Advertisement
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam..........A Whistle Stop Tour!!!!
Due to staying in Thailand a few weeks longer than planned and not wanting to miss the Moto GP in Shanghai, ha ha, we only had about 4 weeks to travel Indo-China. As we only had limited time we just stuck to the main tourists sites and took a few flights to make it possible, so unfortunately we didn't get to venture off the beaten track to much. (which is probably a good thing in these countries as they were all very heavily bombed and there are still lots of landmines undiscovered!!).
First off was Laos, which was supposed to be the most undeveloped country for tourism in south east asia. However on first sight, due to the number of modern plush Restaurants, Cafes and bakeries and the french colonial feel about the place, it seemed that they had caught up with the tourism market quite well. The bars here put Derby's modern Friar Gate Bars too shame (which is not hard I here you say....). You soon realise that under the surface it is actually still a poor and undeveloped country in terms of general health and hygiene, this became evident
early on as the majority of people we met here had become ill whilst travelling Laos and the food wasn't kept in fridges etc and it was around 40 degrees. It was not long before we experienced the affects ourselves. Firstly Dan became severely ill due to the food and water and then we both got food poisoning from a suspect Tuna Pizza.........eye of the needle!!!!!
That aside though, Laos was a very beautiful picturesque country. We took a boat down the Mekong River for two days through mountainous karst scenery, which was amazing. The trip was fun with lots of Beer Lao and people to chat to. Halfway through the journey we stayed at a small village called Pak Beng, a real local place with a few guesthouses and restaurants for the boat passengers. They only had electricity between 6 and 10pm (although ours went off at nine?). We soon realised that laws and policing seemed quite relaxed here as it seemed every second person was trying to sell you weed, drugs or women (bum-bum as they called it!).
The boat took us into a town called Luang Prabang, which is in central Laos. It was a
really nice well presented town, nothing like what we expectedfrom laos at all. We went with hannah and burt some friends we met on the boat to the most amazing waterfall, Tat kuang Si. It had seven tiers and lots of rope swings and pools to swim in. We climbed up to the top tier, where we found a bunch of young monks messing around. It was really great to see as normally you just see them quietly in their temples.
Our next stop was Vang Vieng......which we had heard a lot about from other travellers. This is definately what you would call a purpose built tourism haunt. The majority of bars had comfy bed-seats and played american sitcoms all day long, including Friends, Family Guy and the Simpsons. The main attraction here though was the "Tubing" down the Mekong River whilst consuming copious amounts of alcohol!!
We hired huge tyre inner-tubes and then was taken 3km up the road to the start. Here we found the start of all the makeshift bars, death slides and rope swings which were on either side of the river all the way down to Vang Vieng. The bars was pumping out Techno
and rave, plying everyone with Beer Laos, Happy shakes (magic mushroom, opium or weed), the atmosphere was amazing and a real good laugh, hardly authentic Laos though!!
Then we went on to the capital Vientiene, where we arrived in the middle of the celebrations of the Laos Lunar New-Year (Pii Mai), which lasted for about a week. The celebrations revolve around a massive water fight, of which we had been experiencing for the past week around Laos, however this was a step up with people driving around the streets in pick-up trucks full of water chucking it over everyone they saw, whilst others stood on the pavements with super soakers and buckets getting them back......there was no way you were staying dry. Obviously we bought the biggest guns and buckets we could find and fought for the 'western front' for the whole two days we were there and saw nothing else of the city.........we had fun though!!
Next stop was Cambodia, which had three official currencies, the Thai Baht, American Dollar and Cambodian Riel. To make things worse 1 pound was equal to 17,000 Riel.......very confusing! The people here were great so friendly and helpful, it was a
really nice country but the begging here was far worse than we had seen anywhere else on our travels.
Arriving at Siem Reap we found our Guesthouse, where they owner wanted to show us the grounds, once on the balcony at the rear we soon realised why, there were around 200 crocodiles in a farm. It was quite funny watching the local kids poking these 200kg animals with a bamboo pole.......pi#@ing them off.
We set straight off on some hired push bikes at 12 midday to Angkor Wat, which was a really stupid idea as it was around 40 degrees and a six mile round trip, plus the walk around the massive grounds of Angkor Wat, their biggest Temple. Needless to say that evening we slept for 13 hours straight, we think with exhaustion!
Angkor Wat was fascinating, the temples date back to 700 AD and as we have already said it is the biggest temple and took a good few hours to walk around. The following day we decided to see some of the other temples, this time we hired a tuk-tuk instead. We did a circuit of about 26km and visited ten more temples. The best of which
Vang Vieng - Loas
Mountain backdropwere Angkor Thom, with the temple of Bayon, it was amazing it had huge faces carved into the temple walls, it was spectacular. The other was Ta Phrom temple, it has trees growing on top of it and its roots twining and ripping through its walls and ceillings. This was the temple used in the movie Tomb Raider. They were not trying to restore this one like many of the others, so it looked fantastic seeing nature taking its course.
