Paco On Tour

Crossing Cambodia

Leaving Laos and crossing into Cambodia was a little how you imagine borders used to be a long time ago. First you checked out of one country, with a little wooden hut serving as immigration control, at least this one was surrounded by a few fishing village huts selling a few wears here and there – although this was mainly for the benefit of tourists coming along to visit the Irawaddy dolphins on the Mekong here rather than anyone crossing the border. As soon as we got across, we were a party of eight, a minibus offered its services to get us to the first town in Laos, a 2 Ѕ hour drive away. We traveled for about 20 minutes in what seemed to be no-mans land and arrived at the little shack that served as the Cambodian immigration post. A couple of officers making lists and asking for the $ 2 entrance charge, much easier than what we had been led to believe, and with a stamp and a glance we were across into a country with one of the most painful histories of the whole region, and it has plenty of competition in this part of the world for that sad achievement.

The Air-conditioned minibus was quite a luxury on this dirt-road track (no asphalt since we left Laos) and we would remember it fondly in the second part of the trip. Transport is an issue in Cambodia, roads are notoriously bad, especially in remote areas such as the one we were in now, and there is not even a rudimentary system of public buses. Pick-up trucks are about as far as you get, that is how the locals travel, and you never know when they will leave or arrive. We were left on the Mekong across from Staeng Trung which was the first town we were aiming for. Ferry across, they are building a bridge but it will not be finished for some time, and on arrival we were welcomed by the usual tourist touts offering travel service to the South, even to the capital Phnom Penh. The only problem was that there was only one fellow offering the service. It was the middle of New Year and normal transport had apparently come to a complete halt. We seemed to have little choice but to pay the stratospheric (for here) price of $15 to get to the main hub of Kompong Thom about 400 km south but at least 10 hours away…

We seemed to have little choice, there were a group of six other travelers already cramped in the mini-bus, much worse looking than our initial one, and we really wanted to get as much ground covered that same day as possible. Many roads in Cambodia were built by the French during there colonial presence here (although formally it was a protectorate for much of the time) and were then left to slowly decay (except in war-areas, where the decay was rapid) for fifty years with very little maintenance, if any, during this time. Since the early 1990s, with the entrance of a UN presence and above all million of dollars in aid, some of the main routes have been fully upgraded, but these are on the whole around the capital Phnom Penh and towards the south and west. Up here in the north work is only starting now. I suppose we were lucky in that at least half of the way the road was set out, flattened and allowed speeds of about 60 km/h, although it feels like 160 km/h on your usual European motorway. Unfortunately it didn’t stop up us getting a pretty big nail in one tire and going through the required tire change, not that the replacement looked like it was in any good shape. After getting our punctured tire fixed at a little village a few km down the road – wonderful how these spring up just when you need them - we did manage to hang on to it for about 10 minutes before coming across a mate of the driver who had, extraordinarily, manage to completely blow up one of his own tires. Like in Formula 1 although his was not a race car… nice chap our driver. I just hoped we wouldn’t encounter another killer nail on the way…

We didn’t thankfully, there was a lot of partying along the route – thanks to the New Year celebrations – and our two stowaway companions had a rowdy time shouting out at the top of their voices from the windows, half their bodies outside you understand, as we crossed any inhabited place, but all part of the celebrations. It was hot and stuffy in the van and one poor Danish girl couldn’t really hack it a lot more – it had been a long day – and we had to stop a couple of times to let her out, get some air and be sick… poor Mr Driver was at a bit of a loss to understand why we should stop the first time we told him to. I suppose, stuck in the driver’s seat, concentrating on a treacherous road, with a little kid sitting where your back should be, he thought that we were pretty comfortable, all things considered. A/C was something we remembered with fondness from our first morning ride, something of a too high a luxury for this trip.

