(30/1/2007-10/2/2007)
Despite having to get up at 7 to get the ferry, it didn't leave until 10. It was only a small passenger one, and moved quite a lot in the waves. As the inside was filled with the usual dreadful music, we spent most of the day on deck until it got too hot. It was pretty boring, especially as the journey lasted 9 hours instead of the 4 or 5 it was meant to, so when we finally arrived in Indonesia it was too late to get the bus to where we wanted to go so we had to spend a night in Medan. All the hotels were pretty crappy, so we decided to take the $2 or $3 dollar one, consisting of a mattress on the floor of a room with cardboard walls in a place called Spoutnik, as it was only for one night. To make things better we had a desert of some insanely rich cake/pancake thing with chocolate, peanut and a non-cheesy cheese and Sally being able to speak Indonesian made things alot easier than they had been in some other places, as well as more interesting as conversations weren't limited to basic English.
Where we wanted to go was Bukit Lawang to see the orangutang rehabilitation centre, but we didn't have time to do a full jungle trek as the guides at the hotel tried to persuade us to do, and certainly not one pushed on us like that. So the next day, after having a lie in to make up of being woken at some stupid hour by the mosque next door, with the help of a guide who was going back there anyway (he also wanted to get us to go on a trek with him, but didn't push too hard so it wasn't too annoying), we took first a betchak (kind of sidecar thing), then a bemo (minivan), then a minibus, and finally another betchak to get there. It was a small village by some rapids with several hotel type things, only a few open as tourism has kind of collapsed in Sumatra and Indonesia in general in recent years. We had the usual search for accommodation, taking longer as everything was spaced out along the bank, passing monkeys playing by one of the cafés as we went past, and settled for a room at the top of a two story hut with a basic but clean bathroom, a balcony with chairs, and no electricity but an oil lamp instead. It was so peaceful there in the jungle that the next day we managed to sleep until 4 in the afternoon! We were only woken when a group of macaques (small grey monkeys) came and ate durian (a large, disgusting smelling fruit) on our balcony and the rocks outside out window. Once we got up we walked down to the inn nearest the orangutan centre, although it was too late to see the feeding there, and had breakfast, during which on the opposite bank of the river a mother orangutan came down for a drink with her baby.
Having missed them on our first day, we made sure to get up in time for the feeding of the orangutans the next day. to reach it we had to cross the river by means of a boat pulled across my a rope around another rope spanning the rapids, which was quite fun in itself, and then after paying we were lead up a hill by two rangers to the platform. They called to the orangutans, who soon came to get their bananas, about seven or eight in total including a little young one, a mother and her baby, and one the ranger told us was pregnant, as well as some macaques trying to steal some food as well. The orangutans here were one that had been kept in captivity and had been rehabilitated, so they were semi-wild and came right up to us, one even trying to steal Sally's bag as it thought there might be bananas in it (unlikely, she hates bananas). It was so good that after playing Scrabblecards and having some pancakes, we came back for the afternoon feed. About the same number came, including a male, and this time I was able to play with the baby orangutan, holding it's hand and pulling back and forth. It's mother got very friendly with the ranger, trying to climb up him and get a piggy-back, and when that didn't work because she was too heavy she came all the way down the hill with us and sat watching them build a new rope bridge, which the ranger told us he didn't understand why they were building it "just for the queen of Spain" as then the orangutans will be able to get across the river. We finished the day by renting a couple of tubes and going tubing down the rapids, a much more informal, and certainly more dangerous way to do it than what we'd done in Laos, as the water flowed much faster, but it was pretty fun.
We decided to leave the next day, but luckily when we got up there were some Thomas Leaf monkeys in the trees nearby, which are cool black and white ones with tufts of hair like Mohawks. So that was a good start to an otherwise boring day, as we had to go all the way back to Medan through the rain, changing buses halfway, cross the city to the other bus station where (after reassuring the stall owners that we weren't Muslim, and trying to explain that we had no religion) we had some pork and got the bus to Lake Toba, a huge water filled crater of an extinct volcano. From the town on the shore we got a ferry to the island where we wanted to stay, foolishly listening to what some people had told us at Bukit Lawang and getting off at the Reggae bar, which was full, or just didn't want us to stay, so we walked down to another one called Abadi which only had two disgusting grotty rooms, but as we were tired and had made the mistake of not leaving out bags at the top before coming down the steep steps to look at the rooms, we took one of them. Combined with some ridiculously expensive noodles we had for dinner and our neighbours playing the harmonica badly late into the night, the next morning we almost felt like leaving the island and going to our next destination. However, instead we decided to spoil ourselves and walked to the nicest sounding hotel in the Lonely Planet Guide, Toba Cottages. There they gave us an off-season discount, so for $20 we basically had a house: the room was in a building built in the local traditional style, and was huge, the steps in it up to a platform where there was a mattress and a great view of the lake, the was a four poster bed, a fridge, some seats, a balcony with seats and a hammock, really nice clean bathroom with a bath and hot water, and a buffet breakfast was included, which turned out to be really nice as the place was run by a German and had a German style bakery with (obviously) German style bread, tasting even better after the woolly processed stuff we'd had to eat since leaving former French colonies.
