In the Capital City

At this point in time I'm in Vientiane, the capital city of The People's Democratic Republic of Laos. Let me back up a week or so to fill you all in on whats been going on...
So after hanging out in Luang Prabang for a couple of days I decided to head out to Phonsavan for a look around. The reason I wanted to head out there is for two reasons: one, there is a really cool archaeological site out there called the Plain of Jars and two, it was the most heavily bombed part of the country during the Indochina/Vietnam Wars.
Phonsavan is actually a small sleepy town out in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful mountains with bright green rice paddies at their base surround the outside of the city. This city, along with the rest of the country, has a very sad history however and it is only now that the people are trying to regroup and pull the lives back together. Brief history lesson that you should all know about...
From 1964 to 1773 Laos was a battlefield in a war that most of the Western world didn't know about. During this time both the USA and North Vietnam (along with China) acted directly against the Geneva Accord of 1962, which recognized the neutrality of Laos and forbade the presence of all foreign military personnel. It basically didn't want other countries using Laos as a military theatre for their own benefit. To get around this agreement the USA temporarily turned air force officers into civilian pilots to fly secret flights over Laos. So secret was this part of the war even the name of the country was banished from all official communications; participants simply referred to Laos as the "Other Theatre". Since as early as 1959, the USA through the CIA, had been training the native Laos village people, the Hmong for guerrilla warfare against the North Vietnamese supported group, the Pathet Laos. During the first few years of the war the American-Hmong forces lost miserably to the stronger Pathet Lao. In order to not loose face the Americans decided to use their "civilian" pilots to bomb Laos in order to continue the war against the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao. So for nine years the United States complete ignored all of the Rules of Engagement (part of which says you cannot drop bombs within 500 meters of a hospital or temple) and dropped bombs throughout Laos and most heavily along the Hoh Chi Minh Trail. Totalling 580,944 flights over Laos by 1973, the secret air force dropped an average of ONE PLANELOAD OF BOMBS EVERY 8 MINUTES, 24 HOURS A DAY, FOR NINE YEARS! Think about it... By the war's end the bombing amounted to approximately 1.9 million metric tonnes dropped in all, or if you want to look at it from a more personal view, over a half-tonne for every man, woman and child living in Laos.
So now, over thirty years after the war, this small picturesque town has to still deal with the affects of the war every day. There are thousands of land mines and bombs which are unexploded that go off every day. Each year 60 people die from unexploded bombs 50% are children who see the small "bombies" or personal land mines that look about like a baseball and start playing with them. You might think that all foreign aid would have come now directly from the USA for the cleanup and de-mining of this region but sadly that is not the case. The meager amount of foreign aid comes from Japan and Australia, two countries that played no part in the war.
During my time in Phonsavan I had the opportunity to learn more about this sad part in the history of the Lao People and also to see a bit deeper into their history and check out the Plain of Jars. No one really knows how these huge jars got out there (some of the biggest are 3 meters tall and weigh over 2 tons) or what their purpose was. There are hundreds of them in total and in order to tour the jars I had to walk on a marked trail. The trail was said to have been checked for mines as deep as 24 inches while on either side of the trail it had only been spot checked. I stayed on the trail. All over the hillsides you can still see huge bomb craters from where they had been dropped. Its kind of surreal because some of the craters have a sign near it that says "Bomb crater made by the American Imperialists and their puppets, 1970".
After the Plain of Jars experience I headed down further south to Vang Vieng, a really small town on the Nam Song river that has turned into a bit of a backpackers ghetto. The locals have found that a good way to make money is to rent out tractor tire tubes so that people can tube down the river, which is actually really fun. I stayed in a small bamboo hut by the river which was really peaceful and relaxing except for one night while I was sitting on my porch someone decided to light off some fire crackers. Thinking someone had a gun, the military presence in the town rushed into compound I was staying in with AK-47s drawn ready for war or something. Watching all of this that night from my porch did liven things up quite a bit.
After hanging out in Vang Vieng for about 5 days I took the bus south again to Vientiane where I'm at now. The city doesn't have a lot going on in it other then the fact that it is the government seat for the country. The city sits on the Mekong river and today I rented a bike and rode down along the river and stopped at some of the small French cafes along the way. The French influence from the colonial times is very evident here as well. They even built an Arc de Triomphe like the one in Paris.
Tomorrow I'm going further south to Paxan where there is a 7km long cave that you take a boat through in order to do some exploring. Should be good. Stay in touch and I'll try to do the same...Signing off.