Scott's Awesome Travel Blog

Photos: Cambodia

scottjohnson1 — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:15:00 GMT

Office Work and Mondulkiri

scottjohnson1 — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:16:00 GMT

The past week of work at the NGO office wasn't too eventful. The project manager had just gotten back from a vacation in Australia, and was getting caught up. So for the 4 days of my second week, I had almost no work to do! I helped to correct a few English documents and chatted with the coordinator, and spent a lot of time on facebook and email. I signed up for a gym membership and got back into some form of routine. The problem with that statement is the word routine, which is not what I wanted to be doing here, so I made plans to get away for the weekend - this time to Mondulkiri in the Northeast of the country. After all that hard work from the previous week, I think an overextended vacation was well deserved! Besides, the coordinator almost forced me to take more time off cause he really wanted me to see the country.

Am I ever glad I decided to take a bus to Sen Monorom (The central town in Mondulkiri province). I travelled by myself this time, because I just need more time to myself than the average person, but I ended up meeting 4 awesome people on the bus ride up and wasn't alone for long. Once we arrived in town, Rathana from Nature Lodge picked us up in a truck and took us back to this amazing eco-resort. I walked past horses, cows, chickens, domesticated cats and dogs and a slew of other small creatures to get to the lodge's restaurant. This place is really amazing, as it feels like you're staying on a small farm in the foothills. Such a peaceful getaway. Besides the 5 of us, there were only 2 or 3 other tourists here, and we really felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.
First order of business on the first night was getting drunk, so we all ordered a cocktail called apple pie, which actually tasted like a baked apple pie...Several drinks and beers later, and we were all taking turns at pool on the lopsided table. What made it even more interesting was the variety of insects that wanted to play with us. There were grasshoppers, ants, some other flying creatures, and a large, clumsy dung beetle that shared the table with us. The dung beetle was hilarious, as it would occasionally spread its wings and struggle to lift its comically massive body into the air, only to make it to the light bulb above the table and crash back down to the pool table on its back after flying straight into the light. It would seem that evolution played a cruel joke on these creatures...it was like a turtle had been given wings and no aerodynamics to go along with them. The only thing that made sense was its solid shell which protected it from itself, or in our case a 4 ball. To end the night, we brought more drinks to one of the guys' cabins, where we sang, created a record amount of inuendos and played guitar.

The second day here was a write-off, as it decided to rain for almost the whole day, which is rare for this tropical climate - normally it rains for 1-2 hours a day during the wet season. We were supposed to rent motorbikes to get a bit of practice in, but they strongly advised us against it, which I'm sure was good advice. I ended up stuffing my face all day since I was a prisoner of the rain in the lodge's restaurant. The three guys in our group of 5 decided to book an overnight elephant trek for the next day. There was a bit of a mishap in the morning, as we realized that there was only one elephant meeting us at the Bunong village. Apparently, we booked a foot trek with pack elephant, but the tour book was not clear at all about this, So Rathana did us a huge favour and drove down to the booking office to see if they could find more elephants. He came back with great news, and a few hours later, we were in a different village watching 3 wonderful pachyderms emerge from the forest. I was provided with a ladder to step up onto the male - named Mai - while the two other guys hopped on the females (couldn't avoid that euphemism). Shortly into the trek, our mahouts let us sit on our elephants'necks and learn how to direct them. You tap their left ear to make them turn right, and their left ear for the opposite. They yell 'Hao'to get them to stop, which never really worked for us anyway. Either grunting loudly or yelling 'Hai' was supposed to get them moving again. As I'm sure most elephants do, they would ocasionally disregard the commands of the petty little humans riding them and wander off the track to demolish bamboo shoots. These things have quite an appetite, and I was told they eat an average of 300 kilos of food a day!

The mahouts were awesome, and extremely helpful. There was a 12 year old boy, a 25 year old man, an 18 year old girl and a woman maybe in her early 40's. I couldn't believe a 12 year old was already in command of a 2-3 ton beast, and the biggest of the three elephants. The fact that none of them spoke English was also refreshing, and just seemed more...authentic. I would have felt ripped off if I had come to an extremely remote village in the jungle and been greeted by Cambodians speaking perfect English. Our guide - Dol - on the other hand, did speak a bit of English, and he had a funny habit of repeating himself even though it was clear that we understood the first time. This was exacerbated when he would get into the rice wine, and I vividly remember him explaining how to access his cell phone flashlight. He spent a full 10 minutes, while I tried to sit still in a swarm of biting insects drawn to me by the candlelight. Our first day of trekking was majestic, which still isn't a good enough word for the experience. I constantly caught myself thinking "holy shit, I'm on an elephant in a remote jungle of Cambodia, my life is complete." This sentiment was shared with the other two guys, as they both would bring it up ocasionally after coming out of the frequent silent dazes. We camped out beside a waterfall, which had a natural pool that we could swim in. There was a chair carved out of a tree trunk sitting in a shallow part of the pool, so we took the obligatory photos.