In any case we made it to Phnom Penh eventually in good shape, thankfully. In truth the last three hours of the trip were on a comfortable bus, with A/C and all, pushing the innumerable mopeds and other vehicles on the narrow roads, although paved by now, here the law being that of the strongest and largest. Phnom Penh itself is a rather special place. The first impression is a city divided in two areas, a small one in which expatriates and the Cambodians who have made money move in and then the rest. The Expat presence here is much larger than in any of the other major cities of the region. This is mostly due to the massive influx of foreign aid that the country has received since the UN brought in a large peace keeping force in the early 1990s. That has now left but the legacy of a large ONG presence and governmental organizations remains. I knew little of the history of Cambodia, at least in any detail, before arriving. I did know that it had suffered dramatically as a “side” theatre of war during the Vietnam war (from 1970 to 1975) and that after a raging civil war the terrifying regime of Pol Pot took over for three and a half years from 1976 to 1979, only prevented of physically destroying the whole country by a Vietnamese invasion, but the aftermath of all this terror and destruction remains very much in the streets of Phnom Penh today. The city was completely emptied and depopulated during Pol Pots regime, from a million inhabitants to just a few thousand, mostly working for the government, and the systematic murder of anyone that had a minimum amount of education or was in any way involved in government, finance, or simply any kind of intellectual endevour. The result was an emptying of any urban life, the escape of anyone who could and forced labour for those that stayed. Mindless cruelty, but above all complete lack of organisation, lead to the death of tens of thousands, some speak of two millions, as a result of the famines induced by the completely irresponsible policies enforced on the population. A very sad and tragic story, which would not get much better as I read a little more of the history and came to learn of what had gone on before. But I am not one to provide any kind of history lesson on Cambodia. Suffice it to say that it remains largely unknown in the rest of the world, that much suffering resulting from those times still exists and the country seems rather unable to lift itself out of the trap of misery it has fallen into.

At this point, our stay in Phnom Penh was only for a couple of days, enough time to find a motorbike and head south to visit some of the coastline. I had decided that given the travel difficulties in Cambodia, in particular to visit some of the more remote areas and get out of the “tourist route”, which is really the capital and the ruins of Angkor- not that much else – I was going to need a dirt bike as used in Thailand and Laos before. Yael would be doing her own route in Cambodia so that left me with the bike to do some discovering on my own. Driving in Phnom Penh was pretty dangerous at first, one really has to get used to the local habits, however crazy they may seem at first. I seemed to get the knack of it after a while, but the trip down to Sihanoukville, about 200 km south, the main costal city, was in fact pretty nerve racking. The road is a good one, paved and in proper shape, but this seems to be taken as the ideal excuse for all those Cambodians that have managed to buy a car – at times, very expensive cars.. - to hurdle down without very much notice of anyone else on the road. Lorries of course are worse, being bigger. A few kilometres before entry a good all storm broke out making it a bit of a wet entry into the town itself... Safe enough, although unfortunately Sihanoukville didn't really live up to expectations. Not many people on the beach and, perhaps because of the rains, rather dirty beaches and murky water. It is not supposed to be like that always, but 36 hours was enough to make the decision to move on. This time, rather than taking the same route to Phnom Penh we went up an alternative route which turned out to be a lot more scenic and much less stressful.

Back in P.P. Yael and I parted our ways and I set off for the south shores of the Tonle Sap, the main lake in Cambodia and one that provides a livelihood to many people leaving on its shores. Roads on either side of it are good, so no real worries there, and after a quick night stop in a small village I continued my way around it in a clockwise sense. My objective was to see as many of the Khmer Temples as I could in the West of the country before staying for a few days in Siem Reap and visiting the amazing complex of temples that the great Khmer civilization built there centuries ago.

Laos: El Sur

Esta semana en el sur de Laos ha sido una de las más coloridas y vivas de tonas las pasadas en el sureste asiático hasta ahora. Tuvimos la oportunidad de alejarnos bastante de las rutas "turísticas"- aunque aquí tampoco es que haya muchas – y realmente adentrarnos en partes bastante apartadas de la región, en un país ya bastante aislado de por si. Todo gracias a locomoción alternativa, pero mejor empiezo por el principio.

Después del espeluznante viaje de Luang Prabang a Vientiane el autobús nocturno a Pakse, a unos 600 km al sur de la capital, parecía en comparación de lo más seguro. Claro que en circunstancias normales un autobús cargado con sacos de 50 kg por todo el pasillo central, con gente tumbada encima – haciendo cualquier transito altamente dificultoso, sobre todo en caso de estampida – y un conductor que conducía el artilugio como si el hombre estuviera sobre una autobahn alemana no una carretera de Laos, con perdón. Al menos el camino no incluía zona de montanas y los camiones optaban por no circular de noche. Había que pensar en positivo, y se me ocurrió que en cualquier colisión el peor arado iba a ser la otra parte, ¡o sea que tendrían cuidado en quitarse del medio!

