Cambodia - Angkor What?!!?!!

So after our long and VERY stressful journey we felt we deserved a nice meal!! There was a great Italian pizza place just around the corner from the hotel!! Totally not Cambodian and totally not cultural but we just need comfort food at this stage and it was owned by a very friendly Italian chef who enticed us in from the street and the pizza definitely did not disappoint!!

Gorgeous food and a great nights sleep - we awoke energised and ready to check out Angkor Wat and the other famous temples in the area. As we had mentioned in other posts we were kind of templed out at this stage but you can’t really visit Siem Riep and not do the temple tour!! And to be fair they have quite a few spectacular ones!! We hired a Tuk-Tuk driver for the day and headed to Angkor Thom for our first temple. The most striking feature of this one is the historical stories carved on the walls depicting Khmer & Cham war scenes and daily life of the Khmer people. The carvings are so detailed and cover massive stretches of the walls that surround the temple. It also had huge stone faces on its many towers, some say the faces are representations of the King who built the temple and others say it’s a combination of him and Buddha. All Buddha carvings in the temple are de-faced as a Hindu King took over the temple after the original owner and instructed his people to get rid of all signs of Buddhism!!

After spending the morning at that temple the heavens opened and the wind was blowing a gale!! The tuk-tuk driver tried to bring down the plastic sheeting which was the roof and the sides of the tuk-tuk but we were still getting soaked so we decided to take a break for lunch. Tom had the local Fish Laksa which was amazing and to be honest 4mths on I can‘t remember what I had but I’m sure it was gorgeous!! Fully fuelled up and even though it was still raining we headed for Ta Prohm. This temple is famous for being in the film Tomb Raider with Angeline Jolie. What was amazing about this temple was that it had been left in much the same condition in which it was found. It had trees growing out of the ruins and the jungle surroundings and rain only added to the experience. It was definitely our favourite temple.

We passed a temple that the archaeologists were dismantling and then restoring piece by piece and I must say I have done some large jigsaw puzzles in my time but this must be some major headache!! Then we visited the final temple of the day, Angkor Wat. It was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. We were expecting to see the famous picture postcard which is on all the guidebooks but as there was a lot of ongoing re-construction with lots of scaffolding to help and a serious lack of water in the pond in front of the temple, Michaela’s best attempt at the famous reflection picture was a little away from the perfect postcard!!

     

The Picture Perfect Postcard - stolen from google images => the best that I could do!!

It was to hard to believe that The Angkor complex was built in only 300 years. Its massive and the size and detail in the temple buildings is spectacular. In its hey day, Angkor had a population of over 1 million and the Khmer Kings controlled a vast territory extending south, to the Mekong delta in present-day Vietnam, north into Laos, and west over large parts of Thailand.

To top off a great day we went to a show put on by one of the local kids orphanages displaying shadow puppetry & Khmer Aspara dancing. There are a lot of kids begging in Siem Riep and their English and powers of persuasion are unbelievable! The orphanages and other children’s charities in the area plead with tourists not to give money to the children as there are many organisations in the area to help them with housing, food, clothing and most importantly education but because the children can make more money on the street the choice in the short term is easy! 

Nong Khai (Thailand) to Siem Riep (Cambodia)- THE most stressful border crossing to date!!!!

We took a 2 day bus journey from Nong Khai to reach the Cambodian - Thai border at Poipet. It is a really busy border crossing as a lot of Thai’s go across into Cambodia for the casinos as gambling is illegal in Thailand and on this day it was bucketting down with rain - so there were little rivers running along the roads!! We had heard a lot about this border and the tourist scams that went on there! We had done a lot groundwork (meaning Tom had made a spreadsheet!!) on the potential scams and were intent on getting to

the other side without paying any more than the $20 we knew it should cost for the official visa!! The madness began when we arrived at the bus station and a driver put our bags directly onto his tuk-tuk and said he would take us to the border. On our way he took a detour from the border road to a so called Visa Office!!! (a rundown shack) and out came a guy with a very official clipboard trying to sell us a Cambodian visa. We refused to get out of the tuk tuk and told him we wanted to go the official border. There was a bit of a stand-off but the driver realised that if he was going to get his fare he would need to move on. So stage 1 complete.

Then as we made our way across the border people were continuously trying to sell us a visa but we told them we already had one. Finally we found the official office where we met the border police and they told us the visa would cost us $20 (the correct fee) and an ‘express’ processing fee of $2 - we were the only people in the office so im not sure who we were getting expressed past!!. There was a sign directly over the counter stating $20 so we handed in our passports with just the $20, waited on a seat for 5mins and got a visa - no mention of the $2 again!! Stage 2 complete! 