I slept in a hammock for the first time ever, which was quite an experience. I thought it would end badly, because as soon as I got in mine I heard slow, cracking sounds. The mahout came running and tied the tree to a bigger one, and thus redeemed my first hammock experience. I completely forgot to take a picture of the tree that my fat ass broke, but it's still in the forest, never to support another lazy tourist again. The next morning, we woke up to elephants coming down to the river for a bath. We helped the mahouts wash them, which was another once-in-a-lifetime experience...I mean, unless someone reading this works at a zoo or with elephants as a career, then it would be an everyday occurrence. We rode to another Bunong village for lunch. We asked if we could take a picture of the family at the village, and this was so well received that we ended up doing a half hour photoshoot with different arrangements, different wardrobe and different backgrounds. They loved pictures! One of the mahouts accidentally walked through a hornet's nest while on his elephant, and got stung at least 10 times all over his head. The Cambodians all thought this was hilarious, but we really laughed when Dol got stung by one rogue hornet and ran through the forest screaming like a little kid.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and soon enough it was time to trek the rest of the way to the village where we were dropped off the day before. We hung out with the staff and played pool back at the Nature Lodge until 2am and then had to pack for our bus rides back the next morning.

Long Weekend at the Beach

scottjohnson1 — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:41:00 GMT

This past Monday was a holiday, so my first weekend off in Cambodia was a long one which, coincidentally, ended up being the same as the May 24 weekend back home. I took a 5 hour bus ride south to the coast. I heard that the coast of Cambodia was as beautiful as Thailand but with fewer tourists. Though I haven't been to Thailand yet (that comes at the end of my trip), I wasn't convinced once I arrived at my guesthouse on Serendipity Beach. The Markara guesthouse was nice, and the beach across the road was good too, but it just wasn't as impressive as I had heard it would be. The water wasn't amazingly clean or clear, and there were very pushy beach vendors patrolling the area for tourists. Luckily, most of them did something called 'threading' which was a technique used to rid women of leg hair. Since I was neither a woman, nor did I need my legs shaved, I was safe for the most part.

I found out about some of the islands off the coast on my first evening, and I wish I had done some research and learned about them before even coming to Sihanoukville, as I would have gone straight there instead of spending the first night on the mainland. I ended up choosing Koh Rong Samloem (Koh means island - it's the same for Thai islands) because it sounded more secluded, and it was the furthest away. Since many of the tour companies and guesthouses were trying to steer me towards Bamboo Island, I decided to go against their judgment, which ended up being the right decision. After the 3 hour ride in a cargo boat through rough waters, I made it to Koh Rong Samloem. Some of the waves were taller than the small boat and I found out, quite happily, that I am not prone to seasickness. I had been sitting on an icebox the entire time because the boat had no seats, so I was glad to be mobile once again.

Now THIS was a beach. I will post pictures soon that hopefully convey just how beautiful this island really is. Apart from 5 other tourists staying in the beach huts and the few staff members, this secluded bay was almost deserted. It was perfect. The sand was so white it hurt to look at it, and I swear it even squeaked when walked in with bare feet. The water was a perfect hue of turquoise and as clear as spring water. After dropping my stuff off in the beach hut, I immediately went for a swim. I got drunk with the other tourists and even the manager of the place that night. We had a great time watching a kitten frantically chase a crab, and listening to one of the girls eerily realistic animal noises. When I was sufficiently loaded, I very responsibly went for a swim (I stayed in the shallow part!) and observed one of the most stunning things nature has to offer - phosphorescence. So from what I learned, there are very small, luminescent organisms not far from the shore that are present in extremely large numbers. As I splashed around in the water, they would light up. At one point I started waving my hands underwater, and it left a dazzling trail of light behind them. I started treading water and my entire body lit up underwater, it was amazing. I can't really describe it in words, but maybe someone has filmed it - go youtube it! It was like seeing millions of little fireflies.

