Wat fun

After a brief detour through Khao Yai national park in northern Thailand (selection of photos on Facebook), I arrived in Vientiane, Laos. I thought Phnom Penh was tiny, but this capital managed to be even smaller: a few temples, some apartments and embassies, with restaurants and bars filling the spaces in between. Laos really struggled after independence from France and the end of its constitutional monarchy around 35 years ago. It didn't receive the same attention as given to its neighbours Vietnam and Cambodia, despite being a major theatre of the "secret war". Laos tops the charts for infant mortality in SE Asia and is one of the poorest countries in the region, but this was not immediately visible in any of the places I visited in my 10 days here. Laos has since tried to market itself as an eco-friendly tourist destination, luring travellers with promises of relatively untamed natural beauty and a more authentic Asian experience; like Cambodia and Vietnam before the touts and scams arrived. However, it was surprisingly expensive to eat, drink and sleep here - obviously not compared to the West, but almost 2 months into my trip I had started to get used to (almost) luxurious hotels for $10 and feasting on $1 meals.


3 days in Vientiane were enough to see the major sights: a few significant temples (my list of temples is growing longer and longer and they're all blurring together) and Patuxay Arch (an Arc-De-Triomphe-wannabe monument built from concrete that was donated by the US military under the assumption it would be used for a new airport runway).

Pha That Luang, Vientiane

Patuxay Arch, Vientiane

In the evening I hooked up with some Aussie gold miners and hit the town. Nightlife in Vientiane is, erm, interesting. There's only one club, which was more like a school disco, but lots of fun. Plenty of Dark Beer Lao (seriously... Best. Beer. Ever. I just know I'm going to end up paying £5 a bottle for it in a Soho bar), tequila shots and stories of unexploded ordnance, helicopter airlifts and unreported border flare-ups. I realised after I got back to my room that I had unintentionally broken the national midnight curfew - not sure what the punishment would have been but, based on the Lao legal system, would probably have been quite strict (as an aside I'm told that in the history of Lao legal system, once charged nobody has ever been acquitted - defence lawyers only act to reduce the sentence handed down, not to argue that their client is not guilty).

Vang Vieng

Nursing a hangover I headed north to Vang Vieng, a supposed hedonists playground, but was really just full of lary and disrespectful amateur drinkers. Opium and marijuana coffee was on the menu in some of the bars and almost every cafe showed re-runs of Friends and Family Guy, 24/7. Very little to do here except "tubing" - floating downriver on an inflatable ring and stopping at makeshift bars on the way - which isn't much fun in heavy rain.  Flooding had closed lots of roads around Laos and made travel in the north much more difficult. Not really wanting to stay in Vang Vieng for long I took my chances with a bus trip through the mountains to Luang Prabang in the north. On the way we had several holdups while we waited for JCBs to clear fresh landslides and had some tricky moments sliding around corners with sheer drops, with earth visibly rolling down the mountainside as we passed.


Eventually we made it to Luang Prabang, the old capital and arguably the cultural centre of Laos, with shed loads of temples in a relaxed riverside setting. After a day exploring the town's palace-cum-museum and some of the larger Wats I booked myself onto a cooking class - partly to learn a bit about Lao cuisine and partly to get some cheeky practice in before I take a similar course in Thailand with a friend that'll undoubtedly get competitive.

After some live Saturday Premiership football (why does northern Laos get it and the UK doesn't?) and another good night out on Beer Lao I nursed a hangover to the airport for my early morning flight to Bangkok. Maybe the national beer is not such a good idea. On the way I watched lines of monks collecting alms from the locals on their way to the monasteries. It sounds so serene, a basic, traditional way of life but I did see two monks checking Facebook in an internet cafe the day before.


I wish I could have visited other places in Laos and got a little further off the beaten track, especially in the south of the country, but weather and time constraints made it difficult. Plus I was getting itchy about being away from the sea and very much looking forward to the diving I would do in Thailand.

Temples of Angkor

Ta Prohm

John and I took a boat up the river from Battambang to Siem Reap, passing through rural communities, floating villages and some stunning scenery. The trip was expected to take 7  hours but it took almost 10, largely due to us having the Derek Zoolander of water-based transport. The delay just gave John more time to make me feel even more guilty for bartering with a small child for a can of coke the previous day (you can take me out of the City, but...).
We based ourselves, as most Angkor visitors do, at Siem Reap just a few km from the Angkor complex, and it was far nicer than I imagined for a tourist trap town. Lots of money flows through here - temple day passes are $20, which is an order of magnitude higher than all the other attractions in Cambodia - and it has largely translated into investment in the town. While Angkor Wat is undoubtedly the most famous of all Khmer temples, the larger area holds several other temples and religious sites, not to mention the hundreds more dotted around Cambodia and even stretching into eastern Thailand.


