Scenery can be a bit repetitive in countries that primarily farm rice. This is a rice field
This is a funny dog
This is the cheapest accommodation I've had so far, less than 1 english pound per night. Fairly basic though...
I caught a fish on the Mekong. Check it out! I put it back as probably wouldn’t have been so great for dinner
There's something I don't understand about this Buddha as it appears to have a swastika on its chest. I just googled it though and believe it represents the Buddha's heart. Still looks odd Vang Vieng, very famous on the backpacker circuit around SE Asia. I won't explain why
The old kings palace in Luang Prabang, now a museum. Relatively unremarkable for me apart from one room that had a collection of good will gifts that other countries had sent to the king. Fine works of art from China, Japan, Russia etc, then I came to the Australia gift. A boomerang! Maybe you had to be there but I found it funny. Also, the american gift was a piece of moonrock from the first moonlanding. I read recently that the Netherlands had analysed this exact same gift that america had given them and it turned out to be just a piece of old wood. I wonder whether the gift sent to Lao would be any different. I wasn’t allowed to take photos
I took a 2 day river boat up the Mekong to the Thai border. I really enjoyed this trip, really relaxing and I was able to see more countryside than most other transport would allow
The men in Asia are not afraid to get close to each other
And just in case anyone ever wondered what a drowned rat looks like
The border was a nightmare I was surprised to discover. I have had worse experiences with SE Asian people than any other place I’ve been so far. The focus on money goes beyond my understanding. People will lie to your face to try and squeeze money out of you. This sort of thing I find very testing. I don’t mind people trying to earn money but when they lie to make it I get angry. I survived the border without losing my temper but I was close. We got a taxi to Siem Riep (the driver had to bribe the police at the border just to take us). The temples of Angkor are impressive, the scale of what was built is immense. My pictures do not do the place justice
Ian is smiling here but the sellers that followed him everywhere were definitely getting to him, much to my amusement (I seemed not to interest them as much)
These trees are awesome
Cambodian people eat spiders, cheap protein I think. I am afraid of spiders but I ate one! It didn’t tast so great. Ian took a video of it so maybe I’ll link it if Ian puts it online. Somewhere else in Cambodia a little girl was trying to sell me(rip me off) some fruit at a bus rest stop, they were also selling these spiders to eat. The little girl I then noticed had one of the live spiders living on her neck, I screamed and got back on the bus. She came up to the window and tried to push the spider in the bus because I wouldn’t buy some fruit. I bought some fruit
Cambodia has a pretty brutal history. Many really bad things happened recently. If you care to read about it put 'Khmer rouge' into wikipedia
Torture room in an old school that was used as a prison by the Khmer rouge and presently used as a museum. Some of the photos in the museum are grim
"You want terrapin"
This newspaper article made me laugh. This guy is excited to be in Cambodia for the nice food and weather. I don’t really know what to make of sex tourism, it’s everywhere in SE Asia. She wants his money, he wants her body, what can you say. The women are so small though it definitely doesn’t look right/normal. I think Dale Parry wasn’t one although didn’t meet him to confirm
How many people on a scooter is too many? 4? There’s room for another one on the back here. Scooters are the family vehicle of SE Asia. At least they have helmets on
Ian and I went to a safari type zoo near Phnom Penh (Cambodian capital), this bird was about 5 feet tall, quite funny looking. They had some dancing elephants. Some daytripping monks asked me to contribute some money to make the elephants dance. I gave them a dollar and the zoo keepers got the music going. At this point Ian was so disgusted he got back in the tuk tuk (funny motorbike/car thing). The elephants dancing was seriously funny, they wobbled their heads side to side and did some kind of line dancing moves. I guess it’s cruel but in Asia there’s little use for elephants anymore in terms of how they were traditionally used (like a tractor or something) so dancing for a living doesn’t seem so bad to me. And I can’t get bad karma for this as the monks made me do it
I didn’t read the guide book very carefully and got stuck in this place for 4 days waiting for a Lao visa. The only border in Lao you cannot just turn up at happened to be the one I was heading towards. I read books
Is a crazy place. I don’t know how you can like the place really although it does grow on you a bit. I was pretty pissed off when I got there as I needed to get my visa for India and had to wait a week in Bangkok to get it as I had to hand my passport in. I lasted a few days and then got fed up with the place and just went south without my passport
Some waterfalls near a place called Kanchanaburi
Bridge over the river Kwai. There is a cemetry and museum telling the history which is very much focussed on the allied forces. It’s strange though as there were more Asians that died from building this bridge/railway line than the other countries put together. The museum was very good though
Temples are boring (with few exceptions), they are everywhere and often the biggest tourist attractions in towns/cities. This is a 16 metre tall buddha, why they chose to build this I have no idea. I can’t imagine it was the first thing on the buddha’s mind after reaching enlightenment. I learnt pretty quickly to avoid them
A place called Lophburi, famous for temples and monkeys. Why did I go there? The monkeys... My hotel was surrounded by wire fencing and electric wire also. Every few hours I would here a monkey scream as it had been electrocuted. Who’s in the cage?
And I had a chicken outside my window also. Strange
My friend Ian came over for a holiday so we went to one of the islands on the south east coast. Same same, well, we got a hut on the beach which was nice but couldn’t sleep between the hours of 1 and 3 a.m. due to drunk people shouting and people on scooters. I’m sure if I’d have tried harder we could have found a quieter beach etc etc. It was funny watching people pose on this ‘picture perfect’ palm tree outside our hut
I think Ian felt the same way about the Thai holiday islands aftera few days so we set off for Cambodia to go and see some temples... These are special ones though!
