Loas, Vietnam and cambodia

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So we crossed the boarder the next day at the port town of Hou Xai, in to Laos. After just a short wait we boarded our two day one night river cruise down the Mekong, to our destination of Luang Prabang. It wasn't the most comfortable mode of transport by any means, but what it lacked in leg room it more than made up for with scenery. We spent around 6 hours on the boat gently meandering down the Mekong river until we reached our destination for the night stopover. It was a quaint little town, and we soon found ourselves a cheap double room to dump our bags in before heading out for a amazingly cheap curry and our first taste of the national beer aptly named 'Beer Lao''.

The next day was an early start but we were rewarded with much more comfortable seats for the final part of the journey down to Luang Prabang. Much of the same jungle scenery on the second part of the trip but it was a much more civilized way to journey down. Rather that the 14 hour non stop bus!
Towards the end of the trip we passed the famous Pak Ou caves, on the banks of the Mekong, which house hundreds of ancient Buddha statues. Just a short while past the caves we landed at our final destination of Luang Prabang and checked in to a fairly luxurious (for us) air-con room with cable TV for just 3 pounds a night!
We headed out that night to explore what the town had to offer. The first thing that hit us was the incredible slow pace of the town and all of its inhabitants and visitors, everyone way just dawdling and taking their time, even the tuk tuk driver's barely reached the 30kph speed limit! truly refreshing in comparison to the hectic Thai's! the next and perhaps more amazing thing was how untouched everything was by tourism. Though the town pretty much survived on the hoards of traveler's passing through, it hadn't changed to adapt the tourists, in fact it was quite the other way around. No fast food restaurant's, just a handful of internet cafes and lots of locally owned boutique style art and craft shops.
This was defiantly the place for us to sit back and catch a breath from the fast pace traveler circuit. So we did just that. We spent two days and two nights wandering the markets and checking out the Wat's (temples) trying the various local foods and drink. We spent sunset at the 'That Phou' temple view point and had an incredible Loa style D.I.Y BBQ. accompanied with some 'lao lao' (their version of moonshine)

All in all, Luang was and incredible place and one that if we had more time we defiantly would have stayed in a great deal longer.

When we finally manged to prise ourselves away form the town we booked a bus down to the next spot on the Mekong river, 'Vang Vieng' infamous for the tubing, which had fast become a travelers right of passage.
A 6 hour bus trip took us in to the town center and after checking in to a guest house, we headed out to see what the town had to offer. Unfortunately after a session catching up on emails i received some horrible news from our home town back in NZ. So that, probably not wisely, led us to a night of drinking in excess and general mayhem.

The next day was a bit of a non event for a few reasons. The day after we dragged ourselves out of bed to check out the tubing. It was great fun and a good way to distract ourselves. Basically you get a taxi a few k's up river then float down the Mekong river in a inflated tractor inner tube, stopping at various bars offering all sort of incentives(the best one being a 30ft slide and a 25m high trapeze in to the river! Great! And aside from the drinking and games, once we had left that behind it was a incredibly tranquil last few k's of the journey back to Vang Vieng.

After a couple more days (waiting for our visas for Vietnam to go through) we took a bus down to the Laos capital of Vientiane.

Not much to report about the capital except that it wasn't anything like as nice as being up in the sleepy towns further north.

After a bit of hassle with our bus across to Hanoi (Vietnam) we finally boarded a 24 hour, V.I.P (?) bus to the Vietnam capital. No doubt the worst bus we had taken since Bolivia. Cramped, hot and leaking!! But we did eventually make it through to Hanoi and once there found a relatively cheap hotel in the cities old town. Then after a much needed shower and change of clothes we headed off to meet back up with my brothers at there hotel!

Once re-united we headed off for a beer and a nice feed to swap story's of the last couple of weeks. As they had been in Hanoi for a bit longer than us they had manged to sort out everything from the buses down the coast to our Halong bay trip, which was much appreciated as we really didn't feel like much in the way of organization after the grueling 24hour bus trip!

The next day, (early) we made our way to Halong bag for a 2 day one night trip around the islands! The trip included all food and the nights accommodation on the boat, coupled with the bottle of whiskey we had brought with us and the incredible scenery, the trip was a real hit.

