Luang Prabang - A Bit Of Rain Ain't Going To Stop Us

Jenni and I arrived in Luang Prabang airport in the late afternoon. From there we took a taxi into the centre of town to our guesthouse. It was really nice, with a log cabin feel to it. It was next to one of the most expensive restaurants in town, L'Elephant, which was a bit out of our price range for dinner, but we did enjoy a couple of breakfasts at the more reasonably priced cafe branch of L'Elephant, located a mere two doors down. The only draw back to our guesthouse was the fact that it was a good 5 to 10 minutes walk to the main area. We spent our first evening chatting with family over the internet and uploading a few articles to the blog. It had been more than a week since we last had the opportunity to use the internet to communicate to our parents that we were still alive and kicking, so it relieved both our mums to hear our voices.


Our first full day was mostly spent organising a few tours and just walking around town. Luang Prabang is a town with a lot of character. It is probably one of our favourite places we have visited on this trip. The houses in the centre of town were mostly built before 1950, under the influence of the French colonists. This, coupled with many cafes and restaurants all throughout town, gives Luang Prabang a very European feel. The contrasting green jungle foliage and flowing Mekong and Nam Khan rivers surrounding the town make it a very pretty place. Making the place even more unique are the many Buddhist monks walking around town. There are so many of them because there are quite a few local temples.


Throughout our stay, we frequently enjoyed sitting down to drink a fruit shake while chatting with some of the local kids. On one occasion I was able to enjoy a game of hacky, using a wicker football with a couple of the local boys. The ball was really small, only slightly bigger than a tennis ball. For the first few minutes, the two of them laughed as I was not as good as them keeping the ball up as I am used to playing hacky with a full sized football. They soon changed their tone as within a few minutes I had got used to the smaller ball and was just as able to keep it up and do tricks with it as they were. On another occasion, we sat down with the kids to play a couple of games of checkers on a homemade chess board, using bottle caps for pieces. The kids were VERY good at checkers as they play it all day long because there is not much else for them to do. While Jenni and another girl that we met played checkers, I had a group of the kids crowding around me while I solved the various Rubik's cubes for them. While I was solving one, they would go and get their friends to come and watch, so by the time I was finished, they would have the next one scrambled so I could solve it again for the friends they brought. Some of them were eager to wait around 15 minutes just to see the more complicated cubes be solved, only to mess them up as soon I was finished, hand it back to me and request that I solve it again!


At the end of our first day, we climbed up to the top of Phu Si hill, a large hill in the centre of town that has a Buddhist tower for worship built on top. From the top, we sat and watched the spectacular sunset over the mountains in the west. We had heard that watching the sunset from the top of the hill is quite popular, so we were glad when we decided to head up about 45 minutes early as we were among the last few people to actually get a seat. Over the next 45 minutes we were joined by a large group of people to watch the sunset. Most people up there spent the whole time looking through a camera lens. The Lonely Planet has mentioned the existence of "epiphany inducing sunsets" in Laos. Up until this point, that sounded like a load of cods-wallop. But upon Phu Si hill, among all the avid photographers, while watching the sunset, I had an epiphany of my own and managed to conquer the mighty Megaminx :) As you can see from the big grin on my face, I was rather chuffed with myself. 


That evening after dinner and on a couple of other occasions during our stay in Luang Prabang, we stopped to browse through the night markets. This market was one of the best markets for locally made wares that we have come across in South East Asia. Most markets we have visited, especially in Vietnam, are chock full of knock off items such as clothes, shoes and watches. These markets always carry some of the local wares too, but they are always overshadowed by the knock off items. The market in Luang Prabang had an excellent selection of tapestries, paintings, lamp shades, table cloths, bed linen, jewellery, wood carvings and all sorts of other local wares. Like the night markets we visited in Cambodia, getting a reasonable price for an item was fairly easy, so we managed to pickup a couple of nice things for good prices.


On our second day we got up early to visit the Palace Museum which was only open for a few hours in the morning, before closing for a break and re-opening for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Jenni and I were among a small group of people who were fortunate enough to be guinea pigs for the brand new audio guide which had only become available to the public the day prior to our visit. We were happy to report back to a Laos tourism official that the guide was one of the best we have listened to. The Palace Museum is actually the palace of the last king of Laos. The palace was built by the French colonists about 100 years ago, so it is still in very good condition and has a very European look inside. After removing our shoes, we were allowed to walk through most of the rooms inside. The most notable rooms were the throne room and the king and queen's separate bedrooms. A lot of work had gone into decorating the throne room's walls with mosaics depicting stories of the royal family as well as setting up various things around the room in preparation of the coronation of the crown prince. Unfortunately for the prince, his hard work in getting his throne room ready for his coronation was all for naught as the country abolished the monarchy a short time before his coronation.


