Khrys weblog

We didn’t manage to pass the border to Laos from Cambodia without paying 1 dollar each for the border controller to stamp our passport. They first made us to wait for a long time as we refused to pay and then threatened to cancel our visa if we wouldn’t pay.

First in Laos we went for a day to the 4000 islands, which are located close to the border. The boat ride there on Mekong river was very nice. On the islands we got to witness the locals washing themselves, and even their teeth on this brown water.
   
Photos
Slideshow

Next stop was in Pakse, where Chris got to train some hotel workers in putting off a fire. Next to a hotel where we stayed, a lightning hit an electric box, which put the next by tree on fire. The hotel owner gave us dragon fruit shakes as a thank you for Chris acting fast and showing their staff how to use the extinguisher. It is also interesting to notice that Lao has the worse connection to Internet so far, which is one of the reason why we publish so late. Talking with that hotel’s manager, we learnt that a 1Mb connection costs 240 US dollars a month, and that the bandwidth isn’t guaranteed at all, meaning that most of time, one can’t get a single page.
   
Photos
Slideshow

We had heard that the people in Laos were a bit quieter than in the neighboring countries, and actually for once we did get a quiet night bus to Vientiane. After arriving we shared a long lasting, interesting conversation with an Australian woman and an Israeli man we had asked for directions from the bus station. One annoying thing in South East Asia is that the bus stations are always located outside or at the edges of the towns, so that every time you are forced to take a tuk-tuk to get to the centre, and you never know how far anything is. Vientiane is quite nice little capital. We walked around to the sights as usual even though the tuk-tuk drivers always try to persuade us to take a tour with them.
   
Photos
Slideshow

The plain of jars is located close to a small town called Phonsavan. We enjoyed a lot walking on the fields and once again realized this is the kind of sights we have enjoyed the most on our trip. Not crowded places, in the middle of the nature. It makes your mind to rest so much!
   
Photos
Slideshow

We quite liked Luang Prabang despite all the building work around and got stuck there for longer than planned. The time passed quickly in good company.
   
Photos
Slideshow

And we had to return to Kuang Si waterfalls for swimming and relaxing day as we ended up hiking the whole afternoon in the rain forest by accident the first time there.
   
Photos
Slideshow

In Lao we saw more monks than in any other country. Especially young ones. They may not have had chosen this path themselves, but it is a pride for their families, or they have joined because they are poor. Being a monk teaches social skills and discipline. Some monasteries also teach English for free, and also we got to discuss in English with some of them. So for these youngsters monk hood is not necessarily a lifetime commitment. One sight in Luang Prabang is to see hundreds of monks collecting rice donations from the villagers very early in the morning.
There are still a lot of unexploded mines in different part of the country, but progress is being made despite an obvious lack of resource and equipment.
Transport is about as bad as in Cambodia, but with less people on the road, it is far less dangerous. Tuk-tuks may have different shapes and colours, but as they say here: “same same !” Lao food is quite similar to that of Cambodia, and we were able to enjoy those cheap fresh fruit shakes a bit longer. Of course we sometimes get bored of Asian food, so we occasionally “have to” go for a pizza or a burger, but these usually are much more expensive and we come back to our noodles and rice. Local beer is alright by Asian standard, but the local booze, “Lao Lao” is cheap, strong, and weird: the bottle might contain scorpions, snakes or other local delicacies :) Talking about delicacies, taking long bus journeys mean we’ll have to stop to eat somewhere in the countryside, and it’s always interesting to guess what the locals will try to sell us: grilled grasshoppers ? fried worms ? spicy spiders ?
Minus in Laos nowadays is too many backpackers who go there basically just to drink and bother other people. They don’t respect anyone or anything. In Laos there are some interesting rules due to increase of tourism. For example in Luang Prabang it is forbidden to play western music, and everyone have to be back in their hotels by 23.30.
   
Photos
Slideshow

We now need to cross the Mekong again, and pass into Thailand.

Border crossing to Cambodia went very smoothly, without any problems and bag checkings. But if Vietnam wasn’t exactly a rich place when it came to countryside, Cambodia’s poverty could be witnessed shortly after the border in a more striking way, especially since the very first building was a rich casino, and the surroundings were made of tiny wooden stalls selling anything from rice to nails and soap. Transport means are more chaotic and one can see people sitting on the roof of cars and trucks very often, and in big numbers. The temples along the roads are nice and some seem to have been renovated, but the houses, typically very simple wooden cottages on pillars (to avoid being flooded) are the standard, outside the big cities. The beautiful flooded plains are quite a contrast.
   
