the famous temples.

We are eating breakfast now, in a calm little hippie cafe in Siem Reap. If all goes to plan (which may be less likely than it seems, with the enormous floods Bangkok is dealing with right now) this is our last day in Cambodia. Tomorrow we catch a bus to Bangkok -hopefully- and from there we fly to Hanoi in northern Vietnam.

For the last few days we have been fulfilling our duty as tourists and visiting temple upon temple, because really, that is what everyone is here for. We hired bicycles and pedalled our way 8 kilometres out of town to the Angkor Archaeological Park, where we could ride around in peace as for the first time in a long time, we were not hassled by tuk-tuk drivers. And when people did begin to hassle us, we could just ride away from them, laughing our little heads off.
On our first day we explored a few of the smaller temples, the highlight being Ta Prohm, a temple that is slowly being engulfed by the huge trees that surround it.

These enormous trees are growing on top of walls of the temples! It's incredible. They are relying on the stone and also holding it together...if the stone collapses, do the trees as well?

Day two at the temples involved us rising at 4.30am in order to cycle over and see the sunrise at Angkor Wat -the famous, famous temple of Cambodia. Despite the difficulty of waking up at this ridiculous hour and the nervousness with which I rode along the dark, early morning streets on a bike with no lights, it was definitely worth it. We were by no means the only people waiting eagerly for the sun to come up but it was ok...we watched the sky morph from pink to gold to blue and then we could explore without hundreds of other tourists all vying for space.

When it looked like this was beginning to happen, we cycled over to Angkor Thom, a walled city that used to be the capital of Cambodia (a long, long, long time ago).

Here we saw a temple with towers that were decorated on all of their four sides with giant, smiling faces and in which almost none of the surfaces were left undecorated by carvings.

It is incredible the amount of work that must have gone into these buildings...especially Angkor Wat. The sandstone used to build this temple was quarried 50 miles away from the site and transported on rafts along the river...all this before they even began the building.

Back to Angkor Thom...we also saw a temple built to represent a mythical Cambodian mountain and a temple that was taken apart by archaeologists before the civil war with, I presume, the intention of being rebuilt in the future. Only during Pol Pot's years of insanity, the archaeologist's records were all destroyed, so they were basically faced with an enormous, hideously frustrating jigsaw puzzle. They did it though. It was reopened in 2008, although some parts still have not been finished.
Our bodies were exhausted after this...probably a consequence of waking at 4, two days of bike riding (after a period of almost no exercise) and hiking around temples in the hot sun...so we headed for home and rested.
Yesterday we hired a tuk-tuk to drive us 60 kilometres out of the city so we could explore an Indiana Jones temple of epic proportions. This temple, Beng Melea, was like an extreme version of Ta Prohm- it has been completely abandoned to nature, which is swallowing it up, one vine and tree root at a time.

Will had a blast and it turned out to be worth the slow bumpy $20 ride out there. Even if our tuk-tuk driver did try and coerce us into booking another long trip with him for today.

So that was Siem Reap. And that is the end of Cambodia, at least for now (unless our bus is cancelled, or we end up being abandoned because it can't traverse the floodwaters, or any other of the numerous, frustrating scenarios that travel in Asia holds promise of).

Onward to Vietnam!

a picture says a thousand words (when Jordan can't be bothered to)

As I mentioned in my last post, we had traveled to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia...we aren't there any more of course. We move around way too fast for me to write about a place before we leave it. But Phnom Penh is a great city. It is thriving and energetic but it isn't overwhelming or too insane. It is also set on a river, and cities on the water are my favourite things.

a tourist boat on the river...

....a main street and an old building. i thought it was pretty

it's edging toward dusk on a street lined with sidewalk eateries and barbers...

the market where we ate our fish porridge with noodles for breakfast...surprisingly un-disgusting

After we decided the heat was too much for us in a city we could not swim in, we caught a bus down to Sihanoukville, a backpacker beach town on Cambodia's coast. This would be a very relaxed place if it were anywhere but Asia...the are constantly numerous hands stretched towards you asking for money for one thing or another and for some reason the proprietors of relaxed, beach front restaurants strewn with comfy chairs insist on blaring horrible Western dance music. So you feel like a walking ATM moving to the beat of a ridiculous soundtrack. But a beach is still a beach. And it is incredibly lovely.

from one capital to another...

