The Long Trip Back Home, day LI-LXXX: The Indochinese Loop
Last time I updated I had just finished the first three sectors of my trip: Europe, northern Asia, and now eastern Asia with a lovely near-3 week trip through mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. My AirAsia Airbus A330-200 flight from Hong Kong left on time at 1045hrs Saturday morning to land at Bangkok's Don Mueang airport three hours later at 1245hrs Thai time.
I had actually been here before - when I last visited Thailand in 2006, at the same airport - so after the usual dance through Immigration and baggage collection, I avoided all the taxi touts and went directly to the taxi rank with the METERED taxis - even though it took the driver some attempts to read where my destination was (and even then he had to leave the taxi temporarily to ask his colleagues) - but ended up arriving in the backpacker district of central Bangkok without any further issues about 45min and two expressway tolls later, where I gratefully checked in, turned on the air-con (Bangkok was just as humid as Hong Kong was, and even more polluted), emerging two hours later to meet the new tour group I was to loop Indochina with, the first trip I was doing with holiday with my old favourite tour-group, Intrepid. It was a first: the entire group were all couples (six Australians and two Irish), and all over 50, leaving me as the only young single male in our group of 9. I didn't really mind though: everyone was fairly friendly, and it meant as the odd one out I was pretty much guaranteed my own room for this section of the trip (I'd not enjoyed my own room since I arrived in Moscow, well over last month!). Our tour leader was a likeable Thai called Noi, who had worked for Intrepid for 15 years, knew his way around Western tourists (and could be quite cheeky at times, but this went well with his actually quite funny sense of humour), with a 2IC leader he was training, a slightly older Thai called Wasa (who also spoke passable German, the first time I have ever heard German spoken with an Asian accent as we spoke later on in the trip). We had our first dinner out in Khao San Road, surrounded by other Westerners, blaring TVs, the growls of tuk-tuks, and the city's signature humidity, over pad Thai and noodles.
Sunday morning was a busy one: we started with a tour of Bangkok's khlongs (canals) in a typical Thai longboat (with a car's entire 6-cylinder engine strapped to the back for propulsion, I couldn't believe it!), before alighting at the rear of the Wat Pho, the capital's holy shrine (containing the country's second largest reclining statue of the Buddha), for a visit, and then a longer one at the adjacent Grand Palace complex, the heart of royal Bangkok (I recognised enough of it from my previous visit in 2006). After cramming ourselves into tuk-tuks and returning to the backpacker section of the city, we took a moment for last showers, and I took a short shopping trip to look for a pharmacy: we were heading into declared malaria areas, and I needed anti-malaria medication, which I was able to find fairly easily (doxycycline) for a decent price. We crammed ourselves into a van this time for a transfer to Hualampong station, Bangkok's central railway station in its inner eastern suburbs. Yep, it was time for another night-sleeper (this now made it the seventh country on this trip I had taken a sleeper train through), however Thai sleepers were quite different from Russian and Chinese ones, extending across the bench-seat across the way (rather than transversely into the carriage's aisle) with a twin bunk opening down from above. It made for a rather comfier sleep than previous sleepers (even if I still needed to sleep partially in the foetal position, as I was still too tall for them!), I must say. We even had a dinner service on the train, where I was able to order sweet-and-sour pork and curry chicken with a beer for next to nothing, delivered right to my seat!
By the time we woke up Monday morning, we had travelled the near-700km northwards, eventually arriving at Chiang Mai at around 0800hrs. We caught two songthaews - a tuk-tuk on steroids, based on a pick-up and able to sit 10 in the tray section - to our hotel near the city's night market section, where most of us had a quick freshen-up, and elected to right bicycles to the temples in the hills around, or just to walk around the city proper (which I ended up doing); the sudden dash north to Chiang Mai had lead to an increase in the temperature but a notable decrease in humidity, which I was thankful for. Later that afternoon, we were taken further up into the mountains to the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai's lankmark holy Buddhist temple (accessed by a 306-step staircase) that also gave an incredible aerial view of the city sprawling out in front of us. That night we ate in the famous Night Market (an Indian curry, rice, and a beer for the equivalent of £2? Sweet!) and even had a bit of a shop through it: I found the local post-office and was quite thankful to do so: I had looked in Hong Kong for one to send off some souvenirs ahead to Australia and reduce the clutter I was lugging around in my rucksack, but the public holidays and later the protests in HK interfered with that plan, and I wasn't able to find one open in Bangkok over the weekend, so I remedied that here, later enjoying a "fish spa" (lowering one's feet into a fish tank to have fish "massage" them as they ate the dead skin off your feet.....ticklish!), and then afterwards enjoy a full hour's Thai foot massage, leaving me happily giddy for the rest of the evening (and the following day!) and ensured a good night's sleep later that evening.
Tuesday was mostly a travel day, climbing into a private minibus and driving further north, stopping off for lunch in Chiang Rai - and visiting the incredible Wat Rong Khun, or White Temple, a Buddhist temple painted entirely in white and adorned with glittering mirrors, like something out of a Buddhist monk's dream! - before eventually arriving in Chiang Khong later that afternoon, stretched along the banks of the river Mekong. It was the international border, we realised later, with the other bank across the way officially in Laos territory, so it was having dinner that evening we could look across the river into another country. :)
Wednesday morning was our first official border crossing of the trip: the border crossing was only 5min outside of Chiang Khong, and a quick hotel transfer got us all there easily enough. We all got stamped out of Thai territory, then waited for am international border bus to arrive, stowing our luggage underneath it when it arrived, and rode across the "Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge" over the river Mekong, crossing officially over to Huay Xai in Laotian territory, and a short distance to the Laos immigration centre on the other side. It descended into friendly chaos soon after, needing to apply for visas (thankfully we all qualified for the visa-on-arrival scheme) and hand over our passports, pay US$30 in fees, wait as the military workers processed them all (our border bus was full, with about 50 tourists, and another three buses arrived during the entire process), watch for our passports as they attempted to pronounce our names, check for all the correct paperwork matched, and then convert any currency over to the Laotian kip once everything was confirmed; the entire process took about an hour or so, and we ended up not only with new stamps but with an official Laos visa sticker in our passports as well.
We had also picked up another tour-guide at this point: Somkit (or just "Kit", as he preferred), a local Laos guide, as Noi and Wasa were both Thai and didn't have enough local knowledge for this part of the trip. We grabbed another two songthaews (or "jumbos", as they were called in Laos), and drove 20min back from the border point down to the river Mekong again, and transferred across to a Laotian "slowboat", where we would spend the next two days drifting down the Mekong in a boat three metres wide but about 40 metres long, able to accommodate at least 20 tourists in decent comfort (we all noticed they had recycled car bucket and bench seats for seating), a western-style toilet and bathroom, the living quarters and kitchen for the family that operated the boat, and the engine room.....quite impressive really! For the next two days we drifted down the river Mekong, stopping along the way to visit the occasional riverside Buddhist temple (like the Pak Ou Caves) or small Laotian village (to say hello and see how the mostly impoverished locals lived from day to day, mostly farming and cultivating rice), staying at a family-run hostel overnight in Pak Bang, a small town on the eastern bank, on Wednesday night. Drifting down the Mekong was actually quite relaxing, allowing us to enjoy all sorts of beautiful river views of the mountains, and it certainly beat the alternative, a crumbling mountain road, barely one lane wide, linking our departure point at the border down into our next destination.
On Thursday afternoon we finally arrived at Luang Prabang, the largest city in northern Laos and the former imperial capital: the city held a World Heritage listing, with plenty of French colonial architecture, and was the focus of Buddhist temples and teachings. Our accommodation certainly seemed to go up a notch: we were given river-side bungalows with covered lean-to (Western-style) bathrooms, along with canopy beds (draped in mosquito nets) and our own balconies; anyone ordering breakfast over the next few days had the option of having it delivered to the bungalow's balcony table and set up there, ready to eat for the morning view (as a single traveller, this means I got one all for myself!). The guesthouse also had a free city-transfer service, allowing us to get into the centre of Luang Prabang within 10min (instead of the 35min walk), and was quite friendly and professional; not something a simple backpacker was expecting! They also offered a laundry service: as it had been since Guilin in China over two weeks ago now, this was something I was grateful to take advantage of.
We also happened to arrive on the night of Koy Krathong, a local festival held on this month's full moon to give thanks for the year's harvest, best symbolised by floating decorated baskets with lit candles down the river Mekong. Plenty of people were there: school children and locals together had constructed many intricate models, mostly of dragons, from paper, lit inside with candles to make them internally glow, which were also allowed to drift down the river. Others crowded at the riverside to float candle baskets, or to release Chinese lanterns (burning an internal wick to fill a paper lantern with hot air, thus making it float away into the sky) into the evening. It was an incredible festival to witness: so many lights and many children with their families clearly enjoying the festivities. It was in the midst of this we found a river-side restaurant to have dinner, watch the sun set, and watch all the illuminated figures float down the river and see the lanterns float into the sky.
Friday Kit walked us into town for an orientation tour, visiting the local silversmith, the food markets and also an informative visit to the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre, a museum explaining much of the different people and races of Laos, which was more expansive than I'd previously thought. Later that afternoon we hired two jumbos for a 45min drive up into the surrounding mountains to visit the Kuangsi waterfalls for lunch and an afternoon dip, detouring past the centre's Asiatic Black Bear Sanctuary, set up to recover former neglected (and performing circus) bears. That evening after dinner in the city, we visited the renown Night Market, set up along Luang Prabang's main street (excepting the previous night, Loy Krathong had priorty) where local textiles, prints, cheap clothing, and local liquor - including, to my surprise, vodka pickled by snake bodies in the bottle! - were all on sale, and as always in Asia, prices were negotiable.
