map laos

SABAI Dii !!!

BORDERCROSSING

early on the 19th we took the ferry across the mekong and grabbed a minibus that would drive us to the loas-cambodian border. We decided not to take the speedboat as the water is pretty low so it is slower that way (many sandbanks and rocks reach above the water) and more expensive too.
At the Cambodian side it took only 2 minutes. They stamped our passports and declaration forms and then, after handing it back over, asked for money. We smiled and walked away.
The Laos side was not that easy. They first asked a small processing fee before even looking at our forms. We refused to pay by telling them our visa was already paid for and that we weren’t going give them some drinking money. The answer was clear: no money, no stamp… and they just left the hut and went back to their business, which is laying in a hammock or playing cards. There is only a handful off tourists crossing that border so they don’t have better things to do. After waiting 30 minutes and threats from the minibus driver that he would take our bags out and simply leave us in the middle of nowhere, we decided to pay each 1 dollar (the minimum). That was all it took for the lazy government officials to come out of their hammock and do what their fucking paid for! Actually we didn’t do that bad cause normally they ask anything between 1 and 5 dollars on each side.
We got dropped at the river border crossing, a couple of km inland, where we joined some people who were on a daytrip from don det (our destination) to visit the irrawaddy dolphins and the khon phapeng falls, where we had lunch. The pick up dropped us in ban nakasang where we took a long tail boat to don det, one of the islands.

DON DET

The area is called si phan don, which means 4000 islands. It’s the Mekong’s widest reach in its journey and during the dry months the river recedes and leaves behind hundreds of islands, islets and sandbars. The largest are permanently inhabited year round and offer fascinating glimpses of tranquil river oriented village life. The communities are self sufficient, growing their own rice, vegetables, rice, fruit, harvesting fish from the Mekong. Time stood still here for ages! Don det, the one we stayed on, is on of the most relaxing places we have ever been too. There is no traffic, except some bicycles, no electricity, no TV s, only a generator that runs from 6 till 9 pm to provide light. And damn, it was fucking WARM without a fan,

Every farmer on the island has build some bungalows (just 1-2 dollars a night), which are very basic, just big enough to fit a bed and a mozzienet, that’s it. And every bungalow has a hammock in front, never seen no many in my life. There is nothing to do but ride a bike around don det and don khon, read, or take a refreshing dip in the Mekong. A relaxing backpackers heaven!

I got pretty sick the first night: diarrhea, headaches, lack of balance. Could just be a case of travelers’ diarrhea because it went away after a couple of days of taking antibiotics. But we think is the Lariam (anti malaria tablets). We are taking them pretty long now and we both have very strange nightmares (Laura’s her scare the shit out of you). The dreams are really vivid and when you wake up it s sometimes hard to tell if the dream actually happened or not. So we had to upgrade bungalow to one with attached toilet, because sitting over a stinking hole 10 times a day with cramps isn’t that fun…But we managed to ride around both islands.


THE WAY TO PAKSE

After a couple of days we left the islands and made our way to Pakse by bus. Well actually it is more like a converted pick up or truck with benches down either side and one in the middle (it is called sawngthaew or something like that), all bags go on top. In Europe they would fit 10-15 persons in it, but here they jammed in 36!! Unbelievable. I was sitting there, still feeling pretty sick and couldn’t move my legs or even stretch them. Just like in Cambodia most older people here have terrible teeth, if they have any left of course, and serious bleeding, infected gum. It looks horrible. And at some crossroads people jump on and stick fried food through the bars. Then the eating, spitting and drinking festivities begin. Some of the passengers brought plastic bags with fish (among other stuff) with them, which after some time began to leak and smell. The whole floor was covered with it, and so were our flipflops. It smelled awful. But this wasn’t the worse… in front of us were some old ladies with teeth as i described above. And after their snacks they started to spit blood and god knows what in a plstic bag they brought with him. And we were so packed we even couldn’t move our turn our heads. My already sick stomach must have turned a hundred times.
We have had a lot of sort like rides, but this one stood out. So you see, the life of the traveler isn’t all fun ;-)

we were dropped at the southern bus station and took another of those things into the center. But they just dropped us a couple of km further at another bus station. We had no clue where to go and luckily we found a Frenchmen who pointed us in the right direction. After walking some kms we finally reached a hostel.

