Phnon Penh - Cambodge the land of weddings

Kampong Cham was a nice town to relax in for a day. Not too many westerners and it's always good to be by the Mekong. We ate a delicious Steam Boat/Hot Pot Khmer style and my dad will be happy that I also decided it was time to lose some hair. My haircut cost $1!
After a day relaxing I fare welled Imke and Martin and got on a bus to Phnon Penn.

Wow - what a city.. It's nice to be back somewhere I've been before but it also pretty different compared to 7 years ago. The country is developing fast! It has a great feel this city and I had another day or so to relax and soak it up before meeting Adam. I spent some time at the markets and wandering around and ate some yummy food and also visited one tourist site I hadn't been too before called Wat Phnon which was nice but I was reminded of the amount of children and amputees (Land mines) begging at tourist sites. You shouldn't give begging kids money so I made up for it by visiting a great restaurant called Friends, it is an organisation that is setup to help street children and the restaurant is staffed by young people from the street. There are pictures all around the restaurant of ex-staff in their new jobs in the better restaurants around town.

I met up with Adam who used to live in Phnon Penh for 3 years. He was back for a visit and a couple of weddings. Its funny - it must be wedding season in Cambodia because I have seen at least one, usually more, every day I have been here.
On Tuesday we met up with Monica (Canadian) who just got married (to a local Khmer) and some of her friends and we went on a boat cruise up the Mekong to "the silk island" - an island in the Mekong - where we saw some women working silk looms and had a bit of a look around. That night we went to a North Korean restaurant which was pretty cheesy! During our meal the young waitresses got up and sang and danced and played North Korean instruments - mostly really cheesy romantic songs. They actually were very good at what they did!

The following morning Adam and I hit the road to head down to a local village in the provinces, we hired small motorbikes (100cc) and drove for about 1.5 hrs. Unfortunately my bike was pretty bad and broke down but a mechanic had it fixed in no time for the fee of 50 cents!

We made it to the village we were headed and to the house of Peat - an old friend of Adams. Peat has been 51 for the last 8 years that Adam has known him and he used to ride a cyclo in Phnon Penh when they met. Adam had a new house built for Peat in his village 5 years ago and now Adam is treated like a prince by Peat and all his family and many of the people in the village. I was lucky enough to be asked by Adam to go with him to the wedding of one of Peat's nephews - Raksmey.




After meeting a Peat and his wife we then jumped back on the moto's for another 2 hours to the village where the wedding was - near the Vietnamese border.
We were treated like VIP guests and sat on the table with the grooms family. Apparently the grooms father is now famous because he had foreigners at his son's wedding! We ate delicious food and had a couple of drinks before we got back on the motos for the trip back to Peats village. The party apparently went all night but we left quite early as riding a moto after dark on the roads in Cambodia is pretty tiring ánd we tried unsuccessfully to make it before dark.

The following day we headed to a local pre-Ankorian temple with a Peats daughter and a few of her cousins from the village. We went to Phnomn Chisor which was pretty nice and visited all the many temples on top of this mountain. Peat told me later that Pol Pot used to live around this mountain during his time as leader, and apparently both the Americans and South Vietnamese had tried unsuccessfully to bomb the temple.






We drive back to the village were we were treated to a delicious lunch by Peats brother Pai and his lovely wife. The Khmers would not eat with us foreigners - Adam has asked them many, many times but they always wait until after we had finished. It is a bit strange to be watched by a group of people when you eat!
We decided to spend another night with Peat and his lovely family (his brother and sister both have houses next to Peat) and their children.. Most of their children (and grandchildren) were in the village as they had come from all around to go to the wedding. After another early night we jumped back on the moto's to go back to Phnon Penh for more of Monica's wedding festivities.

Holiday in Cambodia

Again it's been awhile but I'm sure everyone is on new years holiday in the west - so I am too! Don Det was great to get back too and I spent 7 nights there just relaxing and recovering from my biking adventure. I hooked up with a few of the gang from Xmas and of course we made new friends as they arrived on the island. I did a fair bit of reading in my hammock, ate well and had some fun with the different people that I met. Some girls in a local restaurant looked after me one night and asked me for dinner with them local style which was a great experience. We did one sunset cruise up the river where Mr Vixay - the guesthouse owner took us in his boat up the Mekong to a deserted beach for sunset.