The rest of the day was just a productive: we walked to the King's Grave, one of the supposed attractions of the island, which in itself was not that exciting but we got to see some of the island (which is really big, you could easily spend a week or two going for walks in its hills), and when we got back some other guests were watching Pirates of the Carribean 2, so we did as well, then had tempe (traditional Indonesian food made from soya) burgers, then sat on our platform reading for a while with beers kept nice and cool in our fridge. The next day we got up early to get bus tickets to Bukit Tinggi, our next destination, to enjoy our buffet breakfast and our room until check out time. As the bus wasn't until the evening, we left our bags and walked to the other "attraction", the more interesting stone chairs where judging used to take place, then came back for a swim and to get the ferry from the hotel's garden. The bus was the usual horrible South-East Asian bus journey with terrible music at stupid times of the night, screaming babies, and this time the added novelty of going along mountain roads that only seemed to be half build and so the bus could go at only about 5 miles per hour in some places...
Amazingly we got there only 2 hours late, after crossing the equator sometime during the night, and had a bit of a walk into the city, some some steps to the top of a hill, then down some others again. We had some breakfast and did the usual search for a hotel, finding one where the owner seemed to have taken a liking to us so gave us a discount. It was an OK room, without windows but not too close to the mosque, and the owner made us breakfast of fried chocolate sandwiches and tea every morning. We then went to the zoo not to see the live animals, because I hate zoos, but to see the freaky stuffed ones in the museum such as two headed goats and eight legged cows. From there we walked to the "fort" which was just an unimpressive white building, then on to a park with a view on a canyon and some tunnels the Japanese had forced locals to build while they were occupying, which were not nearly as fascinating as they sounded, and finally we had a look around the market. The day after we had thought of going to a nearby lake, but got up to late, so we had some drinks and played Scrabblecards for a bit then went for a walk, got some fruit and other snacks for the 24+ hour bus journey we had the next day, and had rendang, a local dish of spicy beef, slightly spoilt by an annoying guy trying to practice English, or get us on a tour, or something.
Our bus journey the next day started at 9am and was to go down half the length of the island to the Southern tip at Banda Lampung, so we didn't get there until about noon the following day. The bus didn't finish there though but continued to Jakarta, so it dropped us at the outskirts of the city, then we had to navigate the complicated system of bemos to get to the area with travel agents where we thought there might be hotels. We went to one travel agent to see how much their tour to the national park we wanted to go to would be, but it was stupidly expensive so we left. After a while of wandering around looking lost trying to find a hotel, an Indonesian guy in a fancy 4x4 pulled up and offered to help us because he was "a good guy", which turned out to be true, even if he claimed that God had told him to help us rather than him doing it of his own accord... He drove us around and found a reasonably cheap but decent enough hotel for us called Hotel Lusy and told us how to get to the national park, said goodbye and left. We spent the rest of the day getting bus tickets to Bandung in Java for the next day, then went wandering for snacks in a supermarket, discovering the disturbing existence of durian flavoured condoms, getting bright coloured cakes and iced tea in a plastic bag rather than a cup, and meeting a friendly betchak driver who wanted his photo taken with us, so we got it printed for him in a nearby photo shop. We finished the day with a tasty meal of pempek, a kind of dumpling.
As our bus didn't leave until the evening and the Way Kambas National Park that we wanted to go to was supposedly only 2hrs by bus, we decided to do that the next day. We got up nice and early, got first one bus, then another to get to the bus station, a third bus to a second bus station where we could get a minibus to a road and there get two ojek (motorbike taxis) to the park itself, so we didn't arrive until about 2 in the afternoon. This gave us time to have a 30 minute ride on one of the elephants they have, wandering through the bush and discovering that riding elephants is actually quite uncomfortable, at least the small type they have there. We also got to play a bit with a baby elephant and watch them bathing, and it was all quite fun even though I don't really like to see animals being used for entertainment like that, but we didn't have time to go to see the Sumatran rhinos which have some kind of rehabilitation centre there, as we had to get the motorbikes back to a small town in order to get a bus back in time for our night bus, but luckily that didn't take as long as getting there had.
27 April 2007
24 April 2007
Thailand to Malaysia
(25/1/2007-29/1/2007)
Everywhere was either full or grotty in the backpacker area of Bangkok, so we didn't get a room until 11. We tried to arrange a meet up with Nina who was also there, but we both fell asleep until 3 and then spend 3 hours crossing the city to get to the STA Travel office to change Sally's ticket, only to find it closed, and then that there were no buses so we had to get a taxi back. We walked up Khao San Road, the hilariously tacky tourist strip, had dinner and went to bed. The next day we had more luck, Sally managed to have her ticket changed straight away after trying in several other cities without success, then we bought our train tickets to Malaysia and we finished by 11.30. We played around in a park on the exercise equipment for a while then went to wait for Nina in case she'd got our email, but it seemed she didn't so we missed her again. Instead we got the Sky train to the ferry and the ferry to near Khao San Road to see a bit more of the city and had a tasty pad thai from a street stall followed by mango with coconut sticky rice.
