I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now.

Mangos: For eating...not for rubbing on the skin !!! (Saigon)

Made it to Vietnam... Arrived unexpectedly late and wound up walking for a while and meeting Dylan and his wonderful girlfriend Grace for dinner in District 1. It was a very strange feeling to be walking through such a chaotic and foreign place, and then to see a familiar person standing there in the scene! Saigon seems unique against some of the other Asian cities I have been to...not sure exactly why yet, maybe the pictures will show it...give me a couple more days. I have been borrowing an extra motorbike from Dylan and riding around the city with him. INSANITY...no road rules, hundreds of thousands of people on motorbikes, on foot, in buses beeping and merging through each other at intersections in a way that makes you want to live for today...there will be photos and possible some video! One of the first things we did was go and visit some local fruit markets...being in a tropical rainforest this place has cheap access to loads of amazing fruit....more than half of which I have never laid buds on before...very exciting. I discovered the best fruit ever...not a great fruit or an amazing fruit mind you, but the best fruit. Now, you might say to yourself, "well that's a bit subjective"...but you would be wrong. It's called a mangosteen, and it's right up there at the top of the page, and it's the best fruit ever...passion fruit is pretty tasty too.

Dylan then discovered that he has a pretty serious allergy to Mango sap...this photo is actually from the early stages...those blisters continued to grow over the next day or so and are now about three times as big with several new arrivals as well. At first he thought it was the very serious flesh eating bacterial skin condition "necrotizing fasciitis" which wouldn't be out of the question here in the jungle...but after I got a touch of it as well we put our heads together and narrowed it down to mango sap from the fruit market...apparently it can have effects similar to poison ivy, and in some people (like Dylan) cause severe skin reactions! He seems to be recovering somewhat, but it is still pretty gross. Getting used to the currency  here takes a little time...I have gotten used to doing the conversions in my head, but this is the first time I have had to deal with being a millionaire...in Dongs anyway. The other night we went out and got about half a millions' worth of sushi...I was responsible for about 300,000.00 worth of the damage personally...


I am looking forward to getting to try all of the things that you can sometimes miss when you are just traveling and passing through a place. Dylan has been here for over a year, and that is a pretty cool perspective. I am also keeping my fingers crossed that my blisters don't grow to the size of his, and that I didn't scratch my backside during the critical spreading time window!

Cambodia

I don't think I can say that I "saw" Cambodia...I really just passed through. I was ready to be in one place for a while and keen to make it to Vietnam. Also, it wasn't originally on the plan, so I didn't  have any idea where I wanted to go or what I wanted to see. But, I am really glad that I did pass through because it is an interesting and unique place...with a very rich history. I arrived in Siem Reap from Laos and did the Angkor Wat temple complex and Tong Sap Lake. Siem Reap is surrounded by hundreds of temples built around 1100. They are magnificent accomplishments, especially for the time period, and are definitely landing a spot in my top cultural attractions of the trip...they are an awesome sight. Tong Sap Lake is mostly the result of a weird phenomenon caused by the rainy season making a portion of the Mekong river backfill the valley creating an enormous lake (12,00 km2) for part of the year. I took a boat trip to see one of the famous "floating villages" , which turned out to be another great experience. Although popular with tourists, it appealed to me because tourism was not the sole reason for it's existence...you could tell it was life as usual as we slowly made our way up main "street". The village stands pretty far out out in the lake, above the water level, and is full of people getting on with everyday life...but in an unusual way. It made me wonder if Venice might have looked like this at it's beginning. Probably the most notable departure from normal village life were the pig pens built outside the houses on stilts above the water...I guess they can tire of even the freshest fish after a while!

Leaving on the bus for Phnom Phenh, I was on the last leg of my brief shared journey with my new Australian friends...another couple of great people I have gotten to know along the way. I said goodbye to them at the station, got a room, but quickly decided it was time I made it to Vietnam. The following morning I set off for Ho Chi Minh city. It was a beautiful bus ride, taking about 6 hours. Sitting on the bus, I had the sudden realization that my adventure was coming to a close (well, this one anyway). It's funny because this was the expected finish line from the start, but as I got further and further along I think I forgot that it was all to be done in a year, and that there was an end to it. I now have some decisions to make about what to do next, and all I know is whichever I choose has to include making some money, which has a terrible habit of running out!

