Siem Reap & Angkor (parts 1 & 2)

Our first day in Siem Reap was spent getting our bearings. We rented bicycles again, though the roads were a little bit more hectic here. Had a wander round and took it pretty easy. One of our friends, Laura, had been in Siem Reap for a few weeks so we met up for some dinner and a couple of drinks that evening on the appropriately named Pub Street.

The next day we headed out early on our bikes to Angkor:

Angkor is one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. Stretching over some 400 km2, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century. They include the famous Temple of Angkor Wat and, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple with its countless sculptural decorations.

Or in other words - the place where they filmed Tomb Raider.

We bought a 3 day pass, on our first day we did the small circuit by bicycle. Here we visited Ta Prohm which is the ruins where quite a bit of Tomb Raider is shot. This is the one which has supposedly had the least resoration done on it, so there are giant trees growing out of the buildings all over the place - it's pretty crazy. The day was incredibly hot, so pretty hard work on our bikes despite the circuit not really being that big. Thankfully there were plenty of people desperate to sell us water, as well as postcards, bracelets and loads of other bits. Maddy left me alone at one point later in the day and I was coerced into buying ten postcards of Angkor (it was a dollar so pretty fair really!) by a devastatingly cute Kmer girl. So ten lucky people shall be receiving them shortly. We finished the day by climing up to the top of a massive hill to watch the sun set. It was cloudy and we couldn't see much so we headed off before the crowds and to try and get back while it was still light. On the way we were stopped by a policeman on the side of the road, got a little bit worried but it turned out he was stopping us to make sure our bags were tied securely around our handlebars because there are alot of thefts around here. Even the police (completely and utterly corrupt) are lovely here!

The day after we had a lazy day and got massages after feeling a bit achey from the workout. Early night was the order of the day for what we had planned next. We woke up just before 1am, headed out to the pub to watch the champions league final (Barca were amazing!) - a bit strange having just woke up to be in a bar with loads of people at the end of their nights. Then we went back to the guesthouse to meet our tuk-tuk driver who took us to Angkor for sunrise - it was fairly cloudy but still amazing. We did the grand circuit that day which was cool, but not as great as the day before we felt. Afterwards we were going to head to Angkor Wat and Angor Thom (the two main parts) but we both felt pretty tired from being up so early, and I had a migraine, so we headed home to catch up on some sleep. Tomorrow we have our last day there where we will check out Angkor Wat early, and then head on to do some of the main parts of Angkor Thom. It's so big though, a three day pass isn't nearly long enough to do everything.

A definite highlight so far.

There are 28 pages of photos on my flickr page from Angkor, and we have only done 2 out of 3 days so far. So if you are interested have a browse - if not, here are some (well, lots) of the better ones!

Car ruins the photo a bit, eh?

I think you get the idea....


My favourite Autechre tune, called Nine. Love the sounds.

Welcome to Cambodia

Wednesday 25th May:
7am - Get up, get showered, buy breakfast, check out of guesthouse.
8am - Get picked up by Mr Phou, the local we booked our tickets to Siem Reap (from Si Phan Don) with. He takes us down to a tiny little boat, tells us that it might sink with any more than three people. Four of us get in and set off. We come close to capsizing (and losing everything we have with us) several times. Arrive on the mainland and sit around waiting.
11am - Set off to the Laos - Cambodia border by bus.
12pm - Arrive at border. Pay $2 bribe to have our passports stamped. Cross the border - this involves walking across a 20m stretch of road. Arrive at Cambodia, pay $1 for 'mandatory health check'. Go to Visa office, the cost is $23, despite being $20 according to Cambodia government website. Our protests fall on deaf ears - the immigration officer tells us something along the lines of 'look mate, you don't like it then you can f*ck off back to Laos, alright?' - I'm helping him out with translation here, he got the message across with gestures and mannerisms - top guy. Get our passports stamped, sit around for a while not having a clue where we go or which bus we get on.
1pm - We hop on what we think is our bus - this largely involves following the crowd. My seat is broken - there is no lock on the recliner, so my seat swings back and forth the whole way, especially on the bumpy roads.
3pm - We stop for lunch. Pay over the odds for some chicken curry with rice - keep finding bones everywhere. Realise i'm eating chicken neck - stick to the rice after that.
8pm - Finally stop where we change bus for Siem Reap. Get dropped at another crappy overpriced restaurant (they have deals sorted out with the bus companies - nowhere else we can eat anything), eat some fried rice.
9pm - Get on our bus for Siem Reap - it smells, really badly.
12.30am - Arrive at Siem Reap, fenced and locked in. We find our tuk-tuk driver (pretty much the one good thing to happen that day - our guesthouse arranged it for us), he's the one holding the ''Den'' sign, and wait for the gate to be unlocked so we can leave.
1am - Arrive at guesthouse, sleep.

