Camodia - Phnom Penh and the killing fields

Our bus trip to Phnom Penh was fine - a bit boring but not too long. The landscape in Cambodia is pretty flat away from it's borders with Thailand, Laos and Vietnam (West, North and East respectively) and in many respects is reminiscent of India. It is evident, though, that there is a lot more money in Cambodia than in Laos just by the fact the rural buildings were made of wood rather than the standard bamboo ones in Laos.

Phnom Penh is a fairly large city, again on the Mekong river, with some French undertones and a low-rise, grid-like landscape. It has a lot of tourist amenities like ethnic tat markets, museums, cafes, etc. plus the ubiquitous Wats at every turn. Nice enough but fairly nondescript. The real reason to come here though, apart from the fact it's on the way to Vietnam, was to visit the Killing Fields. Perhaps a rather macabre reason to visit but nevertheless we felt it was an important part of world history that we should witness.

The history of Cambodia is long and varied, with the peak of its civilization creating Angkor Wat, but in the 1970s the lowest end of the spectrum was achieved. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Communist regime sent millions of people away from the cities and created two classes - working class (factories) and peasants - and families were split up to work like dogs all over the country. Similiar to the regime under Mao in China, if in any way you were considered posh, rich, intellectual (i.e., wore glasses), spoke a foreign language or educated in any way, chances are you'd end up in a prison, and ultimately die.

One school in Phnom Penh was converted into a major prison, holding up to 1500 people at any time, for up to 4 months, usually before being taking to a field and killed and buried in mass graves (the killing fields). Classrooms were converted into cells, and victims were tortured to "confess" their bourgeois sins in horrific ways. The school is now a museum, complete with cells and torture equipment and is an eerie place to visit, leaving a sense of bewilderment and disbelief.

The one-time school, then converted into Prison S21
On the way to the killing fields, we stopped at the local shooting gallery as Kieran had a fantasy about shooting an AK47 (Kalashnikov). El (me) decided to just take photos and video but after a few shots had to leave the room. It is the closest I hope I'll ever get to a gun and in many ways was a more effective way of sobering me to the experiences of the victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Kieran and an AK47
On then to the killing fields themselves which consist of a large monument holding some of the skulls and clothes of the victims that have since been excavated, plus various dips in the ground which were once mass graves. Over 8,000 bodies have been excavated so far from this site, less than half, and it is even stranger to walk around knowing that so many people's bodies lie perhaps naked or headless just a few metres away under the earth. Meanwhile, on the other side of the compound, there is a school where children can be heard singing and playing while shocked tourists wander round the awful site.

The killing fields
The worst thing about it all though is to read the estimates that in just 4 years up to 3 million people (some people guess as low as 750,000) died either by torture, working to death, malnutrition, or just plain killed for looking wrong. Perhaps not the happiest blog entry but just as Angkor Wat showed what heights and civilization can achieve, so this place shows how low people can fall.

Cambodia, Siem Reap: Angkor Wat...What a Wat!!!

We took the quick and expensive option to get from Laos to Cambodia and flew Laos Airlines from Pakse to Siem Reap. Historically speaking Laos airlines is notoriously bad and dangerous but El flatly refused to get on another night bus so flying it was. Actually the flight was great and we even got cold flannels (!) and free beer!!!

We were not sure what to expect from Cambodia as the reports we've heard from other travellers cover the whole spectrum from 'wonderful' to 'bloody awful' so we were surprised at the modernity and money of Siem Reap. Of course it has a gazillion tourists because of the famous Angkor Wat but even so there were a lot of very big and swanky hotels many of which were built in the style of the old temples - almost like Vegas in Asia (without the casinos).

After checking into our (rather crummy but friendly) guest house, we took their free bikes to check out Angkor Wat as soon as possible. What we hadn't realised is that Angkor Wat is not just a Wat, it is an entire city complex covering a very large area (we're talking tens of square kilometres here). Sadly we chose the wrong road to get there so instead of a leisurely 8km ride we ended up cycling about 15km just to get there! We knew that after a certain time you can get in for free so we hung about and went to one of the hill-top pyramid-style temples which is a classic place to watch a sunset...pretty cool. We passed Angkor Wat itself on the way and admired it whilst sheltering under a huge tree while we waited for the tropical deluge to stop. It does rain a lot in England but here it rains just as much but instead of lasting 3 days, the rain drops its entire load in about 15 minutes!