Pakse es una pequeña ciudad mayormente de paso para los turistas dirigiéndose al oeste, hacia Tailandia, o hacia el sur, a la zona de las 4,000 islas en el Mekong donde el río se ensancha considerablemente y deja al descubierto infinidad de islas, algunas de tamaño considerable, donde se puede hacer una parada de unos días antes de seguir hacia Camboya, un poco mas al sur.

Para Yael y para mí, lo crucial era poder (por fin) alquilar una moto decente (250 cc) para adentrarnos en toda esa parte del país que no esta servida por transporte, casi de ningún tipo. Una vez encontrada la moto, del mismo modelo que habíamos alquilado la primera vez en Tailandia, y después de una pequeña pausa en Pakse – pasando un calor increíble, ya nos habían avisado que el sur, al estar a menor altura, seria bastante más caluroso – nos pusimos en camino.

El primer día comenzamos con una simple, aunque larga, subida a la ciudad de Savannakhet – la tercera del país. Mansiones coloniales, plazas e incluso una iglesia católica. Lamentablemente hoy en dia esta todo bastante envejecido e incluso en estado de ruina a veces.

La aventura empezo a estar servida cuando de Savanakhet nos dirigimos al este del pais a un pequeño pueblo llamado Saravan. Polvo, pueblos, caminos de tierra roja, puentes de tablas de madera entrecruzado no siempre faciles de cruzar con la moto. Por otro lado la sensacion de adentrarte en el Laos mas real y autentico, al margen de las rutas por las que pasan los autobuses... En realidad el camino era un festin de oportunidades fotografias o simplemente para admirar el paisaje y sobre todo las personas en sus quehaceres cotidianos, tan sumamente diferentes a cualquier cosa que hayamos aprendido los europeos. Los rios estan para banarse, lavar, fregar, el agua, vamos de todo. Eramos bichos extranos, eso si. En una moto enorme, para los estandares de por aquí, con casco – casi inexistentes para las personas normales – y con camaras y veocidad. Dabamos mas miedo que Robocop! Pero los chavales tienen una curiosidad innata y nos sonreian y saludaban con mucha alegria!

Estuvimos en total unos cuatro dias por la ruta de caminos apartados, a veces habia algun trecho de asfalto, lo menos, mas de tres cuartas partes eran caminos de tierra. Muchas veces bien pisado y por donde se podia circular con relativa facilidad, la subida a los montes – una planicie en medio del paises donde se cultiva café introducido por los franceses, era un poco mas arriesgado. En cualquier caso, en terminos de conduccion el ultimo tramo entre Attapeu y Champasak fue el de curtirse de verdad. Un conductor vietnamita que venia en la direccion opuesta nos aviso que despues de cruzar un rio - en una pequena barca, empujado (el rio no esta muy crecido) por una senora – el camino se volvia realmente todo-terreno. Efectevamente eso es lo que fue. Unos 70 km con poco mas de 3 o 4 pueblos, atraversando las profundidades de la jungla donde mdereros – probablemente super-ilegales – talaban y transportaban arboles de mas de 3 metros de circunferencia en viejos camiones que reventaban ruedas por el peso y bloqueaban el camino (dimos a parar con dos) y unos cinco rios donde evidentemente la palabra "puente" no habia llegado. Menos ma que esta es la epoca seca y los rios estan en minimos, porque si no el camino hubiera estado completamente intransitable. Aun asi, cruzar rios hasta las rodillas de agua – esto en una moto que personas de menos de 1,75 no tocan el suelo sentadas – daba cierto cosquilleo. Caerte de la moto en esas circumstancias podria creer dificultades, sobre todo para la moto! Pero la condenada cruzaba, no me lo acababa de creer, pero a cada una que dejaba atrás mas dificil se hacia el dar la vuelta cuando te encontrabas de nuevo una delate. El camino era de enduro y la verdad es que aprend bastante!! Ahora, tengo un nuevo respeto por los constructores de puentes, aunque sean dos tablas pegadas de mala manera!

