Author Archives: Marce

We’re bogged down with unwritten Ireland stories but rather than let the present drift further into the past we’re jumping ahead to get current. We’ll backfill the rest of our time in Ireland later, but for now, let’s get caught up. As always, check the dates on the posts. We always date them when the events actually happened rather than when we get around to posting. We also keep posts in date order, so scroll back if you’ve missed something.

There’s only one flight per day to and from the Plain of Jars. That meant we had an extra day and a half to spend in Phonsavan until our flight out. We didn’t plan anything special. Our tour gave us so much to think about, between the mystery of the jars and the consequences of the bombing and the ongoing task of clearing the land of unexploded ordnance.

We revisited the Mines Advisory Group (MAG International) headquarters to buy a tote bag and leave a donation. They have teams out in the fields every day working to make the land safe again. We passed their vehicles and warning signs several places on our tour.

The rest of our time in Phonsavan we spent looking for food. For a vegetarian Laos is a challenge, especially away from the population centers. As veg-friendly as Thailand is, neighboring Laos is the complete opposite. The diet is basically rice and meat, and finding anything meatless is tough. After trying a couple of local places we settled on the only two restaurants that had any meat free dishes, Cranky-T’s, where I could get a salad, and an Indian restaurant with a variety of vegetarian dishes. I preferred Indian, Jack liked Cranky-T’s. Sometimes we ate together, sometimes we each went to our favorite.

We cruised the local convenience stores for healthy snacks but couldn’t come up with anything.

As usual I convinced Jack to visit the wet market. It was the most earthy market we’ve been to in a long time. Alongside the beautiful produce (why weren’t those fruits and vegetables in the restaurants?) there were tables and tables of dried sticks and other woody things. I tried asking people what they were but we had an unbreachable language barrier. Google Lens later told me many were medicinal plants, but I can’t be sure.

The creepiest thing we saw were wasp nests, complete with wiggly larvae. YouTube showed me how to prepare them but I think that’s a hard no for us.

By the time we got to the butcher tables Jack was itching to get out of there. I don’t think he likes to be reminded of what he’s eating.

I love the markets, all markets. I find them intriguing, inspiring (when I have a kitchen to cook in) and a great window into the culture. After seeing all this gorgeous produce though I’m still wondering why the restaurants couldn’t conjure up a vegetarian meal.

Once again we had to check out with immigration, even though it’s a 35 minute domestic flight. The plane parked way out past the runway. You can see from the mountains in the distance that we’re on a very high plateau and the difference in air temperature from the capital was a surprise. We wished we hadn’t left our warmer clothing in Chiang Mai.

And then we were back in Vientiane. Once again the flight connections meant we had an extra day to spend here. We have no specific plans, except for me. I’m looking for a healthy vegetarian meal.

For Americans of a certain vintage like us, the news during our coming of age years was dominated by the war in Indochina. Words like Tonkin, Mekong, Saigon, Tet, My Lai, red tide, domino theory, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Vietcong, five o’clock follies, pacification, demilitarized zone, and so on, comprised the vocabulary of every day life. To this day the sound of any of these words makes our skin prickle.

Vietnam was the focus of most reporting, of course, then Cambodia and Laos entered our consciousness, especially when Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, then in ‘71 with leaking of the Pentagon Papers, when most of the country became aware of the secret bombing of Laos.

Of the two regions of Laos targeted by American carpet bombing, the northern focus was a 15,000 sq.km. area of the Xieng Khuang Plateau called the Plain of Jars, so-called because it is littered with more than 2000 Iron Age stone jars. The area was bombed not because of the jars, but because it was thought to be the location of headquarters and training camps of the Pathet Lao, a homegrown communist faction. The US, with the initial lukewarm blessing of the ruling right wing Lao government, thought they should stop the red tide from flowing across the border and taking over Laos. Over a period of nine years they blew it to smithereens.

For the first time in our travel experience our inclination to bear witness to places and people who have suffered the atrocities of war and our fascination with ancient archaeological sites happen to occupy the same space. We’ve wanted to come here since we first heard of the Plain of Jars. We expect it will be both mysterious and disturbing.

There are about 90 unique sites identified in the UNESCO Plain of Jars archaeological landscape but most are restricted because of the continued danger of UXOs (unexploded ordnance.) Only seven sites have been cleared and we booked a guide to tour the three most accessible locations. We were joined by a pair of young English backpackers and an Aussie.

We began at the Visitor’s Center where we learned more about the ongoing effect of the carpet bombing. The sites we’re visiting are safe but we were warned to keep on the established paths, not just here but in most areas of Laos where the bombing took place.