Saturday was a free day: after a welcome sleep-in, I elected to use a free bicycle the guesthouse offered to cycle into Luang Prabang and look around on my own. Unfortunately, I was knocked off said bicycle by an asshole Laotian driver behind the wheel of a Toyota Hi-Ace van, who didn't even bother to look if there was anyone else in the intersection before we swept into it past a stop-sign. I couldn't stop in time: I crashed into his driver's side door, and bounced off that to hit the asphalt of the road. Thankfully I wasn't seriously injured: just road rash, sore/stiff muscles and no head injuries (Laos didn't use helmets, and had none to give when I asked for one: I had instinctively raised my head the other way before hitting the road, this probably helped), and I was able to get up onto my feet nearly immediately (after the driver got out to scream at me - I left a pretty nasty dent in the little bastard's driver-side door, but he deserved that - then kicked my bicycle before driving off without helping me), and the nurse in our travel group gave me a quick check afterwards and gave me the all-clear. I'd been knocked off my bike before, and while I hurt at the time, I knew it was fairly minor and I'd be fine in the end.
Unfortunately, I'd fallen on my smartphone: it was in my pocket at the time, and I crushed it when I hit the asphalt, shattering the screen and refusing to respond to any touches, rendering it useless. This effectively rendered me off the air and unable to use any of the smartphone apps I'd come to depend on while travelling with it (camera, wi-fi connectivity of any kind, travel information, calculator, alarms, conversion rates, etc), and at the time I was far more pissed off about the state of my smartphone than of myself. Once I'd calmed down I realised I was far more lucky I was alive and in one piece, but there you go. The travel group - and Noi - were concerned once they heard what had happened, but were quite sympathetic and helpful: for the next few days afterwards I couldn't even lug my own rucksack due to muscle aches and tender road rash trying to heal, but they looked after me, bless 'em!
Sunday we finally left Luang Prabang, with our own private minibus trundling out of the city and down route 13, the country's main highway connecting the north with the capital. We had a 175km trip between there and our next halt on Vang Vieng, but the winding and twisting mountain road made for slow driving, as did the condition of said road, with frequent potholes, landslides recently cleared away, and all sorts of wildlife (pigs, chickens, dogs, and the occasional child) all dashing into the road on the occasional we drove through a village, not counting the other heedless traffic, suicidally willing to overtake our bus around blind corners uphill as a coach appeared from nowhere on the other side of the road. It was somewhat of a relief by the time the northern stretches of Van Vieng appeared mid-afternooon.
Vang Vieng was the region's backpacker headquarters, with more young Westerns than locals, and the resulting hedonistic offers and attitudes that went with it ("Backpacker heaven or backpacker hell, depending on your view" was the best way I heard others describe it once we'd arrived). As it was alongside the river Mekong, there were plenty of river-based activities (like kayaking and white-water rafting), the most popular amongst them being "tubing": sitting on an inflated truck tyre tube and riding it 4km down the river, with all sorts of pubs and drinking spots along the way (the whole idea of tubing while drunk was apparently quite popular by backpackers, considering the amount of injuries and occasional death didn't at all diminish interest in it). Bars and clubs were everywhere (including the usual Irish bar, and even an Australian bar apparently), restaurants consisting of couches or lounges to lie back and watch TV (mostly Friends, Simpsons, or Family Guy re-runs, it appeared) were popular as well, but only when I realised that despite the fact it was officially illegal, smoking hashish and marijuana were also popular offerings here as well. Other activities like rock-climbing in the nearby karst and limestone cliffs were offered, as were bicycle, scooter and quad-hire. Quite a happening place, and like most backpackers, it was mostly alive at night.
I had actually been looking forward to a decent half-day's kayaking, but due to recent injuries couldn't even hire a bike and cycle around the town, so I kept to myself on Monday and had a lazy day in, but went out later that evening with most of the group for a drink or three (mostly won over by the free vouchers they were giving in the streets) at the Irish bar, playing pool and enjoying the live music, retiring with everyone else well after midnight, but thankfully not enduring the hangover most of the others appeared to be suffering. *grin*
Tuesday was the careful trip down the main road Route 13 to Vientiane, slowly winding down the mountains separating the north of the country to the plans in its centre. After stopping at a grand vista perched over a deep valley for lunch, we slowly trundled into the suburbs of the capital.
Vientiane struck me as a regional town masquerading as a capital city: a lot like Reykjavik - Iceland's capital - it has a greater concentration of traffic lights at intersections, a few more high-rise buildings and a more-careful grid arrangement of its streets.....but ultimately that was it: there was no real traffic, like Bangkok, or anything to suggest a bustling capital except the occasional public bus and a greater tangle of cables strung from pole to pole. Once we'd settled into our hotel, we went on a orientation tour, discovering the presidential palace, and the Wat Sisaket (the oldest Buddhist temple in the region (preserved by the French when they took over in the late 19th century) the Patuxai (or Victory Gate, constructed by the French as an echo of the Arc de Triomphe), and later an educational but also rather harrowing visit to the COPE Visitor centre, an outlet of the Vientiane hospital that dealt with artificial limbs for the numerous - and sadly ever-growing - number of victims still falling victim to UXO the Americans carpet-bombed the entire country with during the Vietnam War.
I was able to get my smartphone looked at as well, thankfully, in a specialist phone repair store (amusingly enough called Bossphone) near the central marketplace: for 5500 (or about £110) I was able to get a new screen transplanted onto the existing body, and in only 2 hours too! At least I didn't need to worry about buying a replacement unit after all. Dinner that evening was a far happier affair now that I was back on the air. We even found a Belgian beer bar on the main street next to the river Mekong....the same river that formed the international border between Laos and Thailand, with Vientiane on one side and....not much on the other!
Wednesday was an early day: even though we had a free morning, I wanted to see more of the capital while the sun was up and the temperature was still somewhat bearable. I was able to walk along the riverside and actually see Thailand not too far away across the Mekong, visit a temple or two, and stop by the Laos National Cultural Hall.
By the time we returned to the hotel in Vientiane at noon, we were ready to depart the city and eventually the country: our next stop was the international airport 10km north of the city, and with a quick 1hr hop on a Laos Airways Airbus 320-200, we had landed in Hanoi international airport.
Well, how to describe a city like Hanoi? My first impression was taking the shuttle bus from the airport into the city itself, on a freeway that was seething with traffic - the usual heedless "I'm going if there's even a suggestion of a gap" attitudes of Asian drivers....only the multitudes of motorcycle and scooter drivers were incredible: it actually appeared that the vehicle drivers were soundly outnumbered by their two-wheel equivalents, taking no notice of the usual road-rules, weaving in and out of stationary (and even fast-moving) traffic, and frequently zooming down the extreme edge of the other side of the road against traffic. Vietnamese drivers had somehow developed a six sense for these drivers, and it was incredible I didn't see as many accidents as I was expecting, especially when a group materialised at the head of an intersection waiting for the lights to change, streaming out in all directions regardless if there was still opposing traffic in the road ahead. It got to the point not many of us could sit at the front of the van or bus we were on to begin with, as we were getting minor heart attacks for countless near-misses and barely-avoided accidents.
We arrived an hour later in the centre of Hanoi, just north of the town's Old Centre, and checked in. This was to be, sadly, the last night for the majority of our group - and our current tour leader - who were finishing their tour in Hanoi and were either flying back home or heading back into Laos at the head of a different group. We took taxis (much safer than walking at night in the streets or taking a motorcycle ride!) into the Old Centre to watch a traditional Water Puppet show (a theatre with a water tank in the centre of the stage, Vietnamese singers and narratives as skilled puppet-drivers weaved interesting stories on the water from behind draw-curtains), and had our last meal together as the group that had survived northern Thailand and Laos.
The next morning I took advantage of a sleep-in, before dedicating my day to wandering around the city. My first destination was Ba Dinh square, with the hulking, colonnaded mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh standing to its west. The leader of Communist North Vietnam had been preserved - much like his comrades Lenin in Moscow and Mao in Beijing - but sadly I wasn't able to see him, as at the end of the year he was shipped to Moscow for a rejuvenating re-wax, which was a shame. I visited the nearby One-Pillar Pagoda and the museum dedicated to the Vietnamese fighter himself, perpetuating his personality cult and rather heavy on the pro-Communist propaganda, built in classic stark Communist architecture and decorated with the usual chiselled-marble socialist mural. Next was a walk further east to visit Lenin Square (decorated with a statue of the Russian leader himself) and the War Museum just across the way, decorated by an old Russian MiG-21 fighter jet and some surprising US military hardware as well. I spent the rest of the afternoon around the Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of the Old Quarter, visiting the Ngoc Son (or Jade Mountain) Temple on an island close to its northern shore, avoiding being run-over by enthusiastic traffic, and trying the local pho (Vietnamese rice-noodle soup with beef).
The second evening in Hanoi had us introduced to our "new" group, with only myself and an older Irish couple continuing onwards from the previous group, and with 12 new people - and another tour leader, a native Vietnamese - to travel with, most of them also couples, also older, but from a few other countries (mostly Australia and Britain, a younger South African, and two younger Irish friends): quite a large group, by Intrepid standards. Amidst many introductions, we went out for another group dinner in the Old Town.
Friday morning had us depart early. We left our suitcases and rucksacks behind at the hotel and travelled onwards with only day-packs, filed into a mini-coach, and drove about 3hrs along the northern Vietnamese coast to Halong City, where we boarded a luxury junk (refitted and majorly-upgraded double-level boat) and sailed around the beautiful karst outcroppings of the Heritage-listed Halong Bay, disembarking from time to time to motor out to small islands to visit some incredible naturally-formed deep caves. Some of us went kayaking around the bay (something I really wanted to do, but as I was still healing from my accident this I sadly had to pass), and after a sumptuous 7-course meal (something that appeared to be quite normal in many higher-class Vietnamese dining), many of us retired to the upper deck to stargaze: while the fumes of pollution and the afternoon's haze had sadly cut down on the visibility of sailing around the bay that day, the evening was crystal-clear and made for some excellent clear views of the heavens. We slept onboard in fairly decent air-conditioned cabins, being rocked to sleep by the bay's gentle tide.