We spent the first day exploring the less visited temples on the outskirts of complex, which we pretty much had to ourselves: Lolei, Preah Ko, Bakong, Ta Prohm and (eventually) Prasat Prei Monte, the latter being one our tuk tuk driver was loath to visit and proceeded to concoct all sorts of excuses (even trying to convince us that a small pile of stones near the car park was the ruins we were looking for, before sheepishly relenting). Prasat Prei Monte had the real feel of jungle ruins - not a person in sight, covered with vines and thick cobwebs, hidden away down a makeshift trail. Every little rustle caught our ears, half expecting to see a flashing glimpse of snakes or feral children scampering into the undergrowth. Ta Prohm was nature at its rawest, with vines, bushes and even whole trees jostling for space with the ruins. It was like something out of Tomb Raider, which is apt because it was actually used as a location in the film.

Preah Ko

Ta Prohm

Plenty of little Cambodian kids peddling their parents wares and tugging on our heartstrings. Once you were embroiled in a conversation a soft drink purchase was pretty much guaranteed. Most went along the lines of:
"Where you from?"
"London"
"LondonCapitalUKPopulation60millionBuckinghamPalaceQueenElizabethBigBenDavidCameronPrimeMinisterColdDrinkOneDollaaaaaar!"


Being Welsh, John was finding it difficult to forgo his national pride and pretend to be from London for the sake of making these conversations easier (saying you're from Wales just gets blank stares). When he finally cracked, answering "I'm from the UK, about 150 miles west of London", and got the reply "Cardiff?" he was so overjoyed it was soft drinks all round.


The next day, our temple appetites sufficiently whetted, we headed straight for Angkor Wat. After fighting through the tour groups (we couldn't be bothered to get up at 5am to beat the crowds and catch an overcast, gloomy sunrise) we caught sight of the iconic building... plus scaffolding, which made getting the perfect photo a little tricky. Next up was the Bayon where seemingly everywhere you look you're being watched by several huge stone heads (216 in total) all smiling rather eerily, and supposedly modeled on the face of Avalokiteshvara.

Angkor Wat

Bayon

 I expected Angkor Wat itself to be the highlight, and even with the crowds and repair work this was a fantastic sight, but on its own it didn't overwhelm me. However the temple complex as a whole was magnificent - the scale and the variety in the structures, each one brimming with "how did they do that?" stonework and surrounded by untamed jungle. I should probably stick to more pictures, fewer words to really do it justice.

Preah Khan

Next up, a short trip into Thailand, for visa reasons, and through to northern Laos. 

Phnom Penh to Battambang

Well it's about time I updated the blog, given that I've been in four countries in the past two weeks. After Saigon I jumped on a bus to Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, which involved being dropped in another border town with no information and working through immigration through trial and error. As with all these long-distatnce bus journeys the driver stops at his favourite roadside cafe every now and again, where he undoubtedly gets commission for every weary traveller buying overpriced food, made from unknown animal.


Cambodia uses two currencies interchangably - it's own riel and the US dollar - which means that working out whether you've been short-changed is a test of mental arithmetic. Oh, and they only accept US dollars that were made after 1980, which is a little bit picky  in my opinion. It was another case of hoarding small bills and desperately trying to break the big ones the ATMs dished out. Tuk -tuk, one dollar. 25 bracelets, one dollar. Bottle of water, one dollar. Everywhere I went I was bombarded with people crowing "one dollaaaaarrr, one dollaaaaarrr".

Royal Palace, Phnom Penh

I hooked up with 2 Brits, John and Craig, from the bus trip and we hit the town. Phnom Penh is small for a capital city, only two streets with any sort of action. Every bar had a pool table surrounded by girls in high heels and short dresses practicing their westerner-hunting skills. A really seedy atmosphere. We watched the Hungarian grand prix getting slowly merry on Angkor beer in the Phnom Penh Walkabout (yes, a Walkabout in Cambodia... but probably not an official one), which had the air of Gary Glitter's local. The only other people in there were middle-aged western men with their arms loosely around disinterested, young Cambodian girls. I got accosted on each trip to the loos - doing a Tycho Brahe would have been a less depressing alternative.