The king had a bedroom all to himself that he slept in alone. The king's wife had a separate bedroom where she slept and this was used for 'business time'. Except for the last king, most of the kings took many wives who lived elsewhere in the city. When the king called for them they would stay in this room overnight. When one of the king's wives came to visit, they would have a secret code. She would always hold a bunch of Frangipani flowers while walking to the palace. If the flowers were white in colour it meant that she was ready for 'business time', but if they were coloured pink, it meant 'I have a headache'. I reckon that each time the king invited a wife to come to stay the night, the only thing on his mind would be what colour the flowers were. I can just imagine him, trying to sit on his throne all proper, but at the same time, craning his neck to try and catch a glimpse of what colour flowers she was holding. If he saw they were pink, I'm willing to bet the first thing that went through his head was "Damn, I should have asked for Tracy instead!". 


During our stay in Don Det, we got talking to an Irish bloke who highly recommended that we visit a bar / restaurant in Luang Prabang called Utopia. We had also seen this place mentioned on a couple of flyers around town that listed a whole series of 'Dos and Don'ts in Luang Prabang', claiming "Do spend an entire day lazing at Utopia". We finally found the place, tucked away behind a series of winding alleyways. If it wasn't for all of the arrowed signs around the neighbourhood pointing in its direction we would have never found it. We were very glad we did so as this is possibly the best bar / restaurant that Jenni and I have ever visited. The place is set up right on the edge of a steep hill, only about 20 metres from the edge of the Nam Khan river which, about 1km downstream, joins up with the Mekong river. At the very top is a hut with huge cushions, small tables and sheshas, overlooking a zen style garden with tables and chairs made of rock throughout. Next to the hut is a full-sized beach volleyball court with tall netting set up all around the outside walls to stop the ball from bouncing away from the court. In front of the garden, overlooking the river is the best part. Built on tall stilts, on the side of the hill overlooking the river, is a large bamboo decking with a huge thatched roof overhead. On the decking are many knee high tables with little beds that have large pyramid shaped cushions for you to lean back on while lying down. Here, overlooking the river, Jenni and I spent pretty much all of our spare time in Luang Prabang reading our books, playing with the Rubik's cubes and surfing the internet, all the while enjoying beers, fruit shakes, homemade lemonade and eating some of the delicious local specialities like Luang Prabang sausages and jerky with special made chili sauce and sticky rice. 

That evening Jenni and I went to see a traditional Lao music and dance show. The story was kind of difficult to follow, but Jenni and I are pretty sure we were able to figure it out. In a nutshell, it was a play about a bunch of monkeys who had a bit of a break dancing session in front of their king and queen. After receiving a note from the king, they danced off somewhere else. Along the way, the head monkey had a big fight with a bird guy. After the fight, they all made up and sat on a throne with each other having a laugh about it. Then a demon, a beautiful lady and another bird guy came out in front of the monkey and bird buy sitting on the throne. The beautiful lady was more interested in the bird guy than the demon. The demon had a stick with sparkles on it and waved it all around, singing to the lady, "Well I've got a fancy pants stick, what do you reckon about that!?!" When the lady didn't respond to this, the demon decided, "Well how about I just beat your bird buddy with my stick, what do you reckon about that!?!". The demon proceeded to beat the snot out of the lady's bird guy, while the monkey and other bird guy sitting on the thrones just sat and watched. After that, the demon, bird guy and lady just walked away and the remaining bird guy and monkey guy got off their thrones and had a bit of a yodel. After a good yodel, the bird guy flew around a bit with the monkey on his back. After setting down, the monkey, bird guy and the rest of the monkey's buddies had another break dance. After that, they just took off and a heap of demon guys all came out, all of them branding sticks. They then had a good dance around, waving their sticks singing to us, "Now we all have fancy sparkling sticks, what do you reckon about that!?!" That was the end of the play. It had excellent atmosphere and narrative in our opinion! Five stars!


On the third day Jenni and I awoke to the sound of heavy rain. We both groaned as we had planned to go on a trek to one of the nearby waterfalls that day. Nonetheless, we dragged ourselves down to the cafe where we were to meet our tour group. Jenni and I were the only ones mad enough to turn up for the trek, so it ended up being just us two and our guide Solkit. Solkit was a very interesting person to talk to as he had been a monk in Luang Prabang for 7 years. During our trek he was able to give us a very interesting insight into the everyday life of the monks and even more interesting, their frame of mind when it came to leaving the monks to join lay people in society again. Not only was he very interesting to speak to in regards to being a monk, but he had also grown up in a rural village and had an excellent knowledge of the jungle. While we walked through the rain on the very muddy trails, he would stop along the way to pick and eat wild mushrooms and point out herbs like coriander growing in the jungle. On one occasion, he ripped out a whole series of the herbs by their roots, wrapped them in a large leaf, tied the package with a thin vine and placed them in his backpack to bring them home so he could grow them himself. 