We went to the next office to get stamped into the country and that was surprisingly easy so we thought we were home free. All we had to do now was get to Siem Reap - about 2 hours away - which sounded like an easy task. We knew that $12 each was the normal going rate but that’s assuming 4 in the cab. We were being bombarded by taxi drivers promising that they would give us the cheapest price and that it normally cost $60 and they would do it for $48, then $40, a few steps more $35 etc…but we said we were waiting for the free government run bus which took you to the official “Tourist Bus Station“. This was a bus run by the government to try and get tourists away from the rip off, dodgy taxi drivers at the border to a more organised, official set up about 10 mins away!! The bus eventually pulled up and as we were about to hop on 2 people came running out of it and headed down the road so after a 5 minute ‘discussion’ on the pros and cons of getting ripped off by the bus or the taxi drivers with reservation we hopped on to the bus!! It was impossible to know who to trust!!!! When we got to the bus station, a massive building in the middle of nowhere with 15/20 people working there and we were literally the only customers. It had turned out that the last bus of the day left at 3pm so our only option left was to get a taxi and the battling with price began again. They were trying to charge us more than at the border and were pretending not to understand English so we threatened to just take the bus back to the border and finally we settled on 30 dollars! So one person took the money off us - he handed it to another guy who did a couple of sums on his calculator and counted the money - he handed to another lady who wrote out a receipt - the receipt was given to us - we handed it to another guy who lead us 5 metres to a door where another guy checked the ticket - he gave it to another guy who took our luggage to the taxi and gave our ticket to another guy who then jumped into the wreck of a car that was going to take us to Siem Riep for the bargain price of $30!!! Stage 3 complete and most employees utilised!!!

The very official looking 'government' run tourist bus!!!

The whole time we were in the taxi we tried to keep an eye on road signs to make sure we were actually going somewhere near Siem Riep!! We had given him a piece of paper with the hotel address that we were staying in but he took us close to Siem Reap to a so called taxi rank and said that this was as far as he was taking us and then we had to get into another taxi organised by them to go into the town!! So feeling seriously uneasy but having no other choice we jumped into this taxi who instead of following the signs into Siem Reap he told us he was taking a shortcut through the countryside which was ringing alarm bells for us!! Thankfully sure enough we arrived at our hotel 10 minutes later, Stage 4 complete. We have never been so glad to make it to our destination and never been so exhausted from the stress of deciding who to trust!!

Thailand Round 2 - Nong Khai

So Nong Khai was a place of action!! We had serious business here…there was mini and half marathons to be run, there was volunteer work to be done, we had to sort out Toms fractured finger and of course the blog, as always, was three or four countries behind!!!

We stayed in Nong Khai for 2 weeks and it was so nice to be staying in one place for a reasonable period of time again! It gets tiring packing and unpacking your back pack, reading a new town map, finding accommodation, sitting on buses or planes etc when you are moving every two or three days!! Of course it means you get to see lots of places and it’s the only to way to see the amount of things we have seen but the few wee breaks in between have been nice!!

First on the list of things to do was the marathon!! Tom was running a half marathon and I was running the 10km. The registration money for the run was in aid of building a new school for disabled children in Nong Khai and it was the first time the town had organised such a big race. We were 2 of only a handful of foreigners so everyone was staring at us and anyone who had any bit of English came over to chat. People were so friendly and helpful. Toms run started at 5.00am and mine started at 6.00am so it was a very early start but at least it was not as hot as it would be at midday!! Tom ran his half marathon in 1.59.31 and I ran my 10.5km in 1.14.07 :o)

After the marathon it was off to the hospital for Tom to sort out his fractured finger and off to school for me to teach english to cute little Thai kids :o) As Tom put his feet up in our lovely hotel garden (www.mutmee.com) and rested his finger, which was now nicely wrapped up in a cast, I went to work for a charity called Isara (www.isara.org). It is a small charity that offers local kids the opportunity to come to their learning centre after school and learn english for free in a fun and non-threatening way aswell as going to local schools to help their english teachers with their lessons. The level of English in Thailand is pretty basic as the national curriculum focuses on just learning the language required for their exams (pretty much like learning French at home!!) and so when the kids come to Isara its all about learning to read and hold conversations. Whilst I was there I visited two local Thai schools aswell as teaching and writting a curriculum for the learning centre. The kids are amazing...they get so excited when they see the volunteers arriving and are more than willing to pose for the camera as you can see below!!!  

On our last weekend in Nong Khai there was the annual rocket festival when local villages compete to make and launch a rocket to the highest height possible. We thought it would be a cool thing to go and see but we totally did not imagine that the rockets would be so big, loud and travel so far!! After getting lost quite a few times, and Tom coping with my wild driving on the moped, we arrived in a field just outside the town were the rockets were going to be launched. We saw a big crowd gathering around a big wooden structure so went up for nosy!! I nearly had a heart attack when the rocket launched...it was like a bomb had exploded beside us and there was smoke everywhere!! Health and safety is clearly not a high priority in Thailand!! So we took a few steps back, (to a beer tent!!) amongst the betters who were putting money on which rocket would go highest, to watch the rest of the launches. It was a fantastic day to end on in Nong Khai :o)

 

Laos PDR (Peoples Democratic Republic or Please Don't Rush as the tourists like to joke!!)

