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Published: October 4th 2009
Hello again!
So I guess I left the last blog off at the Bangkok internet cafe eh? Well that, as it turned out, was our little break in our trip. You see, we went back to the train station to catch a 6:40 train to Nong Khai, a mere 13 hr train ride away. But as our luck goes with Thailand transportation it ended up being 15 hrs. But it was alright, we each had our own pair of seats to curl up into a ball on and get some shut eye. There were also some very funny and entertaining people that came up to us to practice their English. There was a school teacher, that we had a good talk with right before we got off the train.
From the train we took a tuktuk to the Thai part of the border. From there we got stamped out of the country and had to board a bus to go across the Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge into Laos. After crossing the border we hopped on another tukuk and were on our way to the bus station at Vientiane (our plans were to eventually head north to Vang Vieng). Our plan
Vang Vieng
Well from the bus stop...was to go check out the buses, maybe grab some food, see the city and then hop on the bus. Buuuut, as it goes with us, we get there, ask for a ticket up to Vang Vieng only to find that the bus was rolling out of the station so we jumped on and off we went on a 4 hr journey north. On the bus we met a German fellow by the name of Sebastian, nice guy been traveling for over 2 years now and was also heading up to Vang Vieng, so we decided to adopt him for a little while. The country side of Laos is beautiful, "lush green jungles spread over rolling hills divided by the very bumpy concrete highway that runs through quaint villages sprinkled with funky houses on stilts and undercover pool halls" (Max).
We finally arrived in Vang Vieng after 50 hrs of traveling (we left Koh Tao at 2pm and arrived at 4 pm 2 days after). Needless to say we were beat, but Vang Vieng is both stunning, beautiful, and ridiculously awesome but a horribe commercialized tourist mess. It's a small village which sits on the Nam Song river, surrounded
Kids boating
They were racing one morning when we woke up by pretty cool hill tops.Very beautiful, the number one tourist attraction however is the tubing on the river and that is a booze fueled, river theme park of awesomeness. You rent inner tubes and float down the river from bar to bar which have created more questionably safe swings, slides, and mudfilled volleyball pits than ever and lure you in with free shots. Now to cope with all the tourists Vang Vieng has morphed into a guest house filled, western restaurant filled, and bar filled touristy Laos destination. In other words, you don't really experience the 'real' Laos, but it is a lot of fun.
So after our long journey we decided to take it easy by going to the Aussie Bar and have dinner, 8 hrs later we went home even more exhausted and seeing double. We spent the night chatting with a couple of New York lawyers, Jill and Heather, who left their high stressed lives to go traveling around the world for 9 months. Really cool chicks who had recently come from Africa after some volunteering and traveling down there. We decided to meet up and discover some of the Caves around the city the next
Mountain Range
Another nice view day. The next day was leisurely and relaxing after all that traveling so we spent most of the day catching up on the internet and watching family guy. You see all the restaurants play western tv shows to lure the tourists in to eat there. Almost 90% play Friends, non stop, all day long, we went to the 24/7 Family Guy one ofcourse. After some R'n'R we went on a hike to find the caves, but sadly they were closed. But we did find a smaller cave and a swimming hole which was a nice little break in our stressful day. I mean we didn't want to tire ourselves out, tomorrow was tubing day!
And I don't know you can fully understand tubing until you witness it for yourself. I'll post some pics to give it some visual aid. You start by renting an inner tube in the town and then you get stuffed into a tuktuk and driven 3 km up river where you're dropped off at the first bar and welcomed with a free shot and a swing. The swing goes into the river from a tree which they've built a sketchy make shift staircase too. You
Driver
View from the backseat of our ride from O Smach to Siem Reap climb up, grab on, and go for it. Then once you're content at that bar you take your tube, hop in the water and float down to the next one where more swings, slides, and drinks welcome you. It was ridiculous to say the least. Don't worry mom, we didn't die, we're oh kay! We did so well, we did it again the next day as well. And yes, equally as fun. There are some characters along this tubing adventure, like Trent, the Albertan who has done it for 280 days (with 14 day break of course)!
After the two days of tubing and one day of sleeping in, we decided it was time to part ways with the girls and head to Cambodia. Yeah, yeah, our plans changed again. Sadly there is no southern Laos in the picture due to it being a lot easier to travel down to Cambodia via Thailand....or so we thought.
So we walked to the bus stop and a public bus came and picked us up (30 mins early bonus!). Off we were again on another epic traveling adventure. After a speedy 3 hr trip down to Vientiane we hopped over the
Traffic
Cambodian Traffic border again and went off to the train station to Nakhon Ratchasima, some 7 hrs away, then the plan was to hop on another train to Surin. However our train was late and we arrived in Nakhon Ratchasima 10 mins before the next train was to leave (supposedly). This was 1 am by the way; however, it was delayed an extra 3 hours. So at 4 am we leave Surin and get ready for no sleep since we had a 3 hour trip and our stop was not the last one. The fear of both of us falling asleep and missing the stop was great but we made it! We got to Surin in time for the sunrise, we grabbed some breakfast at a vendor by the bus station. Breakfast happened to be 2 half boiled eggs in a cup with hot sauce and some tea and strong coffee, very tasty. We had to get a minibus from the bus station to the Chong Jom - O Smach border crossing to get into Cambodia. It's the more remote and less tourist used crossing since it's hard to get to from Bangkok, but our goal was Samraong and the Banteay Chhmar ruins which are suppose to be beautiful. The border crossing was easy peasy with no real trouble except for needing some cash for the Visa's.
We were helped by a nice Cambodian man, who we later found out worked part time at the border, with talking to the guards, getting our visa's and so forth. His other job was a cab driver from the border to wherever. So after getting across the border he offered a cab ride to Siemreap for $40 US. $40US! ''Nononononono, too much'' we said and tried to barter but we soon realized he was our only option so we went for it. We tried to get him to drive us to Samraong instead (which was some 150 km closer) but the roads, as we were about to find out, in this part of Cambodia wasn't in the best of shapes. The red clay/mud roads had deteriorated from the previous days rain so we had to scratch Samraong from the agenda grudgingly. After a quick lunch at the border town we jumped in the car with our kind Cambodian friend and another Cambodian in a red hat and drove for about 5 mins. Then, the nice guy got out, said, have a nice time in Cambodia and left, red hatted Cambodian jumped in the driver seat said "Driver"and off we went.
Hilarious! Then came the roads... Oh man, they were a sight. Windy, pothole-filled, glorious ness! We met other cars, Jeeps, these wicked motorcycle truck things (I tried to get a photo of one), bicyclists, school kids, and cattle, so much cattle. I have to mention that this was a 3 hr car ride in an old Toyota Camry with no seat belts in the back. It was a fun adventure to say the least, there were a lot of up and downs as the pot holes along the road got bigger and longer and the puddles turned into swimming pools. We passed through the country side of Cambodia which was an amazing site, very beautiful and we finally got to Siemreap which I will have to tell you about....
...later.
What I learned in Laos:
- tubing is ridiculous and would never ever be legal in the western world
- Cambodian car horns are used to honk at everything and anything incl. hairpin turns, people, animals, bridges, bicycles, straightaways....
- the portal goes no where
- bee shots do not taste like honey
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Jill
non-member comment
Portals and Bee Shots
(a) I'm pretty sure Max was just too chicken to venture all the way into the portal. (b) Bee shots do, however, make you feel as if you've been stung by ten bees. Just sayin. Heather and I are missing the adventures of Max and Kris.