Shell-Shocked: August 2010

I love Laos. Love, love, love it. It is so relaxing and calm here. The people are sweet. The food is spicy and delicious. Even the street vendors who are so aggressive in other countries (madam, come look, come buy. Lady, this is not so much money for you!) are so chill. Someone asks you to buy something, you say no, and they smile at you and walk away.

I flew into Vientiane, the most chill Asian capital city ever. It's a nice place, but not a ton to do or see. I spent day there and then took the bus to Vang Vieng. Originally, I had planned on taking the bus straight to Luang Prabang, but decided to break up the 11 hour bus ride with a day here. Vang Vieng has a reputation as a party town. It's set among limestone karsts and on a beautiful river. The biggest pastime here is to rent an inner tube and float down the river. This has become such a popular thing to do that there are now tons of bars and restaurants on the river. So, people tube for a few minutes, stop and have a beer or a shot, tube for a few more minutes. The result is a lot of hurt people. I ran into so many people that had huge scrapes, sprains, and cuts from tubing a fast moving river, drunk or high. Every menu in town has a "happy" option. Meaning, with methamphetamines included. It truly boggles my mind, who would take drugs in an Asian country....haven't they seen "Locked up Abroad"? One guy I met, got caught with marijuana and had to pay $1000 fine to get out of prison. Anyway - I heard the scenery is amazing, as long as you stay away from the river. So I booked a bungalow about 10 minutes out of town. It was really basic. No a/c, hot water, tv, or internet. It was right on the river and had a great balcony overlooking the river and mountains. It was great for about 5 hours. Then I finished my book, updated my journal, and had enough self reflection. I wanted to rent a scooter and head out to explore some Buddha caves. But, it started raining. And I decided that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. If you get hurt here, you're only option for good treatment is to fly to Bangkok. Night fell, the jungle moved in to my bungalow. All sorts of weird insects I've never seen. At one point during the night, I heard this weird screeching noise, and then a thump as something landed on my balcony. I didn't sleep so well that night. The next morning, I made a snap decision to get the heck out of town. I took a taxi to the bus station, and caught a bus right as it was leaving the station. The drive to Luang Prabang is one of the most beautiful in Laos. It winds up through the mountains and jungles and rural villages. I was looking forward to all 7 hours of it. And lucky me, it ended up being about 9 hours instead. (Mom - if you are reading this, you may want to skip this section :) This ended up being the most dangerous bus ride I've ever been on. It had been raining heavily and there were several mudslides. We ended up stopping for a couple hours because of a huge mudslide ahead. When it was finally cleared, we watched bus after bus, drive through the remaining mud and fishtail all over....dangerously close to the cliff on the other side of the road. I wish I would've taken video of the buses because it was seriously horrifying. People were gasping and turning away because it looked like they were going to go over the side. It only took a second for me and a few other people to decide that we were going to walk instead. A few foreigners got off. The Lao passengers laughed at us. Our bus made it through with just a little slipping and sliding so we jumped back on, and then off a few more times as we drove through more mudslides. At one point, we were driving through a village, hit mud, and nearly slide into some poor man's house. About 15 people were in and around the house, and once we started sliding their way went running like crazy. The house was set right off the side of the road on a steep hill. Our bus kept sliding into it and hitting his roof. We all got off again, since it looked like we were going to take this guy's house out, and there was a power line that we were precariously close to. The bus driver fought the bus and scraped the house again, but finally got it out. It was insane. Such an eventful and dangerous drive. No American bus would ever have been allowed to drive in those conditions.

One of the buses fishtailing and sliding through the mudslide.

Other passengers from my bus that decided to walk rather than risk the sketchy ride through the mud.

My bus nearly taking out someone's house and a power line. Our bus broke it's rearview mirror and scratched up the entire ride side.

I spent a couple days in Luang Prabang which is a great place to relax. There are more temples and monks here than in any other city in Laos. Herbal saunas and cheap foot reflexology treatments abound. I treated myself to a few of each, just to test our which was best :) I also signed up for a four day trek through the Lao mountains where we spent two nights in rural villages with the Hmong and Kamu people. I'm looking forward to it!

Huge reclining Buddha outside of Vientiane.

Buddha in Vientiane.

Buddha with sticky rice offering in Vientiane.

Wat Siskatet in Vientiane.

Buddhist wat (temple).

I've gotten a little behind on keeping this updated. The last 3 weeks have been jam-packed. After India, I flew to Phnom Penh where Ryan was supposed to meet me on the 11th, but ended up getting delayed by a day. So, I did some sightseeing on my own that I didn't think he would mind missing: Wat Pnomh, the Royal Palace, and a few other historical sights. He finally made it into town and we took off immediately and went to S-21. It's a former high school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge. Anywhere from 17,000-20,000 passed through the prison and were held and tortured before being sent to Choeung Ek (the Killing Fields) where they were killed and buried in mass graves. S-21 has a heartbreaking museum and writings of survivors about their experience. It's really eerie walking through the rooms where people were held. They have the chains and shackles and there are even still bloodstains on the walls. It rained and rained while we were there which seemed very fitting and added to the mood of this sad place. We also headed out to the Killing Fields. They've exhumed most of the bodies from the hundreds of mass graves, but there are still bone, teeth, and clothing fragments all over the ground that come up when it rains. Because it had been raining so much, we saw fragments everywhere. The pathway winds between hundreds of depressions, which were where the graves were. It's an eerie place. The rest of the day, Ryan and I were both pretty muted. An astonishing quarter of the entire population was killed. The former commander of the prison, Duch, has been on trial for years and was just sentenced last week. The trial was in the news a lot while we were there so it was interesting to hear Cambodians talk about it.. He was sentenced to 35 years, but the court shaved off 11 years for time served, and 5 years more for being illegally detailed. So he will only serve 19 years. Most of the people I talked to were very disappointed in the ruling.