The next morning after breakfast, we returned back to the coast - thankfully this morning's weather was a lot clearer than yestreday's haze, making for far better photography - reboarded out mini-coach, and slowly drove back to Hanoi, stopping on the way for lunch and a visit to a ceramic factory). The hotel had us set up in two day-rooms and had moved our luggage there, so once many of us had a quick shower and repacked after two days on the bay, many of us disappeared into Hanoi for the afternoon, before regrouping at 1900hrs for one last Hanoi dinner (another 7-course, belly-busting feat).
After dinner, we caught more taxis to Hanoi's railway station, to board an overnight sleeper train (this now made it the eighth country on this trip I had taken a sleeper train through) which left on time at 2200hrs. It was a return to Russian sleeper standards: rather-dated flip-down bench-sleepers, with four of us to a compartment, but fairly comfortable otherwise (especially to a seasoned railway traveller as I'd become). Our tour leader surprised us and brought two bottles of vodka onto the train, ensuring the evening was a lively one as we trundled further south overnight into central Vietnam.
While some of us had a small hangover (my tolerance to vodka appeared to have increased since the Trans-Siberian Railway, so surprisingly no issues for me this morning), we were all awake when the train slowly pulled into Hué station around 1100hrs. After an early breakfast, we crossed the Perfume River and had a walking tour through the ruins of the historic Hué citadel, the seat of the Vietnamese emperors in the two centuries leading up to Vietnam's colonisation by the French in the late 19th century. In its heart was the Forbidden Purple City, where only the emperor, his family and concubines, and those close enough to them were allowed to step foot, under penalty of death; parts of it had been preserved. Later we visited the tombs of some of the emperors that had lived in the citadel, before later having dinner with a local family in their apartment in the city (a lovely experience).
Monday was a city tour with a twist: we travelled around the region on the back of motorcycles (all sixteen of us!), visiting a regional town and its marketplace and discovering a fortune teller (83 years old!) in a shrine-bridge over a creek (some of us had their fortunes told), before being whizzed to a small pier on the Perfume River and floating down it to the dock outside the Thien Mu pagoda, the city's largest and its unofficial symbol. The site also happened to house the Austin car of Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who famously immolated himself in Saigon in 1963 to protest the South Vietnamese government.
Tuesday was another early departure to drive further south along the Vietnamese coast, via Danang, to Hoi An. The coastal road was a treat, offering impressive panoramic views as we slowly wound up and down mountainous switch-back roads with incredible views of the beaches and the ocean, and eventually of Danang as we slowly approached it. After a brief stop at China Beach (locally known as Non Nuoc Beach, a white sandy beach renowned for both its spectacular beauty and for its history as an R&R destination for American troops during the Vietnam War) just outside Danang, we eventually arrived at our resort in the eastern end of Hoi An: this actually surprised us, as we weren't expecting such luxurious accommodation, and at a resort no less! With its in-house masseurs, swimming pool and on-site restaurant, it was quite upper-class fare for a group of backpackers!
Hoi An's Ancient Town was Heritage-listed, but on the verge of losing it as modernisation of its trading markets and restaurants was threatening its preservation. As well as its French-colonial architecture and thriving marketplaces, Hoi An was also best known for its tailors and clothing industry, home to innumerable stores offering anything and everything you could want to wear. I was already aware of its reputation to be able to copy or clone existing clothing - I was wanting a pair of my American-sourced Levi jeans to be copied - but after realising Hoi An clothing stores didn't have the correct type of denim I wanted, ended up getting a pair of smart leather pants fashioned instead, made only by a picture on the internet and with later modifications I'd asked for regarding deep pockets happily incorporated into its design. Apart from my kilt, it's the first time I'd actually had a pair of pants tailor-made for me - I was asked to return twice to ensure the fittings were correct - and by the time they were delivered to the resort late Wednesday afternoon with a cautious try-on, I was very impressed by the workmanship. One pair of custom leather pants for US$176: not at all bad, considering I'd been looking for a pair in Europe for the last 18 months but had only found ill-fitting, mass-produced articles that didn't cover my rather long legs.
Hoi An was also the first time I it had decently rained on my trip since Shanghai: like any sub-tropical storm it arrived with great gusto, an impressive thunderstorm that on Tuesday belted down for quite some time, curtailing much exploration of the Ancient Town. I was luckier on Wednesday, when it only started raining in hour-long spells, drying out enough to allow me to return to the tailors for subsequent refits and a little walking around. Unfortunately, one of our older travellers - on a cycling tour around Hoi An - ran into trouble cycling through mud from the previous storms and broke her ankle falling off her bike, which resulted in surgery that evening and the unfortunate early departure from the trip of her and her husband. She has since made a good recovery and flew back to Australia a week later.
Thursday it was a very early morning, departing Hoi An at 0430hrs, driving back to Danang - the closest main city with an airport to Hoi An - and taking the second flight for this trip, a quick 1hr hop from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City using a Jetstar Asia Airbus A320-300, landing in Saigon airport around 1100hrs.
Instead of heading directly into the city, we headed north instead in a mini-bus to the Cu Chi tunnels, an immense network of connecting underground tunnels and the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The entire place was riddled with tunnels even short people would find difficult to crawl through: the mountain Vietnamese had dug out the entire network over 30 years, as supply and communication routes, had given birth and fought the Americans and South Vietnamese all from underground, going to extraordinary lengths to shroud their existence, manufacturing all sorts of booby-traps and conducting all sorts of psychological warfare against the invading forces. It was a fascinating glimpse into the Vietnam War I hadn't expected.
We headed back into the city - stopping for lunch outside the compound for pho, during which another tropical whitewash battered down - before we joined the chaotic traffic and slowly weaved our way into Saigon in the early afternoon, stopping to visit the War Remnants Museum, a harrowing photographic display of the Vietnam War and its effects against the local Vietnamese, including birth deformities caused by massive use by American forces of Agent Orange; a little heavy on the propaganda, but clearly making its point about the Vietnam War.
Friday was a day-trip to Ben Tre on the Mekong Delta, on the southern coast. After an hour's drive, we took to the river and explored the region's coconut factories, making an entire living off the humble coconut (dessicated coconut, coconut oil and juice, coconut caramel sweets, coconut fibre ropes and threads), and even side-businesses with rice (including rice paper and rice wine). We were given tastes of the latter, even rice wine pickled with snake and scorpion in the same bottle (very much like the snake vodka I had tried in northern Laos). We were taken by motorcycle jumbo for lunch, but unfortunately I ran afoul of my egg allergy eating soup (while being told there wasn't any) and the resulting allergies made it rather painful to move around for a little while afterwards. We were loaded onto sampans and drifted down the river back to our larger boat that had taken us to the coconut factories, and sipped coconut juice straight from freshly-harvested coconuts as we floated back to the jetty, driving another hour back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was our last night together with our Vietnamese team leader and our younger two Irish travellers, who were departing the next day, so we shared a dinner at the city's KOTO centre, and retired later that night to the hotel's top floor for a goodbye beer or three (I even wore my new leather pants!).
Saturday was a free day for the rest of us: I spent it exploring Saigon on foot, avoiding the incessant offers for tuk-tuk or motorcycle rides, massage parlours, ladies, or "boom-boom" (marijuana) from the locals, and visited the intersection of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Dic's self-immolation (having come across his Austin car previously in Hué), the Reunification Palace (built by the South Vietnamese government a few years before the Vietcong successfully occupied Saigon), and the city's landmark Notre Dam cathedral and post office (formerly a railway station, both a product of Vietnam's French influence), and trying to avoid the erratic spells of rain that insisted in pouring down every so often. Later that evening we all regrouped for our third team leader, a Cambodian, and three extra people joining us (a married couple and another young traveller, all Australians) for our journey across Cambodia, departing the next day.
Sunday morning we caught a public "VIP" bus - I think it classified as a VIP bus because it had very slightly more legroom (for Asian countries at least, didn't seem like all that much to someone of my height) and it had air-conditioning. It was actually the first public bus I had taken in this leg of my travels, I realised a little later. After 2hrs we hit the Vietnamese-Cambodian border, spending just over an hour getting stamped out of Vietnam alone, but surprisingly quick into Cambodia (after a finger-print scan, surprising me). It descended into the usual friendly chaos: needing to apply for visas (thankfully we all qualified for the visa-on-arrival scheme) and hand over our passports, pay US$35 in fees, check for all the correct paperwork matched, and march over to the desks to get everything stamped and approved; the entire process was actually quite quick (about 30min or so), and we ended up not only with new stamps but with an official Cambodian visa sticker in our passports as well. We were jostled back into the bus soon after and travelled onwards for another 4 hours until finally arriving into Cambodia's capital in the early afternoon nearly 5 hours later.
I wasn't too sure what to expect of Phnom Penh: would be a regional town masquerading as a capital city like Vientiane? Or would it be choking on its own traffic like Hanoi? It turned out to be a little of both: a large city, but not as large as Hanoi, with plenty of traffic, but not so much that you felt you were lucky to survive simply crossing the road. In other things, it reminded me strongly of Laos: the Cambodian alphabet looked a lot like Laotian (and Thai), Buddhism and Buddhist temples were aplenty, and while in tourist areas people spoke passable English, it didn't have the frantic tourist-driven madness to people who felt they need to harry every white face they saw to buy their wares or ride their tuk-tuk (which existed in plenty in Vietnam). After alighting at the bus depot, we were transferred to our hotel by mini-bus to freshen up, and had dinner in the centre of town, along the banks of Tonle Sap where it merged into the Mekong. I was in luck: as we had two unexpected departures in Vietnam, we had a spare room, which was graciously offered to the only two single males in the trip, which meant I had a single room to myself again after sharing throughout Vietnam; it was an arrangement that lasted all the way through to the end of the trip.
