Bye Bye Laos - Hello Cambodia

Sunny Skies, Palm Trees & Religion - Vientiane Style

Before i start Sab and I are in Cambodia at a town called Siem Reap..home of Angkor Wat.

But first i have to tell you something about the travel philosophy of the Italians. When one of your most enduring images of the country of Laos is of an Italian man wearing 2 sizes to small bike shorts with his bulge out there for all the world to see, you know something is just not right. This unfortunate display took place in front of the local restaurant that Sab and i had been dining at that night on the Mekong River. The air was warm and the night sky was dominated by dark grey with the occasional bolt of lightning making a guest appearance. All of a sudden one of the guests of the hotel decided that his eating apparel of choice was of a singlet and shorts that seemed to be painted on. It's not like i was looking on purpose but i was shocked as to me...when you go out to eat the mouse stays in the house...not vice versa. More on the Italians later.

The last time i had updated pepsplace was in the quiet capital of Vientiane. Before we left for the south i decided that it was time to immerse ourselves in Lao history. I know i know..the Beerlao factory is history enough but when the National Museum is across the road from your guesthouse, you know that i want to take a look but when we first entered the rustic mansion things weren't exactly as i secretly hoped for. Instead of seeing old guns and pictures of revolutionaries plastered on the walls, we had come across a history of the human race. I know the basic story. Ape turns into man over a few thousand years but there is no need to know about this. I came here with the explicit idea that i would be surrounded by war and not plastic models of caveman villages near the Mekong River 10,000 or so years ago.

Sab shot me a look that said "Why did you want to come here?" and i was feeling the same. It was the National Museum and i thought that seen that Laos has had more bombs dropepd on it than any other country there has to be something about the Indochina conflict of years before. So far the closest i had come was an ancient pot that used to have deceased babies put inside it for religious purposes. Upstairs was a different story as i finally saw what i came to see. Rustic guns and propaganda..these are the hallmarks of a museum in this part of the world for me. It was great to see that the museum took a very neutral slant towards the countries history especially under 95% of the photos where this line would appear:

"With the help of the Imperialist United States and its puppets."

After that visit which renewed my faith in the amusing Socialist slant of history i had the sudden desire to make my way back to the National Firing Range. It was only a block away but i decided to go against the idea as my body decided it was in need of chocolate mousse more than a Smith & Wesson .38.

The rest of the afternoon saw us count down the time till we made our way down to Southern Laos. We were booked in for a 10 hour busride to a town called Pakse where we would have to jump on another bus and ride another 5 hours to a location called the "4000 Islands." The bus itself wasn't that bad, in fact it was the most comfortable bus we had been on. It even had a flurecent green lights in the engine compartment so that gotta mean something right? Sab and I took the initiative early by deciding to watch "Entrapment" on our portable DVD player rather than watch a dodgy copy of "Broken Arrow" on a TV we couldn't see the top half of. Also the movie was on Lao audio with English subtitles. Whilst the ride wasn't the most comfortable i had managed to actually fall asleep. The only way i knew i was asleep was when in my dream i said to myself "Hey i'm asleep." At about 5.50 in the morning (we had left at 7.30 the night before) we were heading into Pakse and the following video will explain how wake up calls are done in this part of the world.



As you can see, it's probably the worst wake up call in my living history. By the time we got to Pakse it was raining and our cheap ponvchos were taken out of the bag only to be put away again soon after as we caught another bus (this time only 3 hours) to the island of Don Khone, the largest of these 4000 islands. The problem was they weren't really islands per se`. They were just a bunch of trees that somehow pierced themselves from the muddy brown Mekong River and forced themselves skyward. I'm sure when the river is low then they may actually look like islands but for now they looked like one big flooded backyard. After settling in we decided to take the bikes for a spin. at first we were going to actually attempt riding a scooter but due to philosophical differences (the owner said we had to pay for petrol extra and we didn't want to) we opted for the more standard pushbike. The scenery on Don Khone was amazing. All around us there were lush green rice fields and farmers just working away not knowing that only a kilometer down the road in a guest house room, an illegal DVD of "Clerks 2" was going to be played later that night.

Renovators Dream here at Don Khone - Swimming pool avaliable only in wet season.

