Some Same-Same, Some Different

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November 26th 2007

Published: November 26th 2007

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Emilie International

Busy Phnom Penh

Life near Boeng Lake. Phnom Penh

(Brace yourselves, this is a long one!)

It seems to be South East Asia's motto: same-same, but different - and you hear it everywhere, from street vendors, restaurants, travel agencies, tuk-tuk drivers. After a couple of months of traveling through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand it's begun to feel true. In spite of some differences in style, wealth, food and history the backpacker scene in each country is really similar as are the food, activities and souvenirs that are peddled to my type. It's not necessarily a bad thing - these places are SO backpacker-oriented that they are a breeze to travel through. For example, you never have to eat strange food if you don't want to; there's a stall selling banana pancakes and fruit shakes around every corner. If you didn't get a chance to buy a traditional-looking shirt or skirt or funky set of lights in Laos, you can find the same thing in Thailand (probably for cheaper). For an introduction to outdoor pursuits, the treks to hilltribe villages in these countries is as cottled and comfortable as a walk in the park (and don't worry about having to eat rice or noodles for breakfast - banana pancakes

Waterfront Property

Flooding by Boeng Kak Lake. Phnom Penh, Cambodia

await!)

A nice change from China has been that people here speak a decent level of English. This is great for a lot of reasons - it means you're not likely to end up with a meal of mystery-meat because you can't understand the menu or the waiter can't understand you. It's also a lot easier to get around on public transport, make hotel reservations, get directions. But in terms of authenticity, something seems to have gone amiss in the backpacker deluge. Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot to be learned and experienced over here. It's just that if you're looking for a hard-core backpacking experience it takes a little more effort to find one here.

Even so, my first few days in Cambodia were about as challenging as I wished them to be, as I was traveling solo again for the first time in weeks and Phnom Penh was not particularly at its prettiest when I arrived. I was staying in the Boeng Kak lake area where you find most of the budget accomodations and I suppose they would have been quite nice if the lake hadn't flooded leaving a smelly cesspool in the alleyways

Tower of Skulls

That's what you find inside this pagoda at the Choeng Ek Killing Fields. Phnom Penh, Cambodia

that lead to their doorsteps (the upswing was that all the mosquitoes in the area made it a sure bet that you wouldn't forget to take your malaria meds). This combined with a lot more poverty and dirt than I'd seen in Vietnam made me a bit uneasy about being alone. It didn't last beyond my second day, though, when I decided to commission one of the millions of moto (motorcycle) drivers loitering around the main road near the lake to take me around the city for a day.

Since I hadn't actually planned to go to Cambodia I wasn't sure what I should do there so I stuck to the standard sites: the Killing Fields at Choeng Ek and Tuol Sleung Prison - a gruesome history lesson about the senseless brutality of the Khmer Rouge, followed by a tour of the golden Imperial Palace. It was strange to see two such contrasting sites in the same day, especially to go from being stunned by the suffering these people went through to awed by the majesty in which their royalty live (the royal treasures are EXQUISITE). Compared to Vietnam, which has made a strong recovery after the Vietnam War,

Classroom Turned Prison Cell

Tuol Sleng prison museum. Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Cambodia is much less developed, though it doesn't lend itself to being pitied.

I actually found Cambodia quite a refreshing country to visit. It was more "real" (i.e. a little less touristy) than Vietnam but friendlier and more industrious than China. The food was tasty and, although there were western options, it was easy to find good, cheap local food too. Corruption is rife and is a main topic of conversation, but most people just seem to be trying to earn an honest living and work hard just to do so. Of course, they could be a little more creative in their employment choices - there are more moto drivers in the Boeng Kak area than there are tourists, but this means that they are really grateful when you give them work. But whereas they would have snuffed you in China if you didn't want to hire them, the Cambodian drivers are still happy to have a chat with you, even if you don't need their services.

I fell in love with Cambodia over my first week there and let down the guard I had put up so hastily in China. I spent a lot more time interacting

Gateway to Misery

Another shot from Tuol Sleng prison. Phnom Penh

with locals, trusted my moto and tuk-tuk drivers, even made friends with them. I realized that people here would allow me to gain as much cultural understanding from them as they stood to gain money from me. I thought that was a fair exchange and it made me feel more generous than I had previously; and I relaxed. And when I did, interesting things started to happen.