The train to the Malaysian border was uneventful, apart from them making us go to bed at 6.30 in the evening, but the next day after we'd crossed the border some kid threw a rock at the train and it hit our window, which shattered with a sound like a gunshot, but didn't fall out of the frame luckily, so we just had to move away. We arrived at Butterworth where we got a ferry across to Georgetown on Pedang island to find somewhere to stay the night, which took a while, though we did find some crazy guy trying to get us to sleep in a super cheap place which was just a mattress on the floor, but we eventually found one and went to buy our tickets to Sumatra for the next day.
Everywhere was either full or grotty in the backpacker area of Bangkok, so we didn't get a room until 11. We tried to arrange a meet up with Nina who was also there, but we both fell asleep until 3 and then spend 3 hours crossing the city to get to the STA Travel office to change Sally's ticket, only to find it closed, and then that there were no buses so we had to get a taxi back. We walked up Khao San Road, the hilariously tacky tourist strip, had dinner and went to bed. The next day we had more luck, Sally managed to have her ticket changed straight away after trying in several other cities without success, then we bought our train tickets to Malaysia and we finished by 11.30. We played around in a park on the exercise equipment for a while then went to wait for Nina in case she'd got our email, but it seemed she didn't so we missed her again. Instead we got the Sky train to the ferry and the ferry to near Khao San Road to see a bit more of the city and had a tasty pad thai from a street stall followed by mango with coconut sticky rice.
The train to the Malaysian border was uneventful, apart from them making us go to bed at 6.30 in the evening, but the next day after we'd crossed the border some kid threw a rock at the train and it hit our window, which shattered with a sound like a gunshot, but didn't fall out of the frame luckily, so we just had to move away. We arrived at Butterworth where we got a ferry across to Georgetown on Pedang island to find somewhere to stay the night, which took a while, though we did find some crazy guy trying to get us to sleep in a super cheap place which was just a mattress on the floor, but we eventually found one and went to buy our tickets to Sumatra for the next day.
16 April 2007
Laos
(11/1/2007-25/1/2007)
Because there were only four of us going on the boat, it meant we didn't have to get up too early. Once we'd had breakfast we went down to the river to our "speedboat", which was a rickety looking, narrow boat with one of the weird long stemmed motors they have in South-East Asia. With our bags in the front, we sat in two abreast and set off down the river for two hours. At first it was fine, but soon it it got narrower and wilder on the riverbank, trees with huge root systems and all looking as if they were facing a constant strong wind, probably because they're half underwater in the wet season, and the water got choppier. It was probably actually quite dangerous, but pretty fun, and we got to the border in about 2 hours. This part was quite fun too, as on the Cambodian side there was just a small village, and when we gave the officials our passports we all had to slip a $1 note in so everything would go smoothly. We did the same on the Lao side, a half hour walk along a dirt track to a wooden house and a cabin that was the checkpoint. We then had a brief wait before someone came to pick us up in a nice big van to take us to our boat across to the Si Phan Don (Thousand Islands), a group of islands in the middle of Mekong.
More specifically, we were taken to Don Det, the backpacker island, and therefore full of restaurants with western food and stuff, and the entire economy centred around tourism. All the accommodation was in small bungalows, we got one for $3 a night with a concrete bathroom separated from the room by a plastic sheet, the shower consisting of a bucket of water, which was also for flushing, although at least the toilet was a western one. There's no electricity on the island apart from petrol generators at a few of the cafés. Once we'd found somewhere to stay and had something to eat, we went for a walk on the sunset side of the island, almost reaching the other end we discovered later, but it meant we missed the actual sunset, although at the bar we went to see it we met a bunch of people from Perth...
The next day we rented bikes so I could try to learn to ride as there were no cars, but the paths were still lined with barbed wire fences, and we started shortly after noon, so obviously I got overcome by the heat and gave up pretty quick. Instead we went for a swim in the river on the sunset side, as all around the island there isn't a strong current, probably due to all the other islands. After sunset, which was always pretty impressive from Don Det, we had dinner of laap, a local dish of minced meat, then spent the rest of the evening drinking beer in our hammocks on the porch of our bungalow. The next day was pretty similar only without the bikes, just a short walk, we managed to catch the whole sunset for once, and for dinner I had tom yam soup, a kind of sour soup with lemon grass. For our last day we decided to walk to the other island, connected to Don Det by an old railway bridge, the only one the French build during their occupation, which seems a bit pointless. On this island there is an amazingly waterfall, which comes as a bit of a shock on such a tiny island, and also a nice beach where we went for a swim. You can also go for boat trips to see the Mekong dolphins, but we didn't bother. We learnt afterwards that Nina, our Finnish friend from the Mongolian trip, was also on Don Det at the same time as us, but we somehow managed to miss each other.