We also visted Tonle Sap Lake, which is the biggest lake in South East Asia. It is around 60 miles long and 20 miles wide and gets to around 8m deep in the wet season. We hired a boat to a floating village on the lake, occupied by Vietnamese immigrants. It was really bizarre seeing all the floating schools, churches, pig styes, shops and bars, it was like a whole separate world out there.....they even grow their own vegatables on floating gardens, it reminded us of a scene out of Waterworld. On the way to the lake we passed some of cambodias rural villages where we saw the locals using wells provided by other countries charities. It was the
Siem Reap - Cambodia
Cycling past the entrance to Angkor Wat worst poverty we have seen yet and the smells weren't very nice due to the lack of drainage and waste control.
We then had a few days in the capital Phnom Pehn, which was a sobering time as we learnt all about the Khmer Rouge Regime. A regime who killed thousands of their own people in an act of genecide. We were astounded to learn that this only happened recently in the late seventies and a lot of the older Cambodians we saw around would have gone through this terrible ordeal. We visited an old School Prison, called S21, which was used as a torture house and holding pen of people they considered would hinder there plans of becoming an agricultural nation, which was basically anyone who they deemed educated, had a military background or anybody who could read or who didn't work at the rate they thought acceptable, and they would also kill all those peoples families too. We also visited the Killing Fields where the mass murders of these innocent people took place. As you can probably tell it was not the most joyful of days we had but it gave us an understanding of the hurt
and anguish that this nation had been put through only 28 years ago.
We then headed to South Vietnam by bus.......Our first port of call was Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), where you couldn't walk a step with out nearly getting run over or hearing the honking of horns due to the 8 million mopeds (literally) on the road. As you can imagine it was extremely busy and hectic......there did not appear to be any road rules what so ever!!! It justseemed you had to get from A to B by any means possible, which meant using pavements, cycle lanes and even the wrong side of the road.
Whilst there we visited a huge quirky amusement park in the middle of the city, which had a variety of weird attractions including spoon sculptures, an ice scuplture city, fun fair rides and even a water park. The highlight of the day though was at a big lake there where you could fish for crocodiles. They were huge. You were given a bamboo rod with a lump meat tied to the end of a piece of string. All you had to do was pop it through the bars and hook
yourself a croc!!! It was definately one of the weirdest things we have done and it only cost us 20p each! Hours of fun!!!!!
Also in Ho Chi Minh city we did a day tour to the Mekong Delta where we travelled up small canals to rural villages. Also we did a tour to the Chu Chi tunnels, which were 200 km of tunnels that the Viet Cons dug out to hide in from the americans during the Vietnam War. They were only 1.2 meters high and 0.6 metres wide. It was very claustraphobic in there but it gave you an idea of how the Viet Cons survived and lived for years, Its not something we would want to experience again in a hurry though.
Dan also got to shoot an AK47, but only with 10 bullets, it lasted for about a millisecond!!! We had also heard that for 200$ you could blow up a cow with a rocket launcher.....but thank god we were running out of time so instead we headed off to Hanoi in North Vietnam.
We again managed to find some of our crawling friends...........BED BUGS..........but requested a room change, however we did meet pests
Bayon Temple - Angkor Thom
Ever feel like your being watched? of a different kind in the form of young lads running the Guesthouse, who tried to rip us off at every occassion and to top it off made nasty coffees in the morning!!
From Hanoi we headed to Ha Long Bay, which is a world heritage site of limestone rock formations in the Gulf of Tonkin. We sailed around on a junk boat for the day visiting caves and villages. We then stayed overnight onboard anchored in a secluded bay. The following day went onto the biggest islang of Ha long Bay called Cat Ba, where we did some trekking and stayed for the night before heading back to Hanoi for a good feast of KFC as we had been given the same food for every meal of the 3 day tour which didn't include any meat.
At least we were not given any dead insects or raw jellyfish of which the locals enjoyed. Whilst in Vietnam we had both commented on the lack of insect sounds and birds but then when we sat and thought about it.....if it moved they ate it! That explained it!!!
We went to watch the Water Puppet Theatre in Hanoi, which is an
Ta Phrohm
Letting nature take its course....... old Vietnamese art that the rice farmers invented as a bit of fun whilst working in there fields. It was nice to see some traditional Vietnamese culture.
We will finish on something that we know all of you can relate to............BEER!!!!!!!!
Vietnam had the cheapest beer in the world, 9 pence a pint of Beer Hoi, amazing!!! We obviously had a fair few whilst sat outside little street venders throughout the city.
We are now in China and have been the Moto GP in Shanghai, which we will include in our next blog to follow shortly. Right then off for now, places to see and beer to drink, we hope everybody is ok and enjoying the start of summer.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0692s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
jackie negus
non-member comment
home
Hi, I think it's time you two came home now, it looks like you are having far too much fun. Grandma sends her love and said you've got to stay in nicer hotels, without the bed bugs. Everyone sends their love, stay safe and enjoy yourselves. Love Mum