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Published: April 14th 2007
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This entry is long. Should have broken the entries up. Sorry... Laos was a refreshing change of pace from thailand. Everything seems to move at a snail's pace. It's not nearly as crowded as Thailand although it did seem like most of the country was on fire. So far, it's my clear favorite.
We made our way down from Chiang Mai in the north of thailand with a two day slow-boat journey down the river. If we thought we were rustic before, we now certainly qualified. We stayed overnight in a village where the power is turned off from 10pm to 7am each day. The boat had wooden benches with zero leg-room and of course, they sold more seats than actual places for people to park their butts.
Arriving in Luang Prabang was a welcome relief and well worth the pain. The city is a Unesco World Heritage site and has some beautiful french architecture. We spent a day wondering around the Royal Palace and a few local buddhist temples. The next day, we took a trip to the local waterfalls that had a number of great swimming holes, complete with rope swing.
From Luang Prabang, we
took the twistiest road ever to Vang Vieng. It's a backpacker's joint with some great movie cafes where you curl up on a futon and watch the latest DVDs. We had dinner and watched Blood Diamond and GhostRider. GhostRider has got to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The main activity is floating down the river on a tube, while stopping along the various bamboo pubs to stop for beer. Pub Crawl on a tube. Great combination. They also have swings and zip lines into the water. Unfortunately for us, the river is low at this time of the year and we had to cut the journy short so we could make our bus.
Vientiane is best described as a boring city. Despite being the capital of Laos, it doesn't have much going for it besides a mini Arc de Triomphe and boring Soviet architecture. We went to the Revolutionary museum. Spending huge money to build and maintain such a museum seems to be a waste in such a poor and impovershed country. The museum is full of photos from the revolution when the Laos got rid of its french rulers in the 1950s and
photos from the Vietnam war era. At the end, it has Adidas tracksuits, cell phones, and Pepsi as signs of the modernization and glorious fruits of communism.
We had seen enough after two nights so we took an overnight bus to 4000 Islands and spent a night on Don Det Island. It's a peaceful place with many bamboo bungalows. We found a cool swimming hole and shared it with the locals, dogs, cows, and pigs. This island only had electricity from 6pm-10:30pm, and it was excruciatingly hot trying to sleep in the heat without even a fan so after being woken up by the roosters at 6am, we decided to march on.
Our bus ride across the border and to Siem Reap was our biggest mobile adventure yet. I made a list below that will give you an idea of what we went through. You just had to laugh at everything after a while. We'd get there when we get there. The main reason for visiting Siem Reap, and Cambodia is to see the Angkor Wat temples. One of the seven wonders of the world, Angkor is large and in charge.
We bought a three day pass,
Mini Arc de Triomphe
A little bit of France in Vientiane, Laos and hired a tuk tuk driver to get us from one temple to another as some are tens of kilometers apart. The first morning, we were up at 5am to see the sunrise over Angkor. It was a little cloudy but we still managed to get some decent photos. We got a guide for our first day and spent 8 hours exploing Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom. The second day was quite good but by the third day, we were templed out.
Making our way to Phnom Penh, we saw a couple of ugly and fatal accidents on the highway. It was the eve of the Cambodian New Year and the roads were busier than usual. With only two lanes, the scooters are passing the bicycles, the cars are passing the scooters, the mini-vans are passing the cars, and the buses and trucks are passing everybody. This ends up with many close calls as cars swerve to get back into their lane before driving head-on into another vehicle. At least, the roads were paved and relatively smooth.
In hindsight, we probably shouldn't have gone to the shooting range and the killing fields on the same day but we
only had one day to explore so we tried to do everything. Firing an AK-47 felt weird. I've only ever fired a rifle at a Sproat Lake New Year's so to fire a fully automatic weapon was explosive. Even with sound protection, it was a sickly sound. Megan fired a few rounds off and even though it left us with mixed emotions, we both got a bit of a kick out of it. Less than 250 yards from the shooting range were the killing fields.
We got a guide with another girl but after the guide had spoke for less than two minutes, she was in tears and decided to wait for us outside. We visited a torture prison as well and I didn't feel like taking pictures at all. It was quite disturbing and even more so because it occured less than thirty years ago. To wipe out millions of your own people, and specifically targeting the educated ones is hard to fathom.
Top 10 Signs of a successful Cambodian Bus Trip
10) You arrive alive
9) You purchase a VIP bus ticket. You do not feel very important at any stage during the journey.
8) You are told you will arrive the evening of the day you depart. You spend overnight in a small-town and have an additional five hours on a bus the next day.
7) You are told that you do not change buses. You end up taking a mini-bus, boat, mini-van, car, and local bus to reach your destination.
6) Your drivers honk at any pedestrian, bicycle, vehicle, and basically anything that moves within 100 feet to let them know that they're about to be passed.
5) Your minivan driver honks at anybody within 200 feet to see if they'd like to ride on the roof.
4) The people on top of the minivan do not steal anything from your backpacks that they are using as chairs.
3) That loud bang you heard was not a gunshot, nor did you just drive over a landmine. It was simply a tire blowing out.
2) The police officer beats the local tuk-tuk drivers & pick-pockets with a wooden club so you can disembark the bus and pick up your luggage.
1) The driver smells worse than the backpackers who haven't showered in 3 days.
Laos / Cambodian Border Scam
We crossed
at a remote land border between Loas and Cambodia. Basically, anything that falls outside of Monday to Friday 8am to 4pm is overtime and an extra $1 is charged. Without exception, every Saturday and Sunday is an official holiday. For gracing their prescence on these periods, you are charged an extra $2.
You can choose not to pay but then the guards will refuse to stamp your passport with an exit stamp. In that case, you move onto the Cambodian side where they will charge you an $8 fine for not getting an exit stamp from Laos, before they let you into the country. Even if you have your stamp, it is miraculously an official holiday in their country too and they would also like an extra $2 from you.
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Shirley Collins
non-member comment
Greetings IV from Vancouver
Greetings from Vancouver, John and Megan! Your ongoing photo and writing journal continues to inform us in a unique way not possible through a guided bus tour. The fact that you are doing it in your youth is a reminder to me to urge my own young adult sons to do the same! Thank-you again for the discipline of journaling. My previous post was pending approval and didn’t go through but it was around the shopping for food on the rivers. It reminded me of boardwalks along waterways like the one in San Antonio, Texas and Venice, Italy. Matt had just returned from his school French trip to Paris and the Italian Riviera and had ridden in a gondola. We enjoy our own boardwalk along False Creek. We are planning a train trip down to San Diego enroute to Mexico in May just to slow our travel down. You are truly slowed down through the significant use of waterways. Keep sharing. Love, cousin Shirley