From Don Det we got a boat and then a kind of truck to Pakse, the nearest large down, which was alright to wander around for a bit, though nothing special. I had guava juice there, but they did something odd, possibly put salt instead of sugar, anyway it was undrinkable. We had to spend a night there and then get a bus following the Mekong (which is the border between Laos and Thailand) to Savannakhet, a nice crumbling colonial town by the river, where we also had to spend a night. If we go back I think we'd want to spend a bit longer there, it was very nice to wander around. The next day we got up very early and managed to get the bus before the one we were aiming for at 6.40 to get to Vientiane, the capital. An hour or two before we arrived, the bus broke down, so we had to all squeeze into a local bus, which had baggage guys climbing on and off the roof as we went along, coming in and out the windows, and walking about on top, we could see their shadows. Once we managed to reach the centre we stopped for donuts at the Scandinavian Bakery, and discovered from other travellers that nearly everywhere was full, so we went straight to the one they recommended. At $10 a night it seemed a bit pricey after where we'd been before, but it had hot water for the first time since Saigon. We had a dinner of chicken and beef hotpot by the river on cushions around a table made of a tractor tyre painted gold. For our only full day in Vientiane (we hoped) we did some washing in our room, then got a bus to Xieng Khuane, a park built by some mystic loon full of statues from Buddhist and Hindu mythology. One was particularly cool as it was shaped like some kind of giant fruit and you could climb up inside it, entering through an open mouth.
Heading north once more, we got the bus to Vang Vieng, even more of a tourist resort than Don Det, with the crazy phenomenon of TV bars, where instead of normal chairs there are kind of sofas to slouch back on, all facing TVs, most of which seemed to play Friends. We managed to find a nice cheap hotel room behind one of them that played the Simpsons instead, had a walk about down by the river (not the Mekong this time) and had beer in hammocks until after sunset before going for dinner at the tasty Organic Farm Café. Vang Vieng's main attraction though is tubing, which we tried the next day once we'd both bought flipflops with skull and crossbones on them. You rent a giant inflated inner tube, get taken by tuctuc to a launch point a view miles up river, then float back to the town, admiring the scenery (kind of similar to Yangshuo again), and stopping at bars on the river bank, some of which have flying foxes and swings landing you in the water. It was great fun, if completely free of health and safety regulations (though it was dry season, so not too dangerous, in wet season it would be), and we met a nice Australian couple from Sydney who like us hung about too long and didn't get back until after dark, and we had dinner with them at the same place as the night before. They even offered to let me stay with them, as at the time I was planning on going to Sydney at some point (not any more though).
Unfortunately or usual tactic of just turning up to get a bus to our next destination didn't quite pay off, as the main bus was full so we had to get a pricey mini-bus. Probably there would have been a local bus soon enough, but the bus station staff were unhelpful, so we just took it. Quite a few people had raved about Luang Prabang, but once we got there and eventually found a (comparatively pricey) hotel, it didn't seem like anything special. It was nice enough, and they had good pancakes with brightly coloured fillings, but I thought Savanakhet was nicer, although I suppose if you have a romantic notion of Buddhism all the monasteries might appeal. The setting was very pretty though, amongst mountains at the meeting of two rivers (one of them the Mekong), it was quite relaxed, with locals playing boule (the French version of bowls or however you want to describe it), and we discovered the delicious Cornetto flavour that is Black Forest Magic. On the evening of the second day we went to the market full of local stuff for tourists, Sally bought some presents for family, but as I'm not going home any time soon I just got a cool monster doll thing, and then chicken and rice, Sally's favourite meal. For our last day we spent a while negotiating with tuctuc drivers, eventually finding an America girl to come with us to bring the price down, and we were taken to the waterfall. In wet season it must be impressive, but when we went it seemed fairly standard really. Swimming in the pools was fun though, if a bit cold, on the way back we saw buffalo who'd had their horns painted pink, and we had a really good meal in the evening.
The next day we'd made the mistake of booking through a travel agent, as we'd decided not to go to Chiang Mai after all but go straight to Bangkok, which meant going through Vientiane and we wanted to make sure we could get the bus to Thailand the day we got to Vientiane, 24 hours of buses in total, but the guy assured us we could, phoning up the office in Vientiane about 8 times to make sure. First problem was at the start. The bus didn't leave until 6.30, but apparently we had to be there at 5.30, the only reason we could see being so we had to pay more for a tuctuc, but we did that anyway, but the bus didn't leave until 8! Once we got to Vientiane we phoned the number we'd been given to get the pickup we'd been assured we would get, but apparently it didn't exist so we had to get our own tuctuc to the office, he then didn't know where it was so we had to ask at a hotel, and when we got to the office they told us the bus had already gone and there was no way to catch it that day. Sally phoned up the office in Luang Prabang, but they were unhelpful, refused to give us any money to pay for the night in Vientiane we now had to or in fact do anything. One of the hazards of travel in the Third World I suppose.
Luckily the hotel we'd stayed at before had room, and they recognised us so let us have a bigger room for the same price as the time before. We spent the next day have beer, coffee and ice cream then went to the office an hour before we were meant to be there just to make sure. 15 minutes after the time we'd got there the day before, someone arrived and took us literally around the corner to another hotel to wait for another half an hour, when someone else brought us around the next corner to the bus, a horrible mosquito infested thing that would take us to the border. only it wouldn't for another half an hour, so how we couldn't have got it the day before we didn't understand. But eventually we did get to the border, paid the Laos officials "overtime fee" and got across to Thailand and our nice VIP double-decker bus. 40 minutes later we stopped for dinner, but finally at 8.30 we were heading for Bangkok, unfortunately with some stupid, irritating, loudmouthed English girl blathering most of the way keeping us awake. At 6.30 we finally arrived, only 24 hours later than we wanted to...