Monday was a full day: we started with a sobering visit to Cheoung Ek (the Killing Fields), the execution place of the Khmer Rouge where millions were ruthlessly exterminated, and one of the largest genocide sites during the Democratic Kampuchea era. Mass graves had been discovered in 1981 - 2 years after a Vietnamese invasion had forced the Khmer Ruuge out - and until now 89 out of 128 mass graves had been painstakingly recovered. A small memorial shrine - filled with 5,000 recovered skulls from the bodies recovered here - had been erected in the 1990s and served as a chilling reminder of the systematic killing here; it reminded me very much of my visit to Auschwitz in 2007, to which many parallels between the Nazi's Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge's genocide had already been made. It was educational and horrifying at the same time. Later we visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (aka Security Post 21, or simply S21 during the Democratic Kampuchea era), the site of a high-school turned holding-site of the Khmer Rouge, and learned of the systematic torture the Khmer Rouge put their prisoners through, suspecting them of any link to the USA/CIA, any intellectual leanings (even the sign of wearing glasses was enough to have a squad arrest you for "re-education" at S21), any spying - real or imagined - and the murders became so great they had to ship people off for slaughter off-site (and hence the Killing Fields). The remnants of S21 now housed a eye-opening history of imprisonment, torture, and worse, all documented in photographs the Khmer Rouge took themselves to keep track of the people they were exterminating. It was unsurprising not many of us weren't hungry for lunch later on.
I used the rest of that afternoon to visit the Cambodian Royal Palace with most of the group - we even hired a guide to walk and talk us through it - and the holy Silver Temple on the palace's grounds, much like the Thai Royal Palace and the Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. I later peeled off and walked around the city's streets myself, discovering the Independence Monument and the Wat Phnom (the city's holiest temple after the Silver Temple). Unfortunately, it seems bad karma struck me again that evening, walking back from the city centre to the hotel, where - in the midst of pouring rain and unable to read the Cambodian script on the streetsigns - I stood under a doorway to check Google Maps on my smartphone.....and some little prick on a motorscooter simply snatched my phone out of my hands and surged away down the street; the very same phone I had just had repaired in Laos had now disappeared again, this time for good. I was bitterly angry, but there wasn't much I could do about it: I was far more annoyed I was off the air AGAIN and had lost all the photos and conversations I had saved on it. Thankfully I had a pattern lock on it, and later enquiries from friends and shown no one had used the phone to contact them once I reported it gone. I cancelled the SIM to prevent my account being used....but there was nothing else I could do. Everyone found out the next morning and were sympathetic about the situation.
Tuesday was a long travel day: the Cambodian highway that linked the capital in the east with its second-biggest city in the west was a pitiful two-lane, single-carriageway highway extending for roughly 300km. Since joining ASEAN, Cambodia had thankfully received funding to upgrade the road - as a direct link from Thailand to Vietnam - and had dutifully begun to tear up much of the road for reconstruction....and then this year's wet season had set in a little earlier than expected, reducing most of the road to a thick, muddy rally track. We were in our own private coach again, but it was a long and bumpy road for most of the day, splashing through mud and sometimes sliding sideways around corners with the rear-end sliding more rapidly than is usually considered safe. It was much like the Mongolian highways I remember having to endure, only with oncoming traffic and a shitload of mud thrown into the deal.
We stopped off occasionally along the way, partaking in unique Cambodian cuisine: fried spider (the Cambodian variant of the tarantula, which was nice but had me picking hairs out of my teeth for hours afterward), and later grilled field-mouse (which was actually rather nice, a lot like chicken, only with smaller bones); we also stopped off at a Cambodian silk farm run by, surprisingly, an old American Vietnam veteran and his Cambodian wife, training the otherwise-uneducated local villagers in weaving and giving them employable skills. Later that afternoon, we took a detour by taxi-boat for a facinating visit to the northern shores of the Tonle Sap lake, the largest freshwater lake in SE Asia, and home to the "floating village" of Kampong Khleang, erected on stilts on the close to the lake's northern shore and only accessible by boat. By the time we rolled into Siem Reap, it was long past sunset.
After settling into the hotel, we took tuk-tuks into the centre of the very tourist-oriented centre of Siem Reap: Western tourists were everywhere, and the old centre even had a "Pub Street" - complete with signs lit up in neon hanging above the roads advertising such - overflowing with Western-style pubs and bars, with the occasional restaurant inbetween, along with the usual insistent tuk-tuk drivers and street-food stalls shouting their wares, and the usual shady character quietly offering ladies' services and boom-boom. After a group dinner, many of us fragmented to explore the booming night market, still open at 2200hrs and happy for new tourists to attract.
Wednesday was the big day: a near-full day dedicated to the temples just to the north of the city, amongst them the drawcard of the entire country, the incredible Angkor Wat. After leaving the hotel at 0800hrs and having our mini-bus drop us off to pick up our multi-entrance tickets, we arrived at the eastern gate of Angkor Wat and essentially went through the temple complex in reverse, from east to west; this was an advantage as not many other tourists were at the eastern end this early in the day, and we were able to see the temple's attractions (wall carvings, intricately decorated towers and archways) without too many other people around for the time being. The temple was immense: having stood for half a millennia and still in relatively good shape (the locals had never really abandoned it, like many of the other temples in the surrounds, and kept it in relatively good condition for the French to "discover" when they established their protectorate here in the late 19th century), it was also quite high, stretching into the sky with its central tower at least 50m, with steep steps and many archways to climb and step through, and a lovely panorama across the main western entrance. We continued to move through the stone palace and eventually out through the impressive terraced gardens and out-buildings and over the 200m moat (still whole and filled with water) outside to the main western parking lot, now milling with hundreds of tourists.
After a quick rehydration session (courtesy of an Esky filled with ice-cold water on our tour bus), we dashed north to the Angkor Thom complex a few minutes away from Angkor Wat, a wholly separate city established from Angkor Wat and the last to be abandoned in the mid-17th century. Its central attraction was the Bayon temple, its most distinctive feature being the numerous massive stone faces on the many towers jutting out from the upper terraces: faces carved into each tower faced each of the four cardinal directions, so no matter which direction you turned within the temple, you usually had a few serene stone faces staring at you from a multitude of levels. We passed the Elephant Terrace (the former main northern entrance flanked by a 400m long terrace of carved elephants all along it) for a lunch break, and then visited the next main temple in the local area: the Banteay Srey or "Lady Temple" (called that from the intricacy of the devata - divine nymphs or celestial dancing girls - carved into many of the temple's walls, and also to its diminutive nature) constructed of dark red sandstone but suffering from more decay over the years and only "discovered" by the French a century ago. After that, we had the afternoon free: considering it was around 1600hrs in the afternoon, most returned to the hotel and availed themselves of the swimming pool or an extended shower.
It was an extra-early wake-up the next morning, leaving the hotel at 0430hrs to make it back to the main western entrance of Angkor Wat by 0500hrs, and witness the glorious sight of the sunrise over the temple for the next 1.5hrs, along with the other early-bird tourists (we had arrived early enough at least to guarantee a decent place that wasn't too crowded); it was simply incredible, and the experience has formed one of the highlights of my Indochina trip. By 0630hrs, the sun was well and truly up, so we took advantage of the early hour to visit the fourth and last of the major temple complexes in the area, to the Ta Phrom (or Jungle Temple), made famous for where the first Tomb Raider movie was shot. While not as in much decay as the Lady Temple, it had remained completely abandoned for the last 300 years, and when the French rediscovered it, they found many tall, adult trees majestically sprouting from the walls and the heart of the temple, many with intricate root systems draped over 3m-tall walls and under temple supports. By that time it was 0900hrs and most of us were hungry, so we returned one last time to the hotel for a belated breakfast and a free day remaining; I took the opportunity to put in some laundry, and sleep in for a bit, surprising myself by waking up four hours later after 1400hrs, but remaining indoors and taking it easy for the rest of the afternoon.
That evening most of us attended an Aspara dancing demonstration, featuring traditional dancing by Cambodian women and group dancing by both genders, over a buffet dinner at the local 5-star resort, before celebrating with one last beer in town off Pub Street.
Friday had us leave Siem Reap after three days and arrive at our last destination for the country at Battambang, a small provincial town on the other side of the Tonle Sap lake to Siem Reap. After checking into the hotel, we took more tuk-tuks out to the old railway, originally constructed by the French linking the town to the Thai border in the west to Phnom Penh in the east, but since the French left and the mad genocide of the Khmer Rouge over the years, the metre-gauge railway had been left to ruin and only a 8km section of the railway had been preserved in the form of a norry, or "bamboo railway", consisting of a small platform of bamboo suspended over two railway bogies and propelled by a tractor engine at about 40kph (any faster and the buckling and warping of the rails would have made it too dangerous to ride), trundling by the Cambodian country-side on a homemade, rickety rail dolly. Great fun! That night, our last night in Cambodia, we ate with a local family, eating traditional Cambodian cuisine, with a flash or two of rice liquor thrown in to make things interesting.
Saturday was another long travel day, leaving Battambang at 0730hrs and arriving at the Cambodian-Thai border about 3 hours later. We said goodbye to our mini-bus and driver, with us the last 4 days, checked out of the Cambodian side, walked the no-man's land between (dominated by numerous casinos, as organised gambling was illegal in Thailand), and having to go through the usual form-filling and immigration on the Thai side; thankfully we had left early enough that there was barely anyone there and no queues to put up with, so a proposed 1.5-2hr process was over and done with in only 30min, with us stamped back into Thailand, my return to this country just under a month later.
It was a long 6hr drive from eastern Thailand to the capital Bangkok, split over two minivans this time, but we didn't mind so much: one of the most noticeable changes returning to Thailand was the vast improvement in road quality (dual carriageway, multiple lanes, decent construction and traffic that actually appeared to vaguely follow traffic rules!) considering what we had become to accustomed to, so besides the occasional stop for toilet breaks and a quick one for lunch, it wasn't too long before we got caught up in the usual traffic snarls outside Suvarnabhumi airport that lasted most of the way into central Bangkok, until we returned to the Khao San Road district and back at the very same hotel I had stayed at before I left Bangkok last time a month ago, seemingly so long ago in my mind. After gratefully checking in, we assembled one last time for a departure dinner and toasted our Cambodian guide, before having a late-night wander through the circus that is Khao San Road, running very near where our hotel was, before we all drifted away the next morning.