It was a grim, but necessary, day. Our first impressions of Cambodia are really great. The people here are all amazing  our guesthouse is great (and cheap - 2.40 a night each). Angkor Wat is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen - but more on that later. Here we pay in dollars, which is basically 4000 riel. Bit strange but it's much less confusing than Laos!

Overall we were a bit let down by Laos. The country was beautiful, and Luang Prabang was definitely great. That said we'd been told by so many people (and the lonely planet guide etc.) that Laos people are the nicest you will meet in South-east Asia - they're not. Our experience was that they were (I generalise) rude and completely unwelcoming. I'm not sure if things have changed over the last few years, or maybe we got unlucky - but everyone we've spoke to on our trip has said the same. It's hard to properly explain since it is more of an overall vibe than particular instances - but for example here even though people try to overcharge you , it's always with a cheeky pleasant tone. The locals are friendly and all happy to negotiate and engage with you, our experience of Laos was completely different. Still had a great time, and saw lots of cool stuff - but it wasn't quite what we'd been built up to expect.

Anyone who likes The Cinematic Orchestra should check this out. A band called Submotion Orchestra, an up and coming group from Leeds. Beautiful electronic/jazz music.

Si Phan Don (The 4000 Islands)

Our final destination in Laos was Si Phan Don, or The 4000 Islands. They lie in the south of Laos, the name is slightly misleading since Laos has no coastline. The Islands are contained in the Mekong river. There are three main islands that are inhabited permanently; Don Khong, Don Det and Don Khon - the latter two are connected by a bridge. The bus we travelled down on was a sleeper bus - so there were beds lining the length of the bus. Was a welcome change from the other buses we had been taking in Laos - I actually slept really well. We changed bus in a place called Pakse which was our last chance to withdraw any money since there were no ATMs on Si Phan Don (they've only recently got 24 hour electricity). We thought we may have been staying til the sunday (about 5 nights) so had to withdraw enough to see us through.

What we had read about Si Phan Don had got us expecting crystal blue waters that would be great for swimming in and a bit of a pristine spot for some hammock chilling. We were a bit let down - the water was the same dirty brown Mekong we had seen in the rest of Laos, and the accomodation was all a bit shoddy and not cheap - it wasn't the most chilled place we've been by any stretch. Also, presumably because it was on the river, there were so many flies and bugs all over the place. Anyway, it was fair to say it wasn't quite what we expected - still lovely, and completely unique, but not what we had hoped for.

We arrived at 11am which gave us plenty of time for the day. We rented bicycles again and started exploring. After paying our dues in tourist charges to get onto Don Khon we headed for the waterfalls. There would be no swimming in these ones though - they're the biggest, by volume of water, in all of south east Asia, apparently. They were pretty awesome.

After the waterfalls we headed to the south of Don Khon, where the rare Irrawady Dolphins hang out. You can't see them from land but can get a private boat to take you out to see them. We gave it a go as it was pretty cheap. After travelling to a certain point (the journey was worth the money alone to be honest), we stopped - our boat driver told us that we were at the border with Cambodia and so couldn't go any further. The only problem is that the dolhpins were all in Cambodia too. Apparently, we later found out, you can pay a bit extra to go over there, which I think are driver tried to tell us at the time but we couldn't really understand him. Still, we did get to see a couple of them, albeit from a distance.


Beyond that, there isn't really alot to do on the islands, and since we weren't really comfortable there, we didn't see the point in hanging around to chill out. So we decided to head to Cambodia the following morning. This presented us with a problem since we had about two and a half million kip on us - and you can't exchange kip outside of Laos. We also know (from our previous encounter) that on the borders you get absolutely shafted on exchange rates. We managed to bargain with someone who bought our kip at 8,100 kip to the dollar - meaning we lost about 3 dollars on just over 300 - not bad. It's a good job too since the following morning the people running the buses would only offer dollars at 9,000 kip, and on the border 10,000.

Grabbed loads of film soundtracks for the iPod before I left as well, Thomas Newman is pretty much the don for me. He's done the soundtracks to loads of great films, this one is probably his best known one though (from American Beauty). Sublime.

Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital of Laos, about a four hour bus journey from Vang Vieng. On this journey we made our first stupid mistake since travelling - we left our passports at the guesthouse. Thankfully Maddy realised just as the bus was about to leave, we told the driver and he thankfully managed to help us out. He charged us 30,000kip and stuck me on the back of a scooter to nip back and pick up our passports while the bus waited. Could have been a bit of a disaster as we would have had no choice but to get the bus back to Vang Vieng and pick them up.