On my last morning in Phnom Penh, I was approached by one of the few female moto drivers I'd met and she asked (almost begged) me to hire her for a ride to anywhere - the bank, a temple, it didn't matter. She obviously hadn't worked in a few days and looked exhausted, but I really didn't need her services so I invited her to join me for breakfast and asked her to suggest a restaurant. She took me to a little family-run place with two tables at the entrance and we ordered some baguettes with eggs and coffee. As we were chatting and I was explaining my travel plans to travel through northern Cambodia and take the unofficial border-crossing into southern Laos, the owner of the restaurant asked if I was

Zen

Be a Buddhist, don't pick nice flowers at the Imperial Palace. Phnom Penh

going to stop on one of the Four-Thousand Islands (an archipelago at the southern tip of Laos that sits in the middle of the Mekong Delta) and if I was, could I do him a favour. It turned out that a Danish guy had stayed at a guest house on the island of Don Det and had offered to make some laminated menus for the owners and left them at this restaurant in the hopes that a tourist headed north would be able to deliver them. After checking to make sure they hadn't stuck me with an envelope full of drugs, I obliged, and left with a renewed sense of purpose in my travels - a mission!

An interesting twist in the story is that I later found out the Danish guy had been working for a not-for-profit human rights organization Phnom Penh that hires McGill students for internships in Cambodia, but the fate of it all didn't go much further than that. Aside from getting a free night of accomodation at the guest house (actually a riverside bungalow) in Don Det, I arrived to find that they already had laminated menus (I guess they got tired of waiting

River Sunset

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

for the delivery from Phnom Penh) and was pretty much treated like an ordinary guest after that (none of the fairy tale welcome and appreciation I had imagined, haha!)

The rest of my trip through Cambodia was made interesting by my introduction to one tuk-tuk driver in Siem Reap (home to Angkor Wat) - a charismatic guy named Lucky. Lucky, as it turned out, was in pursuit of a Canadian wife who would realize his dream of moving to a Western country where he could be "loved for who he was" and not for his money...I think he was quite disappointed to find that Western women are as materialistic as Cambodian women and just as hard-to-get, but his pursuance gave me a chance to see a more local side of Siem Reap. Though I was put in a position of being a "sugar momma" (Lucky showed me around to all the good clubs and restaurants, but I paid for all our food and drinks) he was my "in" to the local scene and well worth the ten or fifteen dollars it cost to do everything we did in two days.

My next stop after Siem Reap was Lucky's

Evening Row

Boeng Lake. Phnom Penh

hometown, Kampong Cham, a quiet city with only a handful of tourists. Here I was met by Lucky's childhood friend Bun Sareth - one of the friendliest people I have met on this trip. Bun is a student at the Tourism University in Kampong Cham but somehow managed to find time to pick me up at the bus station when I arrived. From there, he helped me find a guest house then took me to his school where I got to sit in on an English class. We left school after that for a tour of Man hill where we explored the local wat and Woman hill where we watched the sunset. The whole evening was capped off with a visit to Bun's home where we drank beer and ate papaya salad with his family. Bun and I hadn't agreed on a price for his guiding services beforehand (a business mistake on his part) but I ended up giving him quite a bit more than he usually got from his tourists and it was worth every penny for the glimpse of ordinary Cambodian life he gave me.

From Kampong Cham, I headed north, through serious farmland (the kind where

What Wat?

Angkor, of course! Siem Reap

they don't actually have anything to sell to tourists and don't make any scheduled stops at souvenir shops or over-priced food stands; in fact, it was the kind where bathroom breaks mean squatting behind someone's tree) into Stung Treng and over to Laos by a combination of rickety bus and small boat. And then I got sick - nothing big, just a stomach bug but I was way-laid for most of a day on my hammock by the river. This was probably the best place for this to happen as the only thing to do in Don Det is relax and enjoy the island-pace of life anyway.

