Thursday, April 26, 2007

Phnom Penh and Mondulkiri

We have been extremely bad at keeping you properly updated on our Cambodian travels, there is no real excuse to this... However, there is an excuse for not posting pictures and that is that out camera card seems to have a cold or a virus and we (Peter) has not been really able to find the programmes he needs to fix it, but bear with us...
We spent excessive amount of time in Phnom Penh with our dear friend Keith, doing it the ex-pat way: with car, driver, excellent steaks, home made Amok fish (traditional Cambodian dish) and Singapore slings at Le Royal (arguably the best bar in town).
But so much for luxury, we set off to the mid-East Cambodian province Mondulkiri. It was all going so well! We left Phnom Penh early afternoon and planned to arrive around 19h, conservative estimate! Unfortunately we had not planned the crack in the radiator, the flat tire, the horrendous ditches in the road up from Snoul, and a fallen apart universal joint of the drive shaft (I hope you all know what that is ;) which eventually forced us to stop in the middle of the road, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. It was another excellent opportunity to have a beer :) After some time the rescue service came (I was also surprised they actually have such things here ;) with a white Toyota that looked like it needs help itself. Well slowly but with our spirits still up we set of behind the white Toyota to cover next 30 klicks in about 2 hours. It turned out that the Toyota DID need help as it started overheating ... Eventually, we had to leave the car about 20 klicks from San Monorom (our final destination) and finished our epic journey with the Toyota taking us the final mile at about 2.30 am. And it was all going so well!
Mondulkiri has a population of about 2 people/km2, bad red roads, beautiful jungle, waterfalls and elephants. The people are mainly from different hill tribes. The capital, San Monorom is a small dusty village with one main paved road, a dirt air strip, a monument of mythical animals and, well that's about it. But it is really a very serene beautiful region with cool air, even more friendly and smiling people, laid back and relaxed atmosphere and very slow internet. They say it has a lot of potential but as far as we are concerned that road leading up to here is about the worst stretch of road we have seen in our trip so far, so as long as that is there... don't expect a large tourist influx.
We will be heading back to Phnom Penh hopefully tomorrow (if the car gets fixed...) and then of to Angkor.

P.s. Wolfgang, we did go up to Bokor Hill station, but you are officially recognised as crazy if you actually did that by bike ;)

Monday, April 23, 2007

Dear Haleh this one we took especially for you :) on the roof top of the Equinox bar at THE expat party in Phnom Pen, you cannot tell but we are all dressed 80s style ;)

Monday, April 16, 2007

Cambodia

Here we are already seven days in Cambodia. The beginning was a bit quick and before we realised it we had crossed half the country (stopping shortly in Kratie to see the sweetest and very rare sweet-water Irrawaddie dolphins) and there we were in Phnom Pen. Its a very lively and very pretty city with a long promenade along the Tonle Sap river, beautiful French colonial buildings (again) and really cool bars and restaurants. The international community has been very present in Cambodia since the beginning of the 90s, with very dubious results but contributing if not for much else at least to a rather exciting scene and a vibrant night life. Its very telling though, as all the foreigners are gathered in the bars and restaurants and the Cambodians are gathered on the other side of the street, as a dinner here would cost about a monthly salary for most of them.
We had a great evening with Heike starting off with some Spanish tapas and rounding off with some drinks at the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) watching from the roof terrace the world go by below us. We got some VIP treatment from Keith (you are great!), a former colleague of Peter who was out of town but was very kind to send us his driver who took us for two days around the major sights in the city: the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, the National Museum, a beautiful building with a lovely garden and full of Khmer statues, Wat Phnom, the hill which was established by the old lady Pen, hence the name of the city, after she found four statues of Buddha floating in the Mekong... and sadly the Toul Sleng prison, where in the period 1975-1979 thousands of peoples were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge. Everyone who was perceived to slightly disagree with the regime and its leader Pol Pot or was just in the way of transforming the Cambodia into an agrarian society, was kept, tortured and later killed.
Sadly the whole country bears the scars of this and the consequent civil war and one just keeps thinking: Oh this place would have been so nice...

Khmer New Year 14,15,16 April (actually Buddhist New Year celebrated in the whole SEA) was starting to kick in, although we did not get as much water splashed on us as we expected, so we moved out of town towards the seaside Sianhouk Ville to cool down a bit. The beaches around here are a distant reminder of Thailand but they gave us a very colourful and lively insight into the way Khmers relax and enjoy themselves.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Sudden Lao - The Bolaven Plateau

Wat Phou - the little Ankor


Transport on the Mekong is fun!