Our first view of jars was of a flat plain that gave the area its name, but we’re told the rest of the sites are hilly and wooded. You can clearly see several bomb craters across the field.

As we got closer the size of the jars took our breath away. They are huge, even the smaller ones.

I should say here that historians and archaeologists who have researched the jars hypothesize that their purpose was in some way funerary, but there’s only speculation about the exact function. They do know that the stone came from a quarry some distance away in the mountains. How they transported the stone, how they carved the jars, and most importantly why, remain a mystery. You can read a summary of the historical research and current thinking here.

Some of the jars are broken, which we initially assumed happened during the bombing, but I learned later that in the late 19th century bandits destroyed many of the jars at this site. We could only guess whether a jar succumbed to a bomb or a bandit.

At the bottom of the hill at Site 1 is a cave which may have been used as a crematorium. The opening and the roof are covered with scores of wasps nests but we didn’t see many wasps flying around, thank goodness.

Site 1 was a good introduction to the jars but we were eager to move on to the next one, an hour’s drive away over the notorious Laotian roads.

We were fortunate the sky was mostly overcast because not only did we escape the brutal heat of the sun, but we had the sites nearly to ourselves. We learned later that the lack of visitors is more a continuing effect of the pandemic and that tourism at the Plain of Jars is only about 30% of the pre-Covid level.

As we walked to the site we were mindful again to keep on the paths through the fields.

There are so many jars, and we’re only able to see a small percentage of them. It’s mind boggling. All day, as we walked among them we shook our heads in amazement and muttered some version of, “What the—?” I think we touched every one and looked inside. They’re empty, of course, except for the occasional candy wrapper, which I fished out if I could and relocated to a rubbish bin. Some are filled with water or plant life.

The last site, another long drive away, was our favorite. The jars are huge, the trees are old and the setting made it all so much more mysterious. A couple of the trees grew right through jars.

We lingered until our guide rounded us up for the long drive back to town. We can say with confidence that the effort to get here was worth it. We still have no idea what these jars are all about; it’s always amazing to me how quickly knowledge is lost. The jars were made sometime between about 500 BCE and 500 CE; some maybe as late as 800 CE, and yet there’s no record, either oral or written, of their design, construction or purpose. Maybe future technologies will answer those questions. We’re grateful so many of them survive.

The greater tragedy is that the men who ordered the carpet bombing had no regard for the Lao people who lived here and the place they called home. Thousands were killed or maimed, many more displaced, and much of the land rendered unsafe. The secret war on Laos will forever be a stain on our history.

For further reading I recommend this.

If you want to support the work of MAG International go here.

We went back and forth about whether to go to Vang Vieng, supposedly the party and adrenaline destination for young travelers to Laos. We are not young, nor are we party animals, and I can’t remember the last time I welcomed an adrenaline rush. In the end we decided to go because of the promise of mountain vistas. And we do love mountains.

Last year we did some preliminary planning for Laos but the prospect of days on crowded buses over potholed roads put us off, especially given the remote destination we wanted to visit. This year a long-awaited high speed train began operation, making the journey between Luang Prabang and Vientiane in mere hours and without kidney damage, terrifying mountain passes, or extreme motion sickness. What’s more, the train makes a stop in Vang Vieng and that sealed our decision.

Getting tickets is a little tricky and can only be done within two days of your intended journey. There are several ways to book the train, two of them requiring you relinquish your passport while someone else goes to the station and secures the tickets as your agent. We weren’t comfortable with that, nor did we want to spend nearly the cost of the ticket taking a taxi to the station and back ourselves. We settled on what sounded like the easiest option: walk to the in-town official ticket office to buy the tickets.

By “in town” I mean somewhere within the wide city limits, and it turned out to be a long hot slog out of the lovely shady historic district to a small office open only a few hours a day.

It’s funny that you can’t book ahead, and we worried we won’t get a seat on the day we want to travel, but it all worked out except for some reason we didn’t receive our tickets right then. We have to come back the next afternoon to collect the physical tickets and I was instructed to take a photo of this post-it note, our receipt for the 364,000 Lao Kip we paid, about $17.50 US.

With two more days to enjoy Luang Prabang we were determined to spend a good bit of that time by the Mekong River because we don’t know when we’ll get to see it again. There are plenty of riverside establishments to enjoy the end of the day watching the river flow.

The night market here, or at least the part of it toward the historic district, was mainly geared toward tourists and same-same souvenirs.

Much more interesting was the morning market, more local and certainly more colorful. This is the kind of market I love and it’s a rare place we go that I don’t visit the local markets at least once.

