Phonsavan

The plateau around Phonsavan has been inhabited for thousands of years, and its most visible inheritance is the Plain of Jars: groups of carved stone vessels, made in the Iron Age and used in burial practices, scattered across the grassland. From the 13th century the area was the Tai Phuan principality of Muang Phuan, with its capital at what is now Muang Khoun, a Buddhist town of temples and stupas that paid tribute in turn to Lan Xang, Vietnamese courts and Siam, and was raided repeatedly in the 19th century.

Phonsavan itself is a modern town, and its existence is a consequence of war. During the conflict in Indochina the plateau was a strategic prize contested by the Royal Lao and Pathet Lao forces and their allies, and between 1964 and 1973 it was bombed relentlessly as part of the campaign later called the Secret War. Muang Khoun and most villages on the plain were destroyed, the population fled to caves and forests, and the caves where families sheltered are remembered across the province.

After 1975 the provincial capital was re-established a few kilometres from the ruins, on open ground beside an airfield, and laid out with the wide straight streets it still has. Clearance work began in earnest in the 1990s, and the Mines Advisory Group and others made the main jar sites safe enough to visit; casing and shrapnel remain part of the landscape and of village building material. UNESCO inscribed the Plain of Jars in 2019, and the town has since built its visitor economy around it.

Xiangkhouang is one of the most ethnically mixed provinces in Laos. Tai Phuan families, whose ancestors ruled the old principality, live alongside lowland Lao, and Hmong and Khmu communities are numerous in the hills and increasingly in the town. Hmong New Year, held after the harvest, is the big event of the calendar here, with embroidered costume heavy with silver, ball-tossing courtship games between young people, bullfighting and days of visiting; Lao Buddhist festivals follow the national pattern at the town's monasteries.

Weaving, silverwork and embroidery are living crafts, and silk production has been supported locally as an alternative income for farming families. Because almost every household has a war story, memory is part of daily culture: survivors' accounts are part of the visitor centres' displays, and the metal is everywhere — bomb casings as house stilts, fence posts, planters and troughs.

Manners are rural Lao: quiet voices, the nop as a greeting, shoulders covered at temples, shoes at the door. Guides ask visitors to behave at the jar sites and at the war memorials as they would at a cemetery, and highland villages expect people to ask before entering a house or taking photographs. The province is also known for the cold: woollen hats, jackets and charcoal braziers are part of its identity in a country that rarely needs them.

About 37,500 people live in Phonsavan, making it the largest town of a province of roughly 245,000 people. The economy is agricultural — upland rice, maize, cattle and, in the cool climate, vegetables and fruit that do badly in the lowlands — with government employment, trade with Vietnam, mining interests and tourism on top. Money also arrives from relatives working in Vientiane and Thailand.

Unexploded ordnance shapes life in a way that is hard to grasp from outside. Land cannot be safely farmed, extended or built on until it is cleared, clearance teams work through the province year by year, and accidents still injure and kill, most often children and men digging or burning. Scrap collection remains a source of income and of danger.

The rhythm is a market-town one. Traders and villagers arrive early, the morning is busy and the afternoon slow, and dinner is early. Evenings are cold from November to February, when braziers appear on the pavements. Roads, mobile coverage and electricity have all improved, and the province's connections to Vietnam, over the Nong Het border, matter as much to its trade as the long mountain roads west to Luang Prabang and south to Vientiane.

Highland cooking here is heartier than in the Mekong valley, and the cold season shapes it. Sticky rice is the staple, eaten by hand with jaew, a pounded chilli dip, and with laap, minced meat with herbs, lime, chilli and toasted rice powder, which in Xiangkhouang is often made with beef or buffalo. Grilled meat and sai oua, coarse pork sausage with lemongrass and galangal, come off charcoal grills at the market, and soups of bamboo shoot with dill are common.

The plateau grows what the lowlands cannot: cabbages, mustard greens, tomatoes, strawberries and temperate herbs, and stalls fill with wild mushrooms, forest greens and bamboo in the rainy months. Tai Phuan and Hmong households pickle and ferment vegetables for the cold months, and beef is more prominent than elsewhere in Laos because cattle are raised on the grassland.

The Vietnamese border is close enough to have left a mark. Pho, spring rolls and grilled pork with noodles are sold in the town alongside khao piak sen, soft hand-cut rice noodles in chicken broth, which is the standard cold-morning breakfast. Drinks are Lao coffee with condensed milk, green tea, Beerlao and lao-lao, the clear rice spirit poured at any gathering.