Bolaven Plateau - there are many waterfalls, coffee, bad roads one can explore.
But if you go swimming beware of the Pa Pao fish...


some waterfalls are pure magic

Southern Laos

Coming into Lao we got different opinions from people that had already travelled there and most of them were rather sceptical about the south. As we went down in the main Route 13, the Mekong got bigger and the heat even more so. We sweated to the last drop of bottled water in the long bus rides along nicely paved roads, stopping every half hour to offload and upload endless amounts and diversity of THINGS, I guess it was a good way to cool the motor down as well. We passed Thakek, highly dull, sleepy and unexciting border town which had two main positive characteristics, a beautiful sunset over a full Mekong and buzzing truckloads coming in from Thailand in the morning. And on we go again on the sweating, bumpy ride, 7 hours down to Pakse which is the main city in the South. Its a nice place, with friendly customer oriented, service providing entrepreneurs: a very well English and French speaking guesthouse owner who studied in Poland "back in the days"; a friendly Indian running a restaurant, and I mean literally "running", and serving the best chicken tikka mesala around; nice local guys running an internet shop, who offer also international calls: "Hi mummy!". All in all, with the exception of Paxe, we found the people in the south equally shy and laid back as in the rest of the country, with only occasional incidents where you wonder if the language barrier is the only problem ;0) We visited the sixth century Temple of Wat Phou, a beautiful Khmer temple set in the foot of a hill dominating the whole area and similar to style and beauty but not magnitude to the Angkor temple.

We rented a motorbike and spend the last four days driving around the Bolaven Plateau. Cultivated by the French for farming because of its rich soil the plateau is amazingly undeveloped, growing mostly coffee and tea with small villages scattered along the road, pigs, chickens, smiling kids, pot-smoking old women, its all there, no deserted colonial villas though... we did not find a lost tribe but we enjoyed ourselves greatly and it was a refreshing breeze coming from the tens of waterfalls scattered around the plateau that kept us cool.

Our next destination is the 4000 islands, its an area on the border with Cambodia where the Mekong enlarges to a 14 km width where a lot of small and not so small islands emerge. We look forward to a couple of relaxing days and then we are in Cambodia.

Kong Lor cave

The trip to the Kong Lor cave took us to one of the most scenic and breathtaking places that we have experienced in our SEA trip.
It was getting late, around 6pm (and dark!) and we were still driving on the dusty road in our fully loaded songtew (small local bus). The ride took us into what seemed like a very wide plain surrounded by mountains and with only a dirt strip of orange road going through it, a scenic ride indeed with the already familiar smiling child faces shouting "Sabaidee" or "Bye-bye" (both are supposed to mean Welcome :) somewhere at the end of the road the mountains rose again and hid the cave we were heading to.
It was all very nice but the further we went into the plain, the farther we went from 'civilisation' and we were getting more and more sceptical about the promised homestay for 5$. When we finally arrived one thought had firmly established itself in our minds: "We are stuck", whatever this place was we had no means of getting out of it or getting anywhere else. It was very quickly, very clear that we had a very minimal way of understanding each other with the sweet elderly man that came to greet us. And then he showed us onto the terrace of the place and a beautiful picture revealed in front of us. What turned out to be the restaurant was overlooking the Hinboun river and a scene of serene harmony between nature and man; the sun had already set and the dark was quickly folding in, the cliffs were rising high, the river was flowing quietly, like they had for millions of years; and below the villagers were fishing with fish nets around the little patches of land that had been turned into small vegetable gardens and would become river again when the rainy season came, like they had for thousands of years. We were in awe and our little 5$ hut was worth every cent of it, not to mention the green plant in the little vase. This place was great, it was like we were in the land that time forgot in a four star hotel!
The morning was as scenic and beautiful as the evening and the toast, orange jam and tea that we had for breakfast were the beginning of a great day. We declined the kind offer of the old man to take us to the cave for 33$!!! and instead decided to walk 3 km to the cave entrance and get a ride there. Although it was relatively early, around 9 am the sun was already burning as we walked towards the nearest village. Again, the insight into this poor and yet peaceful and content life was confusing, the people lived in wooden houses with very little of anything that could be called furniture but had the inevitable TV set and satellite dish, the kids were running around half or totally naked but they were there and were many, the mothers were either laying around or doing some house work but none of them was angry or stressed or depressed.
We walked further on and were finally greeted by the Boat Committee, this is where all the man we did not see in the village were, sitting around a guy with a big book who took your money and made us write our names and country in his big book, than another one took a picture with his very first-generation digital camera: it all felt a bit odd "That's the last they will see of us" we thought. Then our boat driver came and we went down to the lake and boarded the piece of wood they call a boat around here, not very stable and we had a 7+ km ride in the dark and wet cave ahead of us ...
The trip was amazing! The cave was huge, up to 90 meters wide and 100 meters high at places and about 7,5 km long, the only way in and out was on the river, we had to get on and off the boat as the river got shallow, it was totally dark with the only light coming from our and our boat masters headlamps. At some point we stopped and one of our guides took us for short walk up to the stalactites and stalagmites that had formed high up over some rocks, the sand was soft it was damp and exciting. The whole trip lasted about an hour very quiet and very dark, when we came into the daylight again it all felt surreal! The trip was a real thrill, there was so little infrastructure in this cave that it might have been a very similar trip which discovered it in the first place and we were part of it :)

Pictures from Kong Lor

It's a long way to the cave

Paradise lost

On the way to the cave... (don't worry there are no mines:)

entering the magic world of Kong Lor


Finally emerging on the other side of the cliff!