So that's my month-long loop completed: what a fantastic experience, despite some setbacks (being knocked of my bike and my constant phone issues). A new group and a new trip depart Bangkok tomorrow, and I start slowly moving south again after a delightful month's detour through Indochina.
This entry was originally posted at http://mnemonia.dreamwidth.org/340981.html. Comments may be left on either entry.
I had actually been here before - when I last visited Thailand in 2006, at the same airport - so after the usual dance through Immigration and baggage collection, I avoided all the taxi touts and went directly to the taxi rank with the METERED taxis - even though it took the driver some attempts to read where my destination was (and even then he had to leave the taxi temporarily to ask his colleagues) - but ended up arriving in the backpacker district of central Bangkok without any further issues about 45min and two expressway tolls later, where I gratefully checked in, turned on the air-con (Bangkok was just as humid as Hong Kong was, and even more polluted), emerging two hours later to meet the new tour group I was to loop Indochina with, the first trip I was doing with holiday with my old favourite tour-group, Intrepid. It was a first: the entire group were all couples (six Australians and two Irish), and all over 50, leaving me as the only young single male in our group of 9. I didn't really mind though: everyone was fairly friendly, and it meant as the odd one out I was pretty much guaranteed my own room for this section of the trip (I'd not enjoyed my own room since I arrived in Moscow, well over last month!). Our tour leader was a likeable Thai called Noi, who had worked for Intrepid for 15 years, knew his way around Western tourists (and could be quite cheeky at times, but this went well with his actually quite funny sense of humour), with a 2IC leader he was training, a slightly older Thai called Wasa (who also spoke passable German, the first time I have ever heard German spoken with an Asian accent as we spoke later on in the trip). We had our first dinner out in Khao San Road, surrounded by other Westerners, blaring TVs, the growls of tuk-tuks, and the city's signature humidity, over pad Thai and noodles.
Sunday morning was a busy one: we started with a tour of Bangkok's khlongs (canals) in a typical Thai longboat (with a car's entire 6-cylinder engine strapped to the back for propulsion, I couldn't believe it!), before alighting at the rear of the Wat Pho, the capital's holy shrine (containing the country's second largest reclining statue of the Buddha), for a visit, and then a longer one at the adjacent Grand Palace complex, the heart of royal Bangkok (I recognised enough of it from my previous visit in 2006). After cramming ourselves into tuk-tuks and returning to the backpacker section of the city, we took a moment for last showers, and I took a short shopping trip to look for a pharmacy: we were heading into declared malaria areas, and I needed anti-malaria medication, which I was able to find fairly easily (doxycycline) for a decent price. We crammed ourselves into a van this time for a transfer to Hualampong station, Bangkok's central railway station in its inner eastern suburbs. Yep, it was time for another night-sleeper (this now made it the seventh country on this trip I had taken a sleeper train through), however Thai sleepers were quite different from Russian and Chinese ones, extending across the bench-seat across the way (rather than transversely into the carriage's aisle) with a twin bunk opening down from above. It made for a rather comfier sleep than previous sleepers (even if I still needed to sleep partially in the foetal position, as I was still too tall for them!), I must say. We even had a dinner service on the train, where I was able to order sweet-and-sour pork and curry chicken with a beer for next to nothing, delivered right to my seat!
By the time we woke up Monday morning, we had travelled the near-700km northwards, eventually arriving at Chiang Mai at around 0800hrs. We caught two songthaews - a tuk-tuk on steroids, based on a pick-up and able to sit 10 in the tray section - to our hotel near the city's night market section, where most of us had a quick freshen-up, and elected to right bicycles to the temples in the hills around, or just to walk around the city proper (which I ended up doing); the sudden dash north to Chiang Mai had lead to an increase in the temperature but a notable decrease in humidity, which I was thankful for. Later that afternoon, we were taken further up into the mountains to the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai's lankmark holy Buddhist temple (accessed by a 306-step staircase) that also gave an incredible aerial view of the city sprawling out in front of us. That night we ate in the famous Night Market (an Indian curry, rice, and a beer for the equivalent of £2? Sweet!) and even had a bit of a shop through it: I found the local post-office and was quite thankful to do so: I had looked in Hong Kong for one to send off some souvenirs ahead to Australia and reduce the clutter I was lugging around in my rucksack, but the public holidays and later the protests in HK interfered with that plan, and I wasn't able to find one open in Bangkok over the weekend, so I remedied that here, later enjoying a "fish spa" (lowering one's feet into a fish tank to have fish "massage" them as they ate the dead skin off your feet.....ticklish!), and then afterwards enjoy a full hour's Thai foot massage, leaving me happily giddy for the rest of the evening (and the following day!) and ensured a good night's sleep later that evening.
Tuesday was mostly a travel day, climbing into a private minibus and driving further north, stopping off for lunch in Chiang Rai - and visiting the incredible Wat Rong Khun, or White Temple, a Buddhist temple painted entirely in white and adorned with glittering mirrors, like something out of a Buddhist monk's dream! - before eventually arriving in Chiang Khong later that afternoon, stretched along the banks of the river Mekong. It was the international border, we realised later, with the other bank across the way officially in Laos territory, so it was having dinner that evening we could look across the river into another country. :)
Wednesday morning was our first official border crossing of the trip: the border crossing was only 5min outside of Chiang Khong, and a quick hotel transfer got us all there easily enough. We all got stamped out of Thai territory, then waited for am international border bus to arrive, stowing our luggage underneath it when it arrived, and rode across the "Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge" over the river Mekong, crossing officially over to Huay Xai in Laotian territory, and a short distance to the Laos immigration centre on the other side. It descended into friendly chaos soon after, needing to apply for visas (thankfully we all qualified for the visa-on-arrival scheme) and hand over our passports, pay US$30 in fees, wait as the military workers processed them all (our border bus was full, with about 50 tourists, and another three buses arrived during the entire process), watch for our passports as they attempted to pronounce our names, check for all the correct paperwork matched, and then convert any currency over to the Laotian kip once everything was confirmed; the entire process took about an hour or so, and we ended up not only with new stamps but with an official Laos visa sticker in our passports as well.
We had also picked up another tour-guide at this point: Somkit (or just "Kit", as he preferred), a local Laos guide, as Noi and Wasa were both Thai and didn't have enough local knowledge for this part of the trip. We grabbed another two songthaews (or "jumbos", as they were called in Laos), and drove 20min back from the border point down to the river Mekong again, and transferred across to a Laotian "slowboat", where we would spend the next two days drifting down the Mekong in a boat three metres wide but about 40 metres long, able to accommodate at least 20 tourists in decent comfort (we all noticed they had recycled car bucket and bench seats for seating), a western-style toilet and bathroom, the living quarters and kitchen for the family that operated the boat, and the engine room.....quite impressive really! For the next two days we drifted down the river Mekong, stopping along the way to visit the occasional riverside Buddhist temple (like the Pak Ou Caves) or small Laotian village (to say hello and see how the mostly impoverished locals lived from day to day, mostly farming and cultivating rice), staying at a family-run hostel overnight in Pak Bang, a small town on the eastern bank, on Wednesday night. Drifting down the Mekong was actually quite relaxing, allowing us to enjoy all sorts of beautiful river views of the mountains, and it certainly beat the alternative, a crumbling mountain road, barely one lane wide, linking our departure point at the border down into our next destination.
On Thursday afternoon we finally arrived at Luang Prabang, the largest city in northern Laos and the former imperial capital: the city held a World Heritage listing, with plenty of French colonial architecture, and was the focus of Buddhist temples and teachings. Our accommodation certainly seemed to go up a notch: we were given river-side bungalows with covered lean-to (Western-style) bathrooms, along with canopy beds (draped in mosquito nets) and our own balconies; anyone ordering breakfast over the next few days had the option of having it delivered to the bungalow's balcony table and set up there, ready to eat for the morning view (as a single traveller, this means I got one all for myself!). The guesthouse also had a free city-transfer service, allowing us to get into the centre of Luang Prabang within 10min (instead of the 35min walk), and was quite friendly and professional; not something a simple backpacker was expecting! They also offered a laundry service: as it had been since Guilin in China over two weeks ago now, this was something I was grateful to take advantage of.
We also happened to arrive on the night of Koy Krathong, a local festival held on this month's full moon to give thanks for the year's harvest, best symbolised by floating decorated baskets with lit candles down the river Mekong. Plenty of people were there: school children and locals together had constructed many intricate models, mostly of dragons, from paper, lit inside with candles to make them internally glow, which were also allowed to drift down the river. Others crowded at the riverside to float candle baskets, or to release Chinese lanterns (burning an internal wick to fill a paper lantern with hot air, thus making it float away into the sky) into the evening. It was an incredible festival to witness: so many lights and many children with their families clearly enjoying the festivities. It was in the midst of this we found a river-side restaurant to have dinner, watch the sun set, and watch all the illuminated figures float down the river and see the lanterns float into the sky.
Friday Kit walked us into town for an orientation tour, visiting the local silversmith, the food markets and also an informative visit to the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre, a museum explaining much of the different people and races of Laos, which was more expansive than I'd previously thought. Later that afternoon we hired two jumbos for a 45min drive up into the surrounding mountains to visit the Kuangsi waterfalls for lunch and an afternoon dip, detouring past the centre's Asiatic Black Bear Sanctuary, set up to recover former neglected (and performing circus) bears. That evening after dinner in the city, we visited the renown Night Market, set up along Luang Prabang's main street (excepting the previous night, Loy Krathong had priorty) where local textiles, prints, cheap clothing, and local liquor - including, to my surprise, vodka pickled by snake bodies in the bottle! - were all on sale, and as always in Asia, prices were negotiable.
