Yesterday morning Jojo and me met our guide at the office in Phonsavan. After depositing all surplus luggage we won’t need, we took a songthaew to the starting point of our hike. Unfortunately, the government built a new road to the Phakeo village of the Hmong tribe. Hence, the landscape around us with all the green hills was nice, but the road was boring to hike and we were exposed to the sun for the whole time. Shortly before we arrived the newly built lower part of the village, our guide told us, that there is an old way coming up from the right. I guess that one would be nicer than the road, even if it would have taken longer. In the middle of the track we stopped at a Kmu village. Jojo and me did a small walk into and we were already invited to drink some Lao Lao whisky. But as I don’t like the hard stuff I gratefully declined and we continued our walk uphill to the Hmong village. In the village is a basic hut for the overnight stay for the foreigners. I got some shirtless refreshment at the well in the middle of the village, after the local women finished their shower. After the chief visited us for some smalltalk, but needed to be translated by our guide, as nobody speaks English in the village, we walked up to jar site 52 for about 30 minutes again. In the afternoon sun the appearance of the site was quit nice. But after all, as nobody knows anything precisely about the jars, and everybody can tell you another story. There’s not much to see than 2,000 year old carved stones…a lot of them. After returning to the village three small girls, about 6-7 years old, where quit interested at us, but also shy in the beginning. As we didn’t understood each other, we tried to play with them…Scissor, Paper, Rock. And after all, as we didn’t knew their names, we called them accordingly.
