As I was mentioning before, I had to book a single tour to go to the Plain of Jars and to the waterfall. Early in the morning my guide picked me up from the hostel. He asked if I would mind, if his friend joined us. "My friend wants to practice English, and would like to see for himself how a tour looks like, because he wants to become a tour guide" - he explained. I didn’t mind. And so, me and three people – one Hmong guide, one Hmong trainee ;) and one Lao driver were on the way to the Plain of Jars and the waterfall. Small explanation: the Hmong are a local tribe in Laos (actually, the Hmong are an Asian ethnic group, they live not only in Laos, but also e.g. in Vietnam or Burma). Hmong people are animists, not Buddhists. As I was told, they believe in power and forces of nature (and spirits that are around us) and do not worship any particular god. The Hmong of Laos were victims of the violent history of the region. In the 60. and 70. the CIA trained many of them to form special commandos (which then fought in the Vietnam War, then in the so called 'Secret War'), after the war Laos became a communist country, and the Hmong were prosecuted by the authorities and placed in the 're-education' camps. Many of them flew to Thailand, or to the USA, but still, there’s a big group of internally displaced Hmong in Laos. They organized resistance, but failed to obtain the same rights as other citizens of Laos. I mean, well, theoretically they do have the same rights, they are being discriminated though and apparently there still occur cases of physical aggression against Hmong in Laos.
Plain of Jars (at least the part that is available for visitors) is divided into three sites. First of them is really impressive – two fields full of stone jars and an interesting limestone cave. There were also some other tourists there.
A 'random tourist' at the Plain of Jars ;) (our'random tourist' is 1,75m tall, so the jar must be about 2 meters big)
At the second site I was alone and I could spot a lizard :) It might not seem that spectacular, I know, but the lizard was actually eating a cricket. I've never seen it in nature (not in a zoo or something). I tried to be really quiet, took some pictures and made even a small video. It’s not National Geographic quality, but I hope you will enjoy it anyways ;)
Third stop on our way was the waterfall. As it is a dry season in Laos at the moment, the waterfall has almost dried out. And so, I could hike, so to say, in the waterfall - well in the river bed, you know what I mean? It was great!
My guide and the apprentice ;) had really enough of me at the certain moment, I could tell. But well, I told them they can leave me there alone, they didn’t want to though, they meant it’s too dangerous – not even the hike itself, but the path back through the woods – there were apparently still plenty of landmines and UXOs (I learned that the origin of the most of the UXOs are the carpet bombings conducted by the US in during the 'Secret War’ in 1970).
I’ve also learned that Laos didn’t sign the Ottawa Treaty (‘Mine Ban Treaty') – for one main reason, it does not have the financial means to proceed with the demining, and each party to the treaty must destroy all the mines within four years. One interesting thing I’ve found out later on, is that my country – Poland did not ratify the treaty (signed it though, back in 1997). It makes me wonder... Especially, when you consider that it was a Polish engineer/ soldier who invented the first man-portable mine detector. We should be the first to ratify the treaty! (Sorry for this political statement... call me idealist, but I do believe that there are causes that should make the whole world cooperate – and demining/ banning landmines is definitely one of them).
Speaking of explosives, in Laos I’ve seen some interesting and rather unexpected ways, in which local people are using the shells of bombs. Namely – to make satellite dishes (!), as construction elements, even cutlery is made out of it.
A barn in the countryside - bomb shells as 'pillars'.
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