Photos
Slideshow

We had taken a bus trip from Saigon directly to Phnom Penh (with just a stop at the frontier). In Phnom Penh we were wondering what’s the story with loads of brand new, big and shiny Jeeps, and then dirty little kids begging next to them. We saw more fancy and expensive Humvees in one day than we had seen in Finland in 3 years. The kids don’t even bother asking them money or food anymore it seems, and come to you as soon as they spot you. A positive note is the apparent politeness of the locals, who salute with hands joined. It’s already that much more than the previous country. On the other hand, the now familiar “Hello, moto ?” has been replaced with “Tuk-tuk sir ? where are you going ?” …
We also found funny that most of the ATMs give you only US dollars (the exception being Canadia Bank), that these dollars are accepted basically everywhere, with the change (meaning anything under a dollar) being given back in riel (with an rate of 4000 riels for a dollar, of course, at your disadvantage). So it is a good idea to keep enough riels in the pocket for small transactions, and try to get rid of big denomination dollar notes asap, since no one has the change (might sound obvious to some but it is still annoying when you just got that stuff from the ATM).
We didn’t stay long in the capital city, but visited the Royal Palace (splendid), Wat Phnom and the streets in between these and our hostel. We couldn’t take much more. At the Wat Phnom (temple), some monkey hang around and you can buy food from locals to feed the monkeys. Those animals definitely had enough to eat and some were so fat they could barely move to grab more. But it’s interesting to see that once the monkey has left his 2 bananas for a bigger and always more attractive pack 20m further, many local kids race to eat the 2 abandoned bananas. Same with peanuts and lotus roots.
We skipped the Khmer Rouge heritage (Tuol Sleng prison and various killing fields) and the local garbage dump where locals and their kids search for valuables (and one can easily imagine what they walk on).
   
Photos
Slideshow

We were not anymore so happy for the bus trip bought from Sinh Cafe between Phnom Penh and Seam Reap as we had been for the journeys bought from the same company earlier in Vietnam. This was because the driver was making his own extra business aside and took all the locals (and their motorbike) he could into our minibus. Don’t get us wrong, we like to take local buses when they are available and cheaper. But paying more, we don’t want the driver to put our lives in danger for driving faster to catch up the time lost in the extra stops. Plus this journey wasn’t very pleasant as many of the locals were sick, coughing and throwing up. During the trip we also had a flat tyre, but didn’t mind much about that as we got to take pictures around in the meanwhile and got to wonder how many people can the locals actually fit in one car.

In Seam Reap we rented bicycles for three days and biked around the huge, beautiful area of Angkor Wat. Apart from the main building featured on all brochures, there are many other temples of all sizes and shapes, depending if they had been built by the Khmer, the Thai or the Cham people. The different styles can be seen at the kind of rock used, the gods whom the temples are dedicated to, and the period. Furthermore, nature has decided to to take over and improve some sites, by covering some tops with soft moss or tall grass, growing huge trees over the walls, surrounding and consolidating some gates with thick roots, without forgetting the various birds’ songs to remind you how much you’re in the jungle. We loved it !
Now, I cannot forget that all over the place, people try to sell you stuff inside the temple, sometimes pretending to give you access to a special area for a discount price, just for you. Monkeys would hang around some places too, and locals would be selling food, reproducing the same scenes we had in Phnom Penh. And 50% of the people trying to sell you stuff are kids. “Shouldn’t you be at school ?”, we’d ask. “School holiday !” or “School? morning only !” would they answer. And while they try to sell (and we would never buy from kids), we could see the parents, doing nothing, sitting in the shadow of some tall tree, watching if their kids work hard enough.
   
