The Plain of Jars

The Plain Of Jars is probably South East Asia's most enigmatic tourist attraction. Situated in the remote north east of Laos, the mountainous communist country that has only been open to travellers for just over a decade, are hundreds of huge stone jars scattered across several square miles. While most ancient Asian sites, such as the Angkor temples in Cambodia, have revealed many of their secrets, historians are still completely baffled as to where the jars came from, how old they are and what they signify. They are, in short, jars of a deeply spooky nature.

Whatever its ancient history, the Plain of Jars has had a turbulent recent past. Thanks to its proximity to the North Vietnamese border, this area of Laos became of key significance during the Vietnam War and so was carpet-bombed by the Americans. Laos holds the dubious record of being the most bombed country in the world, despite never officially being involved in the Vietnam War at all. The legacy of the war is still being felt, with farmers and their families regularly being killed or injured by the unexploded ordnance that still litters the Plain. The Jars have been fully cleared of all UXB, but not straying from the designated paths remains imperative.

Flying into Phonsavan, the town nearest the Plain Of Jars, it's easy to still see the devastation caused by the bombing. Indeed, Phonsavan is Xiang Khouang province's new capital, the old one having been abandoned because it was so badly damaged. Despite being the base from which virtually all visitors go to see the Jars, Phonsavan still feels like tourism has barely touched it. Set against the early morning sun coming up over the mountains surrounding Phonsavan, it's worth the extra effort to get out of bed.

The bumpy half day journey by jeep from Phonsavan to the Plain of Jars is everything a tip through the back-blocks of southeast Asia is cracked up to be – adventurous, hard going, stunningly beautiful. There are three key sites to see the Jars, three places where they are clustered together en masse, but there are over 400 locations where they are to be found scattered across the plain. The Plain of Jars, like Stonehenge and any other ancient historical site, benefits from reading up a little about it first so as to get a sense of what you're about to see. Gathered together at the top of this hill, there are around 130 jars scattered about beneath the trees, mercifully undeveloped by any tourist organisation. Undisturbed amongst the vast wheat yellow and sky blue horizon of the countryside, the jars possess a mysterious quality touched with a sense of serenity. Some of the Jars are at least a couple of metres long weighting several tonnes each, some upright, some leaning after being embedded in the ground, some completely toppled over. All of them are virtually black, and their tall, narrow, hefty bodies make them look like crude cannons, pointing in every direction as if fearing attack from all sides. The darkness of the jars' stone also makes them seem distinctly funereal and a little sinister and inevitably beg the questions, who made them? How did they get here? And what are they for?

No one is even sure where the jars date from. The current accepted theory is that they were created by an Iron Age megalithic civilisation, about which little is known. This makes the jars one of the most important prehistoric archaeological sites in the world. Even the smallest jars weigh several tonnes and none are made from local stone. So quite how they arrived at the top of this sizable hill is only one of the mysteries historians have grappled with. The biggest mystery of all is the purpose the Jars fulfilled for the people who evidently went to a vast amount of effort in creating and placing them. The French archaeologist Madelaine Colani excavated the jars in the 1930s. She discovered some contained bronze and iron tools and bracelets, along with glass beads, while the rest appeared to have been looted. These items led Colani to theorise that the jars were funerary urns, holding cremated remains. This theory has been strengthened by the more recent discovery of underground burial chambers, none of which appear to be open to the public.

In the highlands of Laos you'll find even more to ponder than the enigmatic stone jars strewn across the landscape. Cambodia's rice paddies were not the only killing fields of the undeclared war in Indochina. Here in northern Laos, the denuded hills around the Plain of Jars also witnessed the slaughter of uncomprehending civilians, albeit by foreign forces. Shortly after the end of the American War in Vietnam, most of the people who once lived in this province, Xieng Khouang, have died or fled. A few hours beyond this area toward the Vietnamese border affords visitors access to the scattered remnants of the Ho Chi Minh Trail before jolting up the trail towards a Hmong village sprawling over two hillsides and still littered, like so many, with the debris of war. Cluster bomb casings double as planters, fence posts and house stilts, a sight not uncommon in this now picturesque province.