Bomb crater with jars

The last day in Phonsavan gets off to an interesting start, asking to extend our stay we're told that, tonight, the place is fully booked. The bus to samnue departed already, one a day at 0800, the search for another room before check out, but no real problem, there are so many places and so few people. I find another room quickly, smaller, darker, but clean enough and a little cheaper, return to the guesthouse to pack, am asked if I'm leaving. A phone call is made, the phone given to me. It's a misunderstanding, we can stay another night.

A trip to the museum, glimpses into the life of the land, the realms which rose and fell across the plain. Moving back into the centre we find a tuk tuk and then move off towards site one, arriving mid afternoon, paths lining the hillside, red earth standing out across darker shrubland, rocks protruding from blackened and burned patches.

It's an odd place, something surreal about it, these objects quarries and carried, spilled across the landscape. Plain, tool worked, iron age, some ridged but most not, only a few carrying imagery upon jar or lid. And bombed. Here the craters from U.S. bombing missions remain, gouged into the earth, reminders of the senseless devastation hurled by the empire upon distant lands; that self same fear which burns other countries and cultures today, lessons denied and refuted rather than learned.

Today an archeological dig, a set of teeth, some bones, their trenches under canvas, others upon the hills, foxholes dug into slopes; everywhere the reverberations and debris of war. And the jars remain, mute witnesses to each brief kingdom, to the ebb and flow of history and fortune. 

But too soon it's time to head back into town, the late sunlight throwing beans up through the scattered clouds, shining upon the jars. No transport and an 8km walk back into town, we get lucky, hitching a lift in back of a pickup truck, a group up from Savanahket taking pity and sharing their transportation into town, the setting sun behind us, another act of random kindness shining brightly upon our path.