The three of us started our trek in a village which was home to 3 ethnic groups of Laos, Lao people, Hmong people and Khmu people. Walking through this village was not as awkward as visiting some of the other villages that we had been to while on a tour as the rain had forced most of the people to take shelter in their huts. This allowed us to walk through the village without us gawking at them and them gawking at us. From the village we walked through a couple of valleys where the villagers had various fields of crops like rice, corn, sesame seeds and reeds used for making the thatched roofs of their huts. The whole time we were walking it continued to rain, making the trail very muddy. Although our raincoats kept our upper body mostly dry, our shoes and lower legs got very wet and muddy. The constant rain made taking many photos difficult, but we managed to keep the camera dry enough for a few seconds here and there to snap a few.


We continued over a few hills, passing a few small groups of villagers carrying large bags of harvested produce while walking bare footed through the mud and over the slippery rocks on the hills.  At one point we passed two young men carrying rifles who had been out hunting for the night. When Solkit asked them how they went, they shook their heads and told him that they were coming back to the village empty handed because they couldn't find any game to shoot due to the rain all night long. From the valleys we trekked through the jungle to a mountain spring where we had lunch. The water in the spring was flowing out of a small cave and looked very clear. We would have loved to go for a swim there in the clean looking water, but it is forbidden because it is a holy place for local people.

In the jungle we saw our fair share of local wildlife. A small green snake jumped out in front of Solkit, who narrowly avoided being bitten. He claimed that his heart was racing when it jumped out in front of him as he knows that the breed of snake is poisonous. We also had a scorpion about the size of the palm of my hand walk across the trail in front of us. I even found a small mud crab, sitting in one of the big mud puddles in the middle of the trail. Solkit brought it with us to the waterfall where he said a little prayer for it and let it go in one of the calm rock pools. Along the way to the top of the waterfall, Jenni got the giggles as we trudged through a 500m stretch of mud that stuck to our feet like clay. The stuff just wouldn't come off and picked up more and more as you took steps. Eventually the three of us were a good inch or two taller due to the amount of mud stuck to the soles of our shoes. 

By the time we reached the top of the waterfall, the rain had eased to a drizzle. Solkit took us through the ankle deep rock pools at the top of the waterfall to the very lip. There, with a mere rickety bamboo railing as the only thing stopping us from falling over the edge, we stood at the very lip of the waterfall overlooking a good 50 to 75 metre drop. It was well worth being soggy and wet as the view down was spectacular. The waterfall had a series of large drops before hitting the very bottom. We finished off our trek by making our way down to the very bottom of the waterfall. There we had a swim in one of the large pools. The water was rather cold, but very refreshing. It was a very enjoyable day trekking and swimming, but we were still very glad to get back to our guesthouse for a nice warm shower and to get some dry clothes on. 


We spent another couple of days around Luang Prabang, mostly lazing around at Utopia, but also visiting the nearby Elephant Village for an overnight stay. Jenni was really in her element during those couple of days, so we have decided to leave them to her to write about. Stay tuned!

Si Phan Don - Been There, Don Det

We left Pakse to get to Si Phan Don (also known as the 4,000 Islands) by bus. Because the bus left from the front of our hotel, we were amongst the first 4 people to climb onboard. The bus was rather small with enough seats fit around 15 people and no luggage compartment, so a few seats needed to be used to hold luggage. As more and more people started arriving, all of us with large backpacks, the bus filled up very quickly. As the last few people arrived it was clear that the bus had been overbooked by one or two seats, forcing the people to sit in the back seat to all squash up to fit everyone in. At this point an English bloke behind us called to everyone for "all of the skinny people to go sit in the backseat, regardless of who got here first." When we heard that, we thought, "screw that buddy, we got here before everybody else, so that's just tough luck to those who arrived last and are forced to sit at the back."  Shortly after the bus set off, the same guy spoke loudly again to everybody saying "I would like to talk to everyone about what happened this morning. You are all going to get your first good bollocking of this trip." At this point, Jenni and I looked at each other rather confused thinking, "What happened this morning that we require a bollocking for?" He proceeded to then say "You better all have a very good reason to what just happened and I'm seriously deciding whether or not I'm going to give you a sanction." I looked at Jenni and said, "What the hell is a sanction and why is he going to give us one? Maybe I should give HIM a sanction, with my fist to his head!" At this point, we looked around at all of the pimple-covered faces of our fellow passangers and realized that we were being joined on our bus trip by a visiting high school group. It was good thing I didn't get a sanction though, I would have been beside myself! 


Our bus arrived at a small town by the side of the Mekong river and Jenni and I were escorted with a couple of other people to the dock (the school group had parted ways to head over the border to Cambodia by this stage). We took a small rickety boat from the dock to our destination for the next few days, the island Don Det. For those of you that are a bit confused about me talking about going to an island in Laos, a country that is landlocked, let me explain. Si Phan Don is an area of the Mekong river, right near the border of Laos and Cambodia where the Mekong river is a couple of kilometers wide. In this wide section of the river is a large series of islands, most of which are large enough to house villages on. Don Det, one of the biggest islands, is now a very popular location for backpackers to visit as it is an excellent location for lounging around, drinking beer and eating good food, engaging in a wide range of water sports and great for bike rides and hikes. Don Det is still rather undeveloped and only had electricity connected in November 2009, a mere 8 months before we arrived. Pretty much all of the places to stay on Don Det lack the sorts of facilities that you would find in most guesthouses such as air conditioning, fans, electrical sockets, hot water, even lights! As such, none of the places have online booking facilities, so like Pakse, Jenni and I were forced to rock up and hope to find somewhere available for us to stay. 