CHAMPASAK

In Pakse itself is nothing to do or see so we got a motorbike under our ass and dove to champasak to see the famous wat there (late Angkor era). Its nothing compared to the ones in Cambodia, so it was quit disappointing. But as it was build on the slopes of a hill, the views were ok. We have been spoiled with the temples near siem reap, so we wont be visiting any other ones soon, and these inevitably became the standard. And to be honest nothing we ll be seeing any time soon can match them or even come close. So enough temples for a while. The 90km roundtrip from pakse was cool as you have to cross the Mekong. we had to get ourselves and the motorbike on a wooden plank attached on 2 canoes (to create a sort of catamaran) which brought us across the mekong.

BOLAVEN PLATEAU

Yesterday we drove a motorbike (as daytrips there cost 20 usd pp, just for transportation and driver/guide. Unbelievable!!) for a more then 200 km roundtrip across the bolaven plateau. Its famous for many things but especially for the coffee plantations. (for the fanatics, they grow some of the best and most expensive coffee in the world: Arabica and robusta f.i.). workers live on the estate and the going wage is 1 usd per day. The ride was great and in a lot of places you got smell the coffee while driving. The plateau is home to a lot of minority (laven, Katu and Alak) villages. We stopped at some and walked around. The children were really happy with the stickers we gave them (bedankt petra an mark!). .

we visited some waterfalls too. Tat fan is the most spectacular in Laos with parallel streams plunging out of dense forest and down more then 120 m. Absolutely breathtaking views! the Tat lo fall isn’t that spectacular but the surroundings are great. It was a very laidback place. the kind of place we could spend some days… I had a refreshing power shower before driving the last 85km back to pakse.

VIETIANE

We decided to take the night bus the same day (10hours) to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It is very small place, only 250000 people and still a very relaxed capital compared with the other ones we have been to. We walked around in the afternoon and decided it is a nice place to spend some days.

And finally we have some western food again!! After a couple of weeks of eating the same day in day out, it was a welcome change! Especially because I don’t eat meat (and laura besides chicken almost nothing too) the diet is monotonous. This together with the diarrhea made me lose weight like hell. Only thing is, Laos so far is pretty touristy and prices for western food here are sky rocking. In a supermarket, the feta cheese from home costs 5 dollars, a yoghurt 1,5 usd! That is 30-40% more then in the big Cambodian department stores. Even local food is expensive compared to what we were used to. But we are gonna spend some money on western food (it is delicious) because we are really bored from the rice, noodles vegetables and occasional fish we had the last weeks. Being a vegetarian when you come here a month or even more is fine, especially in the cities or more touristy arias. Much respect to ones who travel a long time and don’t eat fish or seafood, but I cant.

A lot of fancy bakeries with price croissants, sandwiches, etc…here in vientiane. You instantly noticed it is more developed and tourists have been coming here longer. Even the prices of simple souveniers and handicrafts are more then dubbel! they know the price to ask

And traffic!! It is heaven. Signs everywhere, I is hard not to find the place you are looking for. And a lot of roads are paved here, even on the countryside near the bolaven plateau. Till now Vietnam had by far the worst traffic, but Cambodian road conditions were the worst. here in vientiane no motorbikedrivers to drive you around cheap, only tuktuks. and they try to ask a dollar for distances as little as 2km. petrol here is half the the cambodian price, so for 2,5 dollars you can drive more than 200 km with a motorbike

And there are a lot more tourists in Laos then in most parts of Cambodia and even Vietnam. A lot of French and Americans tend to come here.
And in our first week here we have seen a lot of the typical (i-have-the-coolest-dirty-pajama-pants wearing) backpackers. The ones we will probably see in Thailand too.

it all starts to look familiar. Architecture, people, nature,… so far Laos is nothing new. Hate to say it but often we had the been-there-done-that-feeling. Don’t get us wrong, it is beautiful but we need something else, something new.
We cant wait to get to the beaches of Thailand!! And just relax, dive, party, lay on the beach. It is going to be nice to spend a couple of months at the same place in stead of moving around every other day or so.


PLANS

Probably going to visit vieng vang, luang prabang, phonsavan (the top tourist attractions in the north). After that we plan on hiring a motorbike and dive around the mountains in the most upper northern regions (to the border with china, Myanmar and Vietnam) and see some remote hill tribes, jungle and waterfalls. After that the plan is to head to the (southern) middle of Laos (tha khaek and savannakhet) before crossing the border around the 17th of februari

Enjoy the snow back home!!
We will be in touch

map

this might help...