We were knackered after our bike ride but decided to take the "short circuit" around the complex the next day (only 17km) but cheated slightly by getting a tuk tuk the 8km up the road and back! Enough, I hear you say: what about the Wat???

Cheating on Strange Tuk Tuk - the locals all found this the height of comedy



The whole area dates from around 800 AD onwards and was a succession of cities in different locations according to the King's whims, with temples and palaces surrounded by vast swathes of residential areas. People were not deemed worthy to live in stone buildings so none of the towns survive bar these enormous temples rising from the forest. I couldn't do it justice to describe each place, but the general theme is either pyramid-style "mountain temples" with huge towers with massive faces on each face (north, south, east & west), and temples in a long corridor-style format, also with faces, but with many intricate carvings with a Hindu and then, later, Buddhist focus.

A gateway into one of the cities, complete with face towers...very cool
Most of the buildings have been cleared since they were "discovered" (about 100 years ago) but one or two have been left "as they were found" with many trees making their home in the cracks and crevices of the walls and growing mahoosively, leaving the temple walls intertwined with these amazing trees and making you feel like Indiana Jones is going to run around the corner followed by Pygmies with poison darts any second!! (In fact, both Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider were filmed at this place.) The place has a wonderful air of mystery and not surprisingly we took about a gazillion photos which I urge you to look at on flickr in the coming weeks, when we get around to uploading them.

Angkor Wat itself is a mighty huge temple complex with temple mountain in the complex. It is surrounded by the walls of the city, in turn surrounded by a massive and rather beautiful moat that spun tendrils of mist over its waters at dusk. We left this until the end of the day and wandered around it during sunset - in fact a much more lovely spot to see the sun go down.

As we were walking, (and cycling and by the third day we had ditched the bikes and hired a tuk tuk!), around the whole area I was so struck and inspired to write the blog and now it comes to it I can't think of what to say about it, other than that it really is a wonder of the world, in a similar league to Egypt's pyramids, and was well worth the visit.

Wat Poo! and the end of Loas

We got a hellish bus overnight from the Capital of Laos in the north to the city of Pakse in the south. The company was late picking us up, we were told to come to the hotel at 6:30pm, which we did after having a lovely meat feast sitting by the river, Loas sausage, grilled fish and massive pork chop: Kieran was in massive meaty heaven, and Eleanor enjoyed the veg Laos soup, extra garlic! The people did not pick us up in a tuk tuk until 8pm when we got told that the bus was due to leave, the bus station was so far from town that I began to think that the tuk tuk was going to drive us all the way to the south.

When we arrived at the bus station the Pakse bus was pulling out of the station, we both screamed at it to stop, but were told that there was another one leaving soon, oh shite I thought, I have heard this somewhere before, but no there was a bus, trouble is the only seats were at the back, where the seats do not recline and also one was in the middle with nowhere to put your feet, it was not the best bus ride we have ever had, especially as on every bump I jumped a foot in the air...nice.

Anyway, enough bitching! We got there earlier than expected and managed to get to Champusak which is a cool ride across the river on a ferry (Laos style) which is the town next to Wat Phu, Laos next best thing to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We got recommended to go and as we are heading to Angkor Wat next we thought it would make a nice intro.



We Booked into to a lovely guesthouse on the river and hired a moto to ride to the Wat. It was lovely, much different than any temple / ruin that I have seen so far, and chilling out in the guest house was almost as good, lovely view, which we saw for about 1/2 an hour as we both passed out....

I got stung above the eye on the way back to the guesthouse. I nearly took us off the bike as I tried to shake the damn stinging (not identified) thing out of my eye. For those of you that don't know I am hyperallergic to wasps so this really ruined (no pun intended) my day.

I swallowed two anti-histamines and rode back to the guesthouse, wondering in the back of my head how I was going to get air lifted to Bangkok from this arse end of nowhere.

Luckily the only thing that happened is my eye swelled up and made me look like I got a knuckle sandwich El thought that I looked tuff!!) and I passed out in the afternoon as the pills make you mega drowsy.