In the last week we have travelled from Vientiane to Phnom Penh, and though on the map you would not think it to be a very long journey, when you add the 'Asian public transport' aspect to the mix, it becomes a whole different game. Generally the waiting-around-for-no-apparent-reason-yet-a-really-long-time game.

We spent probably 3-4 hours (but it felt like 10) on a tuk-tuk that would comfortably hold 5, with 20ish people, all the luggage and a chicken. We had one "5 hour" bus trip that took 8 or 9 hours. We had a tire explode on one of our buses.

Anyway, that is all behind us now.

As I said, we left Vang Vieng and headed for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We did some shopping, had a bit of a massage, went bowling, spent a few evenings on what would be a very relaxed river front if it weren't for the insanely loud, ridiculous Western music all the stall holders were playing at the nearby market. A stall promoting Milo was playing Linkin Park. Why?

We also went zip-lining which is superfun and extremely terrifying and basically involves flying-foxing between trees in the canopy of a forest. In case you haven't had a very good day or just need a bit of a laugh, this is what we looked like when we did it...

And the photo above is the end of our zip-lining adventure...Will being lowered down to safe ground, as shaky and adrenaline-filled as I was, I imagine.
After we had hit the 'big city' we left for our first stop on our journey to the Cambodian border. It was a tiny little village that had a 7km lake tunnelling through an enormous cave as its drawcard. It was a town in a very beautiful setting, and Will and I could hardly control our childlike delight over all of the baby animals exploring around. Everyone was friendly also...a little boy stopped us in the street so I could give him a high 5.

And there is the spooky entrance to the spooky 7km of cave we boated through. Spooky.

We left this town almost as soon as we finished our caving adventure and began a hell of a few days spent almost exlcusively on public transport, but I won't bore with any details. Although one of the towns we stopped in had a lantern festival celebrating the end of the Bhuddist Lent that was quite pretty to look at, and on the same night we were slightly terrified our tuk-tuk driver was going to murder us. But only for a moment, then he didn't. Apart from that...buses.
And this chapter ends in Si Phan Don, a region of islands at the base of Laos, where we spent one day kayaking and searching for Irrawaddy dolphins (of which there are only 20 left in this area and only one baby has been born in the last 3 years...needless to say they are incredibly rare and endangered, although we did see a few and I even managed to film them doing a bit of frolicking) before we crossed the border into Cambodia.

two-ket.

The title is Will's joke, referring to the fact that Vang Vieng, destination number 2 in Laos, is pretty much exactly like Phuket only on a river not a sea and in Laos not Thailand. This little town, which I imagine used to be a peaceful idyll for fishermen and villagers, has turned into a place that exists exclusively for tourists...loud, drunken tourists. We spent only one day in Vamg Vieng. That was enough. But it was a nice day.

We hired pushbikes and road out of town along 'cave road'(this is just what I have taken to calling it because I don't know its real name and it is the road to all the caves) and after a few distractions we eventually found the cave we were looking for, complete with welcoming lagoon at its base. On our way along cave road two little boys decided they didn't really want to walk all the way home so they jumped on the back of our bikes and we rode onward until they jumped off and ran into their respective houses with their respective cheeky grins.

After exploring the huge cavern of darkness we started the ride home, but after about 5 minutes the chain on Will's crappy rental bike snapped, so we had to think of another way to get the nearly useless bike home. So what do you do when there are two people and only one bike on which the pedals work? Simple, you connect the two bikes and have a bit of a sit down while your grilfriend pedals you both home! Most of the locals we passed had a good laugh about that...some of them just stared in incomprehension. That was our day, and here are some pictures from it.

sabaai-dii! welcome to laos...

Welcome to Laos...you need tuk tuk?

After 2 days traveling on a boat along the Mekong from Huay Xai (where we crossed the border from Thailand) to Luang Prabang, what we really, really didn't need was a tuk tuk. Luckily the drivers were understanding and undemanding.

Luang Prabang is a lovely little town, with a small peninsula, a lantern-lit night market and lots of cafes, restaurants and street food. We whiled away a little of each evening at the market which was a pleasant stroll as most of the vendors were too busy eating, lounging or laughing with their friends to bother uninterested passers-by.