Photos: day 1, day 2, day 3
Slideshow: day 1, day 2, day 3

We’ve experienced a few things in the country, be it in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Kampong Cham or Stung Treng. We’ve tried “Dr Fish”, where you put your feet in some small pool and dozens of little fishes come to eat your old skin and various bacterias. So tickly ! The food was very interesting too, with a lot of influence from India. It tastes really good most of the time (got only one bad lunch in 10 days), it’s usually very cheap (about US$1.5 for a green curry and coconut milk bowl with chicken or beef) and the shakes are sooooo good ! About half a dollar for fresh mango, papaya, pineapple or coconut shake.
Among other things, we got lucky enough in Siem Reap to arrive at a special time and to be woken up at 3am by the chants of monks celebrating whatever Buddhist day (I’m sorry, I love monk chants, but at 3am, I hate everybody :p ). We then changed to a more quiet place but there we got kicked out because we argued with them since they wouldn’t give us the breakfast that was supposed to be included in the price. And of course, like in Vietnam or China, everywhere the concert of cars honking starts early, like 6am, the hostel staff will start chatting loudly about same time anyway, and asking for peace only makes things worse. We have dozens of stories but that will be for the long winter evenings by the fireplace :)
   
Photos
Slideshow

It is now time for us to take a bus and try our luck through the Lao border.

Videos from our trip in Vietnam are ready to be enjoyed on Khrystube.

Next we headed to Dong Hoi and Phang Nha caves. In Dong Hoi there is also a beach, where we relaxed a bit and swam in the warm water. We had expected to find some people speaking French, since Vietnam used to be a French colony. But for our surprise we found like no one speaking French, but few people speaking German. So in Dong Hoi we rented a motorbike in German. It was a nice ride through countryside to the caves. Only three kilometers before the caves we got under a huge tropical rain and lighting, and we had to seek shelter in the nearest house as we were not able to keep driving. Kindly we got offered good local tea. We wanted to pay somehow, and once again felt annoyed that because of the long travel we hadn’t been able to carry any small gifts from our countries to leave to the nice people we meet. Only thing I could find from my bag was a Yatzy-game for the many kids in the house, and some forgotten Finnish salty liquorice. Surprisingly the men didn’t seem to find them too bad, but the poor kids were throwing them out of the window :). Finally getting to the caves we almost missed the whole place, as the only way to explore it is by boat. It was already quite late in the afternoon, and the ticket booth tried to get us to rent the whole boat just for us claiming that there was no one we could share one with. Luckily just when we were going to turn back a tour leader accepted us to share their boat, so we got the ride much cheaper. That was great, because the boat trip and the caves were very nice.
   
Photos
Slideshow

From Dong Hoi onwards we moved around by bus. They were very convenient and comfortable, but it is good to shop around as the prices do vary. We always got to the next place for under 10 euros each.
We stopped in Hue to see the Imperial Palace. Hue was quite a noisy place too and one day there was enough.
   
Photos
Slideshow

Hoi An is the best place in Vietnam to get tailor made clothes done. They do the clothes fast, and can also copy your old favorite piece of clothing. Hoi An is quite nice little town, there is typical blue local boats on the river and a beach which we unfortunately missed because the day we were supposed to go there it was raining all day.
   
Photos
Slideshow

From Hoi An, one day we drove by motorbike to see My Son, remains of ancient Champa civilization temple complex, half located in the jungle and largely covered with bushes.
   
Photos
Slideshow

In Hoi An we started a PADI Open Water Diving course with one day theory part. The two days pool and open water exercises we passed in Nha Trang, a bigger beach town. Chris had wanted for a while for us to take the course so that we could go diving together. Netta was nervous about it because she didn’t feel comfortable breathing under water. It did feel to her like participating “Fear factor” from time to time, but with guts got it done. The three day course is quite fast paced and includes many exercises and lot of information. It’s good that the basics are now well learned, so next time the diving should feel more relaxing and fun. The corals were nice, not as impressive as in Australia, of course, but we go to spot animals we had not seen before, like a nice black coral eel and probably 2m long and 2 cm thick coral worm !
In Nha Trang, there also is a Champa temple and a Buddhist one which has a statue dominating the whole area.
On our last night in Nha Trang we took a cooking course to see for example how they prepare the spring rolls. We hadn’t noticed much differences in Vietnamese food compared to the chinese food, except that they use lot of coconut, pineapple. Shrimps were fresh, big, cheap and good. In Vietnam our problem nearly for the whole month regarding food was that the portions, even twice as expensive as in China, were half smaller and not enough for us.
   
Photos
Slideshow

Before leaving Vietnam we went for few days to a smaller beach town called Mui Ne just to relax and to see some Cham towers and sand dunes. It is amazing how many huge resorts these places have almost empty for big part of the year.
   
Photos
Slideshow

We also briefly stopped over in Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh city, but didn’t visit much of it.
   
