Ben Hills

Why would anyone risk his life to venture here  to the Wild West of Laos's northern Xieng Khouang province ? To see the  most extraordinary relics of a vanished civilisation - fields of  weathered stones that have been described as the Stonehenge or the  pyramids of south-east Asia.
Scattered around the hilltops, under the shade  of wild guava and crocodile trees, are thousands of enormous  lichen-covered urns carved out of solid sandstone - some upright, some  canted on their sides, split by encroaching tree-roots. The largest are  almost three metres tall and weigh an estimated six tonnes .
Although it is 70 years since a French  archeologist named  Madelaine Colani established a study institute here  and first brought the jars to the attention of the West with her book  Les Megaliths du Haut Laos (The Megaliths of Upper Laos) no-one yet has  any real idea who made them, or how, or what they were for - or what  became of that ancient civilization.
In part it is the remoteness of the site. No  sealed roads connect the honky-tonk provincial capital of Phonsavan with  the rest of Laos - you have to take your chances on a clapped-out Lao  Airlines AR72 with broken seats and the windows so scrazed you can  barely peer through them. We flew up with three Japanese mine-clearers  also headed for the Plain of Jars.
As you fly in you get your second clue as to  why the world's most eminent historians are not queueing up to solve the  mystery of the megaliths. The hills have been denuded of their jungle  cover, and now resemble a golf-links pocked with thousands of bunkers.
This is the dreadful legacy of the greatest  aerial bombardment in the history of warfare. The Ho Chi Minh Trail,  down which the Vietcong moved arms and men and supplies for their war  with the Americans and their allies, ran through Xieng Khouang province  and was subject to bombing on a scarcely-conceivable scale for more than  a decade.
That night, after a spicy stir-fry of hedgehog  and a glass of  mushroom-flavoured lao-lao (the local rice-wine) at the  Phetrasy family's inn we watch a video of a Discovery/Times documentary,  The Ravens -- Secret War In Laos, which tells the story.
Between 1964 and 1973, the Americans dropped  more explosives on Laos than they did during the whole of World War II -  two million tonnes, which is the equivalent of one B52 mission every  eight minutes for nearly a decade, or half a tonne of  explosives for  every Laotian.
Many of these were cluster bombs which opened  in midair, releasing 670 bomblets, each containing a charge of  explosives and 300 ballbearings. About one third of these failed to  explode - scattered over northern Laos are millions of these deadly  "bombies" which continue to maim and kill at least one Laotian a week,  many of them children.
Thanks to international mine-clearing teams,  particularly the Manchester-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG), about  200,000 pieces of UXO (local slang for unexploded ordinance) are being  destroyed a year. But it will still be decades before huge tracts of the  countryside, including areas of the Plain of Jars, can be declared  safe.
Lan Phetrasy, who is 29, and his father  Sousath, a war veteran who learned his English from a downed American  airman, have been largely responsible for opening up the Plain of Jars  since the war, although still only a trickle of 150 or so intrepid  tourists make their way up here every week.
Three "fields" of jars - actually rolling  hillsides, pocked with bomb-craters and slashed with the slit-trenches  and the fox-holes in which the Pathet Lao soldiers hid while the B52s  thundered overhead - have now been opened up to the public.
But many more sites are waiting to be  rediscovered. Madelaine Colani located about 10,000 of these megaliths -  but unfortunately she gave directions from villages that have been  obliterated from the map by the war. Twenty entire villages have  disappeared.
Only about 3000 jars have been relocated - the  desperately-poor country cannot afford the satellite survey that would  be needed to find the rest, and cannot protect existing sites from  vandalism and theft - the CIA even tried to airlift one back to Langley,  Virginia, by helicopter but gave up when the steel hawser began to saw  through it.
Local legend has it that a sixth century Lao  warrior, Khun Jeuam, had the jars constructed to brew rice wine to  celebrate a military victory. But less romantic scientists believe they  were the work of a civilization that migrated over the millennia from  northern India through south-east Asia to Indonesia. Similar urns have  been found in Assam and in the Sulawesi Islands.