Luang Prabang is a town for relaxing and certainly no place to rush...so we didn't. We hired bicycles and rode around to some temples where we spoke to a novice monk with excellent English and got totally ripped off by 3 cute, little girls selling bracelets. We had 'traditional Lao' massages (that, if I'm being honest, were not really relaxing at all...more like the feeling you get when you are being beaten up I wold imagine) and we visited book shops and French cafes. We also took part in a cooking course where we learned to make banana soup and stuffed bamboo shoots and lemon grass. Then we stuffed our faces with the fruits of our labours.

There were tour operators all over town advertising trips to a nearby waterfall, but having an unfavourable view of group tours we decided to rent a scooter and drive out ourselves. It being monsoon season the falls were even more impressive than usual...

On the way back to town I decided it must be my turn to drive the scooter as I had never done it before and thought it looked like fun. Everybody who knows me well will be shaking your heads right now, at the truly terribe idea that this was. And you would be right to do so. And Will knew this as well I think, but he also knew that I would get very cranky if I wasn't allowed to have a turn so he hoped for the best and gave me control.

Everything was going spectacularly well...until a giant butterfly (it was like a small bird, honestly, I'm not even lying) flew into my chest and I stopped concentraing on the road in order to make sure the butterfly wasn't on me anywhere. Perfectly reasonable. And it wasn't. But we also weren't on the road anymore, we were driving through the scrub and in the confusion I forgot that I had to remove my hand from the accelerator to stop and tried dragging my feet on the ground. So then I had to do this...

That and I am no longer allowed to ride scooters or motorbikes (by the rule of a worried boyfriend). But that is ok with me.

further a-field

After we laughed with relief at making our flight off Phuket, we had a look at our trusty guide book to find a guest house in Chiang Mai, a town in the north of Thailand, and our next destination. We decided on what looked like a winner, cheap and comfortable with internet and a restaurant. Until we got there and it was closed....since it was nearly 11 at night we weren't being to picky and just went to the next cheap, open place we could find. Apparently it was a place filled with elephants that liked to wake up irritatingly early.

After not too much sleep (because you must never have TOO much sleep....hmmmm) we left the noisy place and went back to our first choice. Then we went to book an overnight trek for the following day and to find trekking shoes, which suddenly seemed like a very important addition to our backpacks.

At 10 the next morning we were picked up and met our trekking buddies which included a father and daughter from Barcelona, a girl from London, a guy who was Canadian but was living in Afghanistan as he served in the army and two German boys who had that odd German way about them. After driving for a while and stopping occasionally at places that gave us opportunities to buy things, we had some fried rice for lunch and then set off on our trek for the day. Our trek for the day involved walking to the top of a really, really big hill where we would sleep for the night in bamboo huts, but it turned out the Germans thought it was a race up the mountain and charged off ahead leaving me to wonder if I was indeed an obese couch potato. Apparently not though, they just wanted to prove themselves. But the exercise was worth it in the end...

We hung out in the little village on the mountain for the rest of the evening and after dinner when we all realised we had no playing cards and there was no TV our guide showed us riddles he made with toothpicks and none of us solved any of them. Then he sung acoustic Thai songs to us with his guitar and when he offered his guitar around nobody else could play it. Then we realised we were probably the worst group ever.

The next day we set off down the moutain at a leisurely 10am. It was far far easier than climbing it, though a challenge presented itself in trying not to slip down the near vertical sections of slippery mud we were walking down. We got to the bottom and found our elephant friends who were going to take us for a walk around the river.

Then we rafted in the river. That was my favourite thing to do. After we had rafted a little (but not too much because I think the wet season makes the river too dangerous in some sections) we did some bridge jumping and then we were back on the road to Chiang Mai.

We had a bit more of a poke around Chiang Mai then we caught the bus to Chiang Rai, further north and nearer the border crossing into Laos. Nothing remarkable happened in Chiang Rai...it's a nice little town and there was a monsoonal thunder storm while we were snuggled up cosily in our $5 a night guest house. This is how we entertained ourselves.

And I think I might leave you all to ponder that...