Fortunately, we had done our research and as soon as we jumped of the boat, Jenni raced off to find one of the best guesthouses listed in the Lonely Planet before the other people on the boat could get there, while I minded our luggage. To our delight, we managed to secure what was probably the best room to stay in on the island, staying at the "Little Eden" guesthouse. Little Eden is run by a charming Belgian bloke called Mathieu. During one of the days of our stay, over a beer, he told us the story to how he bought the land for a mere US$1,000, 9 years prior and was the first person to build a guest house on the island. For the next 9 years, he gradually worked on his investment, turning the bamboo-filled location into the only guest house on the island to boast proper bricklayed bungalows (unlike all of the other guest houses which are mere wooden houses on stilts with thatched roofs), electricy, hot water, ceiling fans and air-con in each of the five rooms as well as the best restaurant with the best view of the sunset on the island. We ate at his restaurant every night as the food was among the best we have tasted during this trip. Each night, people would flock to the decking area of his restaurant to enjoy the sunset and have a few drinks. This is all during the wet season where not too many people visit Don Det, so the place must be completely chockers during the busy season.


We didn't really get up to much at Don Det. We well and truly embraced the island life by spending our days lounging around reading our books and frequenting the local bakery. We were put onto the bakery by Mathieu on the very first day when he asked us where we were from. When we told him we were from Perth, Western Australia, he was quick to exclaim that one of his very good friends living on the island, the local baker Darren, was from Busselton, a short way from Perth. Hearing the words "bakery" and "guy from Busselton, living here on the island", we were eager to visit Darren. Teeth browned from smoking too many cigarettes, messy hair, torn shorts and a tank top that looks like it was washed 2 weeks ago, Darren was a real character who was well suited to the island life of Don Det. With nearly 20 years of experience working at busy bakeries in Western Australia like in Busselton and Coral Bay, he had moved over to Laos and has been making fresh bread, yummy cinnamon scrolls and mouth watering cakes for the past few years. By the time most of us were out of bed, Darren's hard work baking up a storm was already over, so he could spend the rest of the day lounging around, having a smoke and passing the time drinking a few beers with his mate Mathiew. 


On one of our days in Don Det, Jenni and I hired a couple of bikes to ride from our island of Don Det to an island of Don Kong which is connected by a bridge. The road was not exactly the smoothest of roads and thus, we had rather sore backsides the following day. Along the way we were able to get a good glimpse at the local people going about their lives, cooking in front of their houses, kids playing and men fixing this, that and the other. After a couple of kilometres, we crossed the bridge to Don Kong. From here, we continued on until we reached one of the local waterfalls. After grabbing a few snapshots, we enjoyed a coconut at one of the little market stalls before continuing down the track to "the beach". The beach in question was a little area of the riverbank that was covered in fine sand. We stopped here for a short while to dabble our feet in the water before heading back. 


On our way back, we stopped of at Darren's bakery for lunch, where Mathieu was already paying a visit to Darren to enjoy a beer. There we enjoyed one of the local specialities, a pumpkin burger. As my mum and dad will tell you, I'm a rather fussy eater and not the biggest fan of pumpkin, but because the pumpkin burger was just so damned good, even I enjoyed it. While we ate our pumpkin burger, Darren and Mathieu entertained us, telling us stories about the life of living as a working foreigner in Laos. In some aspects, they have it better than the locals because, when at markets, they are willing to shop around, sharing out their business to get the best price, whereas local people will only go to the one market vendor. In other aspects, it can be a pain because when they venture out of the area where they are treated like kings, the Lao people are more than willing to treat them like any other foreigner and get as much money out of them as possible. However, a quick verbal bashing in the Lao launguage usually gets the local con-men to see the error of their ways and they end up getting a reasonable price. Aside from that, it sounds like working in Laos and being married to a local woman is just the same as anywhere else, you wake up, do your work and have various kitchen implements thrown at you by your wife for little to no reason!


Throughout our 4 night stay at Little Eden, we were kept company by a couple of the local kitty cats. Two small and friendly ginger cats could be frequently be seen roaming around the guest house area. We just assumed that they belonged to Mathieu and his family, but we were told that they were not actually their pets. The two cats had taken it upon themselves to adopt Little Eden as their home and any cat-loving travellers as their family. As such, if you were to pay them any sort of attention (even a quick glance was enough for these two), you would have them rubbing themselves up against your legs while sitting at a table. In a few instances, while sitting down reading a book or using the laptop, the most friendly of the two cats would take it upon himself to simply jump up onto your lap uninvited. There he would be happy as Larry to curl up on your lap and have a sleep for an hour or so. Missing our little kitty cat so much, Jenni and I were more than happy to accomodate these two feline characters as unlike many of the other cats over here, they were very healthly and clean looking.