Some of the people held and killed at S-21. The Khmer Rouge was meticulous in their record keeping and took photos of every single person that came through. Some of those killed were just babies and kids. There are thousands of photos in the museum and they are heartbreaking. Some have the most scared and confused expressions and others are openly defiant. Many have bruises and bleeding faces from torture before the photo.

It's the rainy season in South East Asia. This is the road outside our hotel in Phnom Penh. The water was up to my knees!

Kampot is the pepper capital of the world. All the best restaurants use their pepper.

The next day we headed over to the seaside town of Kep. We found a great little hotel with a beautiful view of the ocean. We headed out to some nearby caves that have some temples and buddhas inside, ate some great seafood, and generally just relaxed. We moved onto the riverside of Kampot and took a boat tour up the river, and again, just relaxed. There's a chain of massage stores all across Cambodia that train blind men and women in shiatsu. It costs $6 for an hour so we eagerly signed up. It was seriously the most painful hour of my life. I didn't realize that shiatsu is all about thumbs and these men and women are especially strong. They're all about popping your fingers and toes and if it doesn't pop at first, they just keep pulling and pulling. I thought she was going to dislocate my big toe. I almost called it quits at multiple times during the hour. Afterwards, I did feel good, but I never signed up for another shiatsu massage again.

After Kampot we headed up to Battambang. The town itself is pleasant enough, but everything in this region is about getting out into the countryside and seeing the rural villages and farms. We lucked out and got the best tuk-tuk driver. He had just gotten married a few weeks earlier to a girl who worked the front desk at our hotel. We went out with him two full days and he showed us so many things we would've never seen without a local. We stopped at a rice paddy and got to try harvesting rice plants (I suck at it), see how they make spring roll rice paper, fish sauce, rice whisky making, visit Cambodia's only vineyard, and a whole slew of other things. We went to the "killing caves", one of many around Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge used it to dispose of bodies. They would tell prisoners that they were taking them out to the country to work, blindfold them, and push them into the caves. The caves had been used as Buddhist temples before, which the Khmer Rouge promptly destroyed. Today there is a memorial with some of the bones and a new buddha and temple. Pretty much anywhere you go in Cambodia is a memorial, killing field, killing cave, or stupa with a reminder about this tragedy.

While we were out and about on our tuk-tuk tour we came upon an accident. There was blood on the road and a damaged tuk-tuk and a group of locals huddled around a a doorway of a building. Whatever happened, it looked bad. Ryan went over to see if we could help and it turned out to be a Finish couple that was in the tuk-tuk. The tuk-tuk swerved to avoid a car that had turned abruptly without using their signal, and the tuk-tuk turned on its side and landed on the girl's foot. It was bleeding and she was in a lot of pain. Nobody was doing anything but watching them. We ended up helping the get to a medical centre nearby where they did a quick cleaning, but it was obvious they didn't have the facilities to do much. The whole thing was really frustrating because it was so hard to get anyone to act. Everyone just stood around and watched this poor couple. Ryan finally got them to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. The ambulance pulled up and the driver got out and didn't do anything. Just stood and looked at her foot. Finally Ryan asked him if we should move her into the ambulance and he just looked at us like "oh, yeah, we probably should." Then before he would leave, he told us it cost $15. The whole thing was crazy and definitely made me appreciate healthcare in American. The ambulance only had the driver and he wasn't trained in medicine. He was just a driver. I can't imagine what happens when there is a life threatening emergency. She ended being ok, no broken bones, and she just needed a bunch of stitches. The poor tuk-tuk driver had some horrible road rash all over his hip and back from sliding on asphault when the tuk-tuk turned over. This is the second hospitalization that I've been close to since I arrived. My roommate at Rising Star in India, had a diabetic emergency one night and her blood sugar got down to 12 when it should be 100! They had to rush her to the hospital and get her on an IV. All the guidebooks say if you need serious medical attention, to get yourself to Bangkok asap. It definitely has made me a little more cautious in my activities here because the outcome could be catastrophic.

Our last stop in Cambodia, of course, was Angkor Wat and all the surrounding temples. They were pretty phenomenal. We had a great guide and learned and saw so many things I never would've known if we were just on our own. We spent two days exploring the temples and then our last day in Siem Reap. We took a cooking class and it definitely was one of my favorite parts of the trip. They took us to the morning market and we learned the names of all the local produce and fruits. Then we went back and learned how to make fresh spring rolls, fried nem (like fried spring rolls, fried rice, a delicious Cambodia meat dish, and mango and coconut sticky rice. All this for $12 a person and we got to eat all of it for lunch. It was quite a feast!

Our hotel offered cheap massages and spa treatments so we definitely treated ourselves to a few of those after hours of walking around temple complexes.

Ryan flew back home and I had another day on my own in Phnom Penh before flying over to Vientiane, Laos. I splurged on my last day in Phnom Penh and got a room at a nice hotel, with a great pool and wi-fi.