Southern Laos, Cambodia and back to Thailand

Losing the will for long travel days we've spent the past two weeks with a slower pace through southern Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and much of that time on islands and beaches. 


Our first stop was Don Det river island in Southern Laos on the Mekong

Mmm noodle soup... delicious and cheap

17 is not the most people we've packed into a mini-van on this trip (in Tanzania we had a matatu ride with 23 other lucky people) but with baggage it was pretty tight crossing into Cambodia.

Kratie, Cambodia

endangered Irrawaddy river dolphins in the Mekong River

The geckos here are really cool looking and huge at about a foot long.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city


After reading some Cambodian history to prepare ourselves we visited the Tuol Sleng Museum- a former high school that was turned into a security prison and torture facility during the mid to late 70s under the Khmer Rouge communist regime.  After a chaotic WWII and bombings during the Vietnam war, the Khmer Rouge era claimed approx 2 million lives. 20,000 people were held at Tuol Sleng prior to being executed...

... needless to say the Cambodian people have dealt with a tremendous amount of war, violence and loss in relatively recent history.  The museum is a difficult place to visit as it holds back very little, if any, of the details of what went on here.  We are amazed at the strength of the Cambodian people and are thankful for their kindness to us during our visit.  

Royal Palace

National Museum

Moving out of the city we stopped for two nights on the coast in Sihanoukville and then moved to more remote beaches Koh Thmei island

After short stays in Chi Phat village and Koh Kong on our way to the Thai border, we're now on Koh Chang island in southeast Thailand... We plan to enjoy the island for a week before heading back to Bangkok.

 

Laos

From Thailand, we crossed the border into Laos at Huay Xai and headed north to Luang Namtha for a 3 day 2 night jungle trek.  Laos is amazingly organized for being one of the 20 poorest countires and they have "eco-tourism" options to minimize the impact of tourism and distribute some of the money to local villages. we are really impressed with Laos so far... it's peaceful, clean, affordable, and the people are easy going and helpful.  

Luang Namtha

Our trekking group included two other tourists, one guide, and one local villager.  The villagers take turns helping these tourists groups and no more than 3 groups are brought to any one village per week to limit their dependence on tourism.  

The old man needs a walking stick these days, but the knee held up fine 

Food in the jungle was delicious and included local beans/peas, eggplant, pumpkin, chicken, fish, frog and of course lots of 'sticky rice'.  The villager's knowledge of what is edible in the jungle is amazing and we got to try several edible jungle plants and hear about all sorts of local remedies. 

1st night hut camp, one should not assume the word 'hut' means it has walls :), but sleeping bags and mosquito nets worked just fine.  

2nd night in a local village where we enjoyed the river, camp fire, and rice whiskey.  The villagers also caught fresh fish for us, slaughtered one chicken, and fed us a special dish of frog and rice for breakfast :)

Our guide walked us around the village explaining local customs, politics, flora/fauna, etc.

After a good sleep, we caught a bus south to Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang

Nam Ou River

Night market

Night food stalls where half the town grabs dinner and a big beer for about $2

Kuang Si Falls 

Easy to kill a day at Kuang Si with rope swing, hikes and a little Asian bear reserve

Luang Prabang has a very friendly vibe among travelers, we went out with a few others to a new bar/restaurant on the Mekong River called Utopia.

Vang Vieng

After being given the run around by a couple villagers who charged us $3 to see a different cave/lagoon combo consisting of a farm pond and small tunnel, we found Phu Kham cave with blue lagoon at the bottom that looks more like what our guide book described :)

Bronze reclining Buddha inside the giant cave

Before leaving Vang Vieng we earned our stripes on the famous tubing party river. We didn't trust our camera to make it through the experience so no pictures, but we did leave with a few bruises from the giant slide and rope swing.

Next stop, southern Laos and then Cambodia!