Hills, films and big empty jars in Laos

After travelling South to Luang Prabang, we took the logical next step and went back up North to visit Nong Khiaw. This small village is a few hours away by minivan, on a winding road alongside the Nam Ou river (a fun journey despite having 5 passengers for every 3 seats). As we neared our destination the karst scenery became more and more jagged, and the village itself is set in some of the most fantastical landscape I've ever seen. We spent most of our first evening there haltingly crossing the main bridge, pointing at everything and saying "well that's just ridiculous".

The village has a quiet, chilled atmosphere and there's a great Indian restaurant called Deen which does a mean Rogan Josh. As with all of Laos, we felt completely at ease walking back even on unlit streets. Gangs of kids with sticks are more likely to play fight you than beat you up and nick your bike. The only fear we felt was when we thought we had a snake down the sink plughole in our bungalow - but this turned out to be a persistant frog which is probably still there.

We were intending to go on the '100 waterfalls' trek, but Tiger Trail have a monopoly at the moment and the price was a bit much for us. Instead, we met up with some French travelers for a explore out to caves used by villagers to hide from US bombs during the Secret War.

For some exercise we also climbed up to Nong Khiaw Viewpoint, which started out steep and then became markedly steeper, more jungly and very sweaty. It was worth it for the Lord of the Rings-esque tangled forest near the summit and for the panoramic view of the whole area when we did make it up.

We headed briefly back to Luang Prabang in time to catch the first day of the 2013 Asian Film Festival, which had loads of free screenings around town. Of what we saw P-047 was my favourite, an incomprehensible but entertaining thing about a couple of Thai guys breaking into homes and 'borrowing' them for a few hours.

Also worth our time was the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre which had interesting information on local history, livelihoods and religion, plus a cafe serving an awesome 'ethnic sampler' meal - the everyday favourites of locals in a Westerner friendly format.

Then, we traveled a bit South and a long way East to Phonsavan on the Plain of Jars. This was something I was very keen to see - the stone-age jars are scattered over more than 100 sites and vary a great deal in size, although most are big enough for someone to hide in. Most intriguingly no one is sure what they're for. The best guess is funeral urns (or perhaps better, giants' whisky jars) but as they don't exist anywhere else and no other remains of the civilisation have been found, evidence is severely limited. They are very cool.

We ended up also learning a good deal about the Secret War, as the Plain of Jars was at the centre of conflict between the communist Pathet Lao army and the CIA-backed 'secret army' of Hmong people, before and during the war in Vietnam. The US dropped more bombs on Laos than it did on Germany and Japan combined in WWII, but this didn't quite have the desired effect as the Pathet Lao party took power in 1975.

Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) remains a major hazard, and all over the place you can see craters and bits of bare ground where Agent Orange still prevents growth. You can't go off the beaten track as they aren't expecting to fully clear the bombs and chemicals for another 100 years. The Laotians make aluminum cutlery from melted war scrap and use cluster bomb casings as stilts for houses, being very resourceful people.

Phonsavan itself is only 40 years old, as the old town was completely destroyed in the fighting. It is industrial and cold at night - the 1200m altitude outweighs the latitude here. It is a good environment for mulberries however. We went round a silk farm which grows mulberries; feeds the leaves to silk worms; spins, dyes (with dye produced from plants on site) and weaves the resulting silk; and does a line in mulberry tea, wine and jam on the side. Perhaps unsurprisingly they are very successful and the lady who set it up was nominated for the Nobel Prize for her efforts. Now I just need to think of something that tidy that'd work back home...

- Kath