we’ll likely never know for sure.

I really want to go to Laos because I’ve heard that it is an amazing country to visit. To be honest, I’ve never heard anyone speak ill of it! In particular, I want to go to the Plain of Jars. It just sounds so cool!

The Plain of Jars is a large area extending around Phonsavan. Severeal hundred huge stone jars are scattered about and no one knows where they came from. The jars are over 2000 years old and the stone that they are made of can’t be found anywhere within the area! They can weigh as much as six tonnes and may have been used for burial purposes. It’s one of those unexplained mysteries!