Of course in the middle was new years eve which was pretty big on the island. I was having a great time but I think that I had too good a night the night before and around 11.15pm I was exhausted so I went for a quick rest and then woke up at 6am the next morning. I was a lot better off than most people on the island the next day!
My last night we walked across Don Det to another island Don Kong where there are waterfalls and large rapids in the Mekong river. We had a BBQ of Chicken and Duck which was delicious and brought a lot of comment from the local villages as we walked to the beach with them.
January 3 my Laos visa ran out so I had to leave the country and head down into Cambodia. I think that it was exactly 7 years to the day that I first came to Cambodia and I was excited to see much more of the country this time.
We got a bit of a shock at the price differences for buses at the border but I was travelling with Imke (German) and Marting (English) who I met on Don Det and we headed for Ban Lung - to the mountains in the north east of the country.

We arrived after dark and checked into the Lake View Lodge which is a former Governors residence and was huge!
The following day we hired 3 local guides to take us on the back of their mopeds to see the local sites.

We visited 3 waterfalls which were spectacular and Martin and I went Swimming at the 3rd one. After lunch at the Delicious Gecko restaurant we visited the volcanic crater lake which was also spectacular and great for swimming. Ban Lung is a very dark red color because large amounts of dust everywhere. We were pretty dirty but it was a great day. The following day we wandered around the town and took it pretty easy before taking a bus to Kratie the following morning (6am).
Back on the Mighty Mekong river we spent a day again on the back of Moto's having a look around at the local villages and sites . We visited a meditation retreat which was very peaceful and another Wat. There wasn't too much to do so we jumped on a bus the following morning for Kampong Cham.
It is a great town a - little bigger than the previous 2 towns and I really feel like I'm in Cambodia again. The people here are great and today we hired a Tuk- Tuk to get out and see the local area again.

We visited a Bamboo bridge that gets built every year in the dry season - before being washed away in the wet. We also went to a huge rubber plantation and out to the oldest Wooden Wat in Cambodia. It is around 150 years old and locals say that it has huge powers. Apparently the Amercians tried to bomb and destroy it but couldn't.
We also visited the local ancient temple from the Ankgor Wat days. It dates from the 10th Century and was really spectacular. I don't think I'll head up to Ankgor again this trip so it was nice to get a bit of a feel for the memory! I think I'll relax in Kampong Cham before heading down to Phnon Penn and meet up with Adam who was living here when I first visited 7 years ago. As an Ex-local who speaks Khmer it will be good to catch up and get a few ideas of where else to check out.

Route 13 and 250cc's

I can't believe it's so long since my last post and there's been so much happening! My last post I mentioned that I was going off tubing.. I started around 11am and the plan was to have a mulberry shake at the Organic farm to start but Somehow I got talked into buying a Lao Lao (Lao Whisky) Mojito for underprivileged children and well really it was all downhill from there. I met a fun Irish couple who were buying buckets of Lao Lao and Vodka mixed with Thai Red Bull and the Lao 'amphetamine' drink M150 and I was soon involved with that. The tubing is actually pretty low key because the different bars are not very far apart from each other but the first 5 or so all have large swings and flying foxes that drunk people get on and drop into the water.. It was great fun from what I remember - the 5th bar had a giant slide which I went down in my tube and ws launched very high- after that the day is a bit of a blur. I don't remember getting back to town but woke up in bed at 10pm so I must have needed a sleep. The next day was difficult but I got up early to head to Vientiane - the capital of Laos, I took it pretty quietly that day and the day after as well. Vientiane is an interesting town, it is a bit Lao, a bit French and a bit of a big country town as well. There was some good food to eat which helped me to recover from tubing!

The first day in Vientiane I bumped into a couple of Kiwi guys from Wellington who I had met caving and tubing in Vang Veng. They mentioned they were riding motorbikes down through central and southern Laos. I soon was involved and after a few quiet days and Sauna and massage we met up with a local French man who was hiring the bikes. At this point Te, one the Kiwis, decided that he was too unwell (flu) to make the trip so it was just James and I who set of about 10.30am the following day.

We hired 250cc Honda Trailbikes so we could go off road if we wanted and the first day we headed into a National Park to check them out. Motorbiking is a great way to see a country and it was fantastic to drive through the many villages and towns and stop off if we wanted. James had a few problems with his bike at the end of day 1 and we ended up riding for a little while in the dark. Eventually at Vieng Kham we found a sign that said 'Nightclub and Guesthouse' so we pulled in to spend the night. It was just the 2 of us and a 2 piece live music group came on and we felt a bit embarrassed that they were playing for us - surely no one else would be turning up. Before long the place was pretty packed and a couple of quiet beers lasted a bit longer than expected. The next morning James bike wouldn't start so we had and extra hour or so to recover while they charged his battery. We covered a fair bit of distance on day 2 and didn't stop too much, we had our accommodation organised early and after a delicious dinner went to bed early in Seno.

