Laos - Luang Prabang to Phonsavan

After a night in the border town of Huay Xai (not really worth spending too much time in itself) we caught a bus to Luang Prabang in the North of Laos. We decided against the popular 2 day slow boat trip having already spent our share of time on the Mekong river of the past few months. The bus journey was an overnighter and our first experience of a bus that we couldn't lie down on for that length of time. I just looked the journey up actually, and according to Wikipedia,
'The road from Huay Xai (the Laos town across the river from Chiang Khong) to Luang Prabang is poorly maintained, remote, unlit, unmarked and extremely dangerous for the unfamiliar traveler, particularly in the wet season. Regular buses nonetheless do run, taking 14–16 hours'.
Worse than the aching in our legs, the winding country roads and general lack of sleep was the fact that the air-con was cranked up to the extent where one fellow traveller described it as 'a fridge'. Still, the starry night was beautiful to gaze out at (at 4am...) and we made it in one piece in the morning at Luang Prabang, a city which is a UNESCO World Heritage sight and for good reason. The city itself is beautiful. It lies along the banks of the Mekong and was, until the Communist takeover in 1975, the Royal capital and seat of Government of the Kingdom of Laos. We spent our first full day there looking at some of the temples, visiting the old Palace (now also a museum) and spending the evening at the night market.
The second day we decided to hire bikes (again) and took off into the countryside. After an hour or so we came across a small waterfall up a stony track and sat for a while reading and dabbling our feet in the river. Sadly, the track on the way down proved too much for my tyres and I got my second puncture of the trip so far. Luckily they seem to be used to this around here and it didn't take long to find someone able to fix it. We carried on a few more kilometres, along roads with mountains either side until the continuing uphill battle became a bit too much for my legs and we decided to turn around and find somewhere for a late lunch. At this point, Kev got a puncture so we had to find another place to get it fixed.
We made it back to Luang Prabang in the late afternoon and decided to go and upload some photos. Then we went for a beer. Then we met some lovely Finnish guys and had a couple more beers and a few games of pool. Suddenly it was midnight (how did that happen??) and we were back at our guesthouse having a couple more drinks with the Finnish guys. When we finally went to bed at around 2am (once I'd packed..) we realised that the hard drive, where all our photos and important documents are stored, was no longer in the bag. Obviously 2am was not really the time to be charging back to the internet cafe, the bar and the room where the Finnish guys stayed, however with a bus to catch at 8.30 the next morning we were desperate. To cut a long story (and long night!) short, we found the hard drive at 8am in the internet shop where Kev had forgotten to unplug it and made the bus to Phonsavan.
The road to Phonsavan was fairly similar to the road to Luang Prabang, with the added worry that every passenger was given a plastic bag to throw up in. Many did. The Laos scenery is truly stunning and there was plenty of time to admire it! At around 3pm, the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. For 4 hours. Yes, we had broken down on a narrow winding road with no signs of civilisation to be seen. Nobody seemed even a slight bit concerned about this and everyone kept smiling as various attempts to fix the engine failed. The sight of a group of Laos men taking apart a DVD player to somehow fix a bus engine (nope, I don't get it!) in the pitch black whilst laughing and joking will stay with me for a long time!
We were only spending one day in Phonsavan, which is famous for the nearby 'Plain of Jars'. The Plain of Jars is basically an area of 7 sights (3 of which are popularly visited) dotted with huge stone jars used for unknown purposes around 2,500 years ago. As well as this, the area is full of unexploded ordinance from the Secret War conducted against Laos between 1965 and 1973, some of which has been cleared but the majority of which has not, leaving huge areas uninhabitable. After deciding against going on an organised tour, we hired a motorbike, blithely ignoring the warnings of rain. What's a little rain? we thought to ourselves. We dressed in trousers, raincoats and proper shoes (first time since Scotland) and were actually still cold. We figured the temperature here must be pretty low. Kev looked it up afterwards - 17 degrees. Brrr. Anyway, we arrived at the first jar sight, an eerie kind of place as the huge jars are just dotted about the countryside but with huge bomb craters in between them, and areas that are out of bounds as they haven't been cleared surrounding them. A really strange, strange sight.
We carried on driving ( in the rain now) to what we thought was the second sight but got a little lost, and ended up 30km in the wrong direction. Oops! By the time we backtracked, the rain had come on strongly and we were getting pretty soaked. Added to this, the second sight was up a dirt road which wasn't really coping too well with the rain and probably wasn't the best idea for a motorbike novice to be riding up. We made it unharmed and, after seeing the second sight, decided not to risk the conditions for the third but to drive back to Phonsavan. Having made it safely through the rain and mud and bad conditions, it seemed ironic that we crashed the bike back in the town right outside our guesthouse. I should add very quickly that no person or bike was hurt. Still, it left us a little shaky and we thought maybe we should have done the tour after all!
Since then we have been to Vang Vieng and are now in Vientiane, but that will have to wait for another day!