Author: matt

Arrived in Phonsavan, a journey not without incident as we were hit by an overtaking lorry. The damage seemed to be limited to the driver’s side window, panels and mirror etc, but it cost us half an hour at least in time whilst the drivers argued about it. Now I’m here it seems awfully dead at the moment, so am off now to see if I can actually find a cheap-ish way to get to the Plain of Jars, the main attraction of the area.

Otherwise I might be going back to Vang Vieng at this rate! Let’s see what daylight tomorrow brings…

It’s been a fantastic couple of days here – yesterday I took a bike to a cave, first you have to cross the river on a canoe thing with a longtail engine, it’s only about a foot wide so you have to balance the bike precariously across it to make the passage. The other way came a canoe with a dead pig in it, which was so heavy that is was nearly sinking, the driver having to bail out continuously as the water poured in.. On the other side you cycle for a few miles on these dirt track excuses for roads, at some places your cycling through 18 inches or so of water for 50 yard stretches. When you finally get there it’s well worth it though, you scramble up a cliff to the cave where inside is a huge lying Buddha for some strange reason. After I fought my way back through the cave with my trusty torch you enter an enormous cavern, so large that the torch cannot illuminate the other side or barely even the roof, so very hard to say how big exactly.

Just outside the cave (called Tham Phu Kham) is a stream with a tree leaning out across it. You climb the tree and leap from about 20 feet into the water, which a few of us were doing. It’s hard to make the jump of course, but it’s helped by the biting ants all over the launching branch which tend not to make you hang around for too long. A few of us did this, including some of the 500,000 Israelis that seem to be in this country. Some of us then went back to town and hired some tractor inner tubes and a tuk-tuk to take us up river a few miles. The driver deserts you and you jump in with your tube (and beer of course) and float back down to town. After making a few refreshment and jumping stops, we got back in darkness and couldn’t even find how to get out of the water, we all lost each other and ended up landing in different places. After half an hour or so we all ended up back at the rental place in one piece.

Then we foolishly went out until 5:30 which was a shame as I had to be up at 7:30 for today’s kayaking tour. However after the first few capsizes I was vaguely with it. We stopped at another cave, they put you in innertubes and you float into the opening which is about 6 inches higher than the water and 2 feet wide, float inside for some time and then abandon the tubes and crawl, swim and slide further into the system. It’s completely dark of course, but that’s perfectly OK as they gave us each a candle. Have you ever tried swimming with a lighted candle and kept it alight??? We got out of there after what felt like hours, tried to work out if we’d still got today’s batch of Israelis, then made a couple more stops for yet more jumping from absurdly high platforms before dropping us conveniently beside my guest house.

Leaving tomorrow morning for Phonsavan – the guidebook says they should have 24-hour electricity there by now, and maybe even an internet cafe!

Have arrived in Vang Vieng, a sleepy little town but getting quite a bit of tourism industry these days. I’ve taken a cabin down on the riverside which is alarmingly high and fast flowing, I hope it doesn’t rain too much and get too much higher or I’ll be needing a new set of clothes. The otherside of the river are some very striking mountains, in which are all sorts of limestone caves to explore and waterfalls and so on.

The other night I had a somewhat surreal experience whilst channel flicking – I suddenly recognised my old office, the Adelphi Building in a film. It turns out was a scene from Killing Me Softly starring Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham, in fact I recall being there when it was filmed but didn’t take much notice at the time. A few months ago I met a guy in a canoe in the Amazon river who knows the software we produced, and now I see the office on the TV. Someone must be trying to tell me something!

Off to try and find a restaurant with the aid of my torch that I just fixed with a paperclip. They don’t really believe in street lighting in these parts.

Made it to Vientiane OK and my 16th country this trip, with one stop at Pakse on the way up to pick up about 3 extra passengers. The first stop was a money changer in the airport – you hand him a $50 note and he gives you a shoe box full of Kip, as the largest denomination note that exists is worth about 25p. Strangely the exchange rate you seem to get is over 20% above the official bank changing rates. No idea why. On trying to leave for town, an official airport notice states that taxi fares must be prepaid and are no longer negotiable, to improve customer service. However, within about two minutes of finding out they wanted $6 a ride, myself and a Norwegian bloke negotiated a fare of slightly under $2 for the two of us.

The town seems quiet but clean, there’s a few temples around to look at (I can hardly wait!) but not a lot else happening. I will probably head north to Vang Vieng tomorrow.