The next day all was well apart from the massive eye and the fact that the pills turn me into a massive moody PMT bitch (Big sorry to Eleanor and thanks for putting up with me), so we treated ourselves to a slow boat back up the river to Paske and booked into the swankiest hostel in Paske,(read: air con and TV and towel and a bell boy!!!), it was heaven.

We have loved Laos: the people, the food and the views are all amazing. I can't wait to cook Laap when we get back.

Next stop we fly to Cambodia into Siem Reap to see the massive Angkor Wat, can't wait.

Vientiene - bit of a crummy capital really, but cool Buddhas

After our monstrous hangover in Vang Vieng, we headed south to the capital of Laos, Vientiene. Not as pretty as Luang Prabang (which is a world heritage city), Vientiene still has a certain French feel to it with low rise traditional buildings interspersed with nasty concrete eyesores. Our bus journey was quite funny - a local bus, but quite comfy seats, if a little bit more crowded that you'd expect (but a quarter of the price of the "VIP tourist" bus).

The Mekong once again acts as the border between Thailand and Laos and is very much its best feature. Unfortunately for us the main road with all the shops and restaurants was "under renovation" for the whole length of the city and was a complete quagmire. It rather spoiled the effect and made Vientiane seem like one enormous building site. There's not actually an awful lot to do, so in Vientiane so we hired a scooter and headed 25km out to Buddha Park, a fairly recent (50 years or so) park that was full of concrete Buddhas and other Hindu and Buddhist statues.

Not Laos at its best


Sadly the aforementioned road under construction went virtually the whole was there and so we were both covered head to foot with dust, but also had sore eyes (dust) and sore bums (bumpy road) so we felt the park had a lot to live up to.

Actually it was amazing and had some very imaginative sculptures doing crazy shit - it was reminiscent of a modern art gallery and well worth the visit. The journey back was long and arduous though and a Laos massage was definitely in order!!

Lazy Budda


Nothing else to do so we headed south on an overnight bus to Pakse and a big ancient monument: Wat Phu. Of course we got dropped off at the bus very late so had the last (worst) seats on the bus, right next to some Israeli guys we'd seen in Muong Noi - the traveller trail in Loas is very well established! Even the Valium was not enough for this bus ride and El (once again) vowed to pay $100 for the 1 hour flight next time and never ever ever ever take a night bus ever again. Times 2.

Tubing in Vang Vieng

We nearly decided to not do the tubing thing, but after meeting Rob and Megan in Laung Prabang they made us feel so boring that we just had to do it.

We all met up at the hi-speed Internet shop and walked to the tubing place, picked up our tubes and all crammed into the tuk tuk with four big rubber inner tubes hanging off the back, and off we went, but not before the driver asked El and I to be as far forward as possible to counter weight of the tubes. LOL I had visions of us being thrown back out of the tuk tuk, or it doing wheelies the whole way to the start of the tubing.

The start was from an organic farm. El and I had already had breakfast in their town cafe, my god mulberries tea and pancakes and the milkshake (all mulberries) were very very nice. Before we set off we loaded up all our stuff, money and clothes into the dry bag and we were off, the river was looking very very fast. The guy in the cafe told us that the hills must have had a lot of rain in the last few days, as the river fills up and empties quite fast. We only had about 5 minutes on the water when the first swing and bar comes into view, lol and all the way down the river you could see them...


The night before we all went for a drink on a island in the river at the end of the tubing, with a special menu in two parts, ganja and opium, milkshakes or spliffs, anyway about 8:30pm (dark) a guy rocks up to us all wet carring a tube, called Carmel from Israel. He sits down and asked us were he is? and what time it is? which country are we from? and is this the end of the tubing? and which side of the river is the town? he takes this all in tells us he is very drunk and then is silent for a few second... he then asks us all the same question again in the same order, were he is? and what time it is? which country are we from? and is this the end of the tubing? and which side of the river is the town?. Omg I though how many people die on this river every day!!!!