I spent the rest of my healthy time in Laos traveling with the people I met shortly after crossing into Laos (a Dutch guy named Koert - like Kurt with an "oo" sound and a purr in the r - and a Kiwi couple) as we were all headed to the same places at the same time, or at least their schedule sounded good to me and I went along with their plans. We stopped in the peaceful village of Tat Lo where we bathed in the river, admired waterfalls, walked along

Monk-y Business

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

forest paths and took an elephant ride. Elephant-riding is a pretty controversial activity as some trainers are not very kind to their animals, so we wanted to make sure we did it in a place where the elephants were treated well, and the elephants in Tat Lo lead enviable pachyderm lives.

It was my birthday by the time we got to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and though it is not the most happening city in the world I enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Koert and the Kiwis complete with travel-appropriate birthday presents.

To be honest, after this Laos lost a bit of its appeal to me. My next stop was Vang Vieng, about 5 hours north of Vientiane. While you expect any capital city to have international food and a backpacker district, Vang Vieng seems to be all about the tourists. Replete with "TV bars" serving a variety of Western-style meals and showing repeats of "Friends" on a constant loop, Vang Vieng is okay for a bit of hedonistic indulgence but a far cry from giving you any insight into Laos culture. Even a walk outside the backpacker area leaves you with little indication of "local" life

Contemplation

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap

- a bit disappointing if you get tired of being confronted with all of these stereotypical home comforts. To be fair, Vang Vieng does have some nice caves and a beautiful swimming lagoon about 7km outside the town (and apparently some bodacious river tubing, which is the main tourist attraction - we didn't do any) but the town itself is a commercialization nightmare (though I suppose this isn't true if you happen to own a TV bar that makes a killing off the dull-eyed, open-mouthed tourists that install themselves there every night).

Anyway, I left Laos after Vang Vieng feeling like it wouldn't be worth the 6-hour journey north to Luang Prabang (which is renowned for trekking, but which I fear is in a similar state of commercialization as Vang Vieng) and also feeling pressed for time - it was November 14th, I had a flight to Delhi from Singapore on the 19th and had just remembered that I had forgotten to apply for my Indian visa. Oops! I thought I was going to have to pay extra to get an express visa (it's easy to get a visa for most South-East Asian countries in a day or two

Cambodian Eden

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap

if you're willing to fork out for it) but the travel agents in Bangkok laughed at this suggestion and said it would take at least 5 working days to get the visa - and no, they couldn't make it any faster. This was a problem since I didn't even have 5 normal days before my flight!

So it was with a great deal of embarrassment that I cancelled my plans to meet up with my Calgary friend Marko (whom I had actually convinced to change his vacation plans to meet me in India instead of going to Peru) and re-booked a flight to a later date. I felt terrible but, aside from leaving Marko to fend for himself in Delhi, the set-back worked to my advantage. I was able to cancel my flight from Singapore for a small fee and bought a new, cheaper ticket from Bangkok to Kolkata. I also found myself with 10 extra days in Thailand. I quite like Bangkok but could never have survived more than a week here so I headed back north to Chiang Mai.

The day I decided to go, I bumped into an acquaintance (Neil) from Laos and he decided

Elephant Terraces

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap

to join me on a whim. Once there, we spent most of our time lounging by the guest house pool trying to recover from an overnight bus trip followed closely by a night of excessive partying at the club behind the guest house (we found it by default on our first night as the bass was pumping right into our room) and enjoying the festivities for the Loy Krathong festival of lights. We broke things up by rock-climbing one day, but steered clear of the overly-touristic "non-touristic" trekking...I've decided that no trumped up "hill-tribe village homestay" could ever be as fulfilling as my homestay in Mali and none of the trekking could ever be as challenging as the stuff you can do in Canada or Japan. Even so, I have loved my time in Thailand, and it ranks third on my list of favourite Asian countries (after Japan and Cambodia). It's become so developed that it actually feels normal to eat western food sometimes (and they do it well enough that Thais also eat it!) but you still get the sense that there is something keeping the country moving aside from the tourism industry (though a walk down one of

Dance!

Angkor Wat

Chiang Mai's major roads proves, awkwardly, that both the sex-tourism and normal tourism industries are alive and well).

As I get ready to fly to India later this morning, I really feel like I've seen enough of South East Asia for one trip. Each country I visited left a distinct impression on me, but I'm ready for something different on the scale that India has to offer. It's back to the hard-core travel-life for me before a cushy Christmas at home!

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