The next day after we had made it back to dry land we were to head straight of on the overnight bus to our first stop on the coastal route south. Hue.
In true South-East Asia style the bus broke down within around half an hour, but couple of Valium sorted that out, and the next thing i knew we had arrived in Hue.
A pretty cool little town, so after we had checked in to an OK hotel we headed out for a night on the tiles. The fist truly savge night since both my brothers arrived on the continent. And it was a great night, lots of dancing and generally taking over the bars! The next day we made our way to an alternative hotel then me John and Tom headed of to the ancient citadel on the bikes we had rented and ended up at a hotel for a swim! A nice day and a good way to see the town of Hue. A few casual drinks and some global domination by me and john on the pool table and we turned in for the night.

The bus was another early one the next day to the town of Hoi An.
Now this was much more like it, a lot more like the atmosphere of Luang prabang. Loads of arts and craft stalls and a lot of tailors, which we decided to investigate the next day.
It was decided that this would be the brother's last stop so we made the most of it. We spent in total 4 days and nights in Hoi An. We went swimming at the beach, bought tailor made suits for our sister's wedding and even rented motorcycles to go and see marble mountain. All that thrown together with some late night whiskeys and some incredible meals out made it a perfect way place to end our time traveling together. Ian headed off the night before the rest of us, which left me and my brother's to have one last night together on our travels.

The next day after saying our farewells. John and Tom headed off to catch there plane, and i had a few hours to kill before my night bus down to the beach resort of Nahtrang.

After and uneventful (thankfully) bus journey south i met Ian at his hostel the next morning, then we proceeded to spend literally the entire day on the beach lounging around, before another night bus down to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon).

We only had day and night in Saigon, which we spent seeing the usual tourist sites and wandering the streets of the country's economic capital.

The day after, we headed off to Phnom Pen, the capital of Cambodia. A fairly short bus and reasonably convenient border crossing and we arrived at the center of the city. After meeting a couple of girls on the bus (Kim and Rhian) we headed with them to a guest house on the lakeside called 'lakeside smile'. It was a wicked plalce to be. Super chilled out and really nice staff. We headed out for a few that night, then woke reasonably early the next day to go to the main reason for our journey to Phnom Pen, the S-21 prison and the notorious 'killing fields' of Pol Pots Khmer rouge regime.

It was a pretty miserable morning for obvious reasons but an incredibly interesting yet disturbing one at that. Once we had had our fill of mass graves and torture chambers, we set off back to the guest house all feeling a little glum to say the least!

That night after a nice meal out we headed (me Ian and Kim) to see what the nightlife was like, the first two bars were OK, and i even manged to beat the owner of one of them at pool, then we headed to the 'Heart of Darkness' night club. Full of locals dancing the night away, it didn't take us much to join the fun. So we played the rest of the night out there before making our way back home in the early hours, somehow.

We said goodbye to the girls the next day and made our way up to the gateway to Angkor Wat, Siem Reap.

Not a bad little town, though we didn't get to see much of it the first two days because of the rain. But the next day,as time was running out we decided to head off to the temples and explore as much as we could of Angkor Wat. Fortunately for us it didn't rain the entire day so we had a great time exploring the temples and surrounding lands.
We started at Angkor Wat then made our made around the circuit to Angkor Thom, Te Kao and Ta Prohm. The latter having truly bin gripped by the hand of nature, was and inedible experience and was as close as i'm ever going to get to feeling like my childhood hero Indiana Jones. ;-)
Truly amazing temples and well worth the $20 entry pass After we had our fill of Wat's, we headed back to our hotel for another night of trying to conserve money by chilling out in the communal area with a few beers and swapping stories with a few English guys we met there the day before.

The next day it was time to head back to Thailand on a nasty 10 hour day bus all the way form Siem Reap to Bangkok.

The last three weeks have bin an amazing part of the trip, seeing some incredible sites and discovering some beautiful town's.

But with the promise of a few days on the incredibly hectic Koh San rd it was time to leave the interesting less worn path of south east Asia and on to the main backpackers cattle market Bangkok....

Until next time
xx

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