We picked up our train tickets and took a last turn around town. It’s been a nice place to hang out for a week, and now we’re ready for something completely different.

Caves and waterfalls are popular excursions in Luang Prabang but we’re more interested in getting a sense of the town itself. The old section is a UNESCO World Heritage site because of the fusion of traditional Laotian urban architecture and colonial styles from the 19th and 20th centuries. UNESCO particularly likes well preserved areas, and this one certainly is.

The city lies on a peninsula formed by the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers. It’s only about three blocks wide so most days we walked one way or another down to the water.

We didn’t remember before we got here that Laos is nominally one of the few remaining communist countries along with China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, so the occasional old hammer and sickle flag surprised us.

Two days after we arrived I got up before dawn and went down to the street to watch the morning alms giving. This is a ritual in most Buddhist or Hindu countries, where the monks walk through the streets gathering offerings of food and other needs from the faithful. We observed the procession from our rooftop hotel in Bhaktapur, Nepal, last year. Now I have the opportunity to watch from across the street. There are strict rules for tourists: no flash photography, no impeding the monks’ progress, stay out of the way and quiet.

As the sun rose, the monks came in waves. All in all there may have been about a hundred, many of them young boys.

Here in Luang Prabang the alms-givers sit on low stools with pots of cooked sticky rice and drop balls of rice into the monks’ bowls or baskets. In other places we’ve seen small packages you can buy to give the monks that include toiletries or other non food items.

We learned that many young boys enter the monastery for the purpose of education, since schooling is not free in this part of the world, and many poor families can’t afford the school fees.

The alms-giving ritual here in Luang Prabang was silent, with only the padding of bare feet on the street and the swish of the robes as soundtrack. In Bhaktapur the monks were accompanied by drums and chanting. I’m glad I witnessed both.

The small girl holding up a bucket is begging from the monks. This area, the historic district, is a relatively wealthy area, so I’m not sure where the children who are begging come from. I did see many of the monks share their rice with the children.

We spent each day exploring the town, trying different cafés for meals and coffee breaks. Often we ran into fellow slowboat passengers and shared more time with familiar faces. We felt like we’d gained a whole community by taking the two-day boat journey.

Luang Prabang is known as much for its crafts as for its architecture. Jewelry, textiles, carvings, unique clothing. We enjoyed every little shop, but of course with limited luggage space and no home to put anything in anyway, we had to walk away from all the beautiful hand crafted things we saw. These soft sculptures particularly delighted us. We’ve never seen anything like them, and we watched the women in the back of the shop working on other similar creations.

The days were warm and the sun was harsh. We usually retreated to our air conditioned room for a few hours each afternoon before heading out again in a different direction.

We saw this Silkworm Poo Tea in a small shop on a back street. We passed. And spoiler alert: we bought a couple of those soft sculptures. We love them.

Back when I was looking for an affordable flight to Asia I tried for the first time the travel services offered by our credit card company. After searching via Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak, and all the other sites, Capital One Travel came up with the most economical and easiest journey via Hainan Airlines, a company I hadn’t heard of and that none of the other portals included in their search results. Not only was it considerably cheaper than the others, but it came with a guarantee to refund the difference if the cost went down after booking. Sure enough, a week later the price went down and I was credited $100.

Based on that good experience, and facing hotel rates in Luang Prabang higher than our budget normally allows, I applied the $100 credit to a six-day stay at a historic hotel in a deluxe room with a balcony overlooking the street where we could watch the sunrise procession of monks for the daily alms-giving.

When we arrived in Luang Prabang our slowboat company drove us to our hotel and it was as beautiful as we hoped, nestled on a shady street in the quiet historic district. We will be living within a UNESCO World Heritage site and we were thrilled.

Not so fast, said the travel gods. The hotel did not have our booking. I showed the manager my confirmation. He shook his head. “I never heard of that site,” he said, indicating Capital One Travel. He showed me the reservation list. No Schulz in evidence.

We were tired and hungry, sweaty from climbing up to the Buddha Cave. We wanted a shower, a nap, and dinner. We wanted to unpack.

The manager suggested I call Capital One. I didn’t have a local SIM card so he logged me onto the hotel wifi and I called via Skype. The woman who answered was sympathetic, said she’d call the hotel, then put me on hold. I waited. The hotel phone didn’t ring.

When Capital One Lady came back she assured me that the hotel had our booking; she had spoken to the manager Sara herself. “Go to the hotel,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

“I’m at the hotel right now,” I told her. “I’m sitting next to the manager and his name’s not Sara. What hotel are you talking to?”