Because there were only four of us going on the boat, it meant we didn't have to get up too early. Once we'd had breakfast we went down to the river to our "speedboat", which was a rickety looking, narrow boat with one of the weird long stemmed motors they have in South-East Asia. With our bags in the front, we sat in two abreast and set off down the river for two hours. At first it was fine, but soon it it got narrower and wilder on the riverbank, trees with huge root systems and all looking as if they were facing a constant strong wind, probably because they're half underwater in the wet season, and the water got choppier. It was probably actually quite dangerous, but pretty fun, and we got to the border in about 2 hours. This part was quite fun too, as on the Cambodian side there was just a small village, and when we gave the officials our passports we all had to slip a $1 note in so everything would go smoothly. We did the same on the Lao side, a half hour walk along a dirt track to a wooden house and a cabin that was the checkpoint. We then had a brief wait before someone came to pick us up in a nice big van to take us to our boat across to the Si Phan Don (Thousand Islands), a group of islands in the middle of Mekong.
More specifically, we were taken to Don Det, the backpacker island, and therefore full of restaurants with western food and stuff, and the entire economy centred around tourism. All the accommodation was in small bungalows, we got one for $3 a night with a concrete bathroom separated from the room by a plastic sheet, the shower consisting of a bucket of water, which was also for flushing, although at least the toilet was a western one. There's no electricity on the island apart from petrol generators at a few of the cafés. Once we'd found somewhere to stay and had something to eat, we went for a walk on the sunset side of the island, almost reaching the other end we discovered later, but it meant we missed the actual sunset, although at the bar we went to see it we met a bunch of people from Perth...
The next day we rented bikes so I could try to learn to ride as there were no cars, but the paths were still lined with barbed wire fences, and we started shortly after noon, so obviously I got overcome by the heat and gave up pretty quick. Instead we went for a swim in the river on the sunset side, as all around the island there isn't a strong current, probably due to all the other islands. After sunset, which was always pretty impressive from Don Det, we had dinner of laap, a local dish of minced meat, then spent the rest of the evening drinking beer in our hammocks on the porch of our bungalow. The next day was pretty similar only without the bikes, just a short walk, we managed to catch the whole sunset for once, and for dinner I had tom yam soup, a kind of sour soup with lemon grass. For our last day we decided to walk to the other island, connected to Don Det by an old railway bridge, the only one the French build during their occupation, which seems a bit pointless. On this island there is an amazingly waterfall, which comes as a bit of a shock on such a tiny island, and also a nice beach where we went for a swim. You can also go for boat trips to see the Mekong dolphins, but we didn't bother. We learnt afterwards that Nina, our Finnish friend from the Mongolian trip, was also on Don Det at the same time as us, but we somehow managed to miss each other.
From Don Det we got a boat and then a kind of truck to Pakse, the nearest large down, which was alright to wander around for a bit, though nothing special. I had guava juice there, but they did something odd, possibly put salt instead of sugar, anyway it was undrinkable. We had to spend a night there and then get a bus following the Mekong (which is the border between Laos and Thailand) to Savannakhet, a nice crumbling colonial town by the river, where we also had to spend a night. If we go back I think we'd want to spend a bit longer there, it was very nice to wander around. The next day we got up very early and managed to get the bus before the one we were aiming for at 6.40 to get to Vientiane, the capital. An hour or two before we arrived, the bus broke down, so we had to all squeeze into a local bus, which had baggage guys climbing on and off the roof as we went along, coming in and out the windows, and walking about on top, we could see their shadows. Once we managed to reach the centre we stopped for donuts at the Scandinavian Bakery, and discovered from other travellers that nearly everywhere was full, so we went straight to the one they recommended. At $10 a night it seemed a bit pricey after where we'd been before, but it had hot water for the first time since Saigon. We had a dinner of chicken and beef hotpot by the river on cushions around a table made of a tractor tyre painted gold. For our only full day in Vientiane (we hoped) we did some washing in our room, then got a bus to Xieng Khuane, a park built by some mystic loon full of statues from Buddhist and Hindu mythology. One was particularly cool as it was shaped like some kind of giant fruit and you could climb up inside it, entering through an open mouth.
Heading north once more, we got the bus to Vang Vieng, even more of a tourist resort than Don Det, with the crazy phenomenon of TV bars, where instead of normal chairs there are kind of sofas to slouch back on, all facing TVs, most of which seemed to play Friends. We managed to find a nice cheap hotel room behind one of them that played the Simpsons instead, had a walk about down by the river (not the Mekong this time) and had beer in hammocks until after sunset before going for dinner at the tasty Organic Farm Café. Vang Vieng's main attraction though is tubing, which we tried the next day once we'd both bought flipflops with skull and crossbones on them. You rent a giant inflated inner tube, get taken by tuctuc to a launch point a view miles up river, then float back to the town, admiring the scenery (kind of similar to Yangshuo again), and stopping at bars on the river bank, some of which have flying foxes and swings landing you in the water. It was great fun, if completely free of health and safety regulations (though it was dry season, so not too dangerous, in wet season it would be), and we met a nice Australian couple from Sydney who like us hung about too long and didn't get back until after dark, and we had dinner with them at the same place as the night before. They even offered to let me stay with them, as at the time I was planning on going to Sydney at some point (not any more though).