Oh yeah, flight home from Bangkok is now currently set to 14th Oct!

The temples are indeed very impressive, most in a remarkable state of repair given that they’re 900 years old or so. And there are so many in a fairly small area, you really could spend at least a week exploring them all if you felt so inclined. This one is The Bayon, one of the more famous ones.

On the way I came across a right cheeky monkey

I have big balls, do you want to see them?

I’ve done my 3 days up there in the scorching sun on my bike, so if I never see another temple it’ll be too soon at the moment..

Went with the English lads to a bar called Dave’s Dead Fish Tower, an odd name as there is no other reference to any fish in the bar, living or otherwise, sea food is not commonplace in Siem Reap in general as we’re miles from the sea, and there’s no tower on the building either. The Cambodian barman claims to be called Dave, but I’ve yet to meet many locals named after any saints, much less the patron saint of Wales, so I think this may be somewhat unlikely. What they do have though is an open pit full of crocodiles, some of them 4 or 5 feet in length, right in the middle of the bar next to the toilets. To actually get to the toilet you have to cross a small bridge with no handrails right over the pit, and it is possibly the most dangerous situation I’ve seen since I’ve been travelling, it wouldn’t pay to get too pissed in there and stagger to the bog… You feel so nervous getting there that by the time you arrive it’s a wonder that you haven’t already been! A sign advises “The crocodiles will not harm you unless you play with them”. Perhaps falling into the pit, out of your mind, is not perceived as “play”.

Last night in Siem Reap and treated to a nice sunset before I fly in the morning to Vientiane.

*** NEWSFLASH *** Trip has been extended!! I haven’t picked exact dates yet but the insurance is extended for a month anyway. I’ve got a flight on Sunday from here to Vientiane in Laos, then will probably gradually make my way through Laos and across the border to northern Thailand and then eventually back to Bangkok.

Meanwhile I’ve moved to a very nice hotel here in Siem Reap, called the Red Piano although my room is themed in bright green (maybe it’s a language problem?). I’ve also acquired a full suspension mountain bike and took that late afternoon to the temples just to suss them out, I’ll start the real touring tomorrow, you can only get a 1,3 or 5 day pass so I’ll take the 3 day starting tomorrow.

The clinic next door to here has a big sign outside saying “Examination of stools, urine, pus and other discharges undertaken” or something like that. Let’s hope I don’t end up in there. Instead I’m off to dinner in a minute with a few English lads I met earlier, there’s quite a happening bunch of bars in a street just here and I think we may have to try them all… After that maybe I’ll need the clinic!

The bus journey was absolutely fine and the road in really quite good condition all the way, despite the pikey $3-50 bus company I’d sought out. Ironically we passed the gold plated $6 bus which was full of westerners on the road, it had stopped as it had been involved in an accident – I bet that held them up for hours, heh heh…. I was the only westerner on my bus which was otherwise full of locals. A nice spin off effect is that we stopped for lunch in a lovely local’s caff set on water with great food, I bet the western bus gets taken to the usual overpriced slop bucket. Only when we arrived at the bus station outside of Siem Reap did I know how much trouble I was in….

There were hundreds of touts, motorbike taxis, tuk-tuks, vendors, you name it, banging against the window pane beside me as the bus pulled to a stop, holding up cards of their guest house. The local guy that was sitting beside me was absolutely horrified by what he saw happening to me. With a deep breath I got off, and I can only liken it to some of these scenes you see on TV where a famous criminal is being hounded by hundreds of papparazzi as he’s led out of court, or football players from the team that just won the world cup as they leave the playing field. With no exaggeration, I was totally surrounded by 25 – 30 of these guys, all yelling at me, shoving cards and leaflets right into my face and hands all over my body. My backpack from the hold was quickly whisked away and I had to rip that out of the grip of the “lucky” guy that got to it first, then as the only means of escape I had to throw a few people to the floor and tip one guy on a motorbike over into the legs of some others and then run. It wasn’t overly pleasant but I was in genuine fear of being robbed. Thankfully I’m about a foot taller than most of them, how someone small would have supposed to have managed is a mystery!