Back to the start, we rock up to the bar and have our first drink and a swing (El was unsure of the swing, but she did it in the end, well done her), and just before we left our first shot of FREE lao lao (local brewed hell fire) and off we went to the next bar, all of 20 metres down the river, repeat about 5 times and a few buckets and lao lao later and it was us that swam out of the river at 7pm in the dark asking people where we were. The only thing I remember is thinking 'I am sure I am more drunk than that guy last night, omg how am I going to get back to the hotel room'?

Both El and I have no idea how we got back to the hotel alive and amazingly the only thing we lost was El's sunglasses. The next day we watched back-to-back "Friends" episodes in a bar for around 8 hours and only moved at 6:30pm after having breakfast / second breakfast and lunch there and then met up with Rob and Megan and watched a film, 40 year old virgin, funny as hell. We felt bad about wasting a day but its the thing you do in Laos, so what can you do?.

Thanks to Megan and Rob for making it a really fun day, maybe see you in the south?

mr monologue

After a wonderful few days in Muong Noi we decided to try to get to Phonsavan, the "Plain of Jars", an old archaeological site in Laos which is a big...er...plain with lots of big, stone...er...jars. No really it is a really interesting site. ANYWAY, everyone said oh you can't get a bus, blah blah, so we thought we'd prove them wrong.

Our adventure started on the boat back down the river to the nearest town, Nong Kiew, where only an hour later we could get on a bus/taxi-type vehicle which would take us about a third of the way where we could get a connecting bus. The journey was pretty full of people but the scenery was stunning - staggeringly beautiful mountains covered with forest. As we got higher though the views were less spectacular as we were in the mountain plains rather than looking at the mountains. But still it was very beautiful. Plus we were the only tourists on the bus which made us feel a bit more authentic.

We were dropped off at a guest house with a big old fat dude who spoke English and we (stupidly) got out of the bus. It was about 2pm and we were hoping to get at least to the next village that day and he assured us a bus would be coming "soon". Kieran went for a stroll round the village and the fat dude impressed me with his English (yawn). After a while we managed to elicit from him that in fact the only bus going in the direction we wanted was a night bus that passed by at about 11.30pm. Shit. We went off for a stroll round the village and had a swim in the river, finishing off by admiring his wife weaving in the afternoon light. It was admittedly a pretty spot but we were kinda eager to get on and a bit annoyed that we had been misled by this dude.


Sabadie Sabadie (hello hello) lots of naked children in the river having fun


We settled in for the long haul, and had a pretty nasty dinner of packet noodle soup and warm Beer Laos, even managing to read our books until sundown when it became quickly apparent that this guest house had no electricity so we idled away the hours from 7pm with the fat dude telling us stories. Well, it might have been interesting if he had spoken slightly better English and let us have a conversation with him but we realised pretty quickly that his name translated to something like "Mr Monologue" and the next few hours actually stretched out in time so even seconds seemed slow.

Mr Monologue's wife


He assured us he would wake us at the correct time to catch the bus if we wanted to go to sleep and kindly provided a cushion and a plastic mat to put on the floor (we, however, suspected that it might be prudent to stay awake ourselves). Meanwhile, as his house was hanging over the river we were being eaten alive by mosquitos. 11.15pm finally came around and we duly left him snoring on the floor of his room while we waited in the perfect darkness in the road for a bus.

11.30 came and went....midnight....12.30am well buses are often late in South East Asia right? ... 1am and Mr Monologue actually came out bleary-eyed to lock up and found us still sitting patiently waiting (our bums had gone way beyond numb from sitting on wooden benches many hours ago). We gave it until 1.15am and then agreed that the bus wasn't coming tonight.

He did give us a (pretty skanky) room to sleep in and at 6.30am when the next door neighbour put on their radio full blast we packed up and left. Did I mention all the houses were made of bamboo so sound proofing not such a great thing. Not to mention the cockerels crowing at 4am onwards.

We walked into to town with our backpacks (about 2km) determined not to have to wait until the next bus that night. We got in the first bus we saw which was going all the way back where we'd come from - Luang Prabang. Sod it. We hot-footed it back to LP and checked back into our nice hotel and decided that old jars are rubbish anyway, and that we're not cut out for adventures, that's our story and we are sticking to it.

Nice view, but where the hell is the bus?

