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April 29, 2005
Cambodia and the Temples of Angkor
Temple then another temple then another temple then another temple and finish with another temple. We were staying in Siam Reap; this town seems to be booming from the close proximity to the Angkor temple area. This boom in tourism inevitably brings a lot of poor people flocking to the city to try and cash in. The evidence of Cambodia’s chaotic past is clearly on show, every street corner has landmine victims, young and old.
The temples are truly amazing and as the Lonely Planet suggests, Angkor is ‘a symbol of nationhood, of fierce pride, a fingers-up to the world that says no matter how bad things have got lately, you can’t ignore the fact that Cambodians built Angkor and it doesn’t get better than that.’ It’s true – temples don’t get much better. The complex of Angkor is not just a small group of impressive temples; the surrounding jungle seems to contain temple after temple, each different from the next. It would take weeks to properly explore all of them, though to be honest you’d need to be a bit of a temple enthusiast (is there a term for that?) to be able to keep exploring them for long. We took three days to visit about ten temples and then felt a bit ‘templed-out’.
It’s lucky that the Cambodians have Angkor as a stepping-stone for bringing their country more in line with its neighbour Thailand, if tourism is in fact the answer. After having visited the temples, we would have liked to have seen more of the country but unfortunately our time was tight.
Posted by jon jack at 9:03 AM
April 24, 2005
Sapa
An optimist might believe that Sapa is the place to come to wander amongst terraced rice paddies and happen upon a remote hill tribe or two. The reality is slightly different. Although the scenery is absolutely stunning, the ‘remote hill tribes’ are now found outside all the tourist hotels, clamouring to sell you silver jewellery and cushion covers. Predictable maybe, but also pretty unsettling. It’s possible to arrange tours to villages with the added option of ‘helping’ for an afternoon or until you need another beer. It’s hard to imagine what kind of help the average tourist could offer – yoking up an ox and ploughing a rice paddy? It may sound cynical but ‘responsible tourism’ isn’t much in evidence here.
If you look past the ethnic minority debate however, Sapa is an amazing place. Yesterday we arranged for a guide to take us for a hike around the area and spent the day stumbling after him as he leapt between rice terraces and over streams. He’d climbed Fansipan (Indochina's highest peak) over a hundred times and it showed. The landscape is incredible – steep terraced hills, mountains towering over and mists rising up the valleys. It’s been good to be here for a few days, out of the noise of the cities and where everything moves just a bit more slowly.
Posted by jon jack at 4:29 AM
April 22, 2005
Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island
Do you remember the Moomins? Halong Bay looks like the place they went to where the freaky wee hippo things sailed around in the funny wee boats. Remember? All those pointy blue islands?
We went to Halong Bay for a few days and took a boat to Cat Ba Island. There are over three thousand islands in the Bay – kayaking around a few of them is only enough to get a taste of what could be hidden there. At low tide you can kayak under gaps in the cliffs and explore hidden lagoons in the centre, surrounded by sheer limestone walls. The limestone caves are also really impressive – ‘Amazing Cave’ is just as its name suggests, though instead of telling us geological facts, the guided tour consisted of “can anyone think what this rock looks like? No? It looks a bit like a bear. And this one looks like a turtle and this one looks like a penguin and this one……” Amazing.
We spent a night on the boat and two nights on Cat Ba Island. The night on the boat was cool, very romantic - the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat, the scrabbling of rats trying to get into your room, awwwwww. Cat Ba Island is the only inhabited island in Halong bay. We spent the first day exploring the island by mountain bike. We visited ‘Hospital Cave’ which was used as a hospital for high-ranking officers during the American war. Our guide was an ageing officer who served there as a lookout for enemy planes flying overhead. We were ‘treated’ to a rare rendition of Vietnamese military songs when he had us trapped in the depths of the caves, very surreal.