Frequent cuddles from the friendly felines weren't our only encounters with members of the animal kingdom on Don Det. I had a couple of altercations with one of the neighbourhood monkeys that we passed each time we took a trip to Darren's bakery. On the first occasion where I ventured too close to this cheeky devil, he was quick to jump up on my back and start biting and yanking at my umbrella that was sticking out of my bag. Jenni was not particularly helpful, wetting herself with laughter as I cried "Get 'im off me! Get 'im off me!' while hunched over, flailing my arms around in an attempt to get him off my back. On another occasion, we walked by the monkey so we could take a photo with him. As you can see in the photo, my wrist band caught his eye and he was quick to grab hold of it, give it a good biting and try and yank it off me... the cheeky bugger!


On one of the nights, a pack of local dogs took it upon themselves to pick a fight with another dog right outside our bungalow. The barking and howling at 3am in the morning had us as well as the rest of the guests awake. Not to be one that likes to be disturbed in my beauty sleep, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Still half asleep and armed with a can of insect spray, I boldly stumbled out of our front door to confront the pack. I strode right up to the ring leader that was making all the racket and gave him a good spray. He along with all of his buddies turned tail and ran yelping into the night, leaving us in peace.


Unfortunately our enjoyable trip to Don Det was somewhat spoiled at the very end of our stay. On the morning that we were due to leave, I came down with yet another bout of Gastro and spent the majority of the early and late morning running back and forth between the bed and the toilet to drive the porcelain bus. We were due to leave Don Det via boat in the late morning, to get to the mainland in order to catch a bus back to Pakse where we were planning to stay overnight so we could catch a plane to Luang Prabang the following day. By the time we were due to get on the boat, I was still hugging the toilet bowl, so we decided to chance staying one more night on the island and race back to Pakse the following day to catch our flight in the late afternoon. Fortunately, I was able to recover enough over the next 24 hours to be able to tear myself away from the toilet so that we were able to catch the boat to the mainland, get a bus to Pakse and reach the airport to board our plane. We managed to get to the airport with a good hour to spare, but were glad we did so when the plane ended up leaving nearly an hour earlier than scheduled. Phew!!!

Pakse - An Introduction To The Land Of "Please Don't Rush"

Pakse was the first stop in our visit to the Lao People's Democratic Republic. This is abbreviated to Lao P.D.R, but the joke in Laos is that this actually stands for "Lao, Please Don't Rush." With only a few days spent so far in this country, we can see that this title is far more fitting as it is one of the most laid back places that we have ever come across. It is nearly impossible to get stressed because everyone is super relaxed. I usually hate slow walkers, but within a day of arriving I have become one of them!

I was slightly apprehensive about going to Southern Laos, because it is one of the least developed areas on our itinerary. As a result, it was difficult to plan ahead using the internet, we couldn't even organise accommodation as none of the hostels had online booking facilities. I guess that this is what backpacking must have been like before the advent of the internet, definitely not my favourite way to travel!

Fortunately, finding accommodation was not a problem, in fact we ended up landing one of the best deals so far. After getting a very expensive taxi from the tiny airport to the centre of town, we were dropped off outside the Royal Pakse Hotel. We were tired and didn't want to be wandering around in the heat, so when the owner said that the rooms were only $8 a night we were pretty much resolved to take it as long as the room was liveable. To our surprise we found air conditioning, a TV, bar fridge and private ensuite with hot water! Bargain! In addition, I recognised the downstairs restaurant (Nazim Restaurant) as being recommended in the Lonely Planet for some decent Indian food. Turns out that it was much better than decent as we ended up eating there three nights in a row. The chicken tikka masala was delicious and the lassi was the best I've had next to my own.

That afternoon we checked out the centre of town, which took all of about 10 minutes, and went to a guesthouse called Sabaidy 2 to organise a day trip to the Bolaven Plateau. We were initially going to do an overnight trip, however the only one on offer was a motorbike tour, which we were not too keen on.

That night the power cut out at about 1am, so we did not get much sleep. The next day we went on what was possibly the worst tour that we have been on during this trip. The Bolaven Plateau itself was very beautiful and much cooler than Pakse, being over seven hundred metres above sea level. However, the tour guide was a bumbling fool, who would have been suited to wearing a jester's hat. His lame sense of humour and crazy laugh were amusing at first, but after about 5 minutes everyone was looking forward to seeing the first waterfall so that we could push him off the edge, or at the very least have the roar of the water drown out his lame jokes. It was not until he brought out his scrapbook of foreign currency and proceeded to show us every page that I seriously began to question his sanity. When he took us to a school and started reciting the Laotian ABC people just started ignoring him. He did not really tell us anything interesting about the places that we were taken, so Michael coined it a 'photo-taking tour'; a tour where you are taken to various places for the sole purpose of taking photos. This was extremely uncomfortable at the villages that we were taken to, where we would stand and stare at the villagers and the villagers would stand and stare at us, while we all waited for our guide (he never told us his name, that's how professional he was) to either say something interesting or get us the hell out of there.