I went snorkeling the next day and regrettably had to take the boat back to Sihanoukville. A 5 hour bus ride back to Phnom Penh, and I was ready for bed. The bus played a Cambodian movie for the first 2 hours at max volume, which is just so annoying when it's night time, when you're trying to sleep, and when you can't understand a word of what they're saying. Rambo 3 was up after that, which piqued my interest, but when I realised that everyone's voice was dubbed I just got more annoyed. Oh well, I made it home safely and that's all that matters :) Headed to bed as soon as I got home.

First Glimpses of Cambodia

scottjohnson1 — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:15:00 GMT

Crossing the border into Cambodia from Vietnam, I did not expect 4 large casinos to be the first thing I would notice, but that's exactly what happened. It made me wonder who these large casinos catered to...was it locals? Or Vietnamese? Or maybe expats. I still don't really know, but it was weird. The rest of the bus ride into Phnom Penh reminded me of my time in East Africa. The architecture was a little different, everything was a tad greener, and of course the road was well paved, but the rural areas are very similar. I made it into the city in the late afternoon and was met by a swarm of tuk tuk and motorbike drivers offering me a ride to wherever I was going. This was very familiar. There was one that spoke English really well, and though I told him many times that I didn't need a ride, when my coordinator showed up on his motor bike he ended up telling us to use this guy's tuk tuk to follow him to our homestay. The tuk tuks here consist of a motorbike with a carriage attached that seats about 4 people on benches.

The next day was our orientation, and I was able to meet several of the other volunteers that will be working in the city. We had some in class cultural and Khmer lessons, and they told us what to expect and how to make the most of our time here. The second day of orientation involved a city tour, where they showed us some highlights and landmarks in the city, but we didn't actually get to go inside a lot of them. I guess I'll have to make my own trips to see Toul Sleng (S21 prison) and the National Museum. I also saw the Olympic Stadium, which is ironic because Cambodia has never held any Olympic games, but it was impressive nonetheless. I got some really good photos of baboons at a Pagoda in the city as well.

After getting a few last minute things at the market and getting set up with a local cell phone, it was time to settle into the life of a temporary Cambodian. I got to know my host family a bit better and enjoyed the meals they prepared for me. It's quite a big family living in the house, with 2 daughters, 1 son, the mother and father, one aunt and one nephew. It's an impressive home stay for Cambodian standards, and I was definitely not expecting to get my own room with ensuite bathroom, a communal living room with tv/dvd player, wifi access throughout the house...and even a laundry machine! After spending almost three months hand washing my clothes and scraping my knuckles raw in Kenya, this was the greatest luxury. OK, so I'm not being completely honest, as most of the time I paid locals to wash my laundry for me in Kenya, but those 4 or 5 times I spent kneeling over a wash bucket were excruciating!

My first three days of placement were very interesting...well the first day was only an hour long because no one was there and the coordinator was on vacation - so they asked me to come back the next day, once they had prepared things for me to do. I went back the next day and started helping them translate their NGO statute into passable English (I have the original saved in my gmail in case anyone is curious about how terrible the English was on the first one.) I paid a visit to two of the schools that PIO (People Improvement Organization) supports, as well as one orphanage. Pulling into a landfill site teeming with garbage and seeing obviously malnourished children, women and men picking through it to try to scrape by was heart-wrenching. The first school was built from the remainder of the walls of an older building, and had tarps for a rooftop. The kids were all happy to see me walk in, and stood up to greet me in unison. They said "Good morning Mr Scott, how are you?" to which I replied "Good morning, I am fine, how are you?". They waited there after saying they were fine, until the teacher told them they could sit down. At that point, they half-yelled "Thank you teacher!" and sat down, once again, in unison. They gave me the ever-appreciated smiles, high-fives and handshakes, and couldn't wait to show off their English language skills. I'm starting to realize that kids in developing countries are very much alike, and appreciate their education so much more than we do back home.

My visit to the orphanage was similar, with children smiling, greeting me, and playing amongst themselves. I met the head teacher of the school, who I chatted with for a while. She asked me a very important question at one point, and said "how does all of this make you feel?" Honestly, in all my experiences with volunteering, I have never really been asked such a deep question, and certainly not by someone who was far from being a native English speaker. I kind of choked up just trying to think of an answer. How do you say both happy and sad at the same time? Ambivalent or bittersweet just don't really cut it. On the one hand, I see poor children and families with no support from a social welfare system or their government. On the other hand, I see people from all over the world and, more importantly, many Cambodians doing the best they can to ensure that these people can enjoy the most basic and fundamental rights a human should have. At the end of the day, it's the people that I meet in these situations that keep me coming back to this type of work. If they can get by with virtually nothing, stay positive and manage to keep a smile on their face, then I should never have to right to complain or take anything that I have for granted.

