hey dudes! much has happened since last writing, well. starting in pakse i think, maybe a week or two ago (time passes quickly, and im not sure how many weeks ago we were there) we biked south for a lesurely 40 km ride to a town on the wrong side of the mekong called champasak. it was the capital of laos for a while i think, and was a pretty big town back in the french colonial day but not much goes on there now. we arrived to the ferry port in pouring rain, and were ushered onto one of the hundreds of homemade boats that ferry everything across the river. its pretty much just two old canoes with some planks across them and a scrubcutter with a propeller attached to the back of one. the boatdude bailed out one side as we pushed our bikes on, then bailed out the other side while starting the engine. not the most promising of beginnings, but we had a sweet trip across thinking all the way what a good idea it had been to buy travel insurance. we disembarked on the other side and were met by a very happy (for no descernable reason) guesthouse guy who we chatted to for a bit in bad french before he towed us to his guesthouse behind his tuktuk, him laughing all the way. i think that town did some strange things to his head. we hung out there for a day, and met a british guy and a german girl (tom and jerry) who we ended up traveling and drinking with for the next week. we biked out to the towns one attraction, an angkor era wat, all the way cursing the shoddy chinese bikes that those guys hired which broke down exactly halfway, and proved impossible to repair. anyway, had a few beers and checked out the temple (its important to get the order of these things right) which turned out to be the best one so far. khmer construction being far superior to the thais. just a taste of whats to see tomorrow. excuse the pun. ha.
next place, 4000 islands. took a share taxi down there cause we were too lazy to ride, eventually landing on dong khong, the largest of this massive group of islands in the middle of the mekong river. we watched a few thunderstorms, biked around the island, and drank many a beerlao (there is not much else to do there) before heading to don det, the busiest of the islands. there are hundreds of bungalo guesthouses, most for $2 a night, complete with spiders the size of my knee. there are heaps of riverside restaurants, all with the same degree of indifferent to bad service, and a bakery that was our salvation run by a guy from perth. dont know how he managed to survive on that island, but he was a pretty laid back guy so i guess he likes hammocks a whole lot. we boated out to a rock in the middle of the river and perched on that to watch the endangered irrawaddy dolphins swim back and forth about 200 metres away, and checked out the largest waterfall in SE asia. its the mekong. fucking massive amount of water falling a few metres. i got attacked by leeches when i tried to swim near it so i gave up on that idea and spent the rest of the afternoon checking all my pockets for the little fuckers. next day i was getting a bit bored of hammocking so i inflated my spare bike inner tube and walked to the end of the island, jumped in the river and floated down. it was moving quickish so no leeches here, but i was just getting near to our guesthouse, paddling to get out of the way of a boat, i looked around and there was a stick poking out of the water. i didnt remember there being a submerged tree there so i looked again and it was moving, with a little tongue flicking in and out tasting my smell on the air. not a stick. it was the head of a fucking watersnake about 1 metre away from me, just cruising past. i swam like never before, got up on shore and ran the remaining distance to our bungalow. not swimming in the mekong again, im sick of it. jellyfish.
well, had enough of slacking, getting so lethargic that i was damn near horizontal when standing up, so we caught a watertaxi to the mainland and biked to the border, a mission in itself. there are no signposts so after asking a few people we managed to locate a small dirt road, just off another small dirt road, with a suspicious amount of traffic and about 10 million big puddles. in fact it was more river than road, and turned out to be quite trecherous as lissa discovered. wet clay is not your friend. we got to the border after overtaking several tourist busses, go the bikes!, paid our bribe of $2 (it was a weekend) on the lao side, got to the cambodian post, and this ugly guy with one ear (either a victim of the khmer rouge or he pissed off the wrong guy demanding a bribe) tells us that our visas were no longer valid because they were issued 2 months ago (despite the fact that they still had 1 month to run) and since then their format had changed. a "T" (for tourist) that on our visas was stamped on is now printed on as a part of the visa card. weary of a scam we argued with him for an hour before he took us to his leader (some fat git minus a uniform who had just got out of the shower) who informed us of the same thing. not valid, have to buy new visa for 20 dollars each. so we argued with him for an hour as well. getting nowhere, we dicided to take a photo of each of them along with their names and numbers, buy a new visa and when we got to phunm penh report them to some authority (which probabily doesnt care either), but we were getting low on options. they didnt like having their photos taken, so we argued with them some more, eventually reaching a compromise. one guy at the visa post bought us one personally (we must really have pissed them off) and we bought the other one, with the condition that we write a letter saying that he bought us one and that we all require refunding. that is going to be fun to argue when we get to phnom penh. nothing relieves 2 weeks of pent up apathy than having a blazing row with a border official. i hate cambodian officials more than anyone else right now. corrupt bastards. cool thing was that in the hate and confusion, he forgot to demand a bribe from me, so the visa really only cost 18 dollars. sweet.
