This morning Grace and I departed Sam Neua and arrived in Phonsavan in what was easily the most pleasant travel experience of the trip. We were on a proper bus with the appropriate amount of passengers. The seats were surprisingly spacious, there were no farm animals aboard the bus or people sleeping in the aisles!
The ride was a very pleasant eight hours through the high altitude of Xieng Khuang Province in Northern Laos. I listened to Cat Stevens for about four hours while the bus rattled through the gorgeous countryside. The rolling mountains continue seemingly with no end and are scattered with patchwork farms and terraced rice fields. Forest covers any land which is not used for farming, and a literal sea of green extends indefinitely. We passed through several small villages, which I should note here, that in spite of the obvious poverty, each one of the bamboo thatched homes had a single solar panel in front of it. These people are probably earnign less than $200 per month but they are energy efficient!
Our trip to Sam Neua was sadly too short, and the misadventures we had yesterday prevented us from getting a very good feel of the area, which holds a lot of historical importance for the Lao PDR and the Lao people. The caves in Viang Xia sheltered and helped birth the communist government which is still in power today. In hindsight, it would have been better to rent a motor bike to get out there, instead we suffered through a long and rediculous trip back. Luckily we both kept a sense of humor about it and actually it makes for a good story, so all in all no harm was done. However, it would have been nice to be able to explore the caves more deeply and spend a bit more time at the small museum outside of the cave grounds.
We're both looking forward to tomorrow, we will go see the Plain of Jars, which is not only a mysterious archeological site, but also was a key strategic position along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and is still littered with UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) from the "Second Indo-China War." We're renting bicycles to get out there, perhaps an hour to get to Site One, and will likely visit sites 1,2 and 3. We're getting the bikes in hopes of being transportation self-sufficient and also to get a little exercise after spending twenty hours on buses over the course of the past three days.
If I don't lose any limbs wandering through the land-mine riddled Jars sites, I'll post again from Vang Vieng in a few days!
man zou,
~Christopher~
