Watching the World Go By

Today, I parted ways with my new friend and headed out to Phonsavan, which is famous for the mysterious (i.e. no one knows how it happened) Plain of Jars. The bus left Luang Prabang and took the road south. Now, when I say we took the road south, I mean we took THE road south. For more than three hours, we drove over the mountains on a paved road with not a single intersecting road. Villages ran along the road, rather than being set back on their own road. Very strange to my city ways, but the scenery was beautiful.

We were traveling too fast to get many pictures of the villages, but I did manage to snap this shot of a house. Notice the pattern in the woven bamboo walls. The houses all had different patterns.

I also saw a lot of cute kids. There was a pair of boys that couldn’t have been more than two-years old wearing t-shirts, but no pants, holding hands to try to help each other down an embankment. Very cute. And groups of kids playing, while carrying their young siblings in slings on their backs.

It is still Songkran, so there are of course people at the side of the road shooting water at the bus. Several people really soaked us because they sprayed the bus with hoses, but most were kids with SuperSoaker-style water pistols.

Along the way, we passed quite a few men carrying rifles on their backs. It was later explained to me that this was to protect travelers from bands of thieves that used to attack vehicles on these remote roads. This was all the more interesting because of the holiday. We were seeing men with rifles slung over their shoulders protecting the roads outside the villages, juxtaposed with kids carrying water guns in an identical manner, seemingly protecting their village with water.

After a nap, I awoke to find us cruising through pastural hillsides and eventually to fertile plains.