Loas - Muang Ngoi Neua

View of Muang Ngoi Neua

We decided to take a trip to the plain of Jars in North east of Laos where some very old ...well, jars, are. We thought that it would be nice to do a circular route as I hate to backtrack. We read on other people's blogs that it was not the easiest thing to do as the buses are infrequent, but we thought that we would have an adventure and do it anyway.

First up was a bus trip north up the Nam Ou river to Nong Khiaw and then an hour's boat trip up the river from there. All was going well only an hour and a half wait for the bus because it got full up and left without us (better than being rammed in we thought, not at all like India where the bus is never full!). The view from bus/truck ride got better and better as we went higher up into the mountains or maybe we were just getting high off the exhust fumes that were being pumped into the back... we couldn't tell.

Next up was a lovely trip up the river surrounded by mountains and water buffalo, the driver very skillfully guided us up the rapids to the village of Muang Ngoi Neua. We booked into the "cleanest hotel in town with 24-hours electricity". This sounded good as most places run off a generator and shut that down at 10pm. Little did we know that this was a big mistake and one that should have been avoided as we are reading a book called "food tourist in Loas" and she wrote about this village and forewarned us but we did not take any heed of her!!!! For as the hotel was the only one with 24-hours electricity it also ran as the local hangout joint for the young 21, I can talk all night loudly about how the raves in Goa are like Sooooo cool man, crowd. We joined in on the first night and had fun but by the second we could not sleep until past 1am, not least as the walls were made of bamboo, which would not be too bad if the thousand of cocks (chickens that is) in the village did not decided to sing out at 5am and wake me up every day, suddenly jungle paradise was spoiled, we moved out to a quieter guest house the next day which was heaven.

All that said the place it self is a fantastically beautifully place to have a coffee by the river and we had a lovely trek into the jungle up a smaller river filled with butterflies, Eleanor said that she felt like snow white! past a cave where the locals hid during the war, to a massive rice paddy fields and a even more remote village where we sat in the hammocks there and admired the view.

The next day we hired the ex-school teacher and his son and next door neighbour's boy to take us on a traditional Laos fishing trip. We learnt how to throw a net into the small river and catch small fish. This was the main reason I wanted to go to this village and it was a massive highlight of the Loas trip, even if El caught more fish than me!! She must have cheated.

Strange water buffallo



We Caught these we did, they were yummy mmmm!

Luang Prabang - a city unlike any other we've visited (and wonderful for it)

Typical street in Luang Prabang

We arrived at Luang Prabang and easily found a lovely guest house with clean wood-panelled rooms and a (relatively) soft and comfy bed. Day one consisted of wandering around the city and getting our bearings. Well, I say city but Luang Prabang has the feel of a provincial French town: all low rise buildings in a generic European style architecture - lots of verandas and shuttered windows, all with an asian twist - tuk tuks, scooters and plenty of building going on.

LP is known for having tons of Wats (temples) and there are monks constantly wandering around. Apparently every man in Laos has to be a monk for at least 3 months (kinda like Buddhist National Service) so they are a firm fixture of the surroundings. We did see one monk sitting in the Wat in quiet contemplation - then we realised he was listening to his i-pod and the mysticism was somewhat reduced!!

After being woken up by our next door neighbour sanding wood panels for their new extension at 7 bloody am, we had a lazy breakfast of coffee and croissants before heading to a nearby waterfall. We followed the first few pools up and thought it was picturesque then rounded a corner to be confronted by a huge and beautiful waterfall of dizzying heights with a treacherous path up the side which we obviously HAD to climb. The very top was a bit of a disappointment but the first tier - about 10 metres below the top had an idyllic infinity pool with a lip that allowed you to peer over the edge down the 4 or 5 tiers below while cooling off in the water and with a stunning view of Laos mountains as a backdrop.

El jumps into pool after much trepidation amid fears she'll lose her bikini


El and Carolin at Kuang Si waterfall near Luang Prabang - not for those with vertigo

We ended the day with a cosy dinner then heading out to the only place in Luang Prabang open after 11pm - the bowling alley. Sadly it was nowhere near as fun as Koh Tao (which had Burmese guys crouching at the end of the lane to set up your pins again) but nevertheless we had fun pitching our bowling prowess against each other.