Eastern Cambodia

the eastern part is a region of stark contrast. the hilly, forested northeast looming large over the flat agricultural plains that characterise the rest of the country.
the eastern part only has a paved highway up to kratie, from there it takes a lot of patience and bumpy rides to reach both mondulkiri and ratanakiri provincies (the northeast), which are both amazing.
kratie, just like most provincial capitals in the east (stung treng, kompong cham),is pretty small. only a couple of thousands inhabitants and not bigger then a very small belgian village. They are al places of little interest but you need to use them in order to get somewhere. there`s only one bus (space for 22) and a couple of pickups going to Sen monoroon (mondulkiri) each day, that`s it. So we had to wait in snuol for a couple of hours untill that bus finally came. It was the last tarmac we saw untill we came to laos!.

the way into mondulkiri involves a pretty good, but dusty, dirtroad which passes through some beautiful nature (higlands, jungle,...). there`s no other way of getting there (except by dirtbike probably). There are only 6-8 tourists going there each day, and that`s in the dry season(in the wet season they almost get no visitors, to difficult to reach probably). so it`s one of the few places unspoiled by tourism. When we came there after a long day we immediatley felt it was quite cool after sunset which we liked after the boiling heat we endured. Sen monorom is a nice place, set amid rolling hills. The area has plenty of minority villages and waterfalls.
In the whole provine the`re only 2 people living per sq km. and half of the 35000 come from the pnong minority group, the rest are other hilltribes. almost no khmers here...
we rented ourselfs a bike and drove out to the sen monoron falls. on the way back we got the first of 2 flat tires and after a couple of hours fixing and eventualy changing the whole old tire we ste course to the bou sraa waterfalls, a couple of hours east of sen monoron. The road there supposed to be one of the countries worst. it`s probably a reminder of how all roads were only a couple of years ago. It takes almost 2 hours to cover the 35 km over rocks, broken bridges,..., but its a magnificent trip. the falls are equally beautiful, it`s a dubble drop waterfall and it`s one of the largest in the country. after that we headed back to sen monoron and drove up a hill to watch the sunset with edwin and astrid ( from holland, 35 and 31) who we met on the bus the day before and proved to be excellent company during our stay.

TREKKING IN THE JUNGLE...
The 4 of us decided to team up for a 2 day trekking in the jungle. We booked it with a young english guy (jack) who just opened his bar `the middle of somewhere` ( the only one in town) and trekkings just a couple of months ago.,. very cheap,, but we needed to carry all our supplies (food, drinks, cooking gear, sleepingbag,..) and we had a phnong speaking guide. We figured as long as he knows where he`s going, no english is necessary...
The trek went through the jungle, plains, grasfields (beautiful!!). across rivers and over the hills. it was pretty hard but worth the effort! We only didn`t have enough water with us so we needed to boil some riverwater from time to time. but mixed with some herbs it made quite a nice tea. Around 16u we arrived, feet full of blisters!, in a hut in the middle of nowhere. It`s the home of a family of 11. Inside the big hut there are 2 platforms, a meter high, covering each side of the hut where they live and sleep. On the floor they have a fire, burning at all times. and the animals (chicken, dogs, pigs,...) walk where they want and during the night they sleep under the platforms. We had the worst night in a long time, partly because the rooster started at 3u30 and he sat only a meter away. 16 people and even more animals sleeping in 1 hut, quit a sight i guess.
Jack is the only guy running treks here, other treks don`t come here, so we were the 4th trek going there in 2 months. Before that they had never seen a tourist. This was not some homestay in a village where they`re used to seeing tourists. This was real and something the 4 of us had never experienced before, just sitting opposite eachother and staring for minutes... Their livingstandaards are below everything you can imagine, and the children had a terrible cough. almost 30% of the pnongchilderen don`t make it to 5, but once they do, they `ll grow to be old .
The way back was pretty hard cause we only walked an hour before lunch (at 10am). the guide stopped and started cooking at a beautiful waterfall. so we thought, after this it`s only 2 hours max. we couldn`t be more far from the truth. it was 5 hours crossing hills during the hottest part of the day... he probably stopped there because it was a nice setting for a meal. Some english would have come in handy here... but we had a great time!!! (and i never longed for a pepsi so hard for a long time!!) i recommended the trek to many people already. And Jack told us he splits his treks up between 3 families so they don`t get to used to it. now they only get one trek a week or less so let`s hope it stays this way...

