2000 years ago, so legend has it, a mighty king named Khun Cheung fought a decisive battle with his ancient enemies (possibly a race of long dead giants) and emerged victorious. In celebration of this great day he ordered feasting and drinking throughout the land. Huge jars were created as storage pots for the food and to brew the vast quantities of Lao Lao whiskey necessary to get his armies completely legless. The festivities lasted days and are still talked of in awe filled tones many generations later.

Grave or whisky drum?

All that are left of these drunken parties are the jars, carved in local stone and strewn about the countryside in seemingly random fashion. Improbably they have survived not only two thousand years of weathering, but also the most sustained and concentrated bombing campaign the world has ever seen. Now they sit silently long after the revellers have turned to dust. Now very much part of their natural surroundings evoking Shelley, "Look upon my works ye mighty and despair". All trace of the once great hands that built them gone and forgotten.

War what war?

A quick word on the bombing of Laos by the way... At no time did the Americans ever conduct a so called 'secret war' against the Ho Chi Minh Trail that may or may not have been forged by the Vietnamese around the DMZ. It is all a communist myth designed to undermine U.S. credibility. No bombs were illegally dropped over Laos, the local people do not regularly use American cluster bomb cases as building materials, cattle troughs or fence posts, there is no evidence of unexploded ordinance in the countryside. Laos does not have a suspiciously high number of three legged cows, or no legged people for that matter. Large bomb craters do not (repeat not) pock mark the fields of Northern Laos like a golf ball with acne. There is absolutely no evidence to support these grossly erroneous claims (made by mostly foreign people, possibly Muslims with almost definitely proven links to Al Quaeda) and anyone who says otherwise should be branded a terrorist and subjected to several years of incarceration without trial or charge, not that we'd do that, we're the land of the free. Not on US soil at least. Cuba on the other hand...

Scraping the Lao Lao barrel

Anyway, we pulled into Phonsavan, the new capital town of the region (after the previous capital was bombed completely flat during the 60's) and set about sorting out a tour, we quickly found a few hardy travellers to join us, Kim who we'd met before in Luang Prabang and Tal, one of those lone Israeli travellers you rarely see. Our guide, a nice local guy, told us of the legend of the massive post battle booze up as though it was gospel truth. Nothing we could say would deter him from his belief in the story his great grandparents passed down to him. More probably, according to archaeologists (though what do they know eh?) the jars were used as funerary urns. There is evidence of bones, ashes and offerings inside and underneath some. Maybe a more convincing theory, but we liked the party idea better.

We all went out to three sites of jar interest. The first was amazing, more than three hundred massive stone jars sticking up on the flowing hillsides. Some so big you could get in but not out again. There was also a cave here where the local farmers used to hide when the American B52's did such a good job of secretly bombing the hell out of the area. The bomb craters are numerous, obvious and completely undeniable. About three million tones of explosives were dropped over Laos between 1960 and 1970, thats one tonne for every member of the population!

Planning our party?

Site two was smaller but set on two little hills with great views. Our guide explained that when the first big party was over some of the men realised (presumably through their stinging hangovers) that their girlfriends had missed the fun and would be annoyed. So they transported several of the still full jars here and did the whole thing again. His unfoundering belief was charming. We stopped in a local womans 'farm' (hovel) to see the production of the local lao lao whisky. Next to the still were quite a few pots of seriously strong booze and throughout our guides chat the local kids kept sneaking in for a quick snifter. They must be drunk all day! I got to try some of it... there's you're fuel shortage solution right there, you could fly jet planes with this stuff.

Kim being accosted by her admirer

Site three was no less spectacular, about ninety jars set amongst rice paddies and water buffalo (wallowing in suspiciously round looking ponds). Presumably the revellers realised their girlfriends mothers had missed out and moved one last time. Our guide triumphantly told us that no evidence of dead bodies, bones or ashes were found anywhere near these jars as if this lack of proof somehow proved his case. We smiled inwardly (without actually knowing the truth either) and attempted to fit into some of the smaller urns to see if any lao lao had been left at the bottom. We even had our lunch provided in a nearby farmhouse so comprehensive was our tour. Then at the end we stopped by the site of a destroyed Russian tank. Most of what was not nailed down had been whisked away but you could still see what it used to be. Someone had apparently only recently managed to disconnect the main turret gun barrel, which I assume is now part of the plumbing in his house.

The bomb fence...but there was no war!

Once our tour had finished we all jumped straight into the next tuk tuk that came along and sped the 30 km or so out of town to a little Hmong village. Here, so we had seen on a couple of agency posters the locals had extensively used cluster bomb cases as building materials and we just had to take a look. The village turned out to be bigger than we'd imagined and predominately made of boring old stuff like bamboo and stone, but our driver had never seen the bomb houses either and ended up just as excited as we were. We all scrambled through the dusty streets asking for directions before finding what we wanted. A long fence built from spent cases, house stilts and animal troughs, all sorts of imaginative uses for Americas patent WMD's of the 1960's.

A free hardwearing trough

On that note we went back to our respective hotels. The next day we would all meet up again at Phonsavans hilltop bus station (with its astounding rice terrace views) completely by accident for one last goodbye. The bus we were lucky enough to catch to the Northern village of Sam Neua was probably the comfiest for many many months of crap, dusty, sardine tin travel. There were very few locals on the bus, no other tourists and a few boxes of rice, veggies, chickens etc. I had a whole seat all to myself as did Amanda, all the way there. It was complete bliss. Looking out of the window I came to the conclusion that although Loas roads tend to veer towards the unbelievably windy the hills and valleys they actually wind through comprise some of the best scenery in the whole of Asia. Leaving the Plain of Jars far behind us we sped into unknown territory with light hearts and our spirit of adventure duly restored.

A unique plant pot