Our trip out here started with a very bumpy and swervey bus from Dalat to Lak Lak. During the ride, a fair amount of our bus companions got sick, but were provided with ample amounts of plastic bags from the bus driver. These bags were then tossed out the window without a second thought. Actually pretty much like all other trashes. Needless to say, it was a very interesting trip for Cédric and me.
After being dropped off in Lak Lak, we spent the next few hours wandering around the town trying to find the village that the guidebooks mention for staying overnight. We had good fortune and were flagged down in the middle of the street by a girl who’s family runs a longhouse hotel in the village. Jun village was very quaint, just on the outskirts of the town, and provided some wonderful views of the lake and mountains.
The next day, Cédric and I caught a bus to Buon Ma Thuot, to explore the coffee city of Vietnam. Coffee plantations encircle the city (basically, they dominate the highlands of the province) and there seems to be a coffee shop about two doors away from the next one. We first visited a village-turned-resort/restaurant, Ako Dhong, and wandered through some traditional wooden longhouse buildings (although they were too shiny to be authentic). Afterwards, we scootered over to the Dray Nur waterfalls outside of town. Our day was rounded out by buying about 3kg (6lbs) of coffee beans. (When in Rome).
Today, we found our guidebooks to again be useless in getting out to Yok Don National Park and trusted travelers’ forums on the internet to guide our way. As mentioned, we stood outside of the co-op supermarket and waited for the pink and green bus to take us to Buon Don- however, the bus driver forgot that the two foreigners on the bus wanted to get off at the only major attraction along the route. So we ended up backtracking 5km. After we got to the park, we dropped off our bags, had the most expensive and biggest lunch on our trip so far (food, lodging, and tours are not the cheapest here), and went off to trek through the National forest. Yok Don is part of the only forest in the world that loses its leaves in the dry season (now) and is very rich in biodiversity. We took a two hour hike with a guide during hottest part of the day with relatively no shade (all the leaves were gone). However, we ended at an exceptional waterfall and proceeded to spend the next hour cooling off in the pools.
Next stop on our list is Ho Chi Minh City before we fly out in a few days.
– landing in Beijing: If you wonder why the plane is preparing to land…but you have no idea neither where it is going to be nor what could possibly be your altitude, it just means you are a surfing a gigantic pollution cloud. Until the last minute we were not able to see the ground, although in perfect weather conditions. It feels really weird to have a 20m inhabitants city completely invisible due to the smog.
– buses in Cambodia: Having experienced many bus networks around the world, the one in Cambodia is likely to be one of the less efficient one (apart from western countries were buses are usually suspicious…). All buses in Cambodia seem to make only one route per day with a departure at 930. And apparently always take around 6h (+-1h). To ease things there are no central bus station but small “shops” around towns for each company. Some small lines thus use their shop only once in the day. Connections seem to imply waiting for next day’s bus. 930 + 6h usually implies that you are spending your day in the bus. The solution: Talk to as many people as possible, believe few of them and you may get an access for a bargained taxi or a minivan. Commissions not helping, most of hotels and English speaking people will direct you to the snail-buses.
– Phnom Penh: Considering the GDP per capita, a surprisingly clean and pleasant city, with well maintained monuments, parks, not too noisy, few trashes around or weird smells, some varied restaurants, it feels safe (okay it’s probably not Singapore but tourists with their backpacks in front and focusing on running to wherever following the guidebooks are very amusing – and seem like perfect scamming targets)
– Phnom Penh (the back window): We had booked a really great hotel in the touristic center. Street 130, near the riverfront – also age difference inappropriate dating neighborhood because prostitution is forbidden. During the day lots of restaurants and nice shops. However starting at 6pm some other shops start to open: Small entrance bars. While Cassie was in bed remembering her last week(s) meals, I spent an hour observing the rodeo from the terrace of a restaurant: Apparently Phnom Penh is also the Mecca of weird old (and/or creepy looking) guys from western countries. The kind of person that would look perfect in serial killer c-movies. Apparently the game is to find a very young Asian girl in the evening – the rate first depends on the price of drinks – and then keep her acting as your (granddaughter’s friend) girlfriend for up to several day if you also go shopping with her during the day. Very weird, creepy, and definitely not the best image of westerners… For the girls, the alternative is often a t-shirt factory for 2$/day. Apparently Cambodia is also the refuge of many pedophilias networks and other mafias related. In the ugly part of Cambodia, I could also enumerate the capital becoming a central drug trade center in Asia and an important use of child labor.