We first went to a tea plantation and then a coffee plantation, where we got to try a cup of each. At the coffee plantation we saw the cutest little gibon being kept as a pet in a horrible little cage, suspended from a tree. We contemplated planning a break-out, but due to the lack of a bald-headed person covered in cryptic tatoos (see Prison Break), decided against it and contented ourselves with feeding him bananas instead. Then we went to three waterfalls which were very picturesque. I chickened out on the third and final waterfall, as we had to cross a rickety bamboo bridge that I did not like the look of, but fortunately Michael got some good photos.

After that we visited a couple of villages, a school, a library and a couple of 'ethnic markets'. As previously stated, I found these visits very awkward and I'm certain that the villagers felt the same way. On the way to one of the villages we had to slow down due to a hold up on the road. Unfortunately it was another motorbike accident, which we figured out when we saw a broken handlebar in the middle of the road. Our tour driver popped his head out to find out what the deal was and he said that the motorbike driver had been drink-driving. That brings our count of accidents witnessed up to four in two months, with at least one of them being fatal. The high risk on the roads while riding a motorbike in SE Asia made the decision to part ways with our motorbike helmets all the much easier back in Cambodia.

The school and library were both built using overseas funds. The school building was funded by the Japanese and the library was a joint effort between a few countries, one of them being Australia. Particularly in Cambodia, we have found that many of the roads and some buildings are contributed by overseas countries. Japan is by far the most generous country so far, paying for roads, schools, bridges and restoration of monuments all across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The only funny joke that our crazy tour guide told us was that the Japanese only build roads in SE Asia so that they can sell more cars :-) We tried not to laugh too much because we didn't want to encourage him, however we secretly agreed that he is probably right. So far we have come across two Australian donations, the library in Laos and a bridge in Vietnam. It is good to see donations from our country directly helping the people, such as the bridge in Vietnam, which made a certain section of the country much more accessible and eliminated the need for people to wait ages to take a ferry across. We were told by Sarom that the US offered to build a road in Siem Reap and the Cambodian Government refused! Instead they requested that the US just give them the money (usually the donating country provides the money and engineering) and they would do it themselves. Of course they ended up with an inferior road but maybe they just didn't want Americans in the country, and who can blame them!?

After our tour we returned to find that the power had come back on, so I celebrated by having a lovely long hot shower. We ended up staying for one more day, since I was not feeling 100%, while deciding whether to go to Si Phan Don or Savannakhet. Si Phan Don was originally on our itinerary, however we discovered that it is supposed to be where everyone goes just to get stoned. This is not really up our alley, so we were looking at going to Savannakhet instead, where Michael was eager to see the Dinosaur Museum. Apparently five dinosaur sites have been uncovered in this area, and our idiot tour guide told us that one of the dig sites can be seen inside the museum, like the Terracotta Army. Of course this turned out to be incorrect and due to the fact that there is nothing else to do there, we settled on Si Phan Don, in the hope that we could find enough to do to amuse ourselves until our flight to Luang Prabang.

Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor Part 2

We met Sanny and Sarom early in the morning for our second day of seeing the temples. It turned out that Sanny's son had also fallen sick on the same day that I did, but he was feeling much better by then too. We headed out of Siem Reap and made our way to the temple area. As we entered the area, a ticket officer stopped our tuk tuk to check our passes. As you may recall from our last post, Jenni and I had purchased 3 day passes. We weren't worried about them being expired as of yet because when we bought them, the sign at the ticket office stated that the $40 USD ticket was good for 3 days, with a 7 day expiry. When the ticket officer said we couldn't get in because our ticket had an expiry date of the day prior printed on the front, we got into a big argument, pointing out that on the back of the ticket it even states that the ticket is good for 7 days from the purchase date (which was also printed on the front). Eventually we were directed to the main ticketing office where we demanded to speak to the manager. A guy came out and we got into another huge argument with him, pointing out that his employee had wrongly given us a 3 consecutive day ticket (which costs the same as the 3 day, 7 day expiry ticket). My temper escalated when the cheeky bastard claimed that the person in charge was not around and he refused to let us talk to him/her on the phone, all the while smirking at us. We even pulled one of the tourist police officers into the argument and he was just as unwilling to see reason as all of the employees. At this stage I had lost my cool and was pretty much ready to hit the guy as he just would not listen to reason. Jenni was beside herself, no able to believe that they were being so unreasonable. We could see in his expression that he knew that his employees were in the wrong, but he was just too bloody stubborn to admit it. Angrily, we were left with little to no choice and were forced to purchase ANOTHER $40 USD ticket, which I sternly pointed out to the guy that it better be for 7 days expiry. The whole ordeal ruined the entire visit to the Angkor area for us. It wasn't the $40 USD that bothered us, it was the fact that they screwed up and were too stubborn to admit it. Incidentally, after we were finished visiting all of the temples we very nearly went back to the ticket office to cause a real fuss. In the end we elected not to go back as I was liable to loose my cool and do something that I would regret. We were also in fear that Sanny and Sarom may suffer the consequences of our actions and not be able to take people into the temple area.