It didn’t end there as I still had to find a way to town. I eventually got a moto-driver (hopefully not the one I tipped over!) to take me for 500 riels which is way under what they’d even take a local for. Another scam of course, they’re after commission from whichever guest house they take you to, apparently it can be as much as half of one night’s rent. Craftily I told him to take me to a bank I picked from the guidebook in the region where I wanted to be. He wouldn’t let it lie of course, insisting he take me to a guesthouse afterwards, and then to be my driver for the next few days. This is bad news of course. At the bank I paid him off with 4000 riels if he’d leave me alone, which he did. So my freedom cost me a dollar – not bad! Hotels that I subsequently walked into to check out were amazed and bemused that I’d managed to make it in the door, on foot, alone with a backpack. Normally the driver will follow the tourist in, demanding commission which the hotel has to pay just to get rid of him.

Anyway, the town seems nice enough if a little touristy. I’ve found out that there is another branch of Happy Herb’s here which is great news! You’re not allowed to ride your own motorbike to the temples here which is a shame, so tomorrow might see me on a push bike doing some sightseeing, otherwise I’ll have to take a moto-taxi all day which I hate.

I’m very impressed with Phnom Penh, I really didn’t expect too much from what I’ve heard and read, but it is quite an attractive clean city as far as I can tell, with quite a few interesting things to see and decent food (particularly the special pizzas!) and nightlife. I’ve stayed on an extra night, but am leaving in the morning by bus to Siem Reap. It’s meant to be a 7 hour journey, but from what I can gather that can go horribly wrong sometimes…

Meanwhile I’ve contacted BA and my insurance company to see about extending the trip a little bit, I’ve given into temptation! Details to follow once it’s all confirmed…

I somehow succeeded in getting up at 6:30 and caught my tour bus down to the Saigon river from where we went by boat to the estuary, then up the Upper Mekong to My Tho in the Ben Tre province where we took in a few local sights. Then we went across by bus to the capital of the delta, Can Tho, which was home for the night. I went out for dinner with a mad German that I was also sharing a room with, we expected it to be low key so we were still wearing our minging shorts and flip flops and stuff. However we somehow ended up in the Golf Club (odd name as it was in the centre of town with no sign of a golf course nearby) which was rammed with affluent young, trendy Vietnamese. We did stand out just a little bit, being the only two westerners in there and also the only people in shorts and flip flops, and with me being about 6 inches taller than the next nearest person in there. At 11pm they shut off the music and brought out a spin-the-wheel type thing which seemed to cause great excitement, which was followed by a slow song under soft lighting which was immediately followed by super-loud techno and flashing lights. All very strange..

Next morning we pottered about the floating market nearby and visited various coconut processing factories and a rice mill and all that kind of thing. This was followed by another boat trip up the lower Mekong to Chau Doc for our second night, in a beautiful thatched hotel complex a bit out of town. Local transport to and from town was quite fun, mostly by motorbike towing a trailer. I ended up sitting on the front of the trailer, just balanced on a little shelf of a seat, legs dangling down beside the back wheel of the bike which was quite a cheap thrill. The town seemed to shut down my 9pm so we went back to the hotel by push bikes which also tow trailers for you to sit in and forced the hotel to reopen their bar for a few more.

For the last day we started off in rowing boats, ours was being rowed by this pregnant woman which was a bit of a guilt trip, but the look of delight on her face when I tipped her 5,000 dong (15p) was well worth it as she was jumping up and down with joy. Later we reckoned that was probably somewhere between half and one day’s wages. Finally we caught our boat up the Mekong once more to the Cambodian border, at which point your moor up and go through your immigration formalities in a shed on the river bank, then on to Phnom Penh.

Dinner last night was hilarious – 4 of us went out to “Happy Herbs Pizza Place” which has a fairly bog-standard Italian menu, but if you precede the name of any dish by “Happy” or “Very Happy” when you order then you get an extra ingredient free of charge – marijuana. They forgot this vital component in one of the girl’s lasagne so the friendly waiter brought over a pot full of it for her to sprinkle on top, apologising profusely for his error!

The agency came through with the passport and so I have my Cambodian visa! I’ve also found out that the Laos visa-on-arrival stamps are small enough to fit in a gap that I have (from a very amusing bloke in the Lao Consulate here, he was fascinated by my passport. I suppose he doesn’t get to see many….) so all my options are open again. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving bright and early for a 3 day trip across the Mekong Delta and up to Phnom Penh by river.

Other than running around embassies, today has been fairly quiet. I did go for an 85p haircut and shave though. The haircut is good but the shave was fair agony, as I think the blades they use are not really up to Western-man stubble. He got through 3 blades on me and it felt like he was using a machete.