Hanoi and Halong Bay

scottjohnson1 — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:56:00 GMT

Well I haven't been keeping up with this blog of late, so let me fill everyone in on what's happened in the last week or so.

I made it to Halong Bay, most importantly, but plans changed once I got there. A group of about 12 people piled out of our minibus to take the shuttle to our boat - the Halong Phoenix Cruiser. As the little shuttle boat slowly puttered up to it, I was immediately impressed. The rooms on the boat were excellent, the boat itself was great - it had three levels, with a restaurant and bar on the second, an upper level with seating and canopy with another bar, and a sundeck on top with deck chairs for laying in the sun. The first level as well as part of the second were for rooms. We immediately set off and ate lunch while the boat made its way into Halong Bay.

The reason I say that plans changed is because once I got there, and realized how stunningly beautiful the landscape and atmosphere was there, I decided to pay for a second night on the boat. I got to do a bit of kayaking and cave exploring on the first day, then had a great dinner that evening. The sunset in the bay was indescribable, and hopefully some of my pictures on facebook give you an idea of what it looked like. Jumping off the boat into the bay after the sunset was great fun, though they wouldn't let me jump from the third deck =( The second day was filled with kayaking, this time with only 4 people - those of us that were doing the 2 night stay - and involved paddling through a floating village, through several caves and out into gorgeous inlets and hidden lakes. I'm probably going to run out of adjectives by the end of this post, so please bear with me. I also saw a pearl farm that day, and had bbq lunch on a small boat.

We were given some bad news on our way back to the boat from our full day trip on the second day. Apparently, there was an engine problem on the main boat, and we had to be transferred onto the Phoenix 2 - a smaller boat - I wasn't even aware that they had more than one boat, but the second one was definitely a downgrade. They gave us a free bottle of wine to share between the four of us, which I guess was a decent gesture, but we were still kind of bitter. So myself and an Australian guy I met ignored the boat crew's warnings not to buy things from the rowboat merchants that came around from the floating villages, and we bought a nice bottle of whiskey. They later charged us a service fee anyway, so I guess our attempts to hide it were in vain. We got drunk on the boat and he practiced how to say "I love you" in Vietnamese to the girls in the rowboats. The last day was spent hiking up one of the islands to a viewpoint at the top. 500 steps in the heat definitely made me break a sweat. We had a cooking demonstration of how to make spring rolls as we headed back to the mainland.

The interesting part of this trip was the reason for why we were downgraded to a different boat that second night. So I got back to Hanoi, and found out from my friend Rebecca (who didn't extend her stay like I did) that the ship had quite an issue while I was out on my day trip. It's funny that one person said there was engine trouble the day before, then another just said "management". The engine actually did have a problem - it caught fire. So everyone was on the boat, having lunch, when it started to fill with black smoke. The staff started panicking and running to the back of the boat, which, of course, set off all the tourists. They were rushed onto a smaller boat, and thus marked the end of their trip. They were already heading back to the harbour anyway, but I'm sure it ruined everyone's day. One poor couple was on their honeymoon. Everyone got a free drink at the restaurant on the mainland for the whole ordeal. Whoopdie doo. After doing a bit of research, I discovered that there was a serious accident in Halong Bay in February of this year. About a dozen tourists died because the boat just sank that quickly. Guess which company owned that boat? HALONG PHOENIX! So yeah, upon filling out the customer feedback form after the trip, I happily (or angrily?) ticked off "Would not recommend to a friend"

After one more evening in Hanoi, I woke up at 4:30am to head to the airport to catch a flight south, into Ho Chi Minh. I got on a bus shortly after the flight landed, and started heading west to Cambodia.

Photos: Vietnam 2011

scottjohnson1 — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:55:00 GMT

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

scottjohnson1 — Thu, 12 May 2011 09:29:00 GMT

So I think I've finally adjusted to the 11 hour time difference, and I must have done it in a way that turned me into a morning person at the same time. I wake up between 5-6am every morning now, but that's probably also because the sun rises at 5am here.

