Plain of Jars
Phonsavan Area, Xieng Khuang City, Xieng Khuang Province...

Friday, November 28, 2003

The city is called Xieng Khuang, but the area is called Phonsavan, and all the tourists are marketed the destination as Phonsavan, and some people call the city Phonsavan. But it's name is Xieng Khuang, and it's the capitol of Xieng Khuang Province. The old capitol is called Muong Khoune. Sounds like a case of bad branding to me....

There are some interesting stories about what these stone jars are all about, but the truth is that no one really knows. It seems most likely that they are for sarcophagi because of the bones and ornaments found in the jars. They are estimated to be about 3,000 years old and are scattered around the Xieng Khuang area.  In the three sites we visited we probably saw 500+ jars.

Some of the jars are carved of solid stone, but some are made of a primitive cement. The cement is made by boiling sugar cane, buffalo skin, sand and rock together.

They believe this cave served as both a giant kiln for the 'cement' pots and also as a crematorium. Once the cement mixture set, the pot was cooked in the kiln to finish it.

During the American/Vietnam war Lao and Vietnamese (VC) soldiers hid out in this cave. The bomb craters from American planes are plentiful in this area (Xieng Khuang Province) as well. When we visited My Son in Vietnam, the VC had also been hiding out in the temple. I'm not sure why, perhaps they thought they could shoot at U.S. planes without retaliation if they hid in a sacred area. Unfortunately, many pots were destroyed during the war because of this miscalculation.

Not a whole lot to tell about the various jars pictured here. Some are round, some are squared. The ones on hilltops were meant to house the higher society folk, and the ones lower down were meant to house the common citizens. The king's jar (behind the gentlemen below and also on Spaz's Lao page) was carved of solid stone. Most of the citizens' jars were made of the cement mixture.

These were the fun shots. Our guide is pretending to drink Lao Lao from one of the jars. Later, he showed me the comfortable armchair jar. There is a tree at Site 2 that was simply magical, and our guide said that they used to come to worship this tree. The last shot is a great candidate for repotting.

On the way to Site 3 we walked over a rickety bridge and through a rice field. On the way back we saw the oddest thing: two girls were following a water buffalo around with a shovel and a bag. I'm not sure if they were obeying some pooper scooper law, or if they couldn't just get the animal to poop in the right field, but I'm sure they had a good reason to be playing with dung... go figure.

When we first got to Site 1 it was quite cold and windy. Xieng Khuang is at about 1,500 meter elevation so it quite a bit cooler than other areas of Lao. The three gentlemen were intently staring at Kathy and I as our guide was telling us the story of how they found the bones and ornaments in the big jar behind the guys. They kept looking so I took their picture. They seemed to think it was as funny as I did. J

On the way out we stopped and saw a Lao Lao, or Lao Whiskey, distillery. Basically farm brand rice moonshine. Phongsaly, by the way, is famous for it's Lao Lao both for its flavor and its strength. Phongsaly Lao Lao is green in color because they filter it through leaves. Anyway, this still was in Xieng Khuang, and was on a farm. A pig farm to be exact. The mash makes great pig feed.

We also stopped to look at a buffalo shed made with leftover 500lb bomb casings for posts.

There was some Hmong festival going on at the time. Our guide didn't have too much information about it, but from what we can understand it goes a little like this:

The beautiful womens dress up in deir ver expensif dress, maybe like $5,000,000 dollar one dress, or $5,000 an den trow the ball. Also has bull fight.

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Copyright 2003, Dana M. Brash. All Rights Reserved.