Day 3 and we continued down Route 13 (which runs from the capital to Cambodia) until there was a dirt road heading east. This was our turnoff to head into the Bolaven Plateau - which is an area famous for its coffee and waterfalls. The dirt roads were pretty bumpy but our trail bikes handled them well. The problem was that my little backpack that was strapped on the back didn't like the bumps and decided to open.. It took me a minute or 2 to realise and by then a bit of my stuff was littered down the road. When I realised I panicked and quickly sped back to James who had stopped to pick up my phone, guidebook and some clothes. We spent a while looking for my Nintendo but I later realised that the Buddhist Monk who was gesturing at me as I sped back past him has probably got it along with a pair of socks and undies! We made it up into the plateau and found a nice place to stay in Sekong at dusk.

The following day we were planning to meet Te to organise Xmas but we wanted to head through the National Park and see some waterfalls before heading down into Pakse. We found our way and saw what is arguably Lao's highest waterfall (Nam Tok Katamtok) and also stopped at the top of another before heading across to Paksong. I misjudged one corner coming out of a village and ended up going over the handlebars of my bike which broke my glasses which put a few lovely scratches on my face. We had a small break before stopping for coffee in Paksong and it was great. We mad our way down to Pakse and it took a while to find the road out (old Lonely Planet maps are bad!) as we got a text from Te saying that Xmas was in the 400 Islands near the border with Cambodia. We made it down there after dark and checked into our bungalows on Don Det. I had a quiet night that night after my stack but of course it was Xmas eve so lots of Europeans partied late. Te had organised a Xmas lunch and early the next morning he and James went with the Bungalow owner to the local market back on the mainland. They bought a pig, 2 chickens and 2 fish and a fire pit was dug. We had a late lunch (or early dinner) as you do on Xmas and there was about 10 of us. Later on some of the guys brought out guitars and the numbers swelled a bit as we had a great fun night. I drank lots of water so the next morning wasn't too bad - James and I had to get the bikes back up to Pakse to return them.

We left in the arvo and decided to check out the World Heritage listed Wat Phu Champasak. We had to put the bikes on a little ferry to get them across to Champasak which was fun and the Wat itself was definitely a highlight. I managed to drop my bike again trying to find my way down to the ferry. We made it back into Pakse after dark and managed to get the bikes delivered that night. I checked into a nice Hotel (Pakse Hotel) and bought some iodine to clean up my grazes. I have a pretty badly bruised foot so I've decided to stay in the nice hotel for another night and have a rest before heading back down to the 'super relaxed' 4000 island to do some more relaxing until new years eve. Then I'll probably relax some more. Motorbiking was a great experience and probably the highlight of my trip so far. We were treated like rockstars in many places and driving along a road when school has finished you would get 100's of kids jumping, waving yellng and cheering. It was also a good lesson that I'm not a 22 yr old (like the Kiwi guys) any more and to remember that I'm on Holidays. I doubt there's be much to report on for a bit so Happy New Year everyone and look for more postings in 2009!

Different Towns - Laos? I'm not sure..

The day after trekking I decided to get the early bus to Luang Prabang with my friends Elle and Ben from my trek. Our Tuk-tuk to the bus station was stopped by a minivan driver and we jumped into that instead - it was faster and cheaper than the bus so a good start! We had a great Laos steamboat dinner that night.
Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World heritage site and it is really beautiful. No tall buildings and a great mixture of French and Laos architecture, many historical Wats and temples all on the banks of 2 rivers including the Mekong. It is so clean and nice that it didn't really feel like Laos anymore - it is definitely an international town.
I spent the first day exploring the town on foot and visited a few of the major Wats. I went to a great restaurant Tamarind - run by 2 women - 1 Australian, for lunch and had a tasting plate which gave me a good idea of Laos delicacies - yum.
I had a pretty quiet night as I think the trekking was catching up with me. Sleeping on wooden huts floors hurts your body!
The following day I had a lazy morning (More yummy food!) before catching a slow boat up the Mekong to the Pak Ou caves. There are 2 caves in a limestone cliff that contain thousands of statues of Buddha. We came back via a local village as the sunset over the Mekong...
(I'm not posting photos cause I think you will find better ones on the Internet)
As beautiful as Luang Prabang is, I missed Laos so it was time to move on. The next morning was a minivan to Vang Vieng which is also spectacular but again I don't think very 'real' Laos. The landscape is covered by huge limestone mountains and cliffs but Vang Vieng is also famous for it's tubing down the river - where many young people come and float down the river in tractor tubes, between many bars and the occasional huge slide, or flying fox or swing in the river as well.. So there are many bars and young women running around in bikinis which is not really Laos at all.
I spent my first day on a motorbike exploring the area and many of the caves that are in the limestone's mountains surrounding the town and ate some fantastic food at Vang Vieng's organic Mulberry farm.
I'm going to do tubing tomorrow because I have been hearing about it for so long.. Needless to say I might be off the air for a day or 2 after bar hoping all day long..

