South-East Asia in a Nutshell

On the 18^th of September we met the end of the S.E. Asia segment of our trip which included Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to get to Laos but hope to on a future trip.

We had an awesome experience while in S.E. Asia, we did all that we set out to do (and them some), stayed healthy and been blessed with great weather, except Koh Chang where it rained for days and days. We’ve written about the highlights in other posts so this is just about logistics and a little info on the next segment of our journey.

Nuts and Bolts of this Segment
Lodging - In total we spent 44 nights in S.E. Asia; 23 in Thailand, 14 in Vietnam and 7 in Cambodia. Of these nights nine of them were spent in five star hotels and the rest predominantly in three star hotels. Our average cost per-night for a hotel room was just under $50 USD which matches our original budget. Most rooms were booked online using services like Hotels.com or Agoda.com. We could have easily stayed in much-much cheaper hotels through-out but our goal was to stay in the best hotels we could get for our money, and I believe we succeeded in that.

Transportation – We used Vietnam Airlines to get us from place to place in Vietnam at a very cheap price. Booking directly on VietnamAirlines.com saved us quite a bit of money, in the end our average plane ticket in Vietnam cost $35 USD. In Thailand we used Thai Airways and buses to get around. Thai Airways is definitely more expensive that Vietnam Airlines but their Intra S.E. Asia flight awards are very cheap. For example, we only used 10,000 miles each to fly between Chiang Mai and Hanoi, a flight that would have cost us a few hundred dollars. Getting into and out of Cambodia was done by bus and was a terrible experience. If we ever come back to Cambodia we will definitely be flying.

Budget – We’re right on track with our $50 USD average daily budget for this portion of the trip, in fact we’re a couple dollars under budget. If this was a shorter trip we could have easily purchased 10x the amount we did.

What’s NextWe are now in chaotic Kathmandu, Nepal. We just finished a 12 day tour consisting of trekking, a jungle safari and rafting. This was our first group tour of the trip and we think it really well not to mention all the new friends we’ve met. We have quite a few things to write from our experience here in Nepal so please stay tuned. From here we fly to the Maldives via Sri Lanka for what we hope is the most beautiful and romantic stop of our year long honeymoon. We have seven nights enjoying island life in the Maldives before we’re off to a Tiger Safari in India.

Thanks so much to everyone reading this blog. We hope you find the posts interesting and always welcome any ideas or comments you have.

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

Hangin Out in Thailand

Cambodia Landmine Museum

Prior to arriving in Cambodia we had heard a little about a landmine and unexploded ordinance (UXO) problem in the country. It wasn’t until after we travelled to Cambodia and visited the Cambodia Landmine Museum that we realized the scope of this major issue which affects many-many people throughout the country and surrounding regions. Cambodia has more amputees per capita than any other country in the world.

Just a small number of cleared mines and other devices

Our first visible clues to the scope of this problem occurred driving around the outskirts of Siem Reap and visiting the Temples of Angkor. We saw signs indicating fields had been deemed safe and cleared of mines. We’d also been instructed not go to off any footpaths in outlying areas or places where there were no signs. Walking to and from the temples we were warmly greeted by bands of musicians who also happened to be mine victims, many visibly disabled, maimed or disfigured in some way. Instead of begging for money these groups have gotten together to sell CDs of their music and accept donations for playing live.

A group of mine victims performing outside a temple.

Aki Ra, a former child soldier of the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese Army, founded the landmine museum back in 1997. After the war Aki used his expertise in explosives to dismantle these dangerous devices from surrounding areas. He then used the mines and UXOs he dismantled to fill the museum. Since then Aki has deservedly made quite a name for himself and his museum, he’s been featured on CNN, BBC and many other television and print media.

Just a few of the many dismantled mines and unexploded ordinance at the museum

Walking through the museum you get a sense of the enormity of land mines and UXOs left throughout the area. There are incredible stories of Aki Ra when he was a soldier, many-many dismantled devices divided up by make and model and statistics of current victims. Here is a short story told by Aki Ra displayed in the museum:

“My parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge and I was raised in army camps with other children. I received my first weapon when I was 10 years old. I fought for the Khmer Rouge until I defected to the Vietnamese army. This was in the early 1980s and I was still a child. As I was one of the newer soldiers in my unit I was required to go out at night and hunt for food. We hunted with our regular weapons, AK-47s or M-16s. When I would go into the jungle to hunt sometimes I would run into my friends from the Khmer Rouge, children like myself, whom I had grown up with, who were hunting for food to eat. We would hunt together and when we were through, play together. The next day we would kill each other.”