Unfortunately or usual tactic of just turning up to get a bus to our next destination didn't quite pay off, as the main bus was full so we had to get a pricey mini-bus. Probably there would have been a local bus soon enough, but the bus station staff were unhelpful, so we just took it. Quite a few people had raved about Luang Prabang, but once we got there and eventually found a (comparatively pricey) hotel, it didn't seem like anything special. It was nice enough, and they had good pancakes with brightly coloured fillings, but I thought Savanakhet was nicer, although I suppose if you have a romantic notion of Buddhism all the monasteries might appeal. The setting was very pretty though, amongst mountains at the meeting of two rivers (one of them the Mekong), it was quite relaxed, with locals playing boule (the French version of bowls or however you want to describe it), and we discovered the delicious Cornetto flavour that is Black Forest Magic. On the evening of the second day we went to the market full of local stuff for tourists, Sally bought some presents for family, but as I'm not going home any time soon I just got a cool monster doll thing, and then chicken and rice, Sally's favourite meal. For our last day we spent a while negotiating with tuctuc drivers, eventually finding an America girl to come with us to bring the price down, and we were taken to the waterfall. In wet season it must be impressive, but when we went it seemed fairly standard really. Swimming in the pools was fun though, if a bit cold, on the way back we saw buffalo who'd had their horns painted pink, and we had a really good meal in the evening.
The next day we'd made the mistake of booking through a travel agent, as we'd decided not to go to Chiang Mai after all but go straight to Bangkok, which meant going through Vientiane and we wanted to make sure we could get the bus to Thailand the day we got to Vientiane, 24 hours of buses in total, but the guy assured us we could, phoning up the office in Vientiane about 8 times to make sure. First problem was at the start. The bus didn't leave until 6.30, but apparently we had to be there at 5.30, the only reason we could see being so we had to pay more for a tuctuc, but we did that anyway, but the bus didn't leave until 8! Once we got to Vientiane we phoned the number we'd been given to get the pickup we'd been assured we would get, but apparently it didn't exist so we had to get our own tuctuc to the office, he then didn't know where it was so we had to ask at a hotel, and when we got to the office they told us the bus had already gone and there was no way to catch it that day. Sally phoned up the office in Luang Prabang, but they were unhelpful, refused to give us any money to pay for the night in Vientiane we now had to or in fact do anything. One of the hazards of travel in the Third World I suppose.
Luckily the hotel we'd stayed at before had room, and they recognised us so let us have a bigger room for the same price as the time before. We spent the next day have beer, coffee and ice cream then went to the office an hour before we were meant to be there just to make sure. 15 minutes after the time we'd got there the day before, someone arrived and took us literally around the corner to another hotel to wait for another half an hour, when someone else brought us around the next corner to the bus, a horrible mosquito infested thing that would take us to the border. only it wouldn't for another half an hour, so how we couldn't have got it the day before we didn't understand. But eventually we did get to the border, paid the Laos officials "overtime fee" and got across to Thailand and our nice VIP double-decker bus. 40 minutes later we stopped for dinner, but finally at 8.30 we were heading for Bangkok, unfortunately with some stupid, irritating, loudmouthed English girl blathering most of the way keeping us awake. At 6.30 we finally arrived, only 24 hours later than we wanted to...
09 April 2007
Holiday In Cambodia
(3/1/2007-10/1/2007)
To start our first full day in Cambodia, Sally and I went to the Laos embassy to get our visas for Laos (pronounced "Lao") as we would be entering at an unofficial border crossing so couldn't get them on arrival. That done we had bubble tea (fruit flavoured cold tea with sorghum ball "bubbles" - I had plum, a mistake as it was disgustingly sweet) in a very strange posh looking bar with blacked out windows, then went to the internet for a bit before having more bubble tea, this time from a street stall where we could only choose the flavour by the colour of the powder in the jars, but luckily I managed to get mango which was much better than the fancy one. At some point I also bought myself a new hat to replace my black cap with red star from Vietnam that I'd managed to leave on the bus when we arrived in Cambodia, a kind of cowboy/explorer's hat, like the ones the VietCong had.
Once we finished these we decided to go to Tuol Sleng, the torture museum in the former school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge. It was pretty depressing and sad, most of it left as it was when the regime fell, along with some photo exhibits, although some of the captions rather disturbed this sombre atmosphere, particularly the summary of the life of one of the victims, an actor who apparently appeared in the films "When The Frog Cries, The Girl Panics" and "Tomato With Dried Fish Men". We followed this up the next day with a visit to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, where the prisoners were taken once they'd been tortured to be executed, although generally not with bullets but with the butt of a rifle. The main exhibit is a tower in which the thousand or so skulls that they dug up are on display as a monument to remember the victims, with labels saying how old the people each group of skulls belonged to were. Then you wander around past the trenches they were dug out of, and in the ground there are rags, apparently the blindfolds they wore, sticking out of the ground, an occasional pile of bones and signs on trees saying "the magic tree: where microphones were hung to drown the cries of the dying" and "this tree was used a tool to kill babies". All pretty grim stuff, but apparently our driver who took us there in a tuc-tuc (the kind of motorised rickshaws they have everywhere) didn't think so as he asked us just after we left if we wanted to go to the shooting range. And I still don't really understand the Khmer Rouge. I mean, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, May, Ho Chi Minh, and others, all did things according to a certain twisted logic, that were horrific, but where really just modern versions of Roman Emperors and other scumbags. But the Khmer Rouge seemed to have no logic and were actually completely insane.