– Vietnam: So far very lively, very friendly people, approaching us to simply help when their neighbors seem to have a cult for tuktuks referring to the number of occurrences per day. The food (also applies to Cambodia) is also very varied and also far from the clichés in Europe. No, it’s not spicy, it’s full of vegetables, not just fried noodles, it’s cheap and many possibilities (never had the same dish twice so far) and “relatively” (Cassie will disagree after the last days) clean.
– crossing the borders: Entering china -> should be easy for one day (special conditions) but it looks like the custom officers are not all aware of visa rules.
Entering Cambodia, very simple and straightforward with a small fair fee.
Entering Vietnam: First you need some sort of recommendation letter from a company “governmentish” doing nothing but cashing cash, and then a second expensive 50$ real visa at the first entry, for at the airport. Total an expensive stamp. However crossing from Cambodia with a bus is literally a joke. It seems like waiting long enough makes you cross the border. We went through without handling the passports a single time, a smile at the infrared camera and an xray of whatever you present to whoever is present gives you entry to Vietnam. Literally nobody verified if the number of people in the bus was correct, if the passports were available, etc. Next time I’ll try with a Disneyland passport…
– wifi and cellphone: Even in the most remote place so far, a sandwich street food stand kilometers from a town…you may have a free wifi hotspot and no issue whatsoever to get a 4g signal. Germany, wake up: I’m fed up to lose signal in downtown Augsburg !!!
– saying words in Cambodian: We tried, we failed
– in Vietnamese: We tried and people are amused…second check with hands though (or English)
– gesture “come”: It seems like asking someone to get closer is like a sign “Go away” or “I’m not interested”. That brings situations were Cassie goes away instead of coming on a boat and the people making even more signs more expressively, and Cassie even more confused
– silk: I so didn’t get a fake silk mao shirt that so didn’t break after 5 days.
Probably more random stuff some other day!
]]>We left Phnom Penh in a nondescript bus from the outskirts of the city early Tuesday morning and made our way to the Vietnamese border (which was a nondescript check point where it seemed that if you stood outside the bus in the heat long enough, you were allowed to cross the border). As we drove closer to the border, the dry Cambodian landscape turned into flooded rice fields, spotted with small mountains- very different from what we had seen for the last week.
Around noon, we arrived in Chau Doc and dropped our bags off quickly at the hotel so we could spend the rest of our day motorbiking around. Our first stop was Tra Su, a small wetland reserve 30 km away that also served as a type of bird sanctuary. We rented a boat with a young Vietnamese couple and spent a few hours floating among the mangrove forests, watching the numerous bird species. Afterwards, we scootered back to the city, with a small detour at Sam Mountain (a small, sacred (but also developed) mountain that is spotted with Buddhist temples and shrines).
Our next day followed a similar rhythm: bus to Can Tho, renting a moto to take to Vinh Long, taking a boat ride there, then motorbiking back. Yesterday was also the first day that we experienced driving on the chaotic, yet self-organizing, madness that is the Vietnamese ‘highway.’ Vietnam is significantly more developed than Cambodia and thus comes with more people who own their own vehicles (albeit mostly motorbikes) and road lanes. Here, it seems as though everyone has a right to use the highway, from fruit sellers to school children riding bikes to old men in wheelchairs moving against traffic to buses on a tight time schedule. As long as you drive slow enough and keep a vigilant eye, there will be no major issues. That being said, I made it clear that our motorbiking will be kept to smaller, more rural roads next time.
