Muang Khoun, 35 kilometres south-east of Phonsavan, is the former capital of Xieng Khouang province and the site of the old royal city that was levelled by American bombing in the late 1960s. A handful of ruins survives in a quiet rural village: the brick remains of That Foun, a 30-metre Buddhist stupa partly destroyed by Chinese looters in the 19th century and finished off by bombs in the 20th, and the brick walls of Wat Phia Wat, where a large seated Buddha sits roofless in the open air.
The drive out is the point — through landscape pockmarked with bomb craters now filled with water and used as duck ponds, through ethnic Lao Loum and Hmong villages where scrap aluminium from the bombs has been beaten into rice scoops and spoons. Half a day with a guide and a hired driver.