Victims of the regime

The following day we took a trip to the Killing Fields and the infamous S-21 prison [please Cambodia, build a funfair or something!]. When Pol Pot's security forces took over the local high school in 1975, they renamed it to Security Prison S21 and turned the classrooms into torture chambers. Around 17,000 people - soldiers, monks, academics, informants, and anyone the Khmer Rouge suspected to be opponents of the regime - were imprisoned here in the four years it was operational. Only 7 made it out alive. Like the Nazis, the regime were meticulous in their records of prisoners and their torture. Despite all this evidence the regime leaders still claim they had no knowledge of S21 and tragically their trials are ongoing, some 35 years after they were removed from power, which only delays the resolution this country desperately needs.

Memorial Stupa, Killing Fields

Most of these prisoners were executed at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, often in the most brutal of ways. Victims were bludgeoned to death to save ammunition, babies were swung against treetrunks until their skulls smashed open, then bodies were dumped in mass graves. The memorial stupa on the site houses around 8,000 skulls, bones and clothing found during the excavations. In the wet season the rains stir up the ground, exposing teeth and clothing and sure enough we found some as we walked through. A constant reminder of the brutality that unfolded here.


John and I went to Battambang the next day, Cambodia's second city in the northwest of the country, but nothing more than a high street. We took a daytrip into the countryside to visit Phnom Banan temple, the Killing Caves of Phnom Sampeau (not sure how many more 'Killing' places I can take) and did a Cambodian wine tasting session, throughout which the vineyard worker was preoccupied with poking a toad up the arse with a twig. Lesson of the day: Cambodian brandy is not special.

Killing Cave of Phnom Sampeau

Phnom Banan temple

So far, Cambodia is up there with my favourite countries. Incredibly humble and friendly people, fantastic food and terrific scenery. Despite all the depressing tourist sights I had a great time, and with the Angkor temples still to come, it just gets better (Angkor in the next blog...).

Nha Trang, Dalat, Saigon

I took the sleeper bus to Nha Trang. This wasn't just a normal coach at night, but a fancy bus decked out with rows of almost fully reclining bunkbeds. It's comfy in theory, but only if you're less than 5ft tall, otherwise you spend all night with your knees in the air (though judging by the extent of the sex industry here it seems like a lot of people are doing that already). Also you're lucky if your bus isn't over-booked. Most operators take more people than beds, forcing some travellers to choose between sleeping in the gangways or being left at the roadside (you're often taken to the bus, which is parked some distance outside town so that it's not that easy to get back... full marks for deviousness).


I arrived in Nha Trang aching and tired and immediately booked myself on a snorkelling trip that morning. The reefs off the coast aren't special but I figured that a casual day of soaking up the sun and sea would be a perfect cure for the lousy transport. The town itself is pretty small and, aside from the beach, had very little to see. So, nursing some typical English sunburn I took a bus to Dalat in the central highlands - the main reason being to get out of the 35C temperature and exhausting humidity. 


Perched up in the mountains Dalat has a very European climate, with some vineyards (Vietnam's finest wine, apparently) and strawberry plantations, and I was pretty cold - it must have dropped to 25C. Brr. Plenty of stalls selling hats and thick jackets and all the locals were wrapped up in the evenings. I took a tour with "Easy Peter", part of the ubiquitous "Easy Riders" crew who do motorbike trips in the surrounding countryside. Peter Fonda he was not, and I never did find out in what way he was Easy.

Central Highlands near Dalat

Elephant falls, Dalat

Next up was Saigon. I grabbed another sleeper bus, not learning from my past mistakes. I was assured it would take 8 hours but somehow it managed to shave 2.5hrs off that time, leaving me in Saigon bus depot at 3.30am. After finding my hotel I woke up the staff and slept in the lobby, waiting for my room to be ready. I awoke to the sound of people eating breakfast around me but still with no room I decided to head out to the Reunification Palace.


The palace was used extensively by the President of South Vietnam and when NVA tanks bust through the gates in 1975 it effectively ended the Vietnam war. Remarkably the building is in pretty much the state it was left 36 years ago and is a weird timewarp back to the final days of the conflict. Saigon also houses the War Remnants Museum, with countless displays of pictures from the photographers who bravely brought the war to public attention and a heavy anti-American slant. 


I took a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, used by the Cu Chi guerrillas to attack American troops, stopping on the way at the Cao Dai temple at Tay Ninh. Cao Dai is a curious mix of Buddhism, Confucianism and Catholicism. The 2.5m followers also worship 3 "saints": the Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat Sen; 16th century Vietnamese sage Nguyen Binh Khiem, and, bizarrely, Victor Hugo.

Cao Dai temple, Tay Ninh

Cao Dai worshippers

Saigon was a pretty seedy place at night. Aside from the numerous massages, I was also offered a girl for the night by a madam on a moped, with said girl riding pillion at the time. Prostitution going mobile. But I wouldn't be hassled for sex for much longer. I was heading to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where the sex trade is practically non-existent... right?