Continuing with our series on our recent Thailand/Laos trip, we’re going to show you some other interesting sites in Xiengkhuang Province.
This is Wat Phiawat, otherwise known as the “Chief of Temples.” This temple was used for royal ceremonies, and not only was the biggest temple in Xiengkhuang town, it was also the oldest. Wat Phaiwat was completely destroyed by bombs during the war.
Not much is left standing.
One of the remaining columns.
On the far left you can see the only remaining section of the temple wall.
The next place we went to was a demolished hospital. This was part of Xiengkhuang town (Muang Phuan), which was the biggest and oldest town in the entire province. The whole town was destroyed by the war and very little of it is left standing today. This hospital is one of the few things left standing.
While onsite, I noticed a GIS control point. This reminds me to tell you that all of these photographs are geotagged. You may click on any photograph and visit the Flickr page where you will find a link to a map. I will geotag this article with the coordinates of the first photograph in this series. By the way, there are more photographs that I haven’t used in this article so you may view them all in our Plain of Jars Flickr set.
Within sight of the hospital above, is this stupa.
Made out of bricks, no one was able to tell us anything about it.
We saw some Lao people shooting photos up on the stupia.
This photo doesn’t quite convey how dangerous being up there really is.
One slip – and it’s all over.
This last shot is a small billboard that explains how the entire town was destroyed in the war.
Former field engineer MJ Klein now lives in Taiwan, and writes articles that primarily feature photographs of travels of MJ and wife Hui-chen, plus daily goings on in the bustling island nation of Taiwan, and other places in Asia. Articles feature people, culture, food, situations and sometimes the trials and tribulations of traveling in places such as China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos and of course Taiwan.