Saturday was a free day: after a welcome sleep-in, I elected to use a free bicycle the guesthouse offered to cycle into Luang Prabang and look around on my own. Unfortunately, I was knocked off said bicycle by an asshole Laotian driver behind the wheel of a Toyota Hi-Ace van, who didn't even bother to look if there was anyone else in the intersection before we swept into it past a stop-sign. I couldn't stop in time: I crashed into his driver's side door, and bounced off that to hit the asphalt of the road. Thankfully I wasn't seriously injured: just road rash, sore/stiff muscles and no head injuries (Laos didn't use helmets, and had none to give when I asked for one: I had instinctively raised my head the other way before hitting the road, this probably helped), and I was able to get up onto my feet nearly immediately (after the driver got out to scream at me - I left a pretty nasty dent in the little bastard's driver-side door, but he deserved that - then kicked my bicycle before driving off without helping me), and the nurse in our travel group gave me a quick check afterwards and gave me the all-clear. I'd been knocked off my bike before, and while I hurt at the time, I knew it was fairly minor and I'd be fine in the end.
Unfortunately, I'd fallen on my smartphone: it was in my pocket at the time, and I crushed it when I hit the asphalt, shattering the screen and refusing to respond to any touches, rendering it useless. This effectively rendered me off the air and unable to use any of the smartphone apps I'd come to depend on while travelling with it (camera, wi-fi connectivity of any kind, travel information, calculator, alarms, conversion rates, etc), and at the time I was far more pissed off about the state of my smartphone than of myself. Once I'd calmed down I realised I was far more lucky I was alive and in one piece, but there you go. The travel group - and Noi - were concerned once they heard what had happened, but were quite sympathetic and helpful: for the next few days afterwards I couldn't even lug my own rucksack due to muscle aches and tender road rash trying to heal, but they looked after me, bless 'em!
Sunday we finally left Luang Prabang, with our own private minibus trundling out of the city and down route 13, the country's main highway connecting the north with the capital. We had a 175km trip between there and our next halt on Vang Vieng, but the winding and twisting mountain road made for slow driving, as did the condition of said road, with frequent potholes, landslides recently cleared away, and all sorts of wildlife (pigs, chickens, dogs, and the occasional child) all dashing into the road on the occasional we drove through a village, not counting the other heedless traffic, suicidally willing to overtake our bus around blind corners uphill as a coach appeared from nowhere on the other side of the road. It was somewhat of a relief by the time the northern stretches of Van Vieng appeared mid-afternooon.
Vang Vieng was the region's backpacker headquarters, with more young Westerns than locals, and the resulting hedonistic offers and attitudes that went with it ("Backpacker heaven or backpacker hell, depending on your view" was the best way I heard others describe it once we'd arrived). As it was alongside the river Mekong, there were plenty of river-based activities (like kayaking and white-water rafting), the most popular amongst them being "tubing": sitting on an inflated truck tyre tube and riding it 4km down the river, with all sorts of pubs and drinking spots along the way (the whole idea of tubing while drunk was apparently quite popular by backpackers, considering the amount of injuries and occasional death didn't at all diminish interest in it). Bars and clubs were everywhere (including the usual Irish bar, and even an Australian bar apparently), restaurants consisting of couches or lounges to lie back and watch TV (mostly Friends, Simpsons, or Family Guy re-runs, it appeared) were popular as well, but only when I realised that despite the fact it was officially illegal, smoking hashish and marijuana were also popular offerings here as well. Other activities like rock-climbing in the nearby karst and limestone cliffs were offered, as were bicycle, scooter and quad-hire. Quite a happening place, and like most backpackers, it was mostly alive at night.
I had actually been looking forward to a decent half-day's kayaking, but due to recent injuries couldn't even hire a bike and cycle around the town, so I kept to myself on Monday and had a lazy day in, but went out later that evening with most of the group for a drink or three (mostly won over by the free vouchers they were giving in the streets) at the Irish bar, playing pool and enjoying the live music, retiring with everyone else well after midnight, but thankfully not enduring the hangover most of the others appeared to be suffering. *grin*
Tuesday was the careful trip down the main road Route 13 to Vientiane, slowly winding down the mountains separating the north of the country to the plans in its centre. After stopping at a grand vista perched over a deep valley for lunch, we slowly trundled into the suburbs of the capital.
Vientiane struck me as a regional town masquerading as a capital city: a lot like Reykjavik - Iceland's capital - it has a greater concentration of traffic lights at intersections, a few more high-rise buildings and a more-careful grid arrangement of its streets.....but ultimately that was it: there was no real traffic, like Bangkok, or anything to suggest a bustling capital except the occasional public bus and a greater tangle of cables strung from pole to pole. Once we'd settled into our hotel, we went on a orientation tour, discovering the presidential palace, and the Wat Sisaket (the oldest Buddhist temple in the region (preserved by the French when they took over in the late 19th century) the Patuxai (or Victory Gate, constructed by the French as an echo of the Arc de Triomphe), and later an educational but also rather harrowing visit to the COPE Visitor centre, an outlet of the Vientiane hospital that dealt with artificial limbs for the numerous - and sadly ever-growing - number of victims still falling victim to UXO the Americans carpet-bombed the entire country with during the Vietnam War.
I was able to get my smartphone looked at as well, thankfully, in a specialist phone repair store (amusingly enough called Bossphone) near the central marketplace: for 5500 (or about £110) I was able to get a new screen transplanted onto the existing body, and in only 2 hours too! At least I didn't need to worry about buying a replacement unit after all. Dinner that evening was a far happier affair now that I was back on the air. We even found a Belgian beer bar on the main street next to the river Mekong....the same river that formed the international border between Laos and Thailand, with Vientiane on one side and....not much on the other!
Wednesday was an early day: even though we had a free morning, I wanted to see more of the capital while the sun was up and the temperature was still somewhat bearable. I was able to walk along the riverside and actually see Thailand not too far away across the Mekong, visit a temple or two, and stop by the Laos National Cultural Hall.
By the time we returned to the hotel in Vientiane at noon, we were ready to depart the city and eventually the country: our next stop was the international airport 10km north of the city, and with a quick 1hr hop on a Laos Airways Airbus 320-200, we had landed in Hanoi international airport.
Well, how to describe a city like Hanoi? My first impression was taking the shuttle bus from the airport into the city itself, on a freeway that was seething with traffic - the usual heedless "I'm going if there's even a suggestion of a gap" attitudes of Asian drivers....only the multitudes of motorcycle and scooter drivers were incredible: it actually appeared that the vehicle drivers were soundly outnumbered by their two-wheel equivalents, taking no notice of the usual road-rules, weaving in and out of stationary (and even fast-moving) traffic, and frequently zooming down the extreme edge of the other side of the road against traffic. Vietnamese drivers had somehow developed a six sense for these drivers, and it was incredible I didn't see as many accidents as I was expecting, especially when a group materialised at the head of an intersection waiting for the lights to change, streaming out in all directions regardless if there was still opposing traffic in the road ahead. It got to the point not many of us could sit at the front of the van or bus we were on to begin with, as we were getting minor heart attacks for countless near-misses and barely-avoided accidents.
We arrived an hour later in the centre of Hanoi, just north of the town's Old Centre, and checked in. This was to be, sadly, the last night for the majority of our group - and our current tour leader - who were finishing their tour in Hanoi and were either flying back home or heading back into Laos at the head of a different group. We took taxis (much safer than walking at night in the streets or taking a motorcycle ride!) into the Old Centre to watch a traditional Water Puppet show (a theatre with a water tank in the centre of the stage, Vietnamese singers and narratives as skilled puppet-drivers weaved interesting stories on the water from behind draw-curtains), and had our last meal together as the group that had survived northern Thailand and Laos.
The next morning I took advantage of a sleep-in, before dedicating my day to wandering around the city. My first destination was Ba Dinh square, with the hulking, colonnaded mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh standing to its west. The leader of Communist North Vietnam had been preserved - much like his comrades Lenin in Moscow and Mao in Beijing - but sadly I wasn't able to see him, as at the end of the year he was shipped to Moscow for a rejuvenating re-wax, which was a shame. I visited the nearby One-Pillar Pagoda and the museum dedicated to the Vietnamese fighter himself, perpetuating his personality cult and rather heavy on the pro-Communist propaganda, built in classic stark Communist architecture and decorated with the usual chiselled-marble socialist mural. Next was a walk further east to visit Lenin Square (decorated with a statue of the Russian leader himself) and the War Museum just across the way, decorated by an old Russian MiG-21 fighter jet and some surprising US military hardware as well. I spent the rest of the afternoon around the Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of the Old Quarter, visiting the Ngoc Son (or Jade Mountain) Temple on an island close to its northern shore, avoiding being run-over by enthusiastic traffic, and trying the local pho (Vietnamese rice-noodle soup with beef).
The second evening in Hanoi had us introduced to our "new" group, with only myself and an older Irish couple continuing onwards from the previous group, and with 12 new people - and another tour leader, a native Vietnamese - to travel with, most of them also couples, also older, but from a few other countries (mostly Australia and Britain, a younger South African, and two younger Irish friends): quite a large group, by Intrepid standards. Amidst many introductions, we went out for another group dinner in the Old Town.
Friday morning had us depart early. We left our suitcases and rucksacks behind at the hotel and travelled onwards with only day-packs, filed into a mini-coach, and drove about 3hrs along the northern Vietnamese coast to Halong City, where we boarded a luxury junk (refitted and majorly-upgraded double-level boat) and sailed around the beautiful karst outcroppings of the Heritage-listed Halong Bay, disembarking from time to time to motor out to small islands to visit some incredible naturally-formed deep caves. Some of us went kayaking around the bay (something I really wanted to do, but as I was still healing from my accident this I sadly had to pass), and after a sumptuous 7-course meal (something that appeared to be quite normal in many higher-class Vietnamese dining), many of us retired to the upper deck to stargaze: while the fumes of pollution and the afternoon's haze had sadly cut down on the visibility of sailing around the bay that day, the evening was crystal-clear and made for some excellent clear views of the heavens. We slept onboard in fairly decent air-conditioned cabins, being rocked to sleep by the bay's gentle tide.
The next morning after breakfast, we returned back to the coast - thankfully this morning's weather was a lot clearer than yestreday's haze, making for far better photography - reboarded out mini-coach, and slowly drove back to Hanoi, stopping on the way for lunch and a visit to a ceramic factory). The hotel had us set up in two day-rooms and had moved our luggage there, so once many of us had a quick shower and repacked after two days on the bay, many of us disappeared into Hanoi for the afternoon, before regrouping at 1900hrs for one last Hanoi dinner (another 7-course, belly-busting feat).
