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Published: February 4th 2012
I realize it's been an unreasonably long time since I last wrote, and for that I apologize. Southeast Asia has turned out differently then expected or planned, though I suppose I should know by now that's just how traveling works! Because I am a bad blogger, and I now have about 4 weeks worth of adventures to catch you up on, I'm going to do this in more of an outline form. Forgive me.
*Please note how much time I spent simply taking various forms of transportation in this past month. I'm surprised I even ever got to breathe fresh air....
Thailand (round 1): -I took a 24-hour overnight train to Bangkok, stayed 6 days with a host wonderful host named Tuck, met several other Americans working abroad here, started running again, and indulged in the cheap food, drink, and shopping.
-I took a 14-hour sleeper train to Chiang Mai, a popular destination in the north. Here I stayed at a hostel for $3/night, overindulged in pad thai and tom yum, visited dozens of buddhist temples, and attended a meditation group. I also splurged on a one-day elephant trek in the jungle, where I got to feed, ride, and play with 6 wonderful elephants. We even bathed them in a river by a waterfall, splashing them with buckets of water and getting sprayed graciously in return. One of my favorite stops on the trip so far.
-I took two buses, for a total of 7 hours travel, to Chiang Khong, on the Northern border of Thailans that meets Laos. I spent one night here, in a barn hostel, with cats and roosters to keep me company. I woke up early the next morning to head across the river into Laos.
Laos: -I took the slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. The journey is split over two days, about 6-7 hours travel on each. The boat is crowded, and shockingly, very slow moving. The engine is incredibly loud and highly unstable, with a tendency to overheat and break down. Your options for enjoying this boat ride are to join one of two crowds: 1. The intellictual, quiet reading group or 2. The party group. I choose group 1 on both days and feel like I have much more dignity left intact for it. They let us off in Pak Beng for the night in between, and immediately witnessed the level of poverty here. Children beg for money, at the demand of their parents, even using gimmicks like puppies to bribe tourists into giving them money. The next morning I went for a run further up into the mountains, out of the tourist domain, and witnessed the true Laotian lifestyle. Simple thatch huts, with mats on the floor for sleeping families of 5-10 people. Mothers huddled over fires, warming their hands before cooking breakfast. Girls my age with 3 kids of their own, trying to calm down a crying baby. Men gathering wood, herding cows, opening up shops for the day. It was very interesting to see, and I could tell I was just as interesting a sight to them, far beyond the comfort zone of hotels and internet cafes.
-I arrived in Luang Prabang to be rudely awakened. This was not the Laos I had witnessed in the morning. LP is catered to tourists. Every street is linder with French-style gueshouses, restaurants, book stores, and gift shops. There is a night market every day of the week, bustling with backpackers trying to shave a few cents off a deal on some earrings or a scarf. Prices were expensive compared to Malaysia and Thailand, so I laid low, walking by the river, reading my latest book, searching for the cheapest smoothie stall in town (which I found; smoothies were 5,000 kip, about 65 cents US!). It was a quaint place, beautiful architecture, lovely views, great food, but just completely overrun with tourists. This is the first of many times I would come to view the Lonely Planet book as more harmful than helpful.
-After 3 nights in Luang Prabang, I headed south about 4 hours by bus to Vang Vieng. This place is the definition of a tourist trap. There are a few streets that make up the core of the town- and its all hostels, bars, and restaurants. Every restaurant has raised platforms divided into sections featuring large cushions around a table. These fake couches all face one of several large TV screens displaying one of two shows: Friends or Family Guy. You must choose a side or give up eating at all. In addition to the TV overload, you can find at least 3 drunk people with in your vicinity at any given hour of the day. And its usually more like 30 drunk people. This is due to the lovely attraction here known as "Tubing in the Vang Vieng". For $5, you can rent an innertube for the day and cruise down the river from one bar to the next. As fun as this was, the free shots, cheap beer, and added entertainment of slides and ziplines into the water make this a very dangerous playground. 2 people died within a week on either side of my visit.