Posted by jon jack at 4:25 AM
April 18, 2005
Hanoi
There are approximately four million motorcycles in Hanoi. We had a one hour flight from Laos to Vietnam, much better than a twenty-five-hour bus trip we calculated. Hanoi makes Bangkok seem chilled out and slow paced. Everything moves at a hundred miles an hour. Trying to cross the street is crazy - you just have to step out, walk slowly and somehow you get to the other side unscathed as the traffic zips past in all directions. We spent the first night in the historic ‘Old Quarter’ and it’s enough just to stroll the narrow streets to get a good feel for the city. The buildings all seem to be piled on top of each other with no sense of town planning at all.
All the clichéd images of Vietnam are here – conical hats, woman with baskets on poles (anyone know the name for these?)…..Well, most of the clichéd images; we saw no sign of swarms of helicopters or soldiers belly-crawling through the jungle. Most of the relics of the Vietnam War (the most recent one that is – the country seems to have been at war for most of its history) are further south, out of the city. Our ‘time in ‘Nam’ is going to be pretty good.
Posted by jon jack at 1:26 PM
April 14, 2005
Kayaking to Vientiane
We kayaked to Vientiane from Vang Vieng. We had the option of a three hour bus trip or to kayak part of the way and drive the rest. It still amounted to three hours on the bumpy roads though. The kayaking was good. This is probably the most dangerous trip I’ve done so far. Not really because of what we were doing, but in terms of the instruction. This consisted of five minutes of ‘this is how you hold a paddle, make sure you have your life jacket on’ and the guide waving his arms about in a paddling motion and that was about it.
After about an hour’s paddling we got to the rapids and were told they were Grade Two. Whatever they were they looked very dodgy. Our guide tried as best he could to explain how to get through them safely, which proved pretty confusing as he would shout “left” when he really meant right and throw stones in the rough direction of where to aim for. We kind of understood though. Abby was the only one in our group to make it through without capsizing. I on the other hand got about half way down, then the world turned upside down. When I got washed out of the rapids, I kind of expected one of our guides to either be there or motion for where to go, instead I just got washed downstream and eventually swam towards the shore. All pretty exciting.
Posted by jon jack at 1:22 PM
April 11, 2005
Vang Vieng
Vang Vieng, the tubing capital of the world. We got here after a five hour bus trip from Luang Prabang on the infamous Route 13 road. ‘In February 2003 an attack on a bus near Vang Vieng killed 13 people including two western cyclists. Two months later, another bus was attacked, killing 12 and injuring 31, confirming fears that government assurances over the security of the road were badly misplaced.’ (Lonely planet, South East on a shoestring, 2004). Thankfully nothing happened to us, your risk is significantly lower if you don’t use government buses and stick to private cars or tourist minivans. We did see four separate groups of armed men on the road, not one of them looked very official.
We spent a few days in and around Vang Vieng. It’s like a mini Kho San Road - lots of backpackers, bars showing western movies and re-runs of ‘Friends’. On one corner there were three bars showing ‘Friends’ and they were packed full of people glued to the TVs, sipping their Beer Laos. As well as tubing, Vang Vieng is famous for its ‘happy shakes’ and ‘happy pizzas’ or there’s the ‘Ecstatic shake’ if you’re feeling like getting, well, ecstatic I suppose. We saw a few dudes in very ‘un-happy’ states from the shakes. The owner of the restaurant that sold them to them had to look after them all night, and it didn’t look like the best place to be freaking out on hallucinogenic pizzas and milkshakes.
Did a day of tubing down the river which was cool; basically you sit in a giant inner tube and float down the river in the sun for three or four hours. The scenery is spectacular, limestone cliffs rising out of rice paddy fields. There’s bars along the way were you can grab a cold bottle of beer. If you want to stop for refreshments you let the guy at the river side know and they pull you in on a big bamboo pole.