Not quite a slow boat..

So motorbiking it was.. I met a great Dutch guy called Pieter who had been here for a couple of days and we got some bikes and checked a local treking company maps before heading off to find some waterfalls. First we headed about 20 kms out of town and then hit a dirt road for around 30 mins. We left the bikes at a river crossing and walked into a local village on foot. I was quite surprised to be greeted by a number of topless women with black teeth and lips from chewing beetlenut... Whoa - the villages here are a lot less developed than in China and we were made to feel quite welcome most of the time - including being offered Lao Lao (local rice whisky), but chose to leave after 20 mins or so. Whilst there we met some other Dutch people returning from a trek and they explained that the waterfall we were looking for was 3 hours walk, so Pieter and I got back on the bikes and headed back to town.
After lunch we headed the other way out of town - into the NPA protected area. It was great riding through the villages - the children were always running out and yelling hello and waving. We didn't have any luck finding waterfalls but had a great day exploring the local area around Nam Tha.
The next day I decided to head for a slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. When I got to the bus station the bus was already full so my plans quickly changed and I decided to head further North to Muang Sing, where the trekking was reportedly better.
I wasn't in town long before I booked onto a trek for 2 nights into the mountains and villages around Muang Sing and the Chinese border.

We started the next morning and visted a Mong village first (Ross?). Not long after that we left the tuk tuk and headed off on foot. The first village we got to was celebrating Buddist New Year so we had lunch in the Head mans house. It was a bit different and thankfully we left after a while and eventually enjoyed a great lunch with our guides.

That night we stayed in an Aka village that was really interesting. Again it was much less developed than any I visted in China including having no power. After dinner the local women came down and gave us a massage - as per their tradition for visitors.

I had a bit of an upset tummy the next morning but that cleared up by lunch which we had in a different Aka village, before heading to the place we would spend the night.
This was a young village and had recently broken away from a parent village in the area. There was a school there and lots of young families and kids. We arrived mid-afternoon so I ended up playing Kratow with the locals - something that I haven't done since Thailand 7 years ago. It provided lots of laughs for the locals and we had early dinner before another local massage. We were staying in the head mans house and later in the evening he turned on a generator so the local kids could come in and watch some TV. I had a few drinks with my Takraw friends and the next morning we headed off through a few more villages before stopping for lunch.
Where we stopped for lunch there was a new house that had just been built and we were invited into the housewarming for lunch. The locals were extremely friendly, and a little bit drunk and they forced quite a few drinks on us as well. It was good fun and I don't think I ate all that much but we had a great time meeting all the people in the village.

Eventually we had to leave as we wanted to get back to Muang Sing to catch buses back to Namtha..
We're made it and after a hot shower I'm back on-line checking emails before I head to Luang Prabang tomorrow..

The City Of Dawn and then beyond..