After dinner, we caught more taxis to Hanoi's railway station, to board an overnight sleeper train (this now made it the eighth country on this trip I had taken a sleeper train through) which left on time at 2200hrs. It was a return to Russian sleeper standards: rather-dated flip-down bench-sleepers, with four of us to a compartment, but fairly comfortable otherwise (especially to a seasoned railway traveller as I'd become). Our tour leader surprised us and brought two bottles of vodka onto the train, ensuring the evening was a lively one as we trundled further south overnight into central Vietnam.
While some of us had a small hangover (my tolerance to vodka appeared to have increased since the Trans-Siberian Railway, so surprisingly no issues for me this morning), we were all awake when the train slowly pulled into Hué station around 1100hrs. After an early breakfast, we crossed the Perfume River and had a walking tour through the ruins of the historic Hué citadel, the seat of the Vietnamese emperors in the two centuries leading up to Vietnam's colonisation by the French in the late 19th century. In its heart was the Forbidden Purple City, where only the emperor, his family and concubines, and those close enough to them were allowed to step foot, under penalty of death; parts of it had been preserved. Later we visited the tombs of some of the emperors that had lived in the citadel, before later having dinner with a local family in their apartment in the city (a lovely experience).
Monday was a city tour with a twist: we travelled around the region on the back of motorcycles (all sixteen of us!), visiting a regional town and its marketplace and discovering a fortune teller (83 years old!) in a shrine-bridge over a creek (some of us had their fortunes told), before being whizzed to a small pier on the Perfume River and floating down it to the dock outside the Thien Mu pagoda, the city's largest and its unofficial symbol. The site also happened to house the Austin car of Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who famously immolated himself in Saigon in 1963 to protest the South Vietnamese government.
Tuesday was another early departure to drive further south along the Vietnamese coast, via Danang, to Hoi An. The coastal road was a treat, offering impressive panoramic views as we slowly wound up and down mountainous switch-back roads with incredible views of the beaches and the ocean, and eventually of Danang as we slowly approached it. After a brief stop at China Beach (locally known as Non Nuoc Beach, a white sandy beach renowned for both its spectacular beauty and for its history as an R&R destination for American troops during the Vietnam War) just outside Danang, we eventually arrived at our resort in the eastern end of Hoi An: this actually surprised us, as we weren't expecting such luxurious accommodation, and at a resort no less! With its in-house masseurs, swimming pool and on-site restaurant, it was quite upper-class fare for a group of backpackers!
Hoi An's Ancient Town was Heritage-listed, but on the verge of losing it as modernisation of its trading markets and restaurants was threatening its preservation. As well as its French-colonial architecture and thriving marketplaces, Hoi An was also best known for its tailors and clothing industry, home to innumerable stores offering anything and everything you could want to wear. I was already aware of its reputation to be able to copy or clone existing clothing - I was wanting a pair of my American-sourced Levi jeans to be copied - but after realising Hoi An clothing stores didn't have the correct type of denim I wanted, ended up getting a pair of smart leather pants fashioned instead, made only by a picture on the internet and with later modifications I'd asked for regarding deep pockets happily incorporated into its design. Apart from my kilt, it's the first time I'd actually had a pair of pants tailor-made for me - I was asked to return twice to ensure the fittings were correct - and by the time they were delivered to the resort late Wednesday afternoon with a cautious try-on, I was very impressed by the workmanship. One pair of custom leather pants for US$176: not at all bad, considering I'd been looking for a pair in Europe for the last 18 months but had only found ill-fitting, mass-produced articles that didn't cover my rather long legs.
Hoi An was also the first time I it had decently rained on my trip since Shanghai: like any sub-tropical storm it arrived with great gusto, an impressive thunderstorm that on Tuesday belted down for quite some time, curtailing much exploration of the Ancient Town. I was luckier on Wednesday, when it only started raining in hour-long spells, drying out enough to allow me to return to the tailors for subsequent refits and a little walking around. Unfortunately, one of our older travellers - on a cycling tour around Hoi An - ran into trouble cycling through mud from the previous storms and broke her ankle falling off her bike, which resulted in surgery that evening and the unfortunate early departure from the trip of her and her husband. She has since made a good recovery and flew back to Australia a week later.
Thursday it was a very early morning, departing Hoi An at 0430hrs, driving back to Danang - the closest main city with an airport to Hoi An - and taking the second flight for this trip, a quick 1hr hop from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City using a Jetstar Asia Airbus A320-300, landing in Saigon airport around 1100hrs.
Instead of heading directly into the city, we headed north instead in a mini-bus to the Cu Chi tunnels, an immense network of connecting underground tunnels and the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The entire place was riddled with tunnels even short people would find difficult to crawl through: the mountain Vietnamese had dug out the entire network over 30 years, as supply and communication routes, had given birth and fought the Americans and South Vietnamese all from underground, going to extraordinary lengths to shroud their existence, manufacturing all sorts of booby-traps and conducting all sorts of psychological warfare against the invading forces. It was a fascinating glimpse into the Vietnam War I hadn't expected.
We headed back into the city - stopping for lunch outside the compound for pho, during which another tropical whitewash battered down - before we joined the chaotic traffic and slowly weaved our way into Saigon in the early afternoon, stopping to visit the War Remnants Museum, a harrowing photographic display of the Vietnam War and its effects against the local Vietnamese, including birth deformities caused by massive use by American forces of Agent Orange; a little heavy on the propaganda, but clearly making its point about the Vietnam War.
Friday was a day-trip to Ben Tre on the Mekong Delta, on the southern coast. After an hour's drive, we took to the river and explored the region's coconut factories, making an entire living off the humble coconut (dessicated coconut, coconut oil and juice, coconut caramel sweets, coconut fibre ropes and threads), and even side-businesses with rice (including rice paper and rice wine). We were given tastes of the latter, even rice wine pickled with snake and scorpion in the same bottle (very much like the snake vodka I had tried in northern Laos). We were taken by motorcycle jumbo for lunch, but unfortunately I ran afoul of my egg allergy eating soup (while being told there wasn't any) and the resulting allergies made it rather painful to move around for a little while afterwards. We were loaded onto sampans and drifted down the river back to our larger boat that had taken us to the coconut factories, and sipped coconut juice straight from freshly-harvested coconuts as we floated back to the jetty, driving another hour back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was our last night together with our Vietnamese team leader and our younger two Irish travellers, who were departing the next day, so we shared a dinner at the city's KOTO centre, and retired later that night to the hotel's top floor for a goodbye beer or three (I even wore my new leather pants!).
Saturday was a free day for the rest of us: I spent it exploring Saigon on foot, avoiding the incessant offers for tuk-tuk or motorcycle rides, massage parlours, ladies, or "boom-boom" (marijuana) from the locals, and visited the intersection of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Dic's self-immolation (having come across his Austin car previously in Hué), the Reunification Palace (built by the South Vietnamese government a few years before the Vietcong successfully occupied Saigon), and the city's landmark Notre Dam cathedral and post office (formerly a railway station, both a product of Vietnam's French influence), and trying to avoid the erratic spells of rain that insisted in pouring down every so often. Later that evening we all regrouped for our third team leader, a Cambodian, and three extra people joining us (a married couple and another young traveller, all Australians) for our journey across Cambodia, departing the next day.
Sunday morning we caught a public "VIP" bus - I think it classified as a VIP bus because it had very slightly more legroom (for Asian countries at least, didn't seem like all that much to someone of my height) and it had air-conditioning. It was actually the first public bus I had taken in this leg of my travels, I realised a little later. After 2hrs we hit the Vietnamese-Cambodian border, spending just over an hour getting stamped out of Vietnam alone, but surprisingly quick into Cambodia (after a finger-print scan, surprising me). It descended into the usual friendly chaos: needing to apply for visas (thankfully we all qualified for the visa-on-arrival scheme) and hand over our passports, pay US$35 in fees, check for all the correct paperwork matched, and march over to the desks to get everything stamped and approved; the entire process was actually quite quick (about 30min or so), and we ended up not only with new stamps but with an official Cambodian visa sticker in our passports as well. We were jostled back into the bus soon after and travelled onwards for another 4 hours until finally arriving into Cambodia's capital in the early afternoon nearly 5 hours later.
I wasn't too sure what to expect of Phnom Penh: would be a regional town masquerading as a capital city like Vientiane? Or would it be choking on its own traffic like Hanoi? It turned out to be a little of both: a large city, but not as large as Hanoi, with plenty of traffic, but not so much that you felt you were lucky to survive simply crossing the road. In other things, it reminded me strongly of Laos: the Cambodian alphabet looked a lot like Laotian (and Thai), Buddhism and Buddhist temples were aplenty, and while in tourist areas people spoke passable English, it didn't have the frantic tourist-driven madness to people who felt they need to harry every white face they saw to buy their wares or ride their tuk-tuk (which existed in plenty in Vietnam). After alighting at the bus depot, we were transferred to our hotel by mini-bus to freshen up, and had dinner in the centre of town, along the banks of Tonle Sap where it merged into the Mekong. I was in luck: as we had two unexpected departures in Vietnam, we had a spare room, which was graciously offered to the only two single males in the trip, which meant I had a single room to myself again after sharing throughout Vietnam; it was an arrangement that lasted all the way through to the end of the trip.