Day 3 said goodbye to Carolin as we hired some bicycles and got a ferry across the Mekong river to look at a Wat set in a limestone cliff that we'd read about, where old and broken statues of Buddha are taken (they are still considered powerful and not to be thrown away). The broken statues were a bit sad but the cave was incredibly dark. The old dude who let us in did give us torches but about a 3rd of the way down we got scared and had to go back to the top. It was pissing down with rain so we shared a plain wooden shelter with our dude and his mate and a couple of monks until the weather improved.

We still had an hour left before our boat back across the river so we cycled inland a little to a small village 2.5km up the road. It doesn't sound very far but go more than 5 minutes away from the town centre and the tarmac gives out and at best the road is compacted stones, at worse a muddy quagmire. We stopped at the village shop and ordered some noodle soup from the proprietor who got her daughter to pick 4 mangoes from their mango tree and served us free, just-picked mango and taught us some Laos phrases. The noodle soup was delicious (and El just picked out the lumps of meat with a smile) and we marvelled at how just a few clicks away from a major city in Laos you can find fairly authentic Laos life. Yes they did still have satellite TV in the background but there was no pretence at being "ethnic" for the tourists, and the kids ran around playing games and riding bikes rather than selling us tacky bracelets and begging for dollars.

It made us love this country even more and decided to hire some more bikes again so we can do a bit of our own exploring. Laos people are incredibly friendly and helpful and the country (what we've seen of it so far) throws stunningly rugged and yet serene mountains vistas that make your senses reel. We will be heading north in the next few days further into the mountain territory to get our fill of mountains before heading to the much flatter south next week.

North Thailand - Chang Kong and Loas Mekong River

After 3 months we are leaving Thailand and looking forward to something different than 7-11's and trying to remember which hello is the male or female version. A few days ago I (K) said hello to a bus load of school boys and they all giggled and called me a ladyboy, sigh!! My secret is out.

So off to Lao or Laos, still not sure, and adventure. Laos is a very poor neighbour to Thailand, was "looked after" by the French for a while but did not leave them with much in the way of useful things apart from a few buildings and the food, a railway would have been nice!

We planned a two-day river trip on the Mekong river, a huge river that runs mostly all the way down Loas on the West side, and serves as a border marker and a lifeline to many Loas people for fishing and water.

We took a bus to the border and slept on the Thai side, with a view over the river to Loas. I was very excited as I had read a lot about this trip and it was suppose to be a big experience.

The next day we crossed the river and exchanged some Thai Baht for Loas Kip, suddenly we were millionaires, fantastic, first time for everything.

The boat ride took 6 hours the first day with hard seats made by some Loas carpenter / chief torturer who's idea of seat ergonomics was that everyone should have a very straight back or even better leaning slightly forward. This situation improved when I discovered that they were stocked with Beer Loas, the numb bum and aching back did not seem to bother me so much after a few of the fantastic local brew.



The change of view as soon as we entered Loas was amazing: very green with huge hills, it was a nice change from the beach life.

The town where we stopped for the night was very forgetable apart from Mr Lie, a ex-10-year monk, who's wife is pregnant (he was very nice and told us some very personal stuff about himself) who's restaurant we went to that night and had fantastic food, "Laap" minced water buffalo with lots of mint fried dry is the Loas special dish and the most fresh orange juice we have ever had. The sign on the entrance "My wife is good cook" dragged us in.

The next day was a 10-hour stint to Luang Prabang, The seats were a bit more comfy this time and the scenery got better and better the nearer we go to the town. Every hour or so we would stop at a village to drop off, pick up and some times people would be buying fish caught that morning. One of the fish was very much alive and kicking and almost knocked the lady who was holding it over! It had vivid orange tail which I have never seen on a river fish before, it looked more like a reef fish.

We finally got there and we were greeted by a smiley Carolin who went on ahead from Thailand, which was nice and I only had one beer Loas right at the end, just for medical reasons you understand.

Luang Prabang is a fantastic world heritage town that is half French and half Loas. I love it already (had French breakfast this morning mmmmm). Anyway must go, a waterfall and a Loas massage awaits.