We headed from the wonderful Chiang Mai onwards to our next destination, Luang Prabang in Laos. It took us 3 days, 1 day on a minibus to the border and then 2 days on the ‘slow’ (no false advertising there!!) boat along the Mekong river. On the first day we stopped off at a white temple and to be honest we were getting templed out at this stage but this one turned out to be very interesting. The temple was the idea of a Thai artist, Mr. Chalermchai Kositpipat, who wanted to build a temple all in white to signify the purity of the Lord Buddha and also because he felt that the gold in most Buddhist temples represents lust and greed. He is completely funding the building of this massive and ornate temple by himself as he does not want to have to be constrained by other funders ideas - obviously a man with quite a lot of money!!

The temple was very different from any of the others we had seen. The entrance to the temple was paved with statues of desperate faces and arms stretching up from the ground and small ponds that surround it, representing hell. These people have earned their place through their evil actions in previous lives. Inside the temple there is a painting of a demon and in its eyes were George Bush and Osama Bin Laden!!! This is to show that our world is being destroyed by those who want to build weapons to kill and are never satisfied, just wanting more power, money, etc. The artist was hurt by seeing all the human lives that were lost because of these two men and placed them in the eyes of the demon. There were also comic like illustrations of super heroes like Spiderman, Superman, Neo from the Matrix, Avatar etc trying to save the world. He explains in the leaflet on the mural that these superheroes represent a false morality and that they do not exist in real life - we need to develop as a people our own sense of morality, by following Buddhism.

The next 2 days were spent on the super slow boat. The relaxed approach of the locals was obvious from the minute we got on the boat to Luang Prabang. The boat was a long boat with car seats which were not fixed onto the boat so as more people arrived more seats were lifted on board and as the car seats ran out plastic seats were used. We were squashed in like sardines, it was comical. It was interesting for a while, admiring the Mekong river and all the goings on, fishermen trying to catch dinner, kids swimming and playing on their makeshift bamboo climbing frames, locals being dropped along the banks of the river in places where it didn’t look like anybody was living, after that it was just a long slow slog!!

''Come on now people keep moving back - we can fit at least another 10 seats on here''!!

In Luang Prabang, we stayed in a lovely boutique hotel for only 15 Euro a night!!! It included gorgeous breakfast every morning overlooking the Mekong river, free beer, coke and water and free bikes!! It was perfect after the slow boat mingingness!!

We used the bikes to cycle round the town and see the sights. There were monks everywhere going about their daily activities wearing their saffron robes and umbrellas. We got up at 6am one morning to seeing them collecting the alms. It was an amazing experience seeing hundreds of monks strolling along the pavement collecting food, mainly rice, from the locals.

One of the hot days we headed out to some jungle waterfalls called Kuang Si. It was a beautiful setting, families having picnics, kids playing and swinging off a tree into the pools. I off course had to give the swinging into the pools a go and on the first go Michaela didn’t get the photo of me in mid air so I went back for a 2^nd go and she got the picture but I held on too long and damaged my hand. It was badly bruised and in a weeks time I discovered that I had fractured one of my fingers!!!

We also met up with 2 guys, Eoin & Dan on the slow boat and went with them for a few beers in some cool cafes and bars around town. It was just such a great town to chill out in. Beer Lao was one of the best beers I tasted in SE Asia and certainly the cheapest!!

We took a local bus to our next stop, the capital of Laos, Vientiane. The city had obvious signs of the French influence, baguettes being sold everywhere, a monument similar to L’arc de Triomphe and Petanque (which my French & Belgium colleagues had taught me how to play when I was based in Brussels). On one of the days we hired a moped and headed out to a sculpture park where we saw some impressive statues. On the way we saw whole families on motorbikes, locals carrying their complete shop on their bike and kids playing Sepak Takraw (game like volleyball but using a rattan ball and you can use your feet, knees, chest or head to keep the ball up). 

It was amazing to see just how much you can get on a moped!!

Locals playing Sepak Takraw and Petanque

The Sculpture Park was amazing - full of huge stone sculptures of Hindu and Buddhist Gods with really intricate carvings.

Michaela had her first moped driving experience on the way back (one I won‘t forget in a hurry!!!). Her practice run in the car park nearly ended up in disaster but after that she started to get the hang of it and became my chauffeur from then on. So we lived to tell the tales of Laos and headed back into Nong Khai, Thailand.