From Phnom Penh it took us a whole day to get to Siem Reap, the City near the famous Temples of Angkor Wat, so there was no point going to the temples that day. The next day we took a tuc-tuc to the ticket booths and got three day tickets, then walked the few remaining kilometres, past a cool big spider whose web I almost walked into, to Angkor Wat itself. There are about 60 temples in the area, but this is one of the most famous, on a square island on a square lake, a huge palace like complex with those three rounded spire things. It was great to wander around a temple that famous that, unlike in China, and like at My Son, had not only not been obviously restored except to keep it from collapsing, but looked like it had only just been cut out of the jungle. Tucked in little dark corners of the temple were shrines still in use today, giving the impression that it was a religion in it's dying throes (although sadly, it probably isn't). Once we'd wandered around that for long enough we continued up the road, finding one of the smaller temples just off it, which was completely free of other tourists, then got a motorbike taxi back (just the one bike for both of us and the driver: if people there can fit a family of four or five on one then so can we). In the evening we had amok, a Cambodian speciality of fish curry steamed in banana leaves, which was delicious, each bought a hammock and a krama, the thin scarves they have there and in Vietnam (which the VietCong used to blend in with the population - mine was in the same colours as they had, blue and white, while Sally got a black and red one), and then got some cans of Black Panther Stout, a local beer with a great name and the slogan "Feel The Power Of The Black Panther!"
Day two amongst the temples we began with a tuc-tuc ride to Angkor Thom, which used to be a holy city with many temples, surrounded by a moat like Angkor Wat but much bigger, and in the centre is Bayon, a rather chaotic temple covered in faces of Buddha. Other temples there included one which French archaeologists had taken apart, recording where each stone went and the Khmer Rouge then destroyed these records, so it is being slowly put back together, and the Terrace of Elephants, a raised platform decorated with carvings of many-headed elephants and wars using elephants and so on. The were also some little local girls playing the hilarious game of "throw rocks and sticks at the wasps nest until they try and attack, then run away giggling." Then leaving along the North Bridge, which like the southern one was decorated with people pulling on a serpent's tale, an image that comes from Hindu mythology apparently, we came to an old academy, Preah Khan, which was the first temple we saw with huge trees growing out of it, the roots wrapping around walls and through stones, which looked very Indiana Jones. From there we were given a free motorbike ride as far as Angkor Wat by a friendly worker, from where we could get motorbike taxis back to the City. For our last day we decided to rent a tuc-tuc for the whole day, something we'd avoided until then as we didn't want to see too many temples and get "templed out" as we had in China. We decided to only see two that day, Ta Prohm, which had apparently been used to shoot the Tomb Raider film, and Ta Som, both less crammed with tourists and full of trees growing over the ruins. He we met lots of kids trying to sell us postcards for "only one dollar", and one little girl could count to ten in about ten different languages when we prompted her. To celebrate having finished the temples, we had "crumble pie" at our hotel, but unfortunately it turned out to be banana crumble, and Sally hates banana.
The Laos border was technically to the north-eat of Siem Reap, but because the roads are so bad, the only way to get there was to spend one day going south and then another day going north to even get to the border town. After all the night buses in Vietnam, we decided to only take day buses though, which gave us a chance to see the Cambodian countryside (very poor, mostly fields and jungle, nearly all the house were thatched with banana leaves and on stilts) and meant we could actually sleep. Our first stop was Kampong Cham, a crumbling ex-colonial town by a river, where we spent the day drinking, playing Scrabblecards, having fresh coconuts and wandering through a cemetery. Strung Treng was the border town where we had to find some people to share a speedboat up the Mekong once more. Luckily on our bus there was a Cornish guy who looked remarkably like Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons, and next to the hotel we found was a café and tour place run by a guy by the name of Mr T, where we met a German guy also wanting to take a boat, so there we could organise a speedboat for only $3 each more than a bus to Laos would cost (so $13), as he already had to send his boat up the river to collect people coming the other way. And that was the end of our holiday in Cambodia. We didn't see many people dressed in black though.
To start our first full day in Cambodia, Sally and I went to the Laos embassy to get our visas for Laos (pronounced "Lao") as we would be entering at an unofficial border crossing so couldn't get them on arrival. That done we had bubble tea (fruit flavoured cold tea with sorghum ball "bubbles" - I had plum, a mistake as it was disgustingly sweet) in a very strange posh looking bar with blacked out windows, then went to the internet for a bit before having more bubble tea, this time from a street stall where we could only choose the flavour by the colour of the powder in the jars, but luckily I managed to get mango which was much better than the fancy one. At some point I also bought myself a new hat to replace my black cap with red star from Vietnam that I'd managed to leave on the bus when we arrived in Cambodia, a kind of cowboy/explorer's hat, like the ones the VietCong had.
