Phonsavanh onward

What a wierd place- a town in the middle of nowhere with a few guest houses and not much else. Phonsavanh is home to UXO (un-exploded ordinance) aplenty and jars. Yep JARS. No the normal flower holding variety. Nope, huge ancient jars, with an unknown purpose.
Lets start with the bombs, during the Vietnam war the Americans in all, their stupidity decided to follow the Viet Kong on their trails out of nam and into Laos. So the Americans bombed Laos too. Unnofficially of course. So what this left was a trail of destruction at the time and a trail of possible destruction to this day. The UXO in Laos in the Phonasavanh area is pretty mextream. They have managed to clear a certain amount out of the 'touristy' area- cus we're sooo important using metal detectors and then visually cleared the areas around the tourist routes. The locals have used UXO's and their aluminium to make cooking utensils, ordaments and also in their entirety to decorate their homes. Entering Phonsavanh there are hotels and guest housed with bombs as decoration at their doors.
The reason we visited Phonsavanh was for the jars. These jars are believed to be 2000 years + and there is debate about their original usage. Phonsavanh like I said is a small town surrounded by paddy fields and Lao-Lao whisky villages. There is not much else here apart from approx 60 sites worth of jars. They range from 1metre to approx 3 metres tall, they are thick and were calved from the mountains about 30km away from the current town.
So this is the tourist attraction and there is not much else to do but it was well worth it.
Back to the UXO, when walking around the site there were markers which were square and painted half red and half white. White means safe and cleared by a metal detector and red means site cleared only. Basically the advise was stay on the track! We also visited a cave where the people hid during the secret war and a Lao- Lao whisky making house where they ferment the sticky rice and turn it in to EVIL alcohol. mmmmm. Approx 45% buit god knows how bad it really is this unrestricted stuff. Had that taste of a bad night straight after you'd downed it.
there are pics pending but this tinterweb connection is too god dam slow
toodle pip. P.s Off to Nam tomorrow- visa's cost $50 each theiving bastards. Nam better be good.