Bye Laos!

Well, the "Kayaking" to Vientiane turned out to be kind of a scam...but it all worked out. It was supposed to be an alternative to taking the bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiane...but...they undersold the ratio of time spent riding in the back of a truck to the time spent actually kayaking. Wound up spending about 4 of the 5 hours in a truck breathing in some wonderful exhaust, and the other hour in the kayak. The only part that really bothered me about this was being explicitly lied to...having traveled for a while now, I have gotten in the habit of asking lots of very specific questions before buying something like this...but that didn't help here, they just told me whatever I wanted to hear. The name of the company is TCK Amazing Tour (should be TCK Crappy Tour). I say this only so that in about 30 years when the google search engine spiders find this page, that maybe it will save someone the same experience. The upside and more interesting part of the story is that the hour spent on the Kayak was one of the more exhilarating I have had on the trip! The river section we did had three sets of rapids and one was guaranteed to make you flip...in actuality, two of them made me flip, but they were all great! I will definitely be looking into where I can do this at home! Arriving in Vientiane, meh, not much to speak of actually. It is the capital of Laos and I saw some interesting temples and such, but all in all, I have seen plenty of places with more character. Upon review of the bus timetables to continue south through the mountainous territory of central Laos on the nonexistent roads, I gave in and did something unspeakable...I changed my plans and flew directly to Cambodia...just don't think I could bear the idea of another 18 hour bus ride at this point in the trip!

Laos

The last few days: Passed through immigration and crossed the border into Laos with surprisingly little hassle...just pay Laos immigration $35 US and you're as good as gold. For being a border town, Huay Xai struck me as a pretty nice place, and I immediately noticed that everything was a little more chilled out than on the Thai side. There were still people trying to get you into their restaurants or offering you a ride, but here you get the impression that they are just offering...which is a breath of fresh air. The following morning I boarded the "Slow Boat" (they weren't lyin') for Pak Beng, stayed a night, and continued on the even slower slow boat trip to Luang Prabang. The boat experience was interesting...really long, narrow river boats with rows and rows of car seats bolted to the floor. The scenery along the way was awesome for the first couple of hours. Ultimately it was a good choice because they kept cold beer on board and it was just as long as the bus would have been...and the bus doesn't have cold beer! The long trip gave me a chance to get to know a couple of pretty cool people, and two Australians (one actual Australian, one pseudo Australian)...we all whiled away the long hours with card games and cold Beer Lao. Beer Lao, by the way, is a very respectable beer, especially compared to what I have been drinking in Thailand, and is Laos' #1 export. Coming in at $1 for a 32 ounc-er, it's a smart choice!

Arriving finally in Luang Prabang after two days on the river, I was happy to find it to be a pretty unique place. Left over from the French Colonial period, it seems a bit out of place in the middle of the jungle. It has been pretty well preserved through the world heritage program, and the streets are lined with period buildings and houses. Alongside the Lao food fare, there are vendors selling crepes and fresh baguettes...a strange mix, and not really good to be eaten together. After 2 days of looking around, I decided to keep going. It was a good base to do trekking to waterfalls and such, but given the amount of jungle I have seen, I am not too keen to be paying anyone to walk me around in it at this point. Also I am now in the double red malaria zone, so I am playing it a little extra careful!

After the bumpiest, most scenic, most nerve racking, craziest 7 hours of my life bus ride I have ever been on, I arrived in what I was fairly warned would be the armpit of Laos, and boy were they right. This place is a stinking, rotten cesspool that is tourism at it's worst. There is not a shred of culture left here...it has become a stop off on the way to the capital city where all of the sort of backpackers I have been avoiding have descended in droves to indulge in buckets of alcohol, cheap food, and American sitcoms. If I here the into song to "Friends" one more time I might cry. Needless to say, I am only staying one night. If the weather holds, I think I am going to skip the bus ride to Vientiane and Kayak there instead! I am pretty excited about this...so I hope it works out. That should be my last stop in Laos, and then I'll be headed to Vietnam...