We spent a couple of days visiting a Hmong village and exploring a couple of plain of jar sites.
DAY 1 - Hmong Village and remote jars
I was out of my comfort zone today as we meet and stayed in a remote Hmong Village. There were plenty of surprises.
The Village was celebrating the Hmong New Year which is 15 days of drinking rice wine, playing games and celebrating.
We were driven 1 hour out of Phonsavan where we were dropped and and started following a dirt road then some tracks into the middle of no where
We pasted these recently cut rice paddies.
Bridge across a stream
After a few hours we reached the Hmong village where we would stay. We dropped our packs headed further into the mountains to the jar site.
The remote Phakeo jar site. There were these giant stone jars spread throughout the forest in a 40m/40m area
Most of the jars were full of water. I looked into one of the jars and spotted a green snake. Karen wanted to have a look without getting too close
This is the Hmong Village we stayed at. They live a very simple life in basic huts. After spending a day with the people I realised I would go completely nuts with boredom living here.
Some Americians built this water tap with a constant flow fed from a spring for the village. This has dramatically changed the lives of the villages who no longer have to travel right down the valley to the stream to get water.
They store their corn in the tree with a rooster tied up to guard it.
This educational poster was inside on of the huts. We thought it was pretty funny and makes you realise how swine flu may have come about.
The village was celebrating the Hmong New Year so the neighbouring village came over to play games.
All the men and the village chief were in this hut drinking rice wine. Every few minutes one of them would puke out of the window. It was so funny.
They asked us to join them so we went ot the village chiefs hut and had a couple of rice wine/whisky drinks.
They had a lot of different types of food that we ate with these spoons melted down with bombies from during the war. The Hmong people are very sexist. The woman always wait on the men and go out a do most of the work during the day.
They asked us what we wanted for dinner. We agreed to chicken and they went out the back and killed a duck. Then a mother and her children cooked it up with vegetables the ladies had collected during the day. They were all very shy probably because we were some of the first white people we had seen. They have their vegetable gardens several kms away to stop the chickens eating them.
DAY 2 – Waterfall, bombies village, Jar Site 1
We left the village after a quick breakfast and followed some more tracks down into a valley, through some more villages and then followed the stream up these waterfalls. After being picked up we stopped by a bombies village, and Jar site 1.
There were hundreds of spiders on this plant
This is one of the rice fields belowing to the village we stayed at.
we found this giant beetle on the side of the track.
Children sometimes get bombies mistaken by these round potato looking things and give them a kick or pick them up and the bombie explodes.
Putting our shoes back on after this stream crossing.
Some lemongrass growing on the side of the track.
This big crater beside this house was created by a large bomb during the war.
We walked through this terrain for most of the day.
butterfly lands on Glenns head.
Another large rice paddie of a neighbouring village.
After lunch we jumped in the water and headed up through a series of cascades and waterfalls.
Taking a break at one of the large waterfalls.
We visited this Bombies village. This hut was held up by the shell of an unexploded bomb.
This person made a fence from the shells.
After visiting this village and speaking to the locals we realised the extent of the bombs dropped in the Xieng Khung Province and the impact it has had on the people. You can not travel anywhere of the main roads and tracks for fear of being blown up by unexploded bombs.
At the bombies village the teenagers were out trying to find partners in their tradtional rituals. The boys and girls throw balls to each other and if they like each other they are allowed to talk. Our guide told us all about it but it was very confusing.
We visited the plain of jars site 1. This site has the most jars out of all 160 sites. Many areas have been cleared of bombs by MAG.
the white line marking the boundary of the site that had been cleared of bombs underground.
There were a total of 250 jars jars scattered throughout the site with each weighing an average of 600kg. The largest weighs 6 tonnes.
They dont really know what they stone carved jars were for. People think they were used as funeral urns as bones how been discovered in some. Our guide beleived they were used to store water.
The jars were carves from the hills in the background and somehow transported to these sites
They think this cave at the site was a crematorium for the dead.
Cave entrance
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