Anyway, Vientiane was a bit of a let down for me as I got really ill while we were here. We were only planning to stay one night anyway before heading down to the 4000 Islands. On the day  we set off we did have a bit of an explore - saw a fairly cool temple, but again it wasn't really worth the entrance fee. Also had a little explore round town and saw some government buildings. It was nicer than I had expected but nothing to shout about really. We found a really cool Italian restaurant that did an all you can eat buffet with pizza and pasta made to order - the food was great but I later found out I wasn't quite well enough to get stuck in to the extent that I did. The best thing that happened that day was finding a chemist who spoke great English so we could both stock up on some bits and bobs and she sorted me out with some medicine to get me on the mend.

We spent a little while looking around for bus tickets to the 4000 Islands, the prices ranged from 230,000kip up to 280,000 kip. We couldn't really figure out what the difference was (different companies they claimed), so we went with the cheapest option. While we waited for the bus we got chatting to some guys that booked from our hotel, they paid 250,000 kip. Their pick up came first and we waited for about 15 minutes and then the same van came and picked us up - in the meantime they had just been driving in circles, hadn't even picked anyone up - bizarre!

A great tune from Blu Mar Ten, I picked up their album Natural History just before I left home - it's worth a listen, quite a range of styles on there.

Vang Vieng (and tubing)

The journey over to Vang Vieng was a long winding road through the mountains. It was pretty uncomfortable but the view was incredible.

We arrived in Vang Vieng lateish on a Friday night. After checking into our guesthouse and getting showered I had a mini breakdown. I think it was the cumulation of a couple of weeks of being tired, being ill and some pretty stressful situations catching up with me but I turned into a complete little girl and had a bit of a moan. It was the first time I think things properly caught up with me and I was missing a few things from home, my bed in particular. Better out than in I suppose, we got an early night and the next morning I felt completely revitalised. Good job, because tubing was the plan for the day.

For those that don't know, tubing basically involves hiring out an inflatable tractor tyre inner tube, beign driven 3.5km upstream and floating down the Nam Khong River back into town. Sounds fine, but there is a caveat. The river is lined with bars, concentrated heavily at the drop off point, all trying to feed you free shots of Laos whiskey to get you hammered, then there are the ropeswings, jumps and slides (one is called the 'Slide of Death', the name can be taken literally, people have died on it). For months my sister has been telling me that certain death will follow if I go tubing, even if I stay off the alcohol. As we got on the tuk-tuk up to th drop off point we also found out someone died on the river the day previous - though this was apparently because he'd had a mushroom shake which contained some mushrooms of the not so magical variety. Still, there we were - what could possibly go wrong?

Well, we made it out alive - which is nice. It wasn't all smooth sailing though. We stayed at the bars at the top of the river for alot longer than was planned, a few buckets were consumed (despite me previously vowing not to touch them anymore). Seriously though, no more buckets for me now - they put some bad shit in the red bull and it leaves my brain fried for a couple of days afterwards - not good, but I digress. When we set off down the river with the intention of getting back to town it started to rain, hard. By this point the bars had thinned out and it got a little hairy, we decided to get out the river pretty pronto - which I think was a good idea. We waited the rain out (only lasted about ten minutes) and then got back into the river, not wanting to pay for a tuk-tuk back to town. We floated for a little while longer until the sun had pretty much set and it started to get dark, at this point we decided the tuk-tuk fare was probably the lesser of two evils and got out of the river properly.

All in all we had alot of fun tubing. To be honest, for me, it was largely down to the group that we went with. I'm probably going to come across really old and boring but the aim of the game pretty much seems to be to go and get smashed, rather than the tubing part, which isn't really what i'm here to do. It's not even as if it's a great party - the music is pretty shitty, and there are alot of (for want of a better word) twats that seem to gravitate around places like that. It reminded me a fair bit of the old atletics union nights at uni - and anyone who went to uni with me probably knows I hated them with a passion. Still, for the one day we had a lot of fun - but my favourite bit was actually the tubing, which apparently makes me a bit of a nerd according to tubing culture.

We met one guy on the tuk-tuk up the river who had been in Vang Vieng for two months, only one day of which he hadn't been tubing. The most ridiculous part is that he hadn't once hired out the tube, instead just got a tuk-tuk up to the bars, got smashed, and got a tuk-tuk back. Seems like a complete waste of time to me, to each their own though I guess. Still, I'll take a night at Womb in Tokyo over this kind of crap anyday of the week!