Stories like the above are scattered about the museum and really opened my eyes to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge and reminded me how lucky I was to have the upbringing I had. Thankfully there are people like Aki Ra out there helping make the current Cambodia a safer place. Many reports say that there are still over 5 million land mines in Cambodia today. One report states there are approximately 100 victims of landmines per month in Cambodia.

Example mine field. This could be anywhere in Cambodia

If you ever come to Siem Reap we would highly recommend you pay a visit to the Landmine Museum. It’s only a few dollars donation entrance fee and well worth the price.

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

Tonlé Sap Lake and Kompong Phhluk Village

About 15km south east of Siem Reap, is South East Asia’s biggest freshwater lake and the largest source of freshwater fish in the world.  For 3 months of the year, July – September, the lake floods from the melting snow of the Himalayas and runoff from the monsoon rains.

During this wet season a unique hydrologic phenomenon in the Mekong River causes the river to reverse direction, filling the lake instead of draining it, expanding the lake to 5x its normal size, filling the surrounding forested floodplain and supporting an extraordinarily rich and diverse eco-system.

There are several villages that are possible to visit in the Siem Reap floodplain area. On the advice of our trusty driver Sam, we visited one of the main ones,  Kompong Phhluk. This village is made up of many small houses built up on thin bamboo stilts 7-9 meters off the ground. During the wet season (now), the houses actually look like they are floating as the water level sits about 1m from the bottom of the houses, but they are actually just built this way to be close to the lake in the dry season and literally become a part of the flooded lake and can only be accessed by boat from June to October.

Passing through the village made on stilts

The village supports about 3000 families, with its own school and monastery. There are even restaurants within the village of stilts. The village is built there to make use of the great freshwater fishing in the area.  Over 75% of Cambodias inland fish come from this lake! So that is the reason these people choose this lifestyle as such.

The stilts are between 6 and 9 meters long.

Everything they do during the wet season is in this water. They use the lake to drink, prepare food, bathe, wash clothes, and even for their toilet. It’s truly an amazing sight to see, and a unique way of life.

Our boat broke halfway through the trip. The driver literally jumped in and started working on it.

We hired a remorque moto ( a little tuk tuk like detachable wagon that hooks onto the back of a motorbike) to get to the little town of Roluos, ($15 USD for the return journey, and Sam our tuk tuk driver came on the boat with us out to the lake) it was then another $20 USD per person for the boat ride 2+ hours. 20-30 minutes up the river to get to the village and edge of the lake. Then we just cruised about through the village, taking in the sights, and meeting some of the people. We stopped off at a little restaurant/house, where some volunteers were teaching the kids of the village how to make bracelets out of string to sell to tourists. This helps give the locals a supplementary income to just the fishing trade.

Some local villagers

From here we got some of the locals to take us on a small little wooden canoe ($5USD for 15 minute ride) through the mangroves. This gave us a much more up close and personal tour of the diverse animal life within the flood plains. We saw a massive tarantula (which is a great source of food for the Khmere people) a very large black toad, millions of spider nests and eggs, butterfly’s, birds, cicadas, millions of fresh water snails, and Dave even thinks he saw a monkey up in the trees. Just a beautiful peaceful escape from the bigger loud boats on the main river. The village people are pretty amazing with their paddling and boat steering skills, and all by using barely more than a rounded stick!

Taking a ride on a canoe through the mangroves

After the canoe trip we finally made it through to the actual lake. It looks so big you could be fooled into believing it was an ocean! We stayed out on the lake to watch the sunset before returning back in the dark with the many bugs. It was a pretty quiet trip home, as you couldn’t talk very well without getting bugs fly into your mouth. The only down fall of having an openair tuk tuk wagon!

Sunset over Tonle Sap Lake

If you come to Siem Reap during the wet season we'd highly recommend you pay a visit to the Kompong Phhluk Village and Tonle Sap Lake. You won't be disappointed.

All of the photos from our day at Tonle Sap can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/TonleSapLakeAndKompongPhhlukVillage?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Cheers for Now - 

Pamela and Dave

The Temples of Angkor

We visited the Temples of Angkor (Angkor Wat as it's commonly referred to) for three consecutive days beginning the 4^th of September, 2011 . I/we could write pages and pages about these temples and the area but for the time being I’ll just summarize our visit and hopefully can go into details about specific experiences later on down the line.