Pasar entre 6-8 horas diaria en la moto bajo estas condiciones cansa y uno llega lleno de polvo y suciedad por todas partes, pero muy contento de haber disfrutado de parajes poco accesibles y aun lejos del turismo tradicional. Tambien hay una sensacion de aventura diferente al no tener ni idea de que le espera a uno unos kilometros mas adelante. El mapa que llevabamos era mas bien indicativo, la condicion de la carretera cambia constantemente y uno se encuentra con sorpresas continuamente que le dan, al final del dia, un sentimieto de logro que no se consigue viajando simplemente en autobus, por ejemplo.

En cualquier caso la moto fue excelente para transformar la vision que habia tenido de Laos hasta entonces. Uno se da mucho mas cuenta de la pobreza real que impera en el pais, aunque eso no implica necesariamente tristeza o penuria como se pudiera pensar. Es simplemente una forma de vida ancestral que la gente de la ciudad o de occidente tiene mal a imaginar.

Al volver a la civilizacion – en este caso a una carretera asfaltada – nos dirigimos al pueblo de Champasak que queda a las afueras de las ruinas de un templo Khmer construido por este pueblo (ahora los habitantes de Camboya) hace unos ocho siglos o asi. Este seria el primero de muchos que llegaria a ver mas al sur, en Camboya mismo, y una interesante introduccion a una civilizacion y sus restos de los que tenia muy poco conocimiento.

Antes de eso, la ultima parada en Laos fue en las islas del Mekong, casi en la frontera con Camboya, donde aun se pueden avistar los ultimos delfines que viven en el Mekong – desafortunadamente en vias de extincion – asi como unas pequenas cataratas que se suceden aquí, haciendo una navegacion continuada del Mekong imposible en este punto. Despues de el palizon de la moto unos dias de descanso relativo venian muy bien. Desde aquí el proximo paso era la dura Camboya.

Happy New Year !

Yes, it is New Year here in Cambodia - also in Thailand and Laos. People throwing water at each other in the streets and lots of partying at night. All shops are pretty much closed as well! I just wanted to assure anyone who might have wondered that I am still alive and well :) It has been a little time since a real entry and now Laos has come and gone in little more than 3 weeks. I hope to have a proper text on it soon - unfortunately photos are probably going to have to wait for a lot longer...

Very hot and dusty here but excellent people, but I won't go on to that just yet... Update not too far ahead, thanks for the patience!

400 Days

In Vientane, the capital of Laos, today about to quietly celebrate the 400th day of my particular tour, this catches me a little by surprise :-)

All well for now, on my way south towards Cambodia tonight, will be writing on Laos itself on my next entry. I simply wanted to thank all of you who have been reading this jumble of mostly unconnected thoughts, from those of you that have followed since the very beginning to those that just pop in out of curiosity once in a blue moon, for the support and interest in my rather personal voyage. Over 16,000 hits on the site to date, which is a rather humbling thought.  It has been, and of course still is, a pleasure to share at least a part of it with all of you.

I was hoping to write some more meaty recollections of the many things that have happened over this year and a month, but I think it is better to leave it for a little later - perhaps day 500 :-)

Gracias.

Luang Prabang & Vientiane

At the end of a little more than two and a half weeks in Laos I come through with a contrasted vision of the country and quite a few unique moments - for good and for hair-raising! It has definitely been action-packed but also some surprisingly lull moments and looking back it is quite surprising to think that it all took place in little more than 20 days.

I had left off with me, still accompanied by Yael, leaving off on a long and crowded "slow boat" trip down the Mekong. The great majority of tourists crossing from Thailand into Laos doing this northern route make the trip on these lazy and colourful boats. You are pretty much squashed in quite tight and bench sizes are more adequate for Lao’s physic (about 1.55 m) than European ones. We were a little too late boarding initially - border difficulties of some members of our van - and ended up with no cushion on our narrow bench :( I suppose third class trains in Southern Europe were a little more comfortable at the time! But it is all part of the fun after all. The Mekong flow already at quite some width at this point, about 2,000 km from its source in the Himalayas, and definitely provides the best source of livelihood and communication for the few people that live around here - small village dwellers living off fishing and slash and burn farming.