Monday was a full day: we started with a sobering visit to Cheoung Ek (the Killing Fields), the execution place of the Khmer Rouge where millions were ruthlessly exterminated, and one of the largest genocide sites during the Democratic Kampuchea era. Mass graves had been discovered in 1981 - 2 years after a Vietnamese invasion had forced the Khmer Ruuge out - and until now 89 out of 128 mass graves had been painstakingly recovered. A small memorial shrine - filled with 5,000 recovered skulls from the bodies recovered here - had been erected in the 1990s and served as a chilling reminder of the systematic killing here; it reminded me very much of my visit to Auschwitz in 2007, to which many parallels between the Nazi's Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge's genocide had already been made. It was educational and horrifying at the same time. Later we visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (aka Security Post 21, or simply S21 during the Democratic Kampuchea era), the site of a high-school turned holding-site of the Khmer Rouge, and learned of the systematic torture the Khmer Rouge put their prisoners through, suspecting them of any link to the USA/CIA, any intellectual leanings (even the sign of wearing glasses was enough to have a squad arrest you for "re-education" at S21), any spying - real or imagined - and the murders became so great they had to ship people off for slaughter off-site (and hence the Killing Fields). The remnants of S21 now housed a eye-opening history of imprisonment, torture, and worse, all documented in photographs the Khmer Rouge took themselves to keep track of the people they were exterminating. It was unsurprising not many of us weren't hungry for lunch later on.
I used the rest of that afternoon to visit the Cambodian Royal Palace with most of the group - we even hired a guide to walk and talk us through it - and the holy Silver Temple on the palace's grounds, much like the Thai Royal Palace and the Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. I later peeled off and walked around the city's streets myself, discovering the Independence Monument and the Wat Phnom (the city's holiest temple after the Silver Temple). Unfortunately, it seems bad karma struck me again that evening, walking back from the city centre to the hotel, where - in the midst of pouring rain and unable to read the Cambodian script on the streetsigns - I stood under a doorway to check Google Maps on my smartphone.....and some little prick on a motorscooter simply snatched my phone out of my hands and surged away down the street; the very same phone I had just had repaired in Laos had now disappeared again, this time for good. I was bitterly angry, but there wasn't much I could do about it: I was far more annoyed I was off the air AGAIN and had lost all the photos and conversations I had saved on it. Thankfully I had a pattern lock on it, and later enquiries from friends and shown no one had used the phone to contact them once I reported it gone. I cancelled the SIM to prevent my account being used....but there was nothing else I could do. Everyone found out the next morning and were sympathetic about the situation.
Tuesday was a long travel day: the Cambodian highway that linked the capital in the east with its second-biggest city in the west was a pitiful two-lane, single-carriageway highway extending for roughly 300km. Since joining ASEAN, Cambodia had thankfully received funding to upgrade the road - as a direct link from Thailand to Vietnam - and had dutifully begun to tear up much of the road for reconstruction....and then this year's wet season had set in a little earlier than expected, reducing most of the road to a thick, muddy rally track. We were in our own private coach again, but it was a long and bumpy road for most of the day, splashing through mud and sometimes sliding sideways around corners with the rear-end sliding more rapidly than is usually considered safe. It was much like the Mongolian highways I remember having to endure, only with oncoming traffic and a shitload of mud thrown into the deal.
We stopped off occasionally along the way, partaking in unique Cambodian cuisine: fried spider (the Cambodian variant of the tarantula, which was nice but had me picking hairs out of my teeth for hours afterward), and later grilled field-mouse (which was actually rather nice, a lot like chicken, only with smaller bones); we also stopped off at a Cambodian silk farm run by, surprisingly, an old American Vietnam veteran and his Cambodian wife, training the otherwise-uneducated local villagers in weaving and giving them employable skills. Later that afternoon, we took a detour by taxi-boat for a facinating visit to the northern shores of the Tonle Sap lake, the largest freshwater lake in SE Asia, and home to the "floating village" of Kampong Khleang, erected on stilts on the close to the lake's northern shore and only accessible by boat. By the time we rolled into Siem Reap, it was long past sunset.
After settling into the hotel, we took tuk-tuks into the centre of the very tourist-oriented centre of Siem Reap: Western tourists were everywhere, and the old centre even had a "Pub Street" - complete with signs lit up in neon hanging above the roads advertising such - overflowing with Western-style pubs and bars, with the occasional restaurant inbetween, along with the usual insistent tuk-tuk drivers and street-food stalls shouting their wares, and the usual shady character quietly offering ladies' services and boom-boom. After a group dinner, many of us fragmented to explore the booming night market, still open at 2200hrs and happy for new tourists to attract.
Wednesday was the big day: a near-full day dedicated to the temples just to the north of the city, amongst them the drawcard of the entire country, the incredible Angkor Wat. After leaving the hotel at 0800hrs and having our mini-bus drop us off to pick up our multi-entrance tickets, we arrived at the eastern gate of Angkor Wat and essentially went through the temple complex in reverse, from east to west; this was an advantage as not many other tourists were at the eastern end this early in the day, and we were able to see the temple's attractions (wall carvings, intricately decorated towers and archways) without too many other people around for the time being. The temple was immense: having stood for half a millennia and still in relatively good shape (the locals had never really abandoned it, like many of the other temples in the surrounds, and kept it in relatively good condition for the French to "discover" when they established their protectorate here in the late 19th century), it was also quite high, stretching into the sky with its central tower at least 50m, with steep steps and many archways to climb and step through, and a lovely panorama across the main western entrance. We continued to move through the stone palace and eventually out through the impressive terraced gardens and out-buildings and over the 200m moat (still whole and filled with water) outside to the main western parking lot, now milling with hundreds of tourists.
After a quick rehydration session (courtesy of an Esky filled with ice-cold water on our tour bus), we dashed north to the Angkor Thom complex a few minutes away from Angkor Wat, a wholly separate city established from Angkor Wat and the last to be abandoned in the mid-17th century. Its central attraction was the Bayon temple, its most distinctive feature being the numerous massive stone faces on the many towers jutting out from the upper terraces: faces carved into each tower faced each of the four cardinal directions, so no matter which direction you turned within the temple, you usually had a few serene stone faces staring at you from a multitude of levels. We passed the Elephant Terrace (the former main northern entrance flanked by a 400m long terrace of carved elephants all along it) for a lunch break, and then visited the next main temple in the local area: the Banteay Srey or "Lady Temple" (called that from the intricacy of the devata - divine nymphs or celestial dancing girls - carved into many of the temple's walls, and also to its diminutive nature) constructed of dark red sandstone but suffering from more decay over the years and only "discovered" by the French a century ago. After that, we had the afternoon free: considering it was around 1600hrs in the afternoon, most returned to the hotel and availed themselves of the swimming pool or an extended shower.
It was an extra-early wake-up the next morning, leaving the hotel at 0430hrs to make it back to the main western entrance of Angkor Wat by 0500hrs, and witness the glorious sight of the sunrise over the temple for the next 1.5hrs, along with the other early-bird tourists (we had arrived early enough at least to guarantee a decent place that wasn't too crowded); it was simply incredible, and the experience has formed one of the highlights of my Indochina trip. By 0630hrs, the sun was well and truly up, so we took advantage of the early hour to visit the fourth and last of the major temple complexes in the area, to the Ta Phrom (or Jungle Temple), made famous for where the first Tomb Raider movie was shot. While not as in much decay as the Lady Temple, it had remained completely abandoned for the last 300 years, and when the French rediscovered it, they found many tall, adult trees majestically sprouting from the walls and the heart of the temple, many with intricate root systems draped over 3m-tall walls and under temple supports. By that time it was 0900hrs and most of us were hungry, so we returned one last time to the hotel for a belated breakfast and a free day remaining; I took the opportunity to put in some laundry, and sleep in for a bit, surprising myself by waking up four hours later after 1400hrs, but remaining indoors and taking it easy for the rest of the afternoon.
That evening most of us attended an Aspara dancing demonstration, featuring traditional dancing by Cambodian women and group dancing by both genders, over a buffet dinner at the local 5-star resort, before celebrating with one last beer in town off Pub Street.
Friday had us leave Siem Reap after three days and arrive at our last destination for the country at Battambang, a small provincial town on the other side of the Tonle Sap lake to Siem Reap. After checking into the hotel, we took more tuk-tuks out to the old railway, originally constructed by the French linking the town to the Thai border in the west to Phnom Penh in the east, but since the French left and the mad genocide of the Khmer Rouge over the years, the metre-gauge railway had been left to ruin and only a 8km section of the railway had been preserved in the form of a norry, or "bamboo railway", consisting of a small platform of bamboo suspended over two railway bogies and propelled by a tractor engine at about 40kph (any faster and the buckling and warping of the rails would have made it too dangerous to ride), trundling by the Cambodian country-side on a homemade, rickety rail dolly. Great fun! That night, our last night in Cambodia, we ate with a local family, eating traditional Cambodian cuisine, with a flash or two of rice liquor thrown in to make things interesting.
Saturday was another long travel day, leaving Battambang at 0730hrs and arriving at the Cambodian-Thai border about 3 hours later. We said goodbye to our mini-bus and driver, with us the last 4 days, checked out of the Cambodian side, walked the no-man's land between (dominated by numerous casinos, as organised gambling was illegal in Thailand), and having to go through the usual form-filling and immigration on the Thai side; thankfully we had left early enough that there was barely anyone there and no queues to put up with, so a proposed 1.5-2hr process was over and done with in only 30min, with us stamped back into Thailand, my return to this country just under a month later.
It was a long 6hr drive from eastern Thailand to the capital Bangkok, split over two minivans this time, but we didn't mind so much: one of the most noticeable changes returning to Thailand was the vast improvement in road quality (dual carriageway, multiple lanes, decent construction and traffic that actually appeared to vaguely follow traffic rules!) considering what we had become to accustomed to, so besides the occasional stop for toilet breaks and a quick one for lunch, it wasn't too long before we got caught up in the usual traffic snarls outside Suvarnabhumi airport that lasted most of the way into central Bangkok, until we returned to the Khao San Road district and back at the very same hotel I had stayed at before I left Bangkok last time a month ago, seemingly so long ago in my mind. After gratefully checking in, we assembled one last time for a departure dinner and toasted our Cambodian guide, before having a late-night wander through the circus that is Khao San Road, running very near where our hotel was, before we all drifted away the next morning.
So that's my month-long loop completed: what a fantastic experience, despite some setbacks (being knocked of my bike and my constant phone issues). A new group and a new trip depart Bangkok tomorrow, and I start slowly moving south again after a delightful month's detour through Indochina.
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