{"id":116,"date":"2008-04-21T01:19:19","date_gmt":"2008-04-20T14:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/21\/phonsovanh\/"},"modified":"2008-04-27T15:25:53","modified_gmt":"2008-04-27T04:25:53","slug":"phonsovanh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/21\/phonsovanh\/","title":{"rendered":"Phonsovanh"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got to the bus station very early, and immediately grabbed a spot at the back, hoping\u00c2\u00a0the bus would be empty enough that I could\u00c2\u00a0lie down\u00c2\u00a0over all five seats.\u00c2\u00a0 As luck would have it,\u00c2\u00a0there were enough leftover seats that I didn’t feel too guilty taking up a bunch of them.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ride itself was bumpy,\u00c2\u00a0and winded itself back and forth through the mountains.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t help but think of \u00c2\u00a0New Zealand, with my waterbottle sliding back and forth on the dashboard.\u00c2\u00a0 The Laos countryside is amazing, and probably second to New Zealand, thus far.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to take photos, but on the bumpy roads it was nearly impossible.\u00c2\u00a0 Riding shotgun on the bus was a guy carrying a kalashnikov rifle.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently they’ve had problems with bandits on this route in the past.\u00c2\u00a0 I wasn’t sure if the guy toting Lao reassured me or worried me even more.<\/p>\n

In Ponsovanh, I checked out a couple of places before settling on a room for the night.\u00c2\u00a0 I booked my tour to the Plain of Jars for the following morning, and grabbed some dinner.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I stopped and checked out the MAG<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0office, which is dedicated to clearing land mines in Laos (and elsewhere).\u00c2\u00a0 Laos is one of the heaviest bombed countries in the world, and there are still plenty of bombs and landmines lying around the countryside.\u00c2\u00a0 They were starting a movie on the project, so I watched that.<\/p>\n

Heading back to my guesthouse, I ran into Louisa and Beth, who were eating dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 They were surrounded by two boys of about 8 years old, who were quite keen on having some of Louisa’s pizza.\u00c2\u00a0 Beth had already given them some salad.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 They jumped back and forth and around us.\u00c2\u00a0 Louisa gave them the plate with the mushrooms she didn’t want, and the kids jumped in with gusto.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t get the feeling they were really starving, but who knows.\u00c2\u00a0 The kids didn’t speak much english, but enough for us to learn that their names were Chong and Do.\u00c2\u00a0 We tried to talk for a bit, but it wasn’t really getting anywhere.<\/p>\n

We headed to another restaurant for a drink, and eventually ran into Chong and Do walking down the street.\u00c2\u00a0 I hollered at them to go to sleep, but I’m not sure they understood me.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually Do mimed resting his head on the pillow and pointed off towards his house, so I think they were planning on going home anyhow.<\/p>\n

Sleeping seemed like a good idea, so I bid Beth and Louisa (who were off to Vietnam in the morning) a good night, and headed to bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got to the bus station very early, and immediately grabbed a spot at the back, hoping\u00c2\u00a0the bus would be empty enough that I could\u00c2\u00a0lie down\u00c2\u00a0over all five seats.\u00c2\u00a0 As luck would have it,\u00c2\u00a0there were enough leftover seats that I didn’t feel too guilty taking up a bunch of them.\u00c2\u00a0 The ride itself was bumpy,\u00c2\u00a0and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}