Given the rugged terrain, poor communications and the fact that this particular border crossing has only been open for about ten years it is all pretty much back-packers zone, and not a very busy one at that. The boat trip to Luang Prabang, the main town in northern Laos, takes about 15 hours to do - downstream - and is split into a 2 day trip. Some brave souls catch the "speed boat" which is a flimsy wooden boat with cramped space for, at most, four or five passengers and a 1,200 cc motor which makes a deafening noise and which can go down the same way in about half the time. Accidents have been known to happen and life-jacket and helmet are highly recommended :)

We got into picturesque Luang Prabang in the middle of the afternoon and were very pleasantly surprised by this provincial enclave which used to be the home of the royal household of Laos when the country was a kingdom - until 1975 - and previously a rather tranquil outpost of French Indochina, the influence of which remains very much evident and gives a distinctly more "colonial feel to it than Thai cities ever had. The town is quite definitely a little gem with architectural displays - especially the temples and the Royal Palace - which have been recently granted World Heritage status by the UNESCO. The Heritage quarter, with its old colonial mansions, is also getting some major refurbishment and the whole place will definitely acquire a lot more cache in the years to come as its "secret" beauty is further revealed and discovered. Apart from the sightseeing there is also a thriving handicraft market - aimed mostly at the tourist segment - but still retaining the quaint charm of the individual posts with wares exhibited simply on a mat laid out on the ground. The major product is silk-ware and particularly scarves. Silverware is also quite important, all hand made of course, a relic of the town’s history as the national centre for craftsmanship which served the royal household and monasteries here.  Even though the French presence here was short-lived and minimal - this being a flung out post with only a couple of hundred of Frenchmen and their families at the height of the colonial period (it was the Vietnamese civil servants which did most of the actual running of the administrative work) - the baguettes are still a common staple food and there is a particular French / European flavour to the layout and main buildings of the town.

After the successful motorbike trips in Thailand we were really hoping to be able to repeat the experience here in northern Lao. In fact the road infrastructure is much worse, public transport unreliable and extremely slow (9-10 hours to cover 300 km or so) making it an ideal country to cover autonomously in a dirt bike. The northern parts are also the least visited and most remote making them the most interesting of course.  Unfortunately, no bikes were for hire at all in Luang Prabang. No dirt bikes, not even mopeds so we were really rather limited to public transport, which meant we visited little outside the town itself. After three days it was time to make our way south to the capital – Vientiane also on the banks of the Mekong. Public transport throughout the third world countries can be a little intimidating at times given the levels of comfort, and above all, security that one may be used to in western countries. At this point I have traveled a few kilometres in buses and had very few incidents to speak of. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and its buses and roads are only very slowly coming up to a "reasonable"standard – even in comparison to other poor countries. The fact that the north is a very mountainous area does not help either the quality of vehicles here – tough on motors going up and on breaks coming down – or in road building – plenty of narrow crossings and gullies into nothingness at present.

All would come together in the trip from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. Buses leave early in the morning, it takes about 8 hours usually to cover the 360 km, the road being impracticable at night, just too dangerous… We were on our way by about 8:00 in a 1980s bus a Hyundai (South Korean – a bit like 1960s Japan) loaded up to the brim (and then a bit more – of course) and winding through the hills and mountains that cover the region. Only eight or nine tourists, mostly at the back, the rest locals, which is usually a good enough sign. After a couple of hours and on a particularly steep hill the engine went CLANK and we stopped. All passengers off, for the necessary inspection of course. Litres of water poured into the over-heated engine, it was probably as thirsty as we were, but no sign of life. One German tourist – a bit of a mechanic / engineer apparently – stated tat a cylinder had busted and the motor was pretty much kaput. We wouldn’t be going any further with this one. You are pretty much stuck when something like this happens, but the driver somehow managed to get the message across to home base that we were down and after about an hour and a half of lying in the scorching sun and looking at the dead motor as if it might suddenly resucitate. It didn’t, of course. A "reserve-bus" came along but rather than arriving empty (our bus was full) as it should have it seemed that the driver had taken the liberty to pick up about ten other passengers on the way, nice chap. It meant that ten of us, unfortunately the least agile or observant – in this case including three tourists – would stay behind…