More people from Holland...
There is nothing linking mondulkiri with ratanakiri province(one is above the other) that even looks like a road. You can only go that way by dirtbike (but there making a sort of road which will be good for tourism there) which is very expensive and takes 2 days. So we had to go all the way back to Kratie. from there we took a bus up north to stung treng(this road will be paved in couple of months i think). Nothing to see there so we arranged transportation for the next day to go to ban lung (ratanakiri). There is no bus going there, only some pick ups and an occasional share taxi or minibus. the minibus supposed to leave at 7am but there were only 5 people going so the driver waited for more but of course none came. So eventually we left at 12.!!after 4 hours we arrived in ban lung, the provincial capital. Ethnic minorities, waterfalls and jungle combine make ratanakiri a popular place to visit. Believe it or not, again we met 4 amazing dutch people, 2 couples (ivo-pepijn en marc-petra) between 31 and 41. we had an amazing 3days there together, enjoying diner, talking and drinking. The six of us went on a trip with a pick-up and guide through some minority villages, lao and chinese villages, cemeteries and other stuff. In one village we drank some ricewine with all the people of the village. They were all sitting together and praying for a sick baby (don`t need no medecine...) Ban Lung is the most dusty town we`ve seen in Cambodia!! Everything (bushes, trees, houses and us too after a ride in the back of a pick-up!) is constantly covered in red dust. it`s horrible. 5 min after a shower you`re covered in it again.
We also spend a day at boeng yeak lom (5km from ban lung), an circular crater like, surrounded by the jungle.the water is really clear, 5 m viz. so perfect for some swimming, relaxing and reading. We did a trek in mondulkiri and now way we`re NOT going to do one so soon again...
Next day we left ban lung for stung treng. Same stories. minibus wasn`t full and again nobody showed up later. after waiting 3 hours we finally left. because of this we were too late to cross the lao border the same afternoon. another day lost in stung treng...

Yes we love Cambodia!!
As ou can see it`s really timeconsuming to get around the northeast provinces, but work is in the progress so in a couple of months (or years for the remote regions) the dirtroads will improve or even be paved. So it will get a lot easier to come here. But inevitabley with that, the area will lose a lot of it`s charme so we`re glad we could do it before that happended! But for the people it would be good to have some tourist yearround. Everything is changing rapidly...

But then again, outside the cities and especially with the minority people, (if you think away the motorbikes and sometimes the power) it seems that time stood still for a couple of 100 years in cambodia. all of them live in huts, and their one and only concern is to put food on the table. that`s also the one reason 85% of them works (they`re all farmers or at least employed in the `foodindustry`). and animals (mainly chickens, pigs, waterbuffels, cows, dogs,...) walk around freely just around everywere you look. They live among the people just like their children, who in most cases don`t go to school but work the fields. Most people only come over to see the temples and maybe phnom penh and sihanoukville, but there`s so much more. We loved Cambodia!! And most people are really genuine friendly, and the children,.... absolutely adorable!! they just wanna play and most don`t even now the word `dollar`(in contrast to vietnam)

for more on the bordercrossing and the first week of laos tune in tomorrow...

holiday in cambodia!

well, it`s been awhile...
we stayed in sihanoukville till boxing day (26th of december) and took a shared taxi to kampot. a 2 hour drive east with 7 (the more they put in, the more mony they earn) people cramped in a cab. Sometimes they fill it up with 9! so we didn`t complain. we booked ourselves a tour to bokorhill national park for the next day. it one of the countries largest protected areas, only open a couple of years due to khmer rouge guerillas. there used to be some wildlife (tigers, elephants) but the most is hunted out or residential in the remote parts of the park.we went up the mountain in a pick up with two bench seats in the back tray and with a big bar running across the middle to hang onto! We climbed aboard and made our way to Bokor Hill, and as the roads got rougher and rougher we just had to hang on for our lives as we bounced around all over the place. the french build a nice road up there in the 20`s, but that is long gone. nowadays it takes more then 2 hours the cover de 30 km. only rocks and holes. We finally made it to the top without anyone falling off or doing themselves serious damage (surprisingly) and wandered around the abandoned buildings. the biggest attraction is an old french hill station build in the 1910`s. it was twice abandoned, last time in `75. . the bokor hill station has a genuine ghost town feeling The casino was most impressive with huge balconies and rooms. the view over the dense jungle and phu qouc island is absolutely breathtaking. we finished the day with a evening meal with the great people we met on the trip. hopefully we`re gonna see them back somewhere in thailand and hong kong

