Sabaidee!

Hello from Thailand!

Mike and I are currently in the northern city of Chiang Mai, getting some things taken care of and preparing for our upcoming journey to Myanmar. Mike is currently motorbiking off in the jungle somewhere but I decided to stay in town for the day and get a better feel for the place (honestly I was a little nervous about driving a motorbike around a relatively large and traffic-filled city) Ok where did I leave off:

Since my friend Andrea hadn't yet been to the museums focusing on the Khmer Rouge period of "Democratic Kampuchia" we decided to visit those places on Sunday. We got a tuk-tuk for the day (a tuk-tuk is kind of like a 3-wheeled open-air taxi) and set off for Tuol Sleng. What used to be the main school in Phnom Penh the Khmer Rouge (communist revolutionaries led by Saloth Sar, aka Pol Pot) turned into the largest prison/torture center in the country. It is now a museum detailing the grusome methods used by the regime and filled with photographs of all of the people once held at the prison. When the Khmer Rouge took control of the country they set about removing urban populations to the countryside and finding and executing intellectuals and anyone who spoke a foreign language or even who wore glasses, as they were not "pure" enough to contibute to the new society. We also went to an area known as the Killing Fields about 20km from central Phnom Penh. We were greeted by a large white stupa comepletely filled with the skulls of those people killed and buried in mass graves at the site, a truly sobering and horrifying experience. Apparently the regime executed up to 300 people per day there, and sometimes had to keep prisoners overnight to execute the next day because there wasn't enough daylight to kill them all. Mass graves fill the area, and one sign even warns visitors "Don't walk through the mass graves!" I think about 2 million of Cambodia's 8 million people were killed or died from problems associated by the regime, a ridiculous proportion of the population. We got some ice cream to cheer us up a bit after the genocide musueums at this random ice cream lounge with a long and wordy poem on the wall devoted to the treat (some British guy claimed the style was called "purple prose", is this a real thing Adhaar?)

The next day we caught the mid-morning bus for Siem Reap, the town that serves as the base for exploring Cambodia's and possibly all of Southeast Asia's most famous monument, the temples of Angkor. A tuk-tuk driver named Bannak took us to our guesthouse and convinced us to take us around the temples the next day (apparently he is both the craziest and fastest tuk-tuk driver in Siem Reap) We woke up pretty early and tuk-tukked out to the temple area. Angkor is indeed a pretty touristy place, but the temples are truly incredible and well worth it to visit. We went counter-clockwise around the complex (opposite the direction most tour groups take) and visited a good number of temples, my favorites being a jungle temple that stretches for a whole kilometer, the Bayon temple covered in faces, and Angkor Wat itself, which is covered in intricate carvings detailing Buddhist and Hindu stories as well as just being a giant religious monument surrounded by a huge moat set in the jungle. We only had one day to explore but one could easily spend a good week looking at each and every temple. At the end of the day we both agreed that Bannak was indeed the fastest tuk-tukker in Siem Reap, though not sure it he was the craziest. We had a beer with him afterward at the guesthouse and discussed Cambodian politics; Bannak didn't have very nice things to say about the current government under Hun Sen)

Mike decided to stay in Bangkok for a few days while I ventured on into Laos (it seems like EVERYONE else in the world calls the country Lao, the Laotians themselves call it the Lao People's Democratic Republic). After an overnight bus to the border and an extra 50 baht charge for "stamping my passport" (meaning a little extra monies for the border guards) I made it to country number six. Some motorcycle drivers outside the border station told me there was no bus to Pakse and wanted to charge me about ten bucks to take me there, but I walked 50 meters ahead and found a bus to Pakse for about a dollar. I was trying to get to an island called Don Khong, one of nearly 4,000 islands in the Mekong River in southern Laos near the Cambodian border. Missing the first and only daily bus, I soon found myself riding on the back of a pick-up truck packed full of Laotians and all of our belongings. It was a little cramped but enjoyable, especially when we stopped in some random town and all of the townspeople ran up to sell us various animal organs roasted on a stick. We took the ferry across to the island, and after checking in to a guesthouse and walking around town for 15 minutes or so I realized there was absolutely nothing to do here but relax. I met a few other travelers and had a BeerLao (really good stuff!) with this German guy named Moritz who apparently travels for three months out of every year. He told me about a morning market that was supposed to be going on from 6-8am every day so I woke up early and ventured out to find it but never did. Everyone in the town I asked said it existed and I also walked to the other side of the island and back (greeted along the way with tons of children yelling "Sabaidee!" or "Falang!" which mean "Hello!" and "Foreigner!" respectively) but otherwise I mainly hung out in the hammock by the river and relaxed. It was a really nice couple of days and talking with the Laotian family that ran my guesthouse was great, but I soon became restless and decided to move on. I took a bus back up to Pakse where there was also nothing to do and then it was off to Vientiane.