This morning, Cédric and I left our hotel before dawn to catch a glimpse of the floating markets near Can Tho. We spent about six hours on the river and saw the fruit and vegetable vendors selling their wares at Cai Rang and Phong Dien market, along with other parts of river life, like the fishermen and small freighters moving up and down the Mekong. The rest of our day was spent drinking iced coffee and wandering around the city. For lunch, we tried Banh Xeo, a local dish comprised of am meat and mung bean filled omelet, which is eaten with herbs, lettuce, and rice paper.
Tonight, Cédric and I are taking a night bus to Da Lat, the so-called City of Eternal Spring due to its cooler temperatures, and hope to spend a few days hiking and biking around the mountains there.
Next day, direction Kratie in northern Cambodia with the surprise to get a 5h30 bus ride although the ticket purchased was expressly asked for a fast van…the town is only 120km north from Kampong Cham. This time the bus luckily doesn’t break down (50% rate so far) but the ride is so slow that it makes me nuts (especially knowing that the express takes 2h). We arrived in the afternoon and headed to our home stay accommodation on the island of koh trung. A different planet, quiet and clean, rural farmland and pagodas surrounded by the mekong. Some kind of remote postcard community. And we will spend two days here enjoying a great host, traditional home and our best meals so far.Saturday is to explore the region of Kratie by scooter. A road follows the Mekong all the way to Laos, and the first part is going through some traditional agricultural country, rapids on the river, (rare endangered) river dolphins, more temples…and tasty street food (I’ll come back to that). We are really far from Germany in here!
We’re now writing from Phnom Penh were we have spent the last two days after an early departure and for the first time having managed to get a reliable fast and almost comfortable (18 people in a four row minivan) ride. Phnom Penh is a booming city, but still comparatively small and “walkable” (important criterion for me to decide if I like a city). Unfortunately Cassie’s digestive system has not quite enjoyed yesterday’s street food from kratie – even kept over 40c by the sun for likely a few days – and Phnom Penh has mostly been from the hotel for her. Luckily we had decided to go “crazy” and almost double our night budget, cheap city hotels usually been also neither the safest nor the most shining. Cassie thus now knows all BBC news from around the world, and between supplying her medicine, food and forcing her to drink, I have rambled around the royal family palaces, the numerous pagodas and markets.
This morning we’ve made an attempt to both go around, and see some Khmer rouges terror sites, some very deranging visits of this recent troubled past. While Cassie had to come back to the hotel to finish recovering, I went for another walk around the center and in the national museum (lots of Buddhism or Hinduism or in between or something else statues!).
We are now getting ready to leave early tomorrow morning back to Vietnam in the Mekong delta for a few days- first stop, Chau Doc!
Cheers, Cedric and Cassie
Yesterday, we continued our bike tour around the temples of Angkor Wat and saw several more sights. Being on bike, we were able to make a few small detours to wander around lesser known ruins. The areas of Preah Neak Poan and Preah Khan were stunning, especially because you needed to make a grand entrance over rivers and moats. At the last temple, Phnom Bakheng, we made the exhaustive climb in over 99°F / 37°C heat to catch a glimpse of the Angkor Wat temple from a far.
The rest of our day was spent recovering from the biking and shopping around Siem Reap. (I found prescription glasses for a fraction of the price in Germany)
Today, we spent the better part of the day sitting in a bus, wondering whether we were actually going to Kampong Cham. This route isn’t frequently traveled by tourists coming from Siem Reap, so it was difficult trying to confirm that we were headed towards the correct city and needed to change bus lines at a certain stop. The bus blowing a tire also didn’t help.
But we made it to Kampong Cham and Cédric and I rewarded ourselves to some tasty street food. Afterwards, we walked across an epically large (1km) and questionably stable (it held up an SUV) bamboo bridge to see the island of Koh Paen and swim in the Mekong River. Apparently this bridge is rebuilt each year after the rainy season floodings, but a concrete bridge is built down river.
We’ve decided to extend our stay by a day here in Kampong Cham, mainly to visit a few surrounding temples and villages. Afterwards, we’re going to move up the Mekong to the city of Kratie.