With a solemn mood, we ventured to the distant temple of Banteay Srei. On the way, we passed the 3rd motorbike accident that we have witnessed in the past 2 months. A villager had fallen off their bike into the ditch on the side of the road. As we drove past, I said to Sarom and Sanny that we should stop and help. Sarom told us that we should avoid getting involved and that he could see that police officers were on their way. Looking around, we didn't see any police officers riding down the road, but we did see one person wearing what looked like army clothes helping a wounded lady out of the ditch, with blood dripping down her face. 


By the time we got to Banteay Srei, my anger had died down (although a week later, Jenni is still sour about the ticket incident - hell hath no fury like a woman  scorned!). This temple was very small in comparison to the others that we had seen, but it did have something special that set it out from the rest. The blocks that were used to construct this temple were made of pink sandstone. Not only did this temple have a very unique colour due to the pink stone, but it also had by far the most intricate carvings on its outer walls. The carvings were far more intricate and better preserved than any other of the temples that we saw during our visit to the Angkor temples. This level of preservation is attributed to the pink sandstone being far harder than the sandstone used on other temples, making it much more hardy to withstand the elements. Due to the intricate carvings, this temple has been nicknamed the "woman's" temple as the carvings upon it are so delicately preserved. 


On the way back to the main Angkor area, we visited a temple which was covered in thousands of little holes. It is believed that when this temple was built, all of the holes were used to house gems of many different colours. The gems were not only used to make the temple look beautiful, but would also help in illuminating the temple in the light of the moon. 


Back in the Angkor main area, we visited Sarom's favourite temple, Preah Neak Pean. This was not a temple as such, but still a place for worship. Four large pools surrounded a larger center pool. Inside the center pool was a small island where a tower which was used for worship stood. Each of the four surrounding pools represented an element; fire, water, fire and earth. At the edge of each pool was a small cave which housed a statue representing the pool's element, an elephant head for water, a horse head for air, a lion head for fire and a human head for earth. People wishing to worship at the central tower would bathe in the pool representing their element first and then bathe in the central pool while worshiping at the tower in the center. 

The next temple that we visited that afternoon was Preah Khan. This was one of the largest temples that we saw in the area. It is believed that it was built to protect the King's holy sword. The building in which the sword is believed to be kept sticks out from the rest of the temple structure, looking more like a building influenced by Roman or Greek architecture with its tall cylindrical columns all around the outside. The temple itself is built in the shape of a large cross, with each wing converging in the center. The center was the main location of worship, so to force people to bow down as they approached the middle, the doors would get progressively lower and lower as you moved closer and closer. Sarom told us that a few years ago one elderly lady hit her head on one of the door ways, passed out and nearly died due to not being able to get medical attention out to the remote area quick enough. Aside from the hallways leading up to the centre, most of the surrounding buildings have fallen down and a lot of the ruins have been overgrown by the jungle. The lack of other tourists, the many buildings lying in ruins and the overgrown jungle gave this temple a really authentic feeling.  


We finished off our second day of temple-seeing with a visit to the oldest temple in the Angkor area, Bakheng. It was the first to be built in the area when the capital city was moved from nearby Rolous to the Angkor region. This temple was built atop of the largest hill in the area and overlooks the entire Angkor park. During the peak season, this temple is visited by thousands of tourists at sunset. Sarom told us that people would arrive at the top of the temple to stake out a good spot on the western side as early as 3 hours prior to the sunset to get a good view. We visited the temple around 3pm, well before sunset. Due to it being the start of the rainy season here in Cambodia, there are not many tourists so it is not very difficult to get a good spot to watch the sunset from the top of Bakheng. Unfortunately because it is the rainy season, it is very unlikely that you can see the sunset anyway because the clouds hide it nearly every day. We were happy enough to take our time to enjoy the 15 minute walk up to the top of the hill and enjoy the view from the top in the middle of the afternoon. Like Angkor Wat, there are very steep steps rising to the top to force people to walk up and back down while facing the temple as to not be disrespectful. Unlike Angkor Wat, there are no tourist-friendly wooden steps leading up to the top, making it very hard work getting to the top. From the top we could see the large man-made lakes that were created to surround some of the temples. Nowadays they are all mostly dried up. We could also see some other temples like Angkor Wat in the distance. After a short stay we headed back down via the elephant's trail and headed back to Siem Reap for the night.