Jonghong means 'the city of Dawn'. It is the capital of Xishwanbana and a pretty relaxed town. It was nice to chill out here for a few days after trekking.. Well I got a bit of a cough/chest cold - I think coming back on the bus, so it was enforced rest! The city has lots of gardens and I spent one day riding out to nearby villages and temples before hanging around the city parks and gardens. Some of them had way too many Chinese tourists so I missed them out, but it was good relaxing.
Eventually I decided it was time to leave China. I will miss traffic lights with count-down timers, rubbish trucks that play much better tunes than Mr Whippy (so people will run out with their rubbish!), and yummy food but theres lots I won't miss too - Mostly noisey, noisely people!
So to Laos it was, due to not being 100% fit I thought I would be relaxed about heading for the border which meant spending the night in the town of Mengla near the border.. This was not a nice town to spend my last night in China in - particularly the Karoke bar in my hotel which was full of drunk men screaming into a microphone until much too late in the night!
I did get some last minute help to get some passport photos for my Laos visa just before the bus left, but then the border crossing was really easy.
I arrived in Luang Nam Tha around lunchtime and had a relaxing arvo to truely shake the cough. I thought a Herbal Sauna would help but the place I went to didn't have sauna yesterday, and I got talked into a Laos Massage instead... I don't think I'll be rushing back to them again - my nipples are still really sore today and I feel a little bit used...!
Today I've been biking around the area through local villages and looking at some of the local Stupa's. Laos is really relaxed. Well up here it is... It's a lot like a country town and everyone and everything is really relaxed. The town was dead at 9.30pm last night which was quite nice too.
There are many minority groups around and their local costumes look great. Some of them are the same people's that I saw whilst treking in China, so there is a bit of cross-over between the countries. I have been contemplating a trek here too, the turn-offs are the cost (treks get cheaper the larger the group - I am 1!) and also that many of the tourists are 'older', so that means the group treks are of the easy variety which I have a problem spending money on. Maybe I'll get a motorbike and see what I can find anyway!

Bana, Bulang and the Burmese Border

Leaving Dali was hard. After 3 weeks in luxury hitting the real world again was a bit scary but a special hi to Dave and Song and all the staff at Jade Emu for making me feel so at home. (Special mention to Della and Nancy for taking me out for dinner, and to Chen Li and Karissa for all their help!) It was also sad to say goodbye to Yuxiu who showed me lots of different places and experiences that the average tourist would not get to see.
So it was off the the Bana (Xishuanbana) in the hope of getting a bit warmer. I had a bad hangover when I arrived and spent most of the afternoon getting to know the part of town I was staying in. I had an email from my friends Alex and Evelyne (German and Swiss) who had given me some ideas about where to stay and what to do. At first I was too tired to do too much but for some reason I decided after dinner to ask about some trekking info at a Cafe Alex had mentioned. Within 5 minutes Anipa, a local guide was at the cafe telling me that he had a trip leaving in the morning! So I got myself organised before bed and the next morning we were off!
Anipa is a Bulang people. One of the many minority groups in Yunnan. We caught buses West, towards the Myanmar border, to Xiding where we had lunch at a local restaurant before hitting the hills.. (day 1 - 16kms)
We walked over a couple of mountains - through a lot of farming plots, past a massive Banyan tree, past a village with a large temple (Zhanglang), before we hit a small local village around dusk at 6'ish. This village used to hold many more families before a large number of them set up a secondary village 30 minutes away due to a lack of water. The secondary village (Manwa) is now bigger than the first and is where Anipa's family live, this is where we stayed the first night - in his parents house.

Many visitors came that night and I slept pretty well - in fact didn't get up till after 9 the next morning.
It was ok because we had a lazier day planned for day 2 (only about 14 kms). We walked past a local temple before hitting a border post for lunch. This town (Bada) was 28kms from the border but the last settlement so it had a customs office. This village was an Akha people village - the thing that distinguishes their costume is a piece of wood, like a prisoners stock that they wear around their neck..
We had lunch and pushed onto the next Bulang village (Manmai) where we stayed with another local family. The food was delicious, including some venison recently hunted from the nearby forest.















It was an early start on day three and after looking at the the local temple (which was large) we headed down into some rain forest. It was very lush and green and there were some huge trees which were great..
After crossing a stream it was back up hill for a couple of hours before another hill top village (Manxi). This was where my friends Alex and Evelyne had stayed, but since they were here.. just 2 weeks ago the locals have put a new road in, down the side of the mountain.
So instead of walking down like they did - this means that we got in the back of a tractor and rode it (in Neutral) down the mountain - at quite some speed. It was a bit scary at times - particularly, as you can see - it's not all that easy to steer around the hairpin corners. But we made it a long way down before the road got too rough and we then walked into town, which is another border town with Myanmar (Daluo) - this one right on the border - it was pretty interesting to see the diversity of peoples and cultures in China.

Anipa told us a story of the Chinese official who had the money to build the road from Daluo to Jinghong. Just over the border in Myanmar is a large Casino and apparently this is where the money for the road stayed.. Chinese people are now banned from visiting the Myanmar Casino over the boder, and so they should be because the current road is shocking. Jinghong has a massage center that is run by blind people and I was thinking of visiting after the hike... After the bus ride back - I am definitely heading down there too sooth some aching muscles.
Its a bit cool today in Jinghong so it seems that winter is chasing me south fast.. Laos here I come...