Then about 30 minutes of seeing the same scenery, we turned back towards the guesthouse where i spend the rest of the afternoon listening to my iPod on the balcony of our guset house and enjoying the delights of a few Beerlao. The next morning Sab and I were boked on a tour of two of the smaller islands - Don Det and Don Khon. These two islands in the Lonely Planet are written up as " a chance to see village life and stay in riverside bungalows." Sounds great but after taking 90 minutes to get there on boat we were told by the boat driver that we had to get off, walk to the bridge that connected the islands, cross it, keep walking and see the biggest waterfalls in Southeast Asia (since then we found out they weren't) walk back and be back at the boat in 5 hours time!

So after walking though mud and between cows and pigs we finally made it to the only railway bridge the French built in Laos. I would have been more interested if not for the fact it took 90 minutes and 5 kilometers instead of the suggested 30 minutes and 2 kilometers. Another hour later we had made it to the Somphamit Falls which during the rainy season looked like a busted sewer pipe rather than the splendor of the Kuang Si waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Then it was back towards the boat where it took us two and a half hours to get back due to the strong Mekong current that the boat was driving against. It was a nice day out in hindsight but if someone says you are doing a tour, you would hope that you would actually get a tour guide and not a driver who said" get out and see you soon."

On Teddy's right (your left) is Laos- On his left (your right) Cambodia

Don't get me wrong, the past few days have had some magic but it has been overshadowed in some respects by the twin towers of fear that travellers hate - travel time and transport. The day after our so called 'tour' we were on our way to Kampong Cham in Cambodia. On the way to Cambodia we passed two Lao checkpoints where you had to get your visa stamped to get out of the country. This is where the Italians come into play. Not only did they not get their stamp stamped at either of the TWO checkpoints we passed but we had to wait for them not only to go back up the road and wait for their Laos visa to get stamped, but also wait for them as they were being issued their Cambodian visa and complain to a bus driver on a price to take them to Kampong Cham.

Like John Cusack said in 'High Fidelity' "I'm not the smartest man in the world but i'm not the dumbest either...i'm a middleweight." Even someone with my lack of wordly knowledge is smart enough to know that you:

a) don't smoke like a chimney around minivans as the smell of smoke wafts into the van or on your clothes

b) you can put your arm around your lover put try not to play tonsil hockey every 30 minutes

c) complain to the locals that transport prices are high when you haven't booked seats

d) act like you are the only people in the minivan by talking Italian with the volume turned up.

I don't like minivans. They make me sick physically. When you have 16 people in a bus designed for 12 all i want is some sort of quiet where i can try and block out the fact my bag is where my testicles used t be due to the lack of space. At one time on a bumpy dirt road we had to stop as one of the Italians wanted a photo of a kid on a buffalo. Not to sound like an old biddy but can you do that after we get to our stop. I'm sure there are other kids riding buffaloes like the Lone Ranger around Cambodia. Hell there may be even a buffalo riding academy here but why oh why did we have to stop for them!!

Some of you might say that i'm culturally insensitive to the European traveller. Some of it may be born out of jealousy due to a lack of real culture back in Oz but this time around there were no excuses of the Italians behaviour. It was disgraceful. I was tired and stinky. I hated them. Eventually we made it to Kratie which was three hours before our designated stop but as we were running nearly three hours late it was decided that we would settle here for the night. Whislt we waited for the rest of the bus to move on to Kampong Cham we found out that the bus driver selected for the Kratie - Kampong Cham route got pissed and shot though on his next job. This further delayed the bus and even though we were supposed to get into Kampung Cham about 5 that afternoon - i think they would have arrived about 10pm that night.

This morning (as in today- the day i'm writing this) saw us take a 10 hour busride from Kratie to Siem Reap. Though this was an actual bus and even with the annoying Chinese movie being played through rustic speakers, the journey was quite pleasnt. I tried to sleep but i couldn'tand i wanted to drink water but didn't out of fear of sudden pressure against my bladder in a remote location in a country full of undiscovered landmines. The hours just slowly waltzed by until this afternoon about 5pm when we were greeted by a sea of Tuk Tuk driver all wanting their business. After fiding a guy who said that he was our driver (part of the bus ticket price was a free ride into Siem Reap town on a Tuk Tuk) there was confusion shortly after as another man with our names written in texta came to find us and say "Don't go with him, he is a liar. I've been waiting two hours for you." Well he had our names on a piece of paper and even though there are stories of bus companies giving away clients names and sending them to hotels as part of another 'commission' scandal, we went with the sign wielding driver and made our way into Siem Reap with no troubles.

Tomorrow we are going to have a well deserved sleep in and have a look around town.

Tonight i did have pizza for dinner though, so much for my dislike of Italians huh?

The last time i had updated