Photos
Slideshow

Apart from the sights and some great landscapes we didn’t unfortunately get very positive picture of Vietnam. People felt genuinely friendly very rarely, mostly just on the countryside where people are poor. In the cities all the time you have someone after your money trying to sell you something or offering their motor bike for rent. They don’t mind lying to get business and might in the same sentence speak how they follow the teachings of Buddha. Even in the post office the clerk lied the price of the stamps! Luckily we noticed at the door and turned back to get our change. Vietnam is touristy but at least in the low season there is way too many locals trying to make their living from tourism and seem to just drive around with their motorbikes all day coming after you.
Next step: Cambodia.

Right on the Vietnam side of the border is Lao Cai. From there we headed directly to Sapa. Luckily Chris had checked from the internet how much the ride from the border to the bus station was supposed to cost. You can easily be confused in a new country with their currency and prices if you don’t take care. Patiently we didn’t accept the first ride offers and searched for a decent priced taxi. The first guys had asked us to pay five times the correct amount. There was loads of small busses offering a ride to Sapa from the bus station, and again we had to bargain to get the correct price.

Sapa is quite a nice small town. There is lots of tourists and the restaurants offer western food, hamburgers, pizza and baguette. After a resting day we rented a scooter and drove along mountain roads watching green scenery and rice terraces which reminded of Inca terraces in Peru.
   
Photos
Slideshow

The train ride from Lao Cai to Hanoi was quite an experience. The train seemed to have been used already in the war, iron curtains on the windows seemed to be bullet proof. When buying the tickets we had tried to ask how long does the journey take, but had got no answer. We knew the Vietnamese trains are not fast, and figured that leaving at 9 am we should probably arrive around 3 pm. At 3 pm we then asked around what time we will arrive in Hanoi. People were telling us 8 pm and we thought they were joking. But when the train employee also wrote 8 pm on a paper, we had to believe that the 350 km journey would really take 11 hours. Surely the train stopped many times, but we definitely had time to take pictures and videos of the Vietnamese scenery. Despite the fans it was a sweaty day, and oh by the way in Vietnam the hard seat actually means hard seat, not covered by leather layer like in China.
   
Photos
Slideshow

There is not really anything to see in Hanoi, it is a noisy city, not to our liking. We stayed there only to get the visas to Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam is a country of motor bikes, and the choir of horns is even louder than in China. In the old city of Hanoi you have to constantly watch out for hundreds of motor bikes. The side walks are a joke, because they are full of food- or souvenir stalls, motor bikes or cars. In our hotel area on the weekends they played loud music at 7 am, which called the local people to clean up the area. On the weekday mornings the same loud speaker was giving out a “community announcement”. If this is not enough to wake you up in Vietnam, there will surely be someone renovating the house just behind your hotel window, hotel cleaning staff keeping a very loud tea party in the corridor, or hotel receptionist knocking your door three times the same morning starting 6 am by asking if you want to get your laundry done, or by letting you know that you cannot get tickets to the train you requested because she was too lazy to book them when they were still available. On the night trains and busses they wake you up with damn loud, hour-long “comedy” shows, even though the buss is full of foreigners who don’t understand a word of Vietnamese. Right, so no hope of sleeping after the cock sings in this country either.

Vietnamese houses are very funny looking. As they have been taxed according to their width, they are built very narrow and high. Sometimes only the front side of the house is painted and the sides left grey.
   
Photos
Slideshow

Chris had planned that from Hanoi we would take a cruise on Halong Bay. Hanoi is full of travel agencies and the hotels also offer the cruises. So it is hard to know which one of the 6000 boats in the area to choose. The first night we happened to talk to a travel agent who also worked in the restaurant where we ate in. She seemed nice and professional, and we ended up booking a two day cruise from her. It was lucky we met her, as when entering the boat we were amazed. The boat was wonderful, and to make it feel very fancy, we were only two couples on the whole cruise.
When enjoying the welcome drinks we saw around 30 people getting into the next boat. Surely they might have paid a bit less than us, but this was definitely worth the extra dollars. In the price was included very tasty breakfast, two lunches and a dinner. Even though there was so many boats cruising on the bay, it didn’t bother at all as it is a large area, so they don’t need to move next to each other. It was so so relaxing to lay on the deck listening only the small noise of the engine. On the boat they played quiet music, and rest of the time Netta had “Pirates of the Caribbean” -tone in her head watching the boats and the amazing sceneries. In the afternoon of the first day we did some canoeing and after that we took a dip in the warm water. Although a bit too short, the cruise and the place were just perfect, one of the highlights of our whole trip.
   
Photos
Slideshow