Hellcat

On March 25 we arrived at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. Though still a communist dictatorship, this is a country light years ahead of Burma in terms of oportunity, education, health care, infrastructure and government involvement with the citizens of Vietnam. Due to our arrival at night we arranged to be met by a driver from our hotel. It is about 1 hour drive and the roads are pretty wild in this extremely overcrowded city. The AnAn hotel proved to be located in a backpacker ghetto in District 1 of the old city. In a similar fashion to many of the newer hotels here it is a high, narrow building with only two rooms on each floor. The narrow building lots in the city are a carryover of the taxation system implemented ... read more

Our morning taxi from Nyaungshwe arrived early for the 1-hour drive over the terrible road to the nearest airport. The diver appeared insistent that we leave so off we went weaving around potholes that could have swallowed a bus and road workers with the latest high tech machinery - "le sledge hammer". Yes, the roadworkers, 50% female, were breaking up stone for a new roadway with sledgehammers. A scene reminiscent of 1950s Louisiana (and likely present day as well) prison chain gangs. Hard work in the already blistering heat. Good thing we left for airport early as our scheduled 9:35 a.m. flight on Air Bagan left promptly at 8:45! We managed to scramble through customs and immigration (yes, need to go through these formalities for every internal flight in Burma) and board plane just before they ... read more

We　headed next to big, beautiful Inle Lake, about 22 km long and 11 km wide, and surrounded by misty high hills. The road there is dreadful, but it's worth making the trip. The main town on the lake is Nyaung Shwe, where we stayed at the Au Mingala Hotel for $18/night, breakfast included. The hotel bungalows are clean, quiet, and you can catch up on the news on the hotel's one English channel, Al-Jazeera (that is, betwen 6 p.m.and 10:00 p.m., at which time the power goes off as it does throughout most of the rest of the town). One of our first snacking stops was the Golden Kite restaurant, which prides itself on its pizza and pasta. Who knew that Italians taught English to the local people in the mountains of Burma? We were ... read more

On our arrival in Bagan we were met by Mr. Moo, a friend of our driver in Mandalay. Mr. Moo's English proved excellent, but chatting with him was a bit disconcerting visually. Like many Burmese he is addicted to chewing Betel nut. As a result, when he smiled, it looked as if he had been drinking chicken blood. During our short drive to our hotel we observed that Bagan, which is located along the Ayerwaddy River, is hot, dusty and desert like, with nothing but sand, and dry scrubby bushes....and, oh yes, more than 2,500 pagodas and temples dating back more than 1200 years! There had been some 5,000 temples, but a brief and violent visit from Kublai Khan in mid-13th century reduced the number of temples by half. While in Bangkok, we had pre-paid 6 ... read more

Got off to a bad start on our trip to Myanmar when our Skippy peanut butter was confiscated by security in Bagkok airport. They also prevented out taking unopened bottle of rum from Phnom Penh duty free on to plane but Skippy a much bigger loss! Things went from bad to worse when we discovered that over half our American currency was unacceptable. Now, when we left home we had crisp, clean U.S. dollars for this leg of our trip. Unfortuately, we had to dip into our stash in Sumatra, northern Thailand and Lao. We decided to replenish our US funds in Phnom Penh as Cambodia runs on the American dollar and dispenses them from the few ATM;s in the country. However, the banks in Cambodia stamp U.S. dollars with little stars or - get this ... read more

Leaving Phnom Penh, we hired a longdistance taxi for the journey to Kampot. The distance is only about 150 km, but it took 3.5 hours due to the terrible state of the road despite its reputation as one of the best in Cambodia! Kampot is nice riverside town, some 12 km from the south China Sea, with lots of old French colonial buildings. Most of these buildings are in ruins as this area proved to be the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge and then the Vietnamese army controlled the town for a further 10 years. We stayed at a 4-room inn called Rikitikitavi constructed in former rice warehouse by a couple from England. Although one of the more expensive hotles in town at $30/night, we thought it a very good bargain. Rikkitavi has a wonderful ... read more

We arrived late in the afternoon on Valentine's Day and once we had checked into our old French colonial inn, we set out on foot to explore the downtown area followed by a lovely walk along the Mekong esplanade. Enjoyed a great Valentine's Day dinner in the Freebird Bar. Without a doubt the best chili con carne in SE Asia and super fun waitresses. The ladies in the restaurant were each given a red rose and chocolate (thereby taking Matthew off the hook!). This is an incredibly dynamic city that feels like it's just exploding with life, despite all the suffering it's endured. Stores, restaurants, repair shops, whatever.... tumble out of artillery shelled and bullet-scarred buildings and take over the street. The whole city feels like its on a roller coaster. Scooter traffic, interspersed with ox ... read more

While still in Siem Reap, we made the decision to take a boat through the northern part of the Tonle Sap Lake and then up a winding river to the city of Battambang - a decision we soon regretted. The boat had seats for 20 and we arrived early enough (7 a.m.) to grab two. By the time we left the dock, there were about 70 tourists with luggage on board, the majority on the roof in the blazing sun. The early part of the trip proved interesting as we motored by floating villages on the northern end of the lake, with kiddies taking barges or dugouts to get to their floating school with an amzing floating gym with a screen around it to prevent volleyballs from falling into the water. After about an hour we ... read more

Enjoyed a short flight from Pakse, Lao to Siem Reap, Cambodia on Siem Reap Airlines. On arrival we were whisked to the Hanumanalaya Inn which is constructed of teak and designed to resemble a traditional Cambodian house. Our first afternnon we walked 3 kilometres to downtown Siem Reap under a blazing sun. Good sense inspried us to stop at the Foreign Correspondents Club, located on a small river, for well-deserved cold drinks. Thereafter we shopped in two of the old markets and returned to the Inn for a lovely swim followed by a tasty dinner by the pool. The next day we chose to spend a few hours dealing with on-going travel arrangements. We also walked to four small Angkorian temples located within the boundaries of Siem Reap for a taste of the splendours to come. ... read more

We booked a truck ride from Don Khong island for the 120 km. journey to the Bolavan Plateau. Start of trip interesting as we had to go on small ferry that looked a tad less than seaworthy. A simple wooden decking placed over two boat hulls with a small extremely noisy engine on the back. Eight small vehicles jammed on one side and then an overloaded bus balanced everything by driving up on the other side. A lot of heavy swaying as we traversed Mekong and while Helen undid the laces on her boots in order to make it easy to kick them off, I whiled away the time by drafting newspaper headlines in my mind "Small ferry sinks in Mekong and 600 lives lost".... "Great looking Canadian couple missing on the Mekong"...."Canadian widow sobs "if ... read more