Nong Tang

Nong Tang (Lake Tang) is a karst landform along Route 7, approx. 48km northwest of Phonsavan. The lake overlooks Phoukoot district and its scenic beauty is admired equally by people travelling to the Plain of Jars or by others heading towards Vientiane or the former royal capital of Luang Prabang.

Nong Tang has a historic connection with the Plain of Jars, when James McCarthy, a British surveyor employed by the King of Siam, passed the lake on his way to Xieng Khouang province. Escorted by two hundred soldiers, on 16 January 1884 McCarthy left Bangkok, reaching the northeast frontier of Siam’s dependencies several weeks later. The province was still reeling from the devastation inflicted by bandits from southern China, who inflicted untold damage on Xieng Khouang with their mindless destruction.

In Nong Tang, McCarthy found no sign of human life, only partridges and peafowl. Continuing on his journey, with his men he crossed the Nam Tang River and some rice fields. On ascending the river bank, they noticed some objects in the distance, which they mistook first for tents, then for cattle and finally for stones rising from the ground. When they reached the Plain of Jars, they realised that those objects were: “gigantic stone jars. Some of them stood erect, some were lying on their sides, some were in fragments, and all round there was evidence that the ground had been excavated” (James F. McCarthy. Surveying and exploring in Siam: with descriptions of Lao dependencies and of battles against the Chinese Haws, 1900).

Impressed by the stone jars of Xieng Khouang, McCarthy believed that their massive size precluded transportation from quarry to field, suggesting that they “must have been made in situ”.