We purchased a three day pass at a cost of $40 USD per pass. Prior to entering any temple or shrine there will be someone checking your ticket. When purchasing a ticket your photo is taken and printed on the pass and the person checking the tickets will verify the ticket is yours.

Getting Around the Temples 

We were extremely lucky to find a wonderful Tuk-Tuk driver named Sam to help us with our visit. Sam designed a three day itinerary for us, drove us everywhere and provided insight to all the temples and surrounding areas including a look at current Cambodian culture. All of this at a very-very reasonable cost to us, and more than worth it as a good driver will dramatically improve your trip to the temples. If you’re coming to Siem Reap, Pamela and I highly recommend contacting Sam who can help you with everything!  You can find Sam on Facebook, email or telephone (+855) 012 27 58 51

Pamela, Sam and I in front of his Tuk-Tuk

Our Favorite Temples
We visited so many temples that there is no way we can write (or you’d want to read) about all of them so we’ll just focus on our favorite three and then about Angkor Wat as it’s the most famous. Click on the bold temple names to see all the pics from that particular temple.

1. The Temple of Bayon
54 gothic towers decorated with 216 large faces and a surrounding 1.2 km BAS-Relief of over 11,000 carved figures  is what makes Bayon our favorite. The temple itself, built by Jayavarman VII, lies at the center of the ancient capital city of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom may have supported a surrounding population of close to one million people and was the center of the ancient  Khmer empire.

Two of the 54 columns of Bayon

A little smooch

2. Ta Prohm
With its jungle atmosphere, Ta Prohm reminded us of a temple right out of an Indiana Jones movie and was supposedly used in one of the Tomb Raider movies. Walking through the temple you quickly learn to appreciate the awe-inspiring power of the jungle and how mother nature can quickly swallow manmade work with gigantic trees, flourishing root systems and erosion.

Hiding out in Ta Prohm

The trees grow right out of the temple at Ta Prohm

3.  Banteay Srei
Last but definitely not least, Banteay Srei is a small temple so intrinsically decorated that it is said the temple must have been built by a woman as no man could build something so beautiful. In fact, Banteay Srei means “Citadel of the Women”, and is considered the finest examples of carvings on earth. We spent quite a bit of time exploring the many-many detailed carvings through-out the small temple. Thankfully Sam took us to the temple at a time when it wasn’t so crowded so we could explore as much as we’d like.

Enjoying the temples

Just one of the many thousands of carvings throughout Banteay Srei

Angkor Wat – The Big One!
Angkor Wat is the most famous and largest of all the temples but it wasn’t one of our favorites. We found it too crowded for our liking and the current restoration project makes the temple not too easy on the eyes.

Angkor Wat is said to be the largest religious structure in the world. To give you an idea of the size, the moat alone is as wide as two football fields, the carved wall surrounding the temple is over two miles long and the top spire is as high as Notre Dame Cathedral. Although the entire temple is immense in size, the actual shrine at the center of Angkor Wat is relatively small being about the size of a small living/lounge room.

In front of Angkor Wat

Looking out over one of the libraries in Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is still a worshipping temple

All the Temples We Visited
Sam designed us a really good three day itinerary for visiting the temples. The amount of temples you can visit really depends on how much time you spend at each temple. The list below are all the temples we visited in order, their names are hyperlinks to the corresponding photo album.

Day 1 – 9:30am to 6:30pm
Angkor Thom - Bayon
Angkor Thom - Baphuon
Angkor Thom - The Royal Enclosure
Ta Prohm
Angkor Wat

Day 2 – 8:00am to 7:00pm
Pre Rup
Kbal Spean
Banteay Srei
Bantey Samre

Day 3- 8:00am to 4:00pm
Preah Kahn
Neak Poan
Ta Som
Eastern Mebon
Banteay Kdei

As you can see the Temples of Angkor are a huge place with much to be seen and way too much to write about. We would highly recommend everyone pay a visit to Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor once in your life. You won't regret it.