-So after 3 days in VV it was onward movement, another 4 hours south to the capital city, Vientiane. This city is still heavily influenced by the French, and I was delighted to have my first bagel with cream cheese in 5 months. Again I did a lot of eating, reading, and a bit of sight-seeing. Nothing special, in my opinion. However, getting out of here would be quite the ordeal.
Cambodia (round 1 and only 1): -From Vientiane, I took a 10-hour sleeper bus to Pakse. Now, while you do technically have a bed, not just a seat, it is not equivalent to the individual beds of the sleeper trains. That's right folks, this is Asia, where they will try to make as many bodies fit into as small a space as humanly possible. So its set up bunk style, with two passengers per twin bed. Hello stranger! I "lucked out" and made friends with a group of Canadian boys, and joined them in the special back of the bus bunk- 5 per bed, since it went all the way across the width of the bus. So I was a sandwich for the night, with one german and three candian guys, two on each side. They were all very generous to me though, making sure I had enough space and plenty of blanket. Not the best night's sleep I've ever gotten though, and I've had some rough nights thus far. Once in Pakse (which is still in Laos), I took another bus 5 hours to the south, and then was swtiched to a minibus for an hour-long ride to the border.
-After fighting my way through Cambodian arrivals and customs (the most difficult/least friendly border I've crossed yet), they piled us onto another bus, which they overbooked. I spent the first hour of the ride sitting on a plastic stool in the aisle. I finally grabbed a seat when we dropped people off, but three poor Kiwi guys were stuck sleeping on the floor for the entire 8-hour trip. And, of course, we switched buses one last time for the final hour-and-a-half trip to Phnom Penh. Total travel time=30 hours, total money spent to get there=$80. Something is very wrong here....
- I only spent two nights in Phnom Penh, since the guesthouses were overpriced compared to most of Southeast Asia. On my one day in Phnom Penh, I took a trip to visit the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum. It is hard to describe the emotions I experienced in both places, ranging from sorrow to horror, from disbelief to utter disgust in humanity. For those of you who are unaware of Cambodian history, as I was before this trip, almost 3 million Cambodian citizens died between 1975 and 1979 under the communist reign of the Khmer Rouge. More than half of those death were due to torture and exectution. The Killing fields, thus, was one of hundreds of fields where innocent people were taken to be slaughtered and buried. The field was lined with mass graves, with human bones and teeth still surfacing everytime it rains. The Genocide Museum was a prison, where people were tortured to death. The rooms were open to walk through, the floors still stained, the walls still marked. The whole day was depressing, but eye-opening. It will never cease to amaze me that mass genocide continues to exist in the world, that history continues to repeat itself.
-From Phnom Penh I took a 6-hour bus ride to Siem Reap. I settled into a slightly cheaper guesthouse, so I was starting to feel better about Cambodia. The next day I set off to visit the ancient temple Angkor Wat. It is the world's oldest religious building, dating back to the 12th century. It was originally Hindu, but has long since been converted by Buddhists. Every inch of the stone temple is covered in the most intricate carvings; it was stunning to walk through. But like all places in Southeast Asia, and probably the world, that were once beautiful and pristine, it is now crawling with tourists, many of whom I witnessed being disrepectful to staff, pushy with other toursits, and erosive to the temple itself. And then, unfortunately, my day took a bad turn. I won't go into detail here, as many of you have already heard the story. I would eventually like to make it a separate entry, but I have a lot of emotional processing to do still before I can explain it in a way you could understand. Sorry if this is all very vague, if you would like to know more send me a message or e-mail. But the important thing is that I am not hurt and I am in a safe place now.
To be continued with Thailand (round 2) and the incident....
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
If you had to do it over again...
would you have taken alternative routes or modes of transportation from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang and from Vientiane to Phnom Penh? Cost/benefit analysis please. Hopefully, your next blog will be published in much less than a month. Glad to hear that you are "not hurt" and are "in a safe place now."