the next day we went back to Phnom penh and arranged ourselves a bus for the next day to battambang, a city in the northwest of the country. We made plans with 2 local motor drivers to drive us around the next day. For the rest of the day we walked around and visited some wats (temples) with attached monasteries. The monks there are really happy to practice their English with foreigners as they get taught by Cambodian teachers. It was really interesting to hear about their studies and beliefs. One monk ( 20 years old) asked me to teach his class the next evening.
We toured around the beautiful countryside on the back of the motor and visited some places, wat Phnom sampeau, a hilltop temple. Especially the surroundings were beautiful. On the walk up we stopped at a killing cave, were the khmer rouge pushed people of a cliff. 10000s died here. The motor guide knew a lot of the history and as almost all Cambodians he too lost several family members during that period. Wat banan was a smaller version of Angkor wat based up a hill and after that we drove around some small villages and watched every day life on the countryside. in the evening I went back to the wat to help the monk with his English and we had some serious fun with them, especially when laura came and there testosterone went up… funny thing was, they`re not allowed to touch women

On the last day of the year we took the boat to siem reap, is supposed to be one of the most spectacular in the country but we saw nothing we hadn’t seen in Vietnam. so we weren`t that thrilled. Arriving near siem reap our boat came under attack by tuktuk drivers who all wanted to take us to the city for free. We are job opportunities for the next days. We spend New Years Eve on the main street, uninspiring called barstreet. Every bar had dj`s playing and drinking stands outside. The whole street was packed! But there lot of beggars with missing body parts constantly asking for money. Some of them even had aggressive tactics, hanging around one legs wasn’t uncommon. I didn’t feel right to party. And after to women beggars started a serious bitchfight right in front of us we decide it as time to leave. They had their babies strapped on their backs and rolling on the ground. Horrible.

We started the new year in grandeur, 3 days to visit the world known temples of Angkor! `m not gonna bore you with stories about the temples, just watch the pics or come over here and see for yourselfves. The temples of Angkor were built in the Angkorian period spanning from AD 802 - 1432, They are all made out of stone and have beautiful carvings and with such intricate details, they are just amazing. I know I won't be able to do the temples justice in this mail, I won't even try. There are simply no words to describe the sheer enormity of them, and the feeling that you get as you wander through them...amazing!!
We hired a tuktuk driver to drive us around the area ( the temples are scattered around a huge domain). First day we did the biggest and most famous ones: Angkor wat (the mother of all temples, the biggest religious building in the world), Angkor thom area, equally impressive and ta prohm, our favorite. It`s the most atmospheric in the area, the jungle is cut down but the largest (and I mean huge!!) are still there. It`s where they shot tomb raider with Angelina jolie . the next day we visited the other temples in the main area and the third day we went to the more further away, banteay srei (small but what it lacks in seize it makes up for in stature, the 3dimensional carvings are from another world) and the rolous group, 20-25 km from siem reap. After some serious bargaining we got a tuk tuk driver to take us to beng mealea, 80km away. It`s one of the most mysterios temples at Angkor. Exploring it is an Indiana jones experience. The temple has been utterly subsumed by jungle, and standing just a few meters away from the trees, it`s hard to tell what lies beneath. You have to climb over trees, broken walls, … and the ride there was nice too. There are some really cool temples far up north, but we had enough temples after 4 days. And those are really difficult to reach. It takes days, and a 1 month visa keeps running… So something for next time maybe.
our camera got stolen In siem reap, so we had to go back to Phnom penh as it is the only place to buy a proper camera. Laura felt bad about it for days, but I was glad we didn’t lose a single pic (we just burned a cd). So we did some shopping there and ended up buying the same one.
This is where i was when the power went out in Phnom penh. It `s not uncommon that (parts of) the city ran out of power for a while but that one came very inconvenient. I cursed like hell cause i lost everything after nearly 2 hours of storytelling!!!! So I forgot most of the things I wanted to tell back then…. ;-( but at least now you know what we were up to

The 7th we took a bus to Kratie, the eastern side of the country. We stopped in skuon where locals eat spiders for lunch, breakfast and diner. They look like giant tarantulas, hairy legs and all. It still weird for us to see that they eat everything, and I mean everything. Every insect imaginable, chickens embryos, rats,… you name it they put it on a stick, fry it and eat it. You just don’t get used to it.
The next day we rented a bicycle and teamed up with a Englishman, mark, to watch the freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin, it`s an endangered specie and can only be watched in stretches of the Mekong in laos and Cambodia. The bike ride their was beautiful. There only 60 left. We rented a boat with driver and spotted some. Dolphins are great!

More about the eastern part of the country… after diner!!!