Si Phan Don - Siem Riep Aug 16 - 19

We arrived in Don Det around noon with a group of backpackers. Sarah and I chose one of the first guesthouses we saw, only 20 000 kip ($2 CND) a night. It closely resembled a garden shed, but was conveniently situated along the Mekong with two hammocks on the porch. After putting our bags down we continued on with the group to a bakery, owned and operated by a Western Australian man. Sarah and I were starving and indulged in a homemade chocolate-banana donut covered in sugar, we then shared a pumpkin soup and foccacia with mushrooms, onions and tomatoes. We made our way back to our hut and vegged out for the rest of the afternoon.

The essence of our time in Don Det was a lot of time spent swinging and reading in our hammocks and doing as little as possible. The local people were some of the friendliest people we have met. Lao people are incredibly laid back, so much so that you often have long waits before you get your meals. The children were so much fun, the first night after watching the sunset and having dinner, Sarah and I went in search of some night life. Instead we stumbled across a large group of local people crowded around a small 12 inch TV in the bakery. Sarah and I sat down and shared pumpkin seeds and BeerLao with an elderly woman and the children. The woman knew some French, from when Lao people had to learn it in school when the French were still in power, and Sarah conversed in simple French with her.

The next day we lazed around only venturing from our hammocks for a short while to wander along the path to the neighbouring island Don Khon, with a concrete bridge connecting the two, one of the only things the French built in the area. The bridge used to have a railway on it. We made our way back weaving through the rice fields, exchanging ‘Sabaidee’ (hello) with locals along the way. We encountered groups of children with homemade bug nets, trying to capture dragon flies. Sarah and I both commented on how kids seemed to entertain themselves for hours, with whatever they could find in the surrounding environment, much different from the XBOX playing kids from back home.

We spent 3 nights in Don Det and then headed to the Cambodian border, just a short bus ride away. Again we were snuggled into a mini bus with a dozen other travelers. We were abruptly dumped at the border, which looked more like a couple of shacks with movable traffic barriers at either end.

We were all first directed to the Lao Departure window, where we had to pay $2 US to receive a departure stamp. From there we literally had to walk across the border from Lao to Cambodia. We then had to stop at a ‘Quarantine’ tent, where we had to produce our travel inoculation documents, if you did not have the proper documents, you had to pay $1 US. From there we walked to the VISA station, where we filed in an arrival form, had to produce a passport picture (if you didn’t have one, you again paid $2 US) and around $23 US for the VISA. Luckily Sarah and I had all of our necessary documentation. Lastly, we made our final stop to receive an arrival stamp, which cost us $1 US. In total Sarah and me each paid $24 US to enter Cambodia.

The group of us found our coach bus circa 1970 waiting on the other side, and sat on the tarmac waiting for the rest of the travelers to complete the same process. Once all of us boarded the bus we set off, stopping briefly for lunch and dinner along the way. Those of us on our way to Siem Riep spent the night in Kampong Cham, just north of the capital Phnom Phen. We were dropped off at a guesthouse, $5 US a night. This guesthouse was by far one of the dingiest we stayed in, which was only confirmed by Sarah waking up the next morning to be covered in bed bug bites.

We continued our journey at 6:45am the next morning and arrived in Siem Riep at noon. When we pulled into the bus station, we were greeted by a man with our names on piece of paper. We were meeting my parents in Siem Riep to tour Angkor Wat together, and thought that they had arranged a driver to pick us up and take us to the hotel. We soon figured out once we were led to a tuk tuk, that this was merely a clever marketing scheme by local guesthouses and tour guides. The man wanted to take us to his guesthouse and be our guide for the next few days. If we had not been meeting my parents, we likely would have gone with this option as we had heard from other travelers that it was a cheap and good way to see the temples. The man simply chuckled when we told him where we were really staying, Le Meridien, one of the higher end hotels close to the ruins. He seemed more than a little disappointed that we did not want to employ his services during our visit. We felt a bit out of place showing up in the lobby of the hotel in our backpacking garb and bags hanging from all available limbs.

Sarah and I spent the afternoon relaxing, scrubbing off weeks of dirt and grim before my parents arrived from Singapore later that night. Sarah treated me to a Salt Scrub at the hotel spa, as a late birthday present and was an excellent way to get rid of the tell tale signs of backpacking.

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