The Best of Cambodia & Laos

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PHONSAVAN & THE PLAIN OF JARS LUANG PRABANG & NORTHERN LAOS
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Site Three is the most impressive and atmospheric of all the sites, marked out by a backdrop
of rolling hills dotted with bomb craters and wooded with pine trees. To reach it
you walk across rice paddies and cross a small bamboo bridge. There are 130 jars here,
some of which are in very bad condition.
To see the sites, there are a few options. Sensible restrictions (given all the things that
can go boom!) mean that you cannot go alone without a proper guide. This means that
quite a number of agencies catering to tourists have appeared in Phonsavan. They all
offer day tours with a licensed guide. These cost around $10 per person, or you can rent
a whole car or minivan for $50 to $100. Some guesthouses also run tours that are slightly
cheaper. A van with a driver will cost you between $20 and $50 for the day, depending
on where it is you want to go.
The Tourism Office offers five trips with a sliding scale of costs, depending on how
many people are in the party. The Keo Kong Guesthouse, a popular option among the
budget-minded, runs a tour daily for between $4 and $7.50, but will not go without a
minimum of five people.
Avoid tuk-tuk drivers if they approach you offering trips to see the jars at a much better
rate than that offered by official outlets. This is because they can’t get permits to take
passengers to all the sites, so it is a false economy since you will see very little.
The Xieng Khuang Tourism Office publishes a very useful pamphlet called “Do-it
yourself activities around Phonsavan.” It lists a number of interesting places to take in, as
a complement to the more heavily visited sites. MAG (Mine Advisory Group) operates
an office in Phonsavan and it is well worth a visit. Excellent information on the UXO
(unexploded ordnance) problem in the area is on display and the office shows two awardwinning
documentaries on UXO clearance in Laos nightly. Donations go directly to
UXO clearance.
Hot Springs The natural hot springs at Muang Kham are government run. The
actual pool where the hot water bubbles up from the rock up is fenced off, but you can
get a view by taking a short path starting opposite the Hot Springs Resort. If you want
to bathe then you have to go to the resort itself. It has a series of individual bathrooms
in which you can soak in the warm spring water. It costs 5,000 kip.
Tham Piew Tham Piew is a cave near Muang Kham, with a tragic and violent history.
Some say it was used by locals as a shelter from aerial attack during the dark years of war.
Others say it was a North Vietnamese Army field hospital. Whichever is true all those
inside it were incinerated by an American rocket in the late ’60s. The blackened walls
bear testament to this tragic event. The journey there involves passing through both
ethnic Hmong and Black Tai villages.
Muang Khoun
Muang Khoun was called Xieng Khuang and was once the provincial capital. Once
capital of a royal kingdom, years of war and pillage compounded by obliteration from
the sky meant that the town was all but destroyed. The temple, Wat Phia Wat, is worth
a look. The enormous seated Buddha has a bullet hole through its forehead, and sits at
the end of a row of towering brick pillars.