The "new" bus and driver were a little worse in terms of wear and tear. Not that this seemed to affect in anyway the speed at which we hurtled down the mountains, our driver seemingly on a mission to make up for lost time due to the breakdown. It is also the dry / burning season here in Laos, as it was in Thailand, but the fires here are pretty savage affairs, with what seem to be acres of jungle just going up in flames all around you. One hopes they are controlled, but you are never quite sure. A particularly fierce fire was roaring through the bottom of the valley which we could see from above. With our crazy driver and fire and smoke all around it all seemed a little like a modern take on Dante’s Inferno. At the back of the bus you get the rawest sensations, so we were really having fun with the driver’s sharp curve techniques. It became less amusing when the bus suddenly started to gather more speed than usual and we took first one corner with quite a swerve and then a much less controlled one (not that the first was very controlled!) A storage door at the side of the bus flew open with quite some violence and a number of passengers got to their feet shouting at the driver to slow down. It became clear he couldn’t. The smell of burning rubber blew into the passenger compartment and we could only see further sharp, tight, down-hill curves ahead of us. It did not look pretty, and for a few seconds – which always lengthen almost eternally when the adrenalin is pumping – I began to wonder if we would actually make it in one piece.

Painfully the bus seemed to gradually slow down and by the time it had managed to get onto the curve-side to make use of the rougher ground to decelerate quite a few of the passengers at the front were getting ready to get off as quickly as possible. It eventually crawled to a halt, we all gave a sigh of relief and thanked our lucky star nothing had happened.  Off the bus – once again – to inspect the damage and reason for the break failure. Faulty air-compressor and burnt out hand break was the verdict – our German companion providing the technical details on this one as well. We plodded along to the next village. No real towns between L.P. and the capital, with half-repaired breaks – apparently something had been done during the stop – and a great urge by our German contingent, and quite a few of the others to abandon ship. They were lucky enough to get a ride in a couple of tourist minibuses that just happened to stop at the same place as us. But available space was very limited and for the rest of us the hearty laughs of the driver and slaps on the back together with a few cries of "No Problem, no problem!!" were as much insurance as we were going to get against any other mechanical or human failure. Thankfully we had by this point passed the rugged terrain and followed into a stretch of road that required less breaking power – but our heightened tension did not really diminish until we got into Vientiane, after a 12 hour trip. One to remember!

After the over-intense trip down to Vientiane I really did need a couple of days "relaxing tie" and got them in the capital of Laos. Amazingly hot on the day following arrival I had little option but to head for the nearest A/C café for a cool drink and an escape from the heat. In any event there is not really all that much to see in Vientiane –certainly less than in Luang Prabang. It is definitely the only city in Laos and the ex-pat community has a certain presence – essentially working on aid development projects I suppose. Some eccentricities in town, such as the Asiatic-like "Arc du Triomph" built following the template of the Parisian one plus some modern, grandiose looking Wats (temples) but all pretty much done in a day and a half or so.

In any case it was a welcome urban stop in what is a largely an agricultural country. The north has definitely remained a largely untouched area and is still of very difficult access, a dirt bike would probably have been the best way to visit it, but the logistics were just too complicated. At the same time, the difficulty that the tourists encounters in moving around means that the great majority of the country is largely untouched by "global tourism" even places like Luang Prabang keeps its charm and has achieved a great combination of comfort, historical sites and openness without losing its own character in the process. This might change if the trickle of tourists becomes a flood but it will probably not happen for a few years yet.

I was surprised at the indirect influence of Thai culture here – but once you learn that the Lao language is quite close to Thai – a little like Dutch and German apparently – all those Thai soap operas they seem to be watching wherever you look become less of an enigma. The country, like Cambodia, is caught between two very large neighbors – Thailand and Vietnam – and for centuries was effectively a vassal state of the Thais or simply a buffer state between the two Southeast Asian powers. The collapse of Communism worldwide and the gradual opening of Vietnam has probably left little choice to Laos but to follow suit itself, but it continues to be a predominantly agricultural and egalitarian society.

In any case it has been a very interesting first 10 days in Laos and I am looking forward to seeing more of the "lowlands" and the country to the south.