Posted by jon jack at 1:17 PM
April 8, 2005
Luang Prabang
One thing about travelling that can be either great or awful is that you tend to see the same people over and over again. We left Chiang Mai with one group, met more at the border and more still on the boat trip. This time we’ve been lucky and have spent the past few days here with a bunch of really cool people. It’s almost impossible to lose each other as there’s really only one bar and one main street.
Today we decided to go out to the Kwang Xi waterfall. After we’d been shouted at by about a million tuk tuk drivers and one of the group had almost had a fight with one of them who’d been following us around, we piled into a minibus and went to see the waterfall. In the past we’ve sometimes been disappointed with attractions which have turned out to be nothing like the description in the guidebook. This was totally different. “This beautiful spot…features a wide, multi-tiered waterfall tumbling over limestone formations into a series of cool, turquoise green pools”. It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t been man-made to look like a ‘jungle paradise’. We dived off a rock into the pool at the bottom of the falls. It was literally breathtaking.
We had a wander round a temple perched on the hilltop with a spectacular 360° view of the city and surrounding area. That wasn’t the best bit though - on the way down there was a monkey jumping around and playing in the trees. Its owner came and chased it away from us. Next thing we saw it climb into an outdoor bathroom, then come leaping back out clutching a tube of Colgate toothpaste, which belonged to a slightly bemused monk who came wandering out after it.
Posted by jon jack at 8:38 AM
Pak Beng to Luang Prabang
Another day another boat trip. It was another eight hours from Pak Beng to Luang Prabang. This time there was only one boat. We sat at the front in the hope of having more legroom but as the journey went on, more and more Lao people got on the boat and had the same idea as us. We ended up being pretty squashed but it was good to travel with the Lao people. One old guy got on with a huge machete and a bottle of dodgy-looking ‘whiskey’ and not much else. After a couple of sips of the whiskey, he spent the rest of the journey crouched at the side of the boat just gazing out with a satisfied expression. Must be good stuff.
Luang Prabang is “an incredible collection of Buddhist and French colonial architecture clustered together on a small riverine peninsula and surrounded by mountains”(Lonely planet, South East on a shoestring, 2004). We stumbled off the boat to another onslaught of tuk tuk drivers and guest house touts all after your custom. It has to be said the tuk tuk drivers here are shocking, we saw about eight people bundled into the back of a tuk tuk, only to be driven 200 metres down the street and charged 20 baht each for the ride.
Luang Prabang is cool, good town to wander around and lose a few days here and there.
Posted by jon jack at 8:33 AM
April 7, 2005
Huay Xia to Pak Beng
“Cheap cheap, special price for you.” We’re told this by almost everyone in Laos. I think ‘special price for you’ can mean anything between ten times the going rate and double the normal price. You have to haggle for everything; you get asked crazy prices at first. Our room, for example, started at 700 Thai baht (ten pounds) but we ended up paying 250 baht (three pounds).
We left Thailand from Chiang Khong, and after a five minute ferry across the Mekong River, we were in Huay Xia, Laos. We spent our first night here. You instantly notice the difference once you leave Thailand; Laos is a lot poorer - the infrastructure crumbling, colonial buildings everywhere.
We caught the boat the following morning, about fifty people crammed into a tiny dilapidated old thing. It resembled a canal barge but packed with backpackers. We sat moored on the river for another two hours then eventually started off. Fortunately some of us were moved onto a different boat which was much better, loads more legroom and compared to the other boat, felt quite luxurious.
The weather had turned really cold, something we were totally unprepared for after the forty degree temperatures of Thailand. Apart from the scenery, much of the day felt a bit like a school trip in Scotland – grey skies, rain and a packed lunch. It took about seven hours to reach the halfway point, Pak Beng. As soon as we jumped of the boat with our bags we were surrounded by touts and locals trying to entice us to stay at their guest house or buy weed or opium or eat dinner. It was really overwhelming after seven hours just gazing at the scenery from the boat.
Posted by jon jack at 7:13 AM