The area around Phonsavan is littered with French, Chinese, American, Russian and Vietnamese made ordinance, a souvenir of over 100 years of warfare.

Bomb casings are in evidence all over town.  This one in front of our hotel is decorative.  Upstairs on the balcony they were using others as BBQ's.  We saw them in use as pig troughs, planters, fire pits, fence posts etc.   Other military scrap is used for the making of prosthetic limbs.

Sitting in the hotel lobby, surrounded by an artistic arrangements of bomb casings and cluster bombs  we watched the very moving  Canadian made documentary 'Bombies' about the ongoing effort to remove UXO.  

Some villages have been swept many times yet still more items turn up.  Sometimes in the branches of trees which were mere saplings when the bombie was dropped. 

As the detection equipment improves areas are checked and rechecked.