They appear to have been hollowed out by hand,  using flint and bronze tools, which would date the urns back as far as  2000BC, making them older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt or the  Xian terracotta warriors in China.
What were they for ? Although various artifacts  - carnelian beads, bronze bracelets, ceramic pots - have been found  nearby, there are no signs of human remains in the pots. It is likely  that they were used for what are called "secondary burial" rituals, in  which the remains are removed after decomposition for cremation or  burial elsewhere.
However, the sites remain sacred to the local  villagers. Until quite recent historical times - a couple of hundred  years ago - Phetrousy says there were annual ceremonies where buffalo  were slaughtered as an offering to whatever unknown animist gods they  worshipped.
And somewhere deep in the woods, at a secret  location, Lan Phetrousy says he knows of  a dozen urns which are still  sealed with their stone lids. They may hold the key to the mystery of  the megaliths - but this will have to wait for a serious scholar with  the time and the money to mount a proper scientific investigation.
In the meantime, tourists are welcome to wander  the Plain of Jars and let their imagination run free. And, if  archeology palls, there are plenty of other things to do in this remote  corner of the world.
Many villagers grow silk-worms and weave  intricately-patterned scarves which they are eager to sell for a few  dollars. At Bau Noi, you can bathe in sulphurous hot springs on the  banks of a pretty creek. The local cuisine is cheap and spicy, Thai food  on steroids, and includes lots of "wild food" like fruit-bats, badger,  termite eggs, and swallows which they net when the birds fly in for dust  baths in the bomb craters.
Most of the villages hereabouts survive on  subsistence agriculture, and they have ingeniously taken advantage of  the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of metal that fell from the skies -  literally beating swords into ploughshares. Shops in Phonsavan sell  ashtrays made of rocket-propelled grenade casings.
At one Khmer village not far from the Plain of  Jars bomb casings support rice granaries, form fences and are used for  pig-troughs and planter-boxes. The local blacksmith has made his forge  out of war debris - the firebox is a Russian truck fuel-tank, the  bellows a flare casing, and the anvil where he beats out knives and  hoe-heads is the nose-cone of a 1000lb bomb.
Nearby Tham Piu is probably the most somber war  memorial in all of Laos. Here, in 1968, a US fighter-plane fired a  rocket into a cave suspected of being a Vietcong supply dump where  hundreds of local villagers had taken shelter - a makeshift alter with a  human skull on it marks the spot where 374 men, women and children were  incinerated.
Phonsavan is not for everyone. The raw  aftermath of war is everywhere. But the people are welcoming -  Australians today are known more for the roads, bridges and schools they  are building here, than their participation in the war.
And the Plain of Jars is, quite simply, one of the world's great undiscovered archeological treasures.

PRACTICALITIES

Getting there:
Lao  Airlines has two flights a day between the capital Vientiane and Xieng  Khouang, the airport for the Plain of Jars. The return fare is $US96.
Accommodation:
The  Vansana is the best hotel in Phonsavan - it's modern, comfortable,  air-conditioned, and has a bar and restaurant. A double room is $US40 a  night, including breakfast and airport transfers.  http://vansana.laodpr.com. The Maly Hotel/Restaurant is fun and funky  and costs $8-$30 for a room - www.malyht.laotel.com.
Touring:
A car, driver  and guide to visit the Plain of Jars sites can be organized for about  $US50 a day through either hotel or by contacting Lan Phetrasy - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Money:
Only the hotels  take credit cards, and there are no reliable money-changing facilities  in Phonsavan. Take cash -- US dollars are best.
Health:
Be sensible  about what you eat and drink - use only bottled water, avoid salads and  be careful with fruit. Have hepatitis A shots before leaving, and take  anti-malaria pills; use spray and mosquito nets. Pay attention to  land-mine warnings and do not stray off the beaten paths.

Ben Hills