The first full day in Ho Chi Minh was spent eating, sleeping and adjusting to the time difference - with a brief walk in the city. The second day was a lot more adventurous. I went to see a beautiful Buddhist temple called the Jade Emperor Pagoda. I then took a taxi to My Tho for a Mekong Delta tour. I had no idea the drive would take over an hour, so I ended up getting slightly ripped off. I got on a boat which took me to three islands on this wide river. I saw a bee farm, some shops with crafts made entirely from coconuts, and visited a coconut candy factory (it was kind of like coconut fudge). I also took a canoe ride down a small channel here. The end of the trip was marked with a wonderful seafood lunch, Rebecca and I holding a giant python, me drinking rice wine with a dead cobra in it...oh and how could I forget - me eating fried cobra (which they killed on my table) and proceeding to take a shot of its blood with gall bladder and beating heart in the same glass. The tour guide was hilarious; he said "It make you feel warm in chest now, but later it make your banana feel warm"

These days have been so packed with tours that I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things. The next day, we had a city tour booked and saw a war museum, a traditional lacquer workshop where they make stunning art works and furniture, and a 200 year old Bhuddist Temple dedicated to the lady in the sky (I forgot the Vietnamese name). We also stopped at a huge Chinese market but I was so overwhelmed with goods and random stuff that I didn't buy anything. A lot of the stuff was imported from Western countries anyway. Had lunch at the famous pho 2000 restaurant; made famous because Bill Clinton and his daughter ate there in 2000. We even ate at the same table. Besides his average order of food, he had coca cola - very daring.

Caught a train the same night headed for Nha Trang. Stayed in a hostel called Backpacker's Hostel. It was a great bargain for 12 USD considering the room had its own bathroom, A/C and two balconies. I spent some time on the famous beach, and then booked yet another tour. This one was another full day ordeal, but this time the transportation was the back of a motorbike, which was exciting until maybe the 3rd hour on it when my tailbone started to feel like it had been whacked with a sledgehammer. We first stopped at Monkey Island, which is known for the 200-300 monkeys residing on it - they looked like macaques to me. There was a show, if you can call it that, when we got there, but I had no interest in seeing trained monkeys do eerily human tricks. With the music on top of that, it was like a psychotic circus. I'm sure they weren't treated very well either. Instead, I walked to another part of the island where the monkeys were in their natural habitat and got to feed a couple of them. It was ridiculously hot on this island! Had lunch further down the road at a well known seafood restaurant. My meal was a little more tame this time around with fried snapper, rice, handrolls and soup. I went to Bo Ha waterfall immediately after to cool down. I did not want to leave this place, it was so refreshing! I did a bit of cliff jumping, and managed to work up the courage to jump from the highest spot - about 40 feet or 14 metres. The last stop on this trip was another beach further down the highway with whiter sand and shallower (is that a word?) water. The bike ride back was about an hour and a half and really tested my lower body, but the trip was soooo worth it. Yes. four o's for emphasis.

Took a plane from Nha Trang to Hanoi early the next morning and slept entirely too much once I checked into a hotel here. As I'm typing this, my stomach is growling and I fear it will get its revenge if I don't get breakfast soon. A car will be arriving very soon to take me to Halong Bay - a famous UNESCO site which I've been wanting to see for so long. I will be spending 2 days and 1 night on a traditional Vietnamese junk boat and I am confident it will be awesome.

OK, time for food. More updates, and pictures to follow as soon as I get organized.

Jetlagged

scottjohnson1 — Sat, 7 May 2011 15:30:00 GMT

So with about 20 hours of flying plus a 5 hour layover in Seoul's airport, I am exhausted! The trip over was fairly uneventful, which I suppose is a good thing. I was amazed at the amount of high end clothing/apparel stores in Seoul's airport. All I wanted was food, and it took 15 minutes to find a food court tucked away upstairs on another level.

I slept uncomfortably on a bench in the terminal gate while waiting for the final flight to Vietnam, but at least it was better than trying to sleep on the plane. The flight from Toronto to Korea could have been better, as I had an overweight dude sitting in the middle seat who would constantly invade my leg space, then fall asleep facing me and either snore or breathe down my neck. The guy even burped in his sleep a couple times! 13 hours of that was not what I would call the ideal flight.

Rebecca and I were thrilled to finally arrive in Vietnam, and the taxi ride to our hotel really reminded me of my time in Mombasa and Nairobi what with the suffocating humidity, the blaring taxi horns, colourful boulevards and the hectic roundabouts - oh, and who could forget the smell of diesel fumes, food and spices emanating from this dense city. The first couple nights are to be spent in a rather upscale hotel - Oscar Saigon Hotel - with an air conditioned room and very friendly staff. Yeah, we're reaaallly doing a lot to adjust to the weather and our impending placement with a local family in Cambodia aren't we? This room even has wireless internet! Well I think a few days of luxury are well deserved, and I plan on taking full advantage! Time to go explore this beautiful city...