Getting to Phonsavan, Laos

How do you move 54 people and enough gear to run four massive archaeological excavations halfway around the world? Start with a C-17 and pile everyone and everything on board. Leave Hawaii and fly to Guam. Hang out in the Anderson Airforce Base terminal for about two hours while the plane refuels and then get back on and fly to Utapao Thailand (About 100 miles southeast of Bangkok).

In Utapao all of the people get off of the C-17 and get onto a C-130. We were on the ground for about 45 minutes total.


This is a much smaller plane that takes you to Vientiane Laos where you go through immigration. After taking you, the C-130 flies back to Thailand to get your gear. In Vientiane you climb on board helicopters. We used two different types. Mi-17s:

And smaller helicopters that we called Squirrels:

After about an hour of flying across Laos we arrived in Phonsavan. Unfortunately I do not have any photos of Laos because the Lao government does not allow us to take any photos from the air other than of our excavations.

Our gear was trucked from Vientiane to Phonsavan and arrived a day after we did.