Once we finished these we decided to go to Tuol Sleng, the torture museum in the former school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge. It was pretty depressing and sad, most of it left as it was when the regime fell, along with some photo exhibits, although some of the captions rather disturbed this sombre atmosphere, particularly the summary of the life of one of the victims, an actor who apparently appeared in the films "When The Frog Cries, The Girl Panics" and "Tomato With Dried Fish Men". We followed this up the next day with a visit to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, where the prisoners were taken once they'd been tortured to be executed, although generally not with bullets but with the butt of a rifle. The main exhibit is a tower in which the thousand or so skulls that they dug up are on display as a monument to remember the victims, with labels saying how old the people each group of skulls belonged to were. Then you wander around past the trenches they were dug out of, and in the ground there are rags, apparently the blindfolds they wore, sticking out of the ground, an occasional pile of bones and signs on trees saying "the magic tree: where microphones were hung to drown the cries of the dying" and "this tree was used a tool to kill babies". All pretty grim stuff, but apparently our driver who took us there in a tuc-tuc (the kind of motorised rickshaws they have everywhere) didn't think so as he asked us just after we left if we wanted to go to the shooting range. And I still don't really understand the Khmer Rouge. I mean, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, May, Ho Chi Minh, and others, all did things according to a certain twisted logic, that were horrific, but where really just modern versions of Roman Emperors and other scumbags. But the Khmer Rouge seemed to have no logic and were actually completely insane.
From Phnom Penh it took us a whole day to get to Siem Reap, the City near the famous Temples of Angkor Wat, so there was no point going to the temples that day. The next day we took a tuc-tuc to the ticket booths and got three day tickets, then walked the few remaining kilometres, past a cool big spider whose web I almost walked into, to Angkor Wat itself. There are about 60 temples in the area, but this is one of the most famous, on a square island on a square lake, a huge palace like complex with those three rounded spire things. It was great to wander around a temple that famous that, unlike in China, and like at My Son, had not only not been obviously restored except to keep it from collapsing, but looked like it had only just been cut out of the jungle. Tucked in little dark corners of the temple were shrines still in use today, giving the impression that it was a religion in it's dying throes (although sadly, it probably isn't). Once we'd wandered around that for long enough we continued up the road, finding one of the smaller temples just off it, which was completely free of other tourists, then got a motorbike taxi back (just the one bike for both of us and the driver: if people there can fit a family of four or five on one then so can we). In the evening we had amok, a Cambodian speciality of fish curry steamed in banana leaves, which was delicious, each bought a hammock and a krama, the thin scarves they have there and in Vietnam (which the VietCong used to blend in with the population - mine was in the same colours as they had, blue and white, while Sally got a black and red one), and then got some cans of Black Panther Stout, a local beer with a great name and the slogan "Feel The Power Of The Black Panther!"
Day two amongst the temples we began with a tuc-tuc ride to Angkor Thom, which used to be a holy city with many temples, surrounded by a moat like Angkor Wat but much bigger, and in the centre is Bayon, a rather chaotic temple covered in faces of Buddha. Other temples there included one which French archaeologists had taken apart, recording where each stone went and the Khmer Rouge then destroyed these records, so it is being slowly put back together, and the Terrace of Elephants, a raised platform decorated with carvings of many-headed elephants and wars using elephants and so on. The were also some little local girls playing the hilarious game of "throw rocks and sticks at the wasps nest until they try and attack, then run away giggling." Then leaving along the North Bridge, which like the southern one was decorated with people pulling on a serpent's tale, an image that comes from Hindu mythology apparently, we came to an old academy, Preah Khan, which was the first temple we saw with huge trees growing out of it, the roots wrapping around walls and through stones, which looked very Indiana Jones. From there we were given a free motorbike ride as far as Angkor Wat by a friendly worker, from where we could get motorbike taxis back to the City. For our last day we decided to rent a tuc-tuc for the whole day, something we'd avoided until then as we didn't want to see too many temples and get "templed out" as we had in China. We decided to only see two that day, Ta Prohm, which had apparently been used to shoot the Tomb Raider film, and Ta Som, both less crammed with tourists and full of trees growing over the ruins. He we met lots of kids trying to sell us postcards for "only one dollar", and one little girl could count to ten in about ten different languages when we prompted her. To celebrate having finished the temples, we had "crumble pie" at our hotel, but unfortunately it turned out to be banana crumble, and Sally hates banana.
The Laos border was technically to the north-eat of Siem Reap, but because the roads are so bad, the only way to get there was to spend one day going south and then another day going north to even get to the border town. After all the night buses in Vietnam, we decided to only take day buses though, which gave us a chance to see the Cambodian countryside (very poor, mostly fields and jungle, nearly all the house were thatched with banana leaves and on stilts) and meant we could actually sleep. Our first stop was Kampong Cham, a crumbling ex-colonial town by a river, where we spent the day drinking, playing Scrabblecards, having fresh coconuts and wandering through a cemetery. Strung Treng was the border town where we had to find some people to share a speedboat up the Mekong once more. Luckily on our bus there was a Cornish guy who looked remarkably like Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons, and next to the hotel we found was a café and tour place run by a guy by the name of Mr T, where we met a German guy also wanting to take a boat, so there we could organise a speedboat for only $3 each more than a bus to Laos would cost (so $13), as he already had to send his boat up the river to collect people coming the other way. And that was the end of our holiday in Cambodia. We didn't see many people dressed in black though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)