“Can you let me talk to the manager?” she asked. I passed the phone over. I watched as he listened to Capital One Lady. Then he said, “Da.” There was a long pause.

“Da,” he said again. Another pause, then “Mister Da. That’s my name.”

With the introductions settled the two got down to business. I only heard our side of the conversation but it went something like this: Yes, that is the correct address. No, that’s not the phone number and hasn’t been for ten years.

The phone was passed back to me.

“Please hold.”

We spent the next hour and a half alternately waiting on hold and passing the phone back and forth. I kept asking Capital One Lady what hotel had our booking because at this point we’re happy to just go there and call it a day. She wouldn’t say. But Mr. Da told me “Sara” is not a Lao name so he can’t imagine that any hotel in Laos would have a manager by that name.

I practiced deep yoga breathing while I was on hold. Jack was slumped in a chair outside with our luggage. It was hot. Da got bottles of cold water for Jack and me and managed the noisy fan, turning it on when we were on hold, then off when Capital One Lady came back online. Otherwise you couldn’t hear anything.

While we waited on hold Da told me that anyway he didn’t have six nights of a deluxe room available because they were fully booked for the coming long weekend with a group of VIP envoys from many different countries attending a regional conference on economic development.

Eventually, Capital One Lady admitted defeat. “It’s our mistake,” she said, stating the obvious, and we all wished she’d come to that conclusion an hour ago. She never said what hotel we had been mistakenly booked into or what country it might have been in, but she offered either a complete refund or a handover to a supervisor who could “solve our problem.” Oh good grief. Just give me the money, I thought. I reminded her that I had used my $100 credit as partial payment and I wanted that back too. She agreed and she even added an additional credit which will come in handy in the future but doesn’t help us right now.

All parties handled the situation with grace and humor but we were left at square one with no room. It was now past 8:30. Da could give us three nights in the hoped for deluxe room with a balcony but then we’d have to move to a small room in a different building in the back for two more nights. Our planned sixth? Well, he’d help us find a room somewhere else. The town was booked to the gills.

Fine, we said. At this point we’d have accepted a futon in the alley. In sympathy he gave us a break on the deluxe room price.

By the time we got checked in it was late and we were weak with hunger. Da pointed us in a few directions for food but as we walked the neighboring streets we learned that the UNESCO part of town shuts down early and we had trouble finding anyone still serving at 9 pm. Eventually we came across a little bistro where we ordered small bites because our need for sleep was overpowering our hunger.

Back at the hotel all was forgiven as we settled in to our lovely spacious room and I set an alarm for 5:45am so I could watch the monks from the balcony in my pyjamas. This was the whole point of booking this particular room.

Not so fast.

I awoke before the alarm to find the travel gods were not finished toying with us. First of all, the view from our lovely balcony was obscured by shrubbery so that my planned morning sitting in my pj’s on the balcony with coffee watching the procession of monks was a bust.

Ok, no worries. I’ll just need to get dressed tomorrow morning and go out to the street to watch the alms-giving.

Before returning to bed I went to the bathroom and when I sat on the toilet the seat broke off and nearly launched me across the room.

Have I done something to deserve this karma? Or are we just on the Practical Joke Tour of Laos? I remind myself of our guiding mantra, “Every day is a journey” and expect the day will improve from here. But for now I’m going back to sleep.

With cold weather approaching and the end of our allotted time in the UK looming we shifted into high gear to arrange storage for the van and a destination for the crew. Somewhere warm, of course, and somewhere we can take care of various medical and dental maintenance. We’re fortunate to be in good general health but we do need to get checked over once in a while and the American medical system is beyond our financial reach, especially added to the cost of travel to the US.

It’ll be Asia again for us. Affordable, warm, great medical and dental care at a reasonable cost, and a healthy cuisine with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s a clear violation of Rule #1 (Never go back) and there are plenty of places we haven’t been yet that might also fit the bill, but I for one crave a couple of months of free time to read, write, do family history, and perhaps explore some new places.

In a flurry of activity we booked a flight to Thailand and arranged for a room in our favorite guesthouse in Chiang Mai. Our friends in Northern Ireland graciously agreed to let us stash Escape Velocity in a secure back paddock where our sailor friend Alan can keep an eye on her. This is a much better solution than last year’s storage, which was lovely and secure but difficult to get to, complicating the logistics and adding to the overall cost.

When departure day came we said goodbye to our tiny home and Alan drove us to the bus station in Newry where an express bus takes you to the Dublin airport in just over an hour. We’re not used to such efficiency!

