Mandi i'm off: Plain of Jars,Phonosavanh,Laos

The main street of Phonosavanh is lined with the offices of the 'Mines Advisory Group',the'Unexploded Ordnance Support Assc'and the restaurants,travel agencies and coffee shops are decorated with bombs from the cute tennis ball size (kids love them) to the giant 500 lbs monstrosities from B 52 sorties.Just in case anyone may be unaware of the bleeding obvious at 7 o'clock each evening a film documentary telling the awesome and awful story of America's secret decade long war on a neutral country plays at the fore mentioned cafes and restaurants.In glorious monochrome the grainy film and the interviews with those that fought it and those still suffering from it are guaranteed to ruin a good meal.

The Plain of Jars is just out of town and is one of life's mystery stories, discovered in 1930 by a French lady there are 58 separate sites containing thousands of large to very large stone jars thought to be the burial urns of an ancient race from the iron age.Many of these jars are broken,smashed, and dotted among them are the huge craters from the B52 sorties,that caused this vandalism, sometimes these raids went on for 24 hours nonstop delivering 3 million tons of ordnance and killing a half million civilians over 9 years

Just google it folks,Americas Secret War or simply The Plain of Jars will provide multiple links to evidence of perhaps the greatest decade long war crime committed since WW 11.

Luckily for all of us the MAG people have cleared enough UXO s to make seeing these marvelous sites possible,as long as one stays on the track of course! Given that the best estimates are that somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of ordnance did not explode it still leaves an awesome amount of work still to be done.It is amazing how resourceful the Laotians have become with all of this scrap metal,most of the aluminum bowls and utensils came from downed aircraft and the bomb casings are used for house stumps,fences,containers and heaps more.