I took an overnight bus up to Vientiane (the capital of Laos, population only about 250,000) and met back up with Mike. It was really interesting to be in a national capital with so few people living there, and walking around the charming little place we discerned a good amount of French colonial influence, definitely more so than in Phnom Penh or many places in Vietnam. We visited the national museum and went through a large exposition about the "U.S. imperialists and their puppets" commiting atrocities in Laos and the Pathet Lao communist resistance movement to liberate the country and bring about a socialist utopia (similar to the museum in Saigon, and I'm sure much of it was true though it did conviently leave out any atrocities commited by the communists).

Next we took another overnight bus (my first back-to-back overnight busrides of the trip!) direct to Luang Prabang, a very Buddhist city in the mountainous north of the country filled with wats (temples) and orange-robed monks walking about. It is a really peaceful little town, we visited some wats and took a couple boats across the river. We also met an interesting fellow named Mo from New Orleans, who was convinced the three sources of all wealth in the world are oil, gold, and some other random thing I can't remember. We got a great vegetarian buffet at the night market in town for about 65 cents and bought a couple of T-shirts to support the local economy before calling it a night.

Our next and sadly final stop in very possibly my favorite country on the trip so far was Vang Vieng. We heard about this town and its famed "tubing" from just about every other backpacker we met who had been to Laos so we decided to check it out. Our first day we rented bikes and cycled around the beautiful limestone cliffs and countryside near the town to a gigantic cave about 6 kilometers away. We decided to explore it on our own with Mike's flashlight and soon found it to be the largest cave we have yet visited. It was rather wet and slippery in some places (we found a giant hole that probably went down to the center of the earth with a skull and crossbones warning sign drawn next to it). We decided to disregard the travel doctor's advice and jumped directly into a beautiful turquiose lagoon right outside the cave, complete with rope swing and random Laotians swimming around looking for crabs (or something to that effect) After we decided to drink some of the lao lao (Lao rice whisky) that we bought in Vientiane, which turned out to be very strong.

Now on to the tubing. As one backpacker we met described it, "It's like a cross between a sweet backpacker hangout place and Miami beach during spring break." We soon discovered the truth of his statement as we got out of our tuk-tuk and some frat-like guy started pouring liquor down all of the girls throats. Anyway, tubing essentially involves floating down the Nam Ha river for 4km in an inner tube, stopping at any or all of the countless riverside bars along the way and getting completely wasted and jumping off 30 foot tall rope swings (At one bar we asked if there were any specials and the bartender brought out a menu for mushroom shakes and other assorted "happy drinks"). As Mike and I were a bit tired from the night before and not really feeling the whole party scence, we skipped the first line of bars and went directly to a sweet place I was told about with a giant white-tile slide and really fun ropeswing that was a bit more relaxed. After a couple of (mostly uninjurious and incredibly fun) slides and swings we moved on to a very quiet and relaxed place with a great view of the limestone cliffs, where we met a really nice couple from Switzerland and talked to them for awhile. We finally left the bar as it was getting dark and floated down the incredibly beautiful last 2km of the river as the sun was setting, greeted by children at the end. I definitely understand what our backpacker friend was saying and definitely liked Vang Vieng a lot more than I originally thought I would.

The next day we moved on to Thailand, and after a grueling day and night riding buses made it to Chiang Mai yesterday. Chiang Mai is a little bit like Luang Prabang except it is much larger and thus a little less relaxed. Its a nice enough city though, and I definitely like it better than Bangkok. It is also filed with wats and monks but has the very Thai addition of tons of "lady bars" spread throughout, as Mike and I discovered last night trying to find a real bar. It is also famous for its gigantic night market where you can pretty much buy anything you can imagine.

That's about it for now, I'm not sure what the status of internet access and international communication is in Myanmar, so it could be a little while until our next update. We fly out on Monday and have ten days to explore the country and then fly back to Bangkok (you are unable to enter and leave the country via land, with a couple small exceptions) I hope the new school year has started well for those of you taking classes and the best of luck to everyone else in all of your endeavors. See you next time!