finally got on our way late afternoon, hottest part of the day, and biked the 60 km to stung treng. had some cold ankor beers and checked out our guesthouse. i didnt realise how sick i was getting of beerlao, so its been really good to switch to the cambodian brew of choice. lissa remains faithful to laos though, i guess she didnt drink as much of it as me. our guesthouse had no rooms available cause we were late getting in, but they offered us a bed on the roof for a dollar. hard to refuse that, so we took it. it would have been really cool but i think we had a bug in there with us, and that little bastard bit me 61 times. the son of a bitch must be glad i didnt catch him, because i would have tourtured it to death with a red hot needle. next time.
we caught a bus next day, and drove across two thirds of cambodia, to Siam Reap, the major tourist destination, containing the famed temples of angkor. it costs a shitload to see the temple complexes, and i think all of that money goes directly into hun sens' governments fund, if not his own personal bank account. another example of the government of this country fucking over its people. im wondering if the ancient angkor people saw what kind of profit he would reap from their achievements, maybe they would have stayed in bed.
this country is amazing. its actually mad. im sure everyone here is clinically insane. the bus ride was an experience, we saw some motorbike rider on the side of the road, not moving, maybe dead, the bus overtook horses pulling loads of wood on carrages, oxen pulling carts, and all manner of strange transport options inbetween. the roads have only been paved for about a year or 2, and the volume of traffic is amazing. the bus driver just blasts his horn to warn people and cruises past them with barely an inch to spare at ridiculous speeds. it was more entertaining watching the road in front of us than the in drive entertainment (some strange physical comedy standup thing on a tv screen). the bus got in finally, and they let us off to collect bags as they opened the gates, tuktuk drivers swarmed in like a dam bursting with the names of all the foreigners on cards (the guesthouses sell our names to them). they tried to take us to their guesthouse about a thousand times. these people are far more persistant than the ones in laos, some guy tried to buy my bike off me for a hundred beers. i like his thinking.
it rained today, and the street turned into a river. everything here is mad. the street kids are really onto it, instead of begging they sell postcards. they ask where you are from then named the capital city of NZ, the prime minister, the population and im sure he knows our chief exports. he challenged me to a game of tic tac toe, with the condition that if i won he would play me at foozball and if he won i would buy his postcards. of course, he won one game, and we drew two. the whole game is rigged, he is too good at it. lissa says i got scammed but i was happy to buy his postcards. real sharp kids. it makes the lazylao people look really bad. if only the cambodian people can get rid of landmines and corruption (a next to impossible task i think) then they will have a bright future. have only been here 2 days, and im already struck by the country. we are buying passes to the temples of angkor tomorrow, so im sure its only going to get more interesting.
Aux
aaaah, saw the coolest thing as we cycled into cambodia. A 5 year old kid sitting on top of a massive water buffallo that was wallowing in a large puddle of mud in the middle of a rice field. he yelled 'heeeeeeeeeeeeloooooooo!' and i almost fell off my bike...again. then we saw 3 local teenage boys cycling the same route that we were...except they only had one bike between them, and they were all placed precariously on the rusty machine. they all gave us big smiles and a wave. a cool intro to the country, especially after the border incident. well off to Angkor tomorrow....oooooh yes the art history geek in me is going to reappear for the next few days, fun fun fun.
ok love you all long time
Lissa :P