We weren’t confident that the bus and the flight would line up properly so we used some points to book an airport hotel for the night, then it was off to Thailand via Beijing. It was a long but mostly comfortable journey, except that my vegetarian food order didn’t make it to the plane so by the time we got to Bangkok I was starving.

We had a long layover in Bangkok and our Chiang Mai flight was further delayed — I think this has happened every time — but that gave us a chance to get local currency and Thai SIM cards for the phones.

We finally made it to our guesthouse where we are booked into the coveted Room 8 for the month. For the next couple of days we visited our favorite places to eat, checked into the ongoing work at our neighborhood temple and generally reacquainted ourselves with the lovely, quirky, funky, welcoming Old Town Chiang Mai. It feels like home and it’s good to be back.

Fastnet Rock is legendary to anyone with an interest in the sea or sailing. It’s the southernmost point of Ireland lying way out in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of County Cork.

My birthday was looming and after seeing Fastnet from Mizen Head we took the plunge and booked ourselves on a day trip to the Rock and Cape Clear Island. It’s a fitting way to spend my birthday.

The boat leaves from the little town of Schull and we arrived early enough to watch the local sailing school readying their boats for launch.

We were delighted to find our tour boat was half empty.

It took about 45 minutes to get to our first stop, Cape Clear Island, where we picked up additional tourists. We were now at capacity and headed for the Rock.

A lighthouse was first built on Fastnet after an American sailing packet was lost on a nearby island in thick fog in 1847. By 1854 the new lighthouse was signaling to ships at sea.

The original brick and cast iron structure proved to be too weak to withstand the ferocious gales common in these parts, despite attempts to shore up the base. By 1891 the powers that be also concluded that the signal from the lighthouse was too weak to signal ships arriving from across the Atlantic, and in 1899 construction of a new tower was begun. The stronger structure was built from dovetailed blocks of granite and entered into service in 1904. The beacon has a range of 27 nautical miles.

Here’s a little tech background for non-sailors. Every lighthouse has a unique sequence, described in abbreviated form on a nautical chart. It’s possible to be in range of more than one lighthouse at a time, so it’s important to know the pattern you’re seeing in the distance to be sure of which beacon it is. Here are some examples of lighthouse characteristics.

As a sailor I can tell you there’s nothing more reassuring when approaching a landfall as spying a signal exactly as described on the nautical chart, assuring you that you are where you think you are.

All of that aside, our first closeup view of Fastnet took our breath away.

We circled the Rock in both directions, giving everyone ample opportunity to get the money shots. It’s beautiful from every angle. And I promise you every one of these photos has had significant horizon correction; while it was an unusually calm day on the ocean, taking photos from the deck of a boat pitching in the Atlantic swell while dodging other tourists is no easy task.

Fastnet Light is the rounding mark for the legendary Fastnet Race, one of the three classic offshore yacht races, along with Sydney-Hobart and Newport-Bermuda, all about 625 nautical miles.

The 1979 race was hit with an unexpectedly severe storm that wreaked havoc on the 303 participating yachts and called in thousands of rescuers and emergency services. It was the single largest maritime rescue operation in peacetime. Nineteen people died, 75 boats capsized, five were lost and believed sunk.

There are plenty of videos about the event. Here’s a link to one of them.

When the captain decided we’d exhausted the photo possibilities he turned the boat back toward Cape Clear Island where we’ll have a couple of hours to explore an idyllic outpost of County Cork.

Not far from the harbor lies a memorial to the nineteen souls lost in the 1979 Fastnet Race. (More names in the side, for those counting.)

Beautiful Cape Clear Island swallowed up our fellow boat passengers and we spent a pleasant few hours exploring the country roads to the other side.

And then it was time for the return trip to the mainland. Escape Velocity’s absentminded navigator forgot to bring the tracker so if you’ve been following along on our track link, here’s the missing bit courtesy of Google maps.

We’ve had a delicious run of good weather but now it’s about to end.

We picked our parkup for the night because it’s ten minutes away from tomorrow’s destination. It didn’t register until we arrived that we were visiting the 4000-year-old Altar Wedge Tomb. Not only is this a great example of the type, but we had it all to ourselves. We found that odd because the car park was full — we grabbed the last remaining spot — so we wondered where all the people were. A short meander down the road (truth be told, I was looking for ripe berries) revealed a small, protected beach. So that’s where everyone went.

We were content to bask in the sunshine and explore our little corner of the universe as afternoon slipped into evening.

I never get tired of gazing at the place where the sea meets the sky.

The days are getting shorter. We have so much more to see.