A woman sits next to her chicken cage
on the main drag of Muang Ngoi.there are more than a dozen names on a blackboard labeled
“New UXO Survivors.” Next to each name is the injury and the
cause of the explosion: “playing.”
Two doors down, and across the street from Crater Cafe, is
the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) Visitor Center—one of several
organizations working tirelessly to remove the UXOs. It wasn’t
until 2004, when MAG cleared three archaeological sites of
bombs, that the Plain of Jars was opened to the public.
The enormous jars scattered across Site 2 are either off-
kilter or have toppled onto their sides. The sites offer layers of
culture, a clear example of the archaeosphere that now wraps
up the world like a great blanket of man’s accomplishments
and failures. The earliest evidence dates back to the Neolithic
period, while more modern uses of the jars and the sites can
be found all the way up to the 19th Century.
There are dozens of local legends that explain the giant
jars, though the most curious involve giants, as it’s not hard
to imagine troll-like creatures lumbering through the barren
landscape discarding oversized stone cups in their wake.
However, there is little evidence to support such creative expla-
nations. Instead, it’s more likely the jars were originally used in
burial ceremonies.
After a day of poking around, I push south through Cha
Ho, toward Plain of Jars Site 3, heading for the “Spoon Village,”
an entrepreneurial community enterprise that melts down
wartime scrap metal, turning it into spoons and other souvenirs.
That’s when I hear the first blast from a MAG team detonating
a UXO. Moments later, I stumble onto the outskirts of the Spoon
Village, Baan Naphia, which reaches out to the world with the
slogan: “Make Spoons, Not War.”
A metal sign which reads “Mr SomeMy. Make spoon” hangs
haphazardly from an enormous rusted bomb buried in the
ground next to a bamboo fence. It’s one of many such signs.
Behind the fence is a flat, short-grassed yard, a tall wooden
house on stilts and four posts holding a high roof over a
homemade brick kiln.
Squatting, a woman pulls a ladle of molten aluminum from the
kiln and pours it into the tiny hole of a spoon mold. Next to her is
a large pile of the glistening spoons. Another stack is being laid
out by her husband. On one corner is a heap of disarmed bombs.
Among them is the baseball-sized BLU-26B, a component of the
CBU-24 cluster bomb, one of the most common UXO found in
Laos. Each CBU-24 contained 665 “bomblets” (BLU-26Bs) within a
single dispenser casing, with each “bomblet” containing 300 steel
fragmentation pellets, all with an effective killing radius of about
30 meters.
After a short time of awkwardly helping out, it’s time to get back
to the loop for a 128-mile jaunt to Ban That Hium. It turns out that
a day in Ban That Hium is only worth exploring if you rock up on a
dual-sport bike. Though the Honda CB500X looks like an adventure
motorcycle, it has limitations. Elephant grass and banana trees
obscure the path before a rocky section goes to sand and the trail
empties into a river. With a local man chewing on a piece of grass
watching, I strip down and check the water’s depth.“There,” I say, pointing to what appears to be
a metal disc. My first reaction is to pick it up.
However, given that I’m in a country with more
than 800,000 UXO which continue to kill and
maim people every year, that’s a bad idea.
The local man pokes the object with his
walking stick. Though I had earlier mused that
perhaps a young American being injured would
make great headlines, perhaps even help drive
more funds to the efforts of clearing bombs
from Laos, I’m in no mood to be a martyr. At the
moment, I only want to get back to town in one
piece. After a bit more poking and lifting, the
man frees the piece of metal.
It’s a plate. A small tin plate.
The following day is the shortest: 104 miles on
1C to Nong Khiaw. It’s a pleasant drive, though
the jungle leading up to the popular Laos tourist
destination looks slashed and burned; the tall,
ghostly trees are heavy with vines.56 July/August 2019