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

One Month Down - Lessons Learned and Highlights from Month One

The 5th of September marked the end of our first month on the road! We can't believe how fast the time is going. Sometimes it's hard for us to remember where we were last week or even what we did a couple days ago. For this reason, at the end of every month on the road we want to capture our highlights and lowlights of the previous month and any lessons we have learned that will help us or other travellers like us in the future. So here goes for month number one, hopefully there will be eleven more to come.

Travel Lessons Learned:
1. When arriving into Northern Vietnam airports it's a good idea to have your arrival airport transportation booked ahead of time, preferably with the hotel you're staying at. We found not doing so left us too vulnerable to scams and generally made the arrival process unpleasant.

2. Only book bus tickets from the place you're currently located. We booked a bus ticket while in Hoi An for a Saigon to Siem Reap bus and ended up with a bad experience. We only pre-booked like this because it was a holiday and heard the buses might be full. In the end it didn't matter that it was a holiday and could've booked the day before.

3. Do not swim in Halong Bay where the boats park for the night. It's okay to swim in places where there's not many boats parked. I (DW) was jumping off the top of our Halong Bay boat where we parked for the night and ended up very-very sick, not to mention coated in diesel.

4. Sometimes it's better to pay the extra money and fly than to take overland trips, especially between countries. Yes, this is not really budget travel but I don't think we're budget travellers. We want safety, reliability and comfort and need to keep these things in mind (not just cost) when choosing travel methods.

Highlight of the Past Month and Why:

Dave -The Temples of Angkor 

Angkor is an amazing place and a true wonder of the world. The people of Cambodia are amazing and have done a really good job setting up the area for visitors.

Pamela - I have two. Playing with the Baby Tigers in Chiang Mai, Thailand and The Temples of Angkor
The baby tigers are too cute. The Temples of Angkor are great because you can see so much history preserved so well.

Lowlight of the Past Month and Why:

Dave - Being sick in Halong Bay, Vietnam

I had such a high fever and was generally miserable in a beautiful place.

Pamela - 17 Hour Bus from Saigon, Vietnam to Siem Reap, Cambodia
We got so ripped off and lied to in Vietnam. The bus ride was terrible and the Vietnam exit border was one of the most corrupt and dodgy places I've ever seen in my life. You needed to hand your passport to the officer with money in it if you expected to get an exit stamp. Amazing.

Cu Chi Tunnels – Crawling through IT

Swimming pool sized bomb craters, battered tanks, live assault weapons, crawling through long tunnels and crawling through longer anti-American sentiments. These are all the things you will find at your trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels which sit about 60 kilometers outside of Saigon, Vietnam. The Cu Chi Tunnels are famous  (maybe infamous depending on how you look at it) for being a stronghold of the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War. During the war thousands of North Vietnamese lived underground in a patchwork of tunnels and caves reportedly 250 kilometers in length. These caves stretched from the Saigon area to the border of Cambodia and allowed the North Vietnamese Army to literally pop-up anywhere they pleased and attack American soldiers.

We went on a half-day tour to the Cu Chi Tunnel with TM Brothers Café tour group. The tour left Saigon at about 8:00 and returned at about 2:00 with a cost of $9 USD each including admission to the tunnels. Admission to the tunnels without a tour is 80000 Dong or about $4 USD. Our tour guide for the entire day was okay and spoke semi-decent English although his repertoire of jokes got a little tiresome towards the end of the day.

Arriving at the tunnels you get the opportunity  right-away to drop-down into a very small entry/exit point that is covered by foliage making it invisible if you’re just walking through. Pamela went down and she even had a hard time squeezing through the opening and she’s thin. I wasn’t about to attempt it.

Pamela crawling out of a tunnel

After climbing down the tunnels we walked around and looked at an old blown out-tank and old bomb craters left by bombs dropped from B-52 airplanes. We also got to see through the use of mannequins how the North Vietnamese Army used unexploded or captured ordinance to make their grenades, land mines and rockets.

Crater from a bomb dropped by a B-52 airplane

From here we took a walk to the shooting range where Pamela and I got to shoot an AK-47 assault rifle at an outrageous cost of $17 USD for ten bullets. We don’t regret it though as when are we ever going to get to shoot an assault rifle in Vietnam again.  After all, in South-East Asia, with a little money anything is possible. While we were at the shooting range I heard a story of a tourist in Cambodia getting to shoot a water buffalo with a rocket launcher for a total cost of $200 USD. True or not true I don’t know…

After shooting our $17 bucks into the side of a hill we got to go down into the tunnels and crawl through about 50 meters of tunnel that was used back in the war. Supposedly these tunnels have been widened out a bit for tourists. It was a pretty tight fit for us not to mention very hot. We can’t imagine how 16,000 people lived down in the tunnels for all of those years.

