Ponsavan

We arrived in Ponsavan, home of the Plain of Jars, at about 5:00 in the afternoon. The land isn't quite plain-like, but compared to what we went through to get here, it is quite flat. When we turned left (east) onto the highway to Ponsavan, turning off of the highway from Luang Prabhang to Vientiane, we left the well-traveled tourist trail and moved into the "real" Laos.

The city of Ponsavan is not a particularly pretty place. A place, Rick would say, more suited to everyday life than an appearance-conscious place like Luang Prabhang. I likened it to small town Northern Thailand: Dusty, needing a paint job, construction going on right and left... always building, always half-built.

We found ourselves checked into a large house-turned-guesthouse on the main road into town. As far as residences go, it really was pretty, with teakwood everywhere. We took rooms on the second floor, and relaxed after our trip. Unfortunately, the water stopped working before the girls could get a shower, and a Thai girl without access to a shower (when she wants one) is a bad thing. We were going to check out, but the owner of the guesthouse offered us two rooms in the basement, where there was water. Not much of an improvement in my opinion, but like Rick, I am of the "whatever" camp (as in, I don't worry about minor things that don't effect my overall joie de vie) and we settled in downstairs.

Then, we walked up the road. We passed another guest house and as we stopped a moment to glance around, a man came out and asked us how he could help us. (You have to get used to that in Asia: It's a perfectly valid way to run a respectable business, walking up to somebody in the street and asking them if you can interest them in your offerings. As a Westerner, you would think this is a con man or something, but that's never (rarely) true here.)

We told the fellow we wanted to see the Plan of Jars tomorrow, and we took his business card. (The girls had Lao telephones with them, so we had constant phone access all the people we wanted to talk to.)

We then found a restaurant, discussed our plans for tomorrow (buy our plane tickets in the morning for an afternoon flight back to Vientiane, go see the Plain of Jars, do a little shopping, and then get dropped off at the airport). We then called the fellow from the street, and he showed up at the restaurant 3 minutes later with brochures, order forms, et cetera, and we made our reservation for a van for tomorrow... $30 for the day.

After that, it was back to our room where we went to sleep.