We parted ways with our group the following day when we decided to get out of Vang Vieng and head down to Vientiane - one day of tubing was enough for us. Vang Vieng is very much a town that has sold it's soul to tourism. Most of the bars are showing endless repeats of Friends or Family Guy, drugs are everywhere, and there seems to be very little of Laos culture left in the town. In it's defence the backdrop to the town is a stunning set of limestone cliffs, it's pretty spectacular - which is presumably why it became so popular in the first place.


We didn't take the camera tubing for obvious reasons but somebody in our group had a waterproof camera with them so I will post pictures later once she uploads them. Here are a few we did take.

 


Good remix!

Luang Prabang

I forgot to mention on the previous post - on our way to the border we stopped off at a temple called the White Temple. It was a really beautiful building but seemed to be going through something of an identity crisis. Inside the temple the had the usual Buddha and spiritual stuff on one wall and then on the other a massive graffiti wall with pictures of Spiderman, Batman and Converse shoes, lots more stuff like that. Bizarre! They also had a statue of predator sunk into the ground around the temple. Never seen anything like it!

On to matters more recent; we're now in Cambodia, and are staying at a place with a decent internet connection and free computers - so the photos are constantly uploading and the blogs should be up to date within the next few days (hopefully).

Luang Prabang is a picturesque little town in northern Laos situated where the Mekong River and the Nam Khan River meet. It was the capital of the old Luang Prabang kingdom, which used to be protected by the French. Because of this it has a pretty unique flavour, it seems more like a quaint village somewhere in France than in Southeast Asia. The food was great; baguettes sold on the street, we found a great little Italian restaurant as well as an incredible bakery that sold some great bagels for breakfast. There was also loads to see and do, and it had a completely relaxed vibe about it - we loved Luang Prabang.

We headed out to check out some waterfalls about 30km out of town. Originally the plan was to cycle but we were warned off doing that by the guys at our guesthouse who told us it was all uphill and that it would be too much in the humidity - after the tuk-tuk ride up there i'm pretty thankful for the warning. The waterfalls were incredible, we met some really cool people on our tuk-tuk up there and later on bumped into the guys we had met on the journey to Luang Prabang. The waterfalls were a series of smaller ones all leading up to a huge one - along the way there were some little pools where you could swim - one with a ropeswing too. Lots of fun!

That evening we headed bowling. In Luang Prabang there is an 11.30pm curfew, so that is what time the bars finish and the noise stops. For life after the curfew you have two choices; a gay friendly discoteque, or a bowling alley. It was all a bit bizarre to be honest. So we hit the bowling alley and bought a few bottles of lion whiskey (a local brew), we later bumped into some more people who had stayed behind to catch the slowboat, and the guys we had been with for Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta (the southeast asia travelling circuit is smaller than one might think). The bowling was good fun, though it got progressively worse as the whiskey kicked in. I managed to win both games too - great success!

The following day we chartered a private boat to to take a group of 11 of us (the guys we met on the journey) up to Pak Ou Caves, a journey which would allow us to see some of the scenery along the Mekong that we would have seen on the slowboat. The boat was great, and the scenery on the journey was beautiful - I can't really state enough how beautiful Laos is as a country. The caves were a waste of time though, and really not worth the entrance fee, we also got taken to a dodgy little village with people trying to sell us things - we didn't stay there long. That night we got some dinner, went for a massage (I think I got the short straw because mine wasn't very good, everyone else loved theirs) and then crashed pretty early.

On our last day in Luang Prabang we rented bicycles - because it was so quiet it was a pretty easy place to cycle around. We headed to a couple of temples but we were really feeling templed out by this point (to be honest, most of them are pretty much the same) - and everywhere kept trying to make us pay entrance fees all the time which for alot of the places really wasn't worth it. We climbed up to the top of Mount Phoussi (pronounced Mount Pussy, apparently), which gave a spectacular view of Luang Prabang, and generally had a bit of an explore. Finished up by going to a swimming pool and chilling out.

That night we finally got a chance to check out the night market properly - we had been meaning too each night but kept missing it as it started to pack up at 10pm. Got some awesome cozy little slippers and some more hippy baggy trousers. I'm anticipating they will both get rolled out for some lazy sundays.

Forgot to update my reading list but in the meantime I finished Nineteen Eighty Four and Freakanomics. Both good in their own very different ways.

At the swimming pool the played this tune, which is probably my favourite by The Cinematic Orchestra. It's got a completely chilled out vibe which fitted the setting perfectly.