Tour of the Old Capital and Plain of Jars

That evening we sat around talking to other tourists in the town trying to get numbers together for a tour the next day.

We eventually ammassed about 9 people and went to see the old capital of the Province which was almost entirely destroyed by bombing, and the sites of these mysterious stone jars...

On the way we stopped off at a site to see some of the war scrap collected in this province ..

There were some huge bombs..



The Lao countryside is absolutely beautiful...



...but going off the path is inadvisable (see live munition on the ground in the photo) ...




The temple in the old capital dating back to the 16th century...



We then went to see an ancient temple raided by Chinese bandits called the 'Black Flag Claw'.
They burrowed into it to steal any treasures hidden inside..



Here's the tour group when we stopped off for some noodle soup lunch..you have to be careful what you order here. In some parts of Lao, they eat dog !!





Then we drove to see the mysterious stone jars. There were about 26 jar sites and the 4 main ones had been cleared of UXO by the Mines Action Group (MAG) ..

Here's Daniel making sure he stayed between the white markers !



...and the stone jars dating back to between 500 BC to 500 AD.
They were quarried in nearby valleys and moved to these sites, probably using elephants, as the larger ones weigh up to 2 tonnes. Archaeologists believe they were funeral urns and used to store ashes of the dead...they were all placed in very scenic places probably for good resting places for the dead...

...bizzarely, other stone jars have been discovered in Indonesia and Northern India. This was the first i'd ever heard of such things..


There were bomb craters everywhere. Here's me standing in one....



On the way back we stopped off to see the remains of a Russian tank used by the Lao communists..
..and Daniel pretending to drive one :)




All in all a great day...and the guide said that Jar sites would become fully Unesco protected sites within a year or two..


The next day, i booked a local bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, where i was planning to kick back for a few days.....