Crawling through the tunnels

The end of the tour consisted of watching a 17 minute video about the Cu Chi area which was produced back in the late 60’s. The video bled with anti-American propaganda and was a bit hard to watch from my (DW) perspective. The video starts off with these words and goes on like this (it gets worse) for about 17 minutes:

"Cu Chi, the land of many gardens, peaceful all year round under shady trees ... Then mercilessly American bombers have ruthlessly decided to kill this gentle piece of countryside ... Like a crazy bunch of devils they fired into women and children ... The Americans wanted to turn Chu Chi into a dead land, but Cu Chi will never die."

In any case, it was a good day out and a very interesting place which we would recommend to anyone. All of our photos from the Cu Chi Tunnels can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/CuChiTunnels?authuser=0&feat=directlink



Cheers for Now –


Pamela and Dave

Hoi An – Sun, Sleep, Shop, Eat, Sun, Sleep, Shop, Eat….

Whether you’re a foodie, shop-a-holic or beach bum; Hoi An is definitely some place that should be on your radar if you’re travelling through Vietnam. If flying is your preferred mode of transportation than you can easily pick-up a flight to Da Nang from Hanoi or Saigon. We paid $35 US per ticket for our Vietnam Airlines flight from Hanoi to Da Nang. You can also just as easily (and cheaper) pick-up a bus or train ticket from any major city in Vietnam to the Da Nang area. From Da Nang it’s about a 35 minute ride to Hoi An. I’d recommend booking airport transportation in advance for convenience purposes and to avoid getting scammed. Once in Hoi An you can get everywhere you need to go by bicycle. Many of the hotels will loan them to you for free or you can rent one for about $1 USD a day.

Sunset over the river in Hoi An, Vietnam

We had just come off a couple weeks inland so we were eager for some beach time. With that in mind we booked in for seven nights at the Hoi An Indochine Hotel. It’s a three star hotel within walking distance to Cua Dai beach, I’d go there again as the rooms were nice and the free shuttle to town was convenient. The downside of this hotel is the mediocre breakfast for western foods and the onsite restaurant was pretty lousy. We tried the onsite restaurant one night and never even thought to go back.

Our days were spent bouncing between the Hoi An Old Town and Cua Dai beach. It was so hot that we spent the middle parts of the day at the beach (lounging under the umbrella) and our evenings or mornings in town dining at any number of great restaurants or shopping at any one of the thousand gift shops and tailors.

We spent our days on Cua Dai Beach.

Hoi An is known for its vast array of affordable and quality tailor shops where you can get clothes made for you for very little cost. Walking through the town you get this right away as there’s a tailor every 50 meters or so, I only wish that we had the money and the baggage space to purchase some new suits and custom clothes. In our case all we could do was look but we do plan on going back when we have a larger budget and more room in our luggage.

So many lamps around Hoi An at night. These ones were for sale.

Staying for seven nights we had the opportunity to try quite a few restaurants for lunch and dinner. Our favorite restaurants were Vinh Hung for the amazing shakes and Hoi An Pancakes, Morning Glory for the awesome Vietnamese cuisine and a beach restaurant that pops-up out of nowhere at night. This particular beach restaurant will setup some plastic chairs and candlelit table for you right in the sand, wherever you want, and then cook your food right there in the sand. It was a great meal for about five us dollars and also very romantic (for the chicks).

Impromptu beach restaurant. All the lights in the background are candles on the beach.

My (DW) favorite part of Hoi An was relaxing on the beach day after day with my beautiful wife. After all, we’re on our honeymoon, we don’t have jobs and most of the time we don’t really have anything we need to do. J My least favorite parts of Hoi An were the stifling heat if you went to town in the middle of the day and the large river rats who closely watched us eat dinner at the Blue Wave restaurant.

Wrapping this up….Come to Hoi An if you like to ride a bike, shop, relax, eat great food and generally just chill out.  If you don’t like any of those things then I can recommend Hanoi J j/k Hanoi is a great place.

All of our photos from Hoi An (minus the rats) can be seen here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/HoiAn?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Cheers for Now –

Pamela and Dave