Nong Tang Lake (History of Xiengkhouang)

Nong Tang (or Basin Tang: Nong = Lake) is a karst landform forth Highway 7, approx. 48km northwest of Phonsavan, the new basic of Xieng Khouang province. The basin overlooks Phukood district, home to massive sandstone jars. The lake’s breathtaking adorableness is admired appropriately by humans travelling to the Plain of Jars or by others branch appear Vientiane or the above aristocratic basic of Luang Prabang.

The basin has a celebrated affiliation with Xieng Khouang and the Plain of Jars, if James McCarthy, a British architect active by the King of Siam, anesthetized Nong Tang on his way to Xieng Khouang Province. Escorted by two hundred soldiers, on 16 January 1884 McCarthy larboard Bangkok, extensive the northeast borderland of Siam’s dependencies several weeks later. The arena was still addled from the confusion inflicted by marauders from Yunnan, who killed, looted and plundered all in sight.


In Nong Tang, McCarthy begin no assurance of animal life, alone partridges and peafowl. Continuing on their journey, the affair beyond the Nam Tang River and some rice fields. On ascendance the river bank, they noticed some altar in the distance, which they mistook aboriginal for tents, again for beasts and assuredly for stones ascent from the ground. If they accomplished the Plain of Jars, they realised that those altar were “gigantic rock jars. Some of them stood erect, some were lying on their sides, some were in fragments, and all annular there was affirmation that the arena had been excavated. Beneath one of them we dug up the apple and begin traces of charcoal, with what appeared to be an adornment of decayed iron”. McCarthy was afflicted by the rock jars of Xieng Khouang, and declared that “These argosy are such as could not possibly accept been agitated to their present position, but accept to accept been fabricated in situ”. (James F. McCarthy. Surveying and exploring in Siam: with descriptions of Lao dependencies and of battles adjoin the Chinese Haws.