• I first read about the Plain of Jars when I was 15 years old and its mystery and allure have never left me since. It then took me 20 years to finally see it and I am pleased with what I saw. Coming from the Philippines, Laos just seems so remote to get to! The trip from Louang Prabang to Phonsavan can easily take between 6 to 7.5 hours as the mountain road is not the best. I opted to rent a private van as I was traveling with my senior mom. While we should have arrived in Phonsavan at 2:30PM, given the travel condition and a rather slow old driver we got, we arrived there at 4PM -- just 1 hour before the closing time of Site 1 (5PM). We rushed getting a tuktuk, and when we got to the visitor center, I had to pull some strings: explaining that I am a World Heritage Site practitioner back in my country (I was a site manager for one of the baroque churches and was under the mentorship of the late Ricardo Favis who played tremendous roles in the successful inscription of many SEAsian WHS including the Plain of Jars) and that I would appreciate if we could be given more time to explore and appreciate the site. In the end, we were allowed to stay longer, allowing my mom and me to witness a most wonderful sunset only a few get to experience while surrounded by the enigmatic jars. After 5pm, it was literally just the two of us left, enjoying a little over an hour of extra time. Site 1 is extensive and it sports a plethora of jar types --- I probably even have had underestimated the complex as a whole before. It is nicely kept, and the jars truly never fail to impress. Initially, I wanted to visit Site 2 the following morning, hoping to get a more "quiet and personal" experience with the jars, but after the visit in Site 1, which took place at what probably was the best time to be there, I no longer felt the urge to check out the other sites: at Site 1 we got great light condition, no crowd, the quietness I always want, great weather, truly an arresting archaeological site of the highest order. And the cherry blossoms where in bloom, too! Phonsavan does not offer much as a city, so we quickly decided to move on to Vientiane from there after the visit. Suffice to say, you really only go there for the jars and nothing else. Laos was smart in making this into a serial inscription, although Site 1 alone could have bagged the tag on its own. 

PS. A day after the visit, I was surprised that the Plain of Jars FB page featured my photo as the page's cover photo. I thought that was funny. In the two weeks we spent in Laos, we managed to tick off all of its World Heritage Sites.