Letters Home: Hello from Laos

Family-

I wasn't planning to visit Laos, but everybody I've met along the way has told me, "dude, you have to go to Laos". So, here I am in the rain on my first day in Vientiane after a long night train from Bangkok. And the last 12 or so days... let's see, I last wrote from Siem Reap, Cambodia. After Siem Reap, I went on a 173 km bus ride that took over 7hrs to reach Battambang. Cambodian highways are a bit of an oxymoron... muddy, washed-out, rice patty trails would be a more accurate term. Battambang was really interesting- the real Cambodia away from the tourist infusion you see elsewhere in Siem Reap. I only spent two nights there with the day in between mopeding around the country side. Unlike other moped trips I've taken on my own, in Battambang I hired a guide to follow for a little less than $10 for the day (bike included). It was so worth it because had I gone on my own I would have called it quites when the rain started and never seen the remote places he took me. After about 20 minutes in the rain you're as muddy and wet as you are going to get so no worries- just keep on trekking.

Leaving Battambang was quite an experience. It had been awhile since I'd been on a beach and I had heard really good things about an island you can get to in just one day of travel. So I set out at 7am and 12hours later I was in my bungalow on Koh Chang. In between I spent 2 hours in a shared taxi going 70 km/h down a road very similar to that in the above pic; walked across the Cambodian/Thai boarder; hitched on the back of a moped to get to a "bus stop"; shared the bed of a pick-up truck for an hour to get to a town where I could actually get a bus; then a ferry to the island; and another pick-up truck to Lonely Beach. Let's just say it was quite an experience, but an experience that bonded myself with a Dutch guy I'd spend the next 10 days travelling with...

Koh Chang was exactly what I needed after a pretty busy 2 weeks of solid travel. Six days sleeping in this bungalow, spending the days on this beach, mopeding the island with this gang of misfits, and drinking the nights away on this deck, again with the same band of misfits.

Six days was perfect, but eventually you get sick of amazing sunsets so you have to get off the island. Three of my friends had flights home on the 20/21 of May, so we all headed to Bangkok for a couple days of shopping and nights of, well, boozy insanity...
On the morning of the 21st I said goodbye to the Koh Chang gang and went back to bed. The following day I toured Bangkok before catching a night train on the Vientiane to start off what I guess what you might call phase 3... on more month to go!
Tim

Letters Home: Hello from Cambodia

Hello Family

Happy to report that all is well and I'm enjoying the life of no work and all play. To get you up to speed on the last 3 weeks since I left India- I arrived safely in Hanoi in the middle of a massive down pour and almost immediately fell in love with Vietnam. Hanoi is great- you get to eat at little street side carts which serve very good, very cheap food, catch a glimpse of the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh, visit the infamous Hanoi Hilton (which I thought was a Motel 6 at best) and sweat a lot (and I mean a lot).

From Hanoi, I took a night train south and got a chance to visit the central Vietnam cities of Hue and Hoi An. The highlights here were the two moped journeys around the Vietnamese country side and the purchase of a custom tailored three-piece suit for $60 (coming to a wedding this summer near you!). I spent Vietnamese Independence/Reunification Day in Nha Trang on the beach singing and playing Vietnamese folk songs with a group of locals that assumed because I'm American that I could play Hotel California for them- boy were they disappointed when all they got was Heart of the Matter.

You always hear about how easy it is to meet people while traveling-and to be honest it's true. I spent the previous 10 days with ever-changing group of 3-8 bonded by a miserable bus trip from NhaTrang to Da Lat. The core group consisted of a travel-torn ex-couple form none other than Seattle, a crazy French chick, a lovely Danish gal, and yours truly. Together we saw the waterfalls and mountains of Da Lat, the bars of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the tunnels of Cu Chi before breaking into two groups. The not so happy couple to Bangkok (and home for at least one of them) and the euro-babes and myself to Cambodia.
Cambodia can both blow your mind and break your heart. In Phnom Penh, we found a really great guest house on a lake in the center of the city and hired mopeds to see what remains from humanity at it's worst- the Killing Fields and S-21 prison. Not pleasant places to visit. To top off an otherwise somber day, while riding home through PP, Maja-the Danish gal- was taking photos while sitting on the back of the motorbike I was driving when a couple of the local hoodlums zoomed passed and snatched her camera right out of her hand! This allowed for two rather unique experiences- first, I thought she said they took her purse (ie. credit cards, passport, etc), so I let her off and went on a mad, almost Bond-style (if it had been successful), chase through PP after the young lads who ultimately lost me in the central market. Finding Maja at the local police station, I realized it was only her camera that went missing and in retrospect my near deadly pursuit playing bumper cars with the local traffic was not entirely necessary. The second experience was with the not exactly ethical, okay let's just call them corrupt, local police. We'll just say that an investigation and police report that would have taken days, or weeks, to complete for the lost camera was completed in 20 minutes once $15 was suggested as a processing fee.

Maja and I got along well, so we struck off on our own to Siem Reap to see the Temples of Angkor. This is the part of Cambodia that blows your mind. Picture 100 foot tall trees growing out of 1000 year old temples in the middle of the jungle. And the great thing is you get to climb and play on them like a giant jungle gym. I wouldn't exactly call the complex safe by any means. In the States such a place would be roped off or extensively hand railed, but in Cambodia you get to climb strait to the top of Angkor Wat using the same ridiculously steep stairs the ancients did. It was awesome!

So all good things come to an end, and I'm alone once again... the last of the team headed back to Denmark yesterday so I'm looking forward to a few more days in Cambodia before heading (most likely) to Thailand...

Tim