Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Xieng Khuang today
Today, villages have been rebuilt and fields replanted. Many of the valley-dwelling, wet-rice
farmers, as well as a majority of the townsfolk in Phonsavan, are descendants of the Phuan
kingdom. In addition to the Lao, the Phuan are joined by a third lowland group, the Black
Tai, and also the Khmu - a Lao Theung group who ruled the lowlands until they were forced
into the hills with the arrival of the Tai groups over a thousand years ago - and a significant
population of Hmong, who arrived in Laos from China in the nineteenth century and now
make up roughly a third of the provincial population.
THE HMONG IN XIENG KHUANG
With much of the literature of the province's historical
Phuan kingdom
destroyed and
many of the customs lost,
Hmong culture
and festivals have come to play an important
role in Xieng Khuang life. Boun Phao Hmong, or the Festival of the Hmong, celebrated
throughout the province in November, draws overseas Hmong back each year for an event
featuring water buffalo and bull-fights. In December, Hmong New Year, a time for young
Hmong to find a husband or wife, is celebrated, as is the lowland Lao festival of Boun
Haw Khao, a two-day holiday in which food is offered to the dead. It has a distinctly Xieng
Khuang flavour, however, with the addition of horse races, horses being especially prized
by villagers who work Xieng Khuang's far-flung fields.
Phonsavan
The capital of Xieng Khuang province,
PHONSAVAN
obliterated during the Second Indoch-
ina War and hastily rebuilt in its aftermath, has only now, almost four decades after the end
of conflict, begun to recover economically. The bomb-casing collections in many guesthouse
lobbies are grim galleries reflecting the area's tragic past when possession of the strategic
plain was seen as the key to control of Laos. It was the new communist government that
designated Phonsavan the new provincial capital, and parked Laos's fledgling collection of
Soviet MiGs nearby, a smug reminder of who won the battle for this bitterly contested area.
The town you see today, laid out on a rather grand scale and extending south of Route 7, is
a modern
reconstruction
that lacks any real character, though, as the wide boulevards attest,
local officials have very big plans for this little place. Driving them on is the international
interest in the world-famous Jar sites scattered around the perimeter of the plain. Tourism has
given the town new life: bombs at the Jar sites have been cleared away and Khoun Cheuam's
jar - the largest of the scores of jars in the area - stares down from tourism posters across the
country. Although most visitors come only to see the Jar sites, the Xieng Khuang Plateau is a
place of great natural beauty and its backroads and villages are well worth exploring.
