We said goodbye to Vietnam and caught a taxi to the bus station with a little apprehension wondering what our bus was going to look like for the 18 hour overnight trip. Luckily as the token foreigners we were given the whole back section of 5 seats so we were actually really comfortable. Unfortunately there was no toilet which was a slight worry for me.
But I shouldn’t have been that worried as we seemed to stop every hour or so to pick up and drop off parcels, so much so that I think the passengers were secondary. This did mean that I was peeing on the side of the road huddled behind a tree while the dogs in neighbouring houses barked at me but when you got to go, you got to go.
We hit the border very early in the morning and parked up and waited until it opened at 7ish. Luckily we were there first as the speed in which people were being processed was pretty slow. We then walked to the Laos side, got our visas and passports stamped and were back on the bus. The difference in road quality was evident straight away and coupled with us climbing straight into mountains made the rest of the journey slow going.
But we made it to Phonsavan only about an hour late and after booking into our guest house went for some lovely Laos noodle soup. The reason we stopped in Phonsavan was to see the Plain of Jars but that was for tomorrow. The other reason Phonsavan is on the map is because it was one of the most heavily bombed areas by the Americans in the Vietnam War. The reason being that the Northern Vietnamese were using Laos as a supply route to transport supplies to the fighters stationed near Ho Chi Minh City. The city itself is relatively new as the old one was completely destroyed by the bombing.
There were some really great information centres on what went on so we spent the afternoon learning about the impact of the bombings which is still felt today. Due to this war Laos is the most bombed country in the world per capita. More bombs were dropped on it in the so called secret war than each side dropped in WWII. Over two million tonnes. If the Americans couldn’t find their target in Vietnam they would circle over Laos and drop their load on the Ho Chi Minh trail as landing with a full load was deemed too dangerous.
The majority of these bombs were cluster bombs where an outer casing holds over 200 tennis ball sized bombs which after reaching 2000 revolutions explode. But a lot of these bombs were dropped too low and it is estimated 30% did not detonate, creating unexploded ordinance (UXO). So pretty much the whole area was one big land mine. These UXO are still killing people today. To fix the problem each square metre of land has to have a metal detector swept over it as these bombs are now under the surface of the ground. It costs $10 to clear a 10x10metre area.
To tell you the honest truth it was pretty gut wrenching hearing the stories, especially considering Laos is considered one of the 20 poorest countries in the world and most survive by farming. However a lot are too scared to expand their fields for fear of hitting a UXO. It just made us both feel sick. We did feel a little better when we found out Obama had pledged 90 million dollars to help with clean up which I must add none of the information centres mentioned in their stories when asking for money.
After this we headed to one of the local cafes for a well deserved beer. S
Clean and surprisingly comfortable. It meant for a pretty easy trip from Hanoi to Phonsavan.
The Main Street in Phonsavan certainly had a bit of a “frontier town” feel to it.