The next day we only spent half a day seeing temples. Sanny and Sarom took us to see some older temples built a short distance from the Angkor area. they were built in the region of the Rolous city, the capital city before Angkor. The first temple we saw was Lolei. This was built on a hill in the center of a huge man-made lake which has since dried up. Next to the ruins of the temple a Buddhist monastery and modern temple of worship have been built. Aside from a few monks walking around, we were the only people there to see the temple.


The next temple we saw was Preah Ko, the oldest known temple in Cambodia. This, as well as Lolei, had a different style of architecture to the temples we saw in the Angkor area. Instead of using large volcanic stone blocks, stacked on top of each other, this was constructed with smaller bricks using stucco (plaster) to stick them together. The tops of the 6 towers in this temple were falling to bits and all in need of restoration. One had recently undergone restoration as the whole top and pretty much crumbled away. We managed to get a couple of good photos of some of the local village kids were playing amongst the ruins.

Our final temple we saw on our visit was Bakong. It is surrounded by a large moat which has never dried up. Apparently the moat is home to a species of large turtles, although we didn't see any while there. Because of the constant supply of water, all of the trees around this temple look very green. This coupled with the water in the moat and the blue sky with wispy white clouds made this temple very colourful to look at. By this stage in the day, the sun was very bright and the lack of shade from any trees close to the temple made standing on the sunny side of the temple extremely hot. On the opposite side, we were able to sit in the shade and enjoy a cool breeze while enjoying the scenery. This was definitely a good one to finish our visit.


To show our appreciation for the past few days, we made sure to give Sanny and Sarom a generous tip. We spent the rest of the day trying to stay cool and humming and haaaing over going back to the ticketing booth to kick up a stir about what happened to us the day prior, but as mentioned previously, elected not to go.


That evening, I needed to get some cash out from an ATM to pay for our accommodation in Siem Reap. Jenni did not need to get any money out so elected not to stay in our room. The ATM that I needed to go to was a couple of blocks away from our guest house. On my way there, I noticed a tuk tuk drop off a couple of local "girls", wearing a lot of makeup and very short skirts. Most had their backs to me as they were disembarking from the carriage, but I did notice that one of them had rather broad shoulders for a young lady. Putting two and two together, I made sure I was well on my way down the street before these "ladies" of the night had got themselves orientated. By the time I was finished getting my money out from the ATM, I had completely forgotten about them and promptly started walking back the same way I came. By this stage, a few minutes later, they had sorted themselves out and were out on the prowl. Before I knew it, as I rounded a corner, one of them quickly stepped in front of me to say in a high pitch voice "Heellllloooooo". I quickly shook my head, smiled and said, "Errr, no thanks" and moved to walk around her / him. As I did this, he / she quickly turned around, put his / her arm around mine and started walking down the street arm in arm with me while making cooing noise. Flabbergasted, I quickly tore my arm away and cried in a disgusted voice "Eeewwwww! Noooooooo!." He / she giggled and left me be. Walking down the dim lit street back to our guest house, I was shaking my head thinking to myself "5 minutes by myself and I'm propositioned by a lady-boy, just my luck. It could have at least been by a girl, or at the very least looked like a girl.... kind of like the one walking toward me." As I passed the dark figure it asked me in a seductive girl's voice "Hi sir, where are you going?" I shook my head and squeaked, "No thanks" and quickened my pace to get back to the guest house where Jenni was waiting.


The next day was our last in Cambodia. We spent the morning stressing as we were still yet to hear back from the girl who was going to change our plane ticket to the flight that left that day because I was unable to make our previous booking due to being sick. In the end we managed to get hold of her on the phone about 2 hours before we needed to get to the airport and she was able to get us on the plane. Sanny picked us up from our hotel and dropped us off to the airport. In addition to our fare, we also gave him our motorbike helmets which we purchased in Vietnam as we did not want to kart them around anymore. He was very appreciative and said that his wife and sister in law would get good use out of them.  We spent the next hour waiting around in the very fancy airport for our plane to depart as it was delayed for a short while. We along with a couple of other American girls had to roll our eyes when an obnoxious big-headed American girl started showing off to her friends (and everyone else in the departure lounge) by loudly singing Disney songs. She even kept going while her friends had all lost interest, determined to show off her singing voice. To our relief our plane was finally ready for boarding and she ceased her bloody serenade. 


We didn't stay too long in Cambodia. We were in and out in less than 2 weeks. If I hadn't fallen sick, it would have been an even shorter than that. We are glad that we went as we saw some amazing things, especially in the Angkor area, but we don't think that we would come again. At no fault of its people, Cambodia is a very depressing place with a horrific recent history. It is terrible to say it, but Jenni and I felt very uncomfortable dealing with the extreme levels of poverty and being confronted face to face with the horrible scars, mutilations and deformations that many people here bear. It certainly has been an eye opener. The country is only really 10 years old (it only gained political independence and stability in 1998) and this has a long way to come in providing many of the things that we take for granted such as proper sewerage systems, 24 hour electricity and being able to walk through the bush without having to worry about stepping on a land mine. Even though many of the people in this country lack those things, they are among the most friendly and accommodating people we have met on our travels.