SE Asia Continued: Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia

A couple years ago I spent a couple weeks in Thailand. During that time I explored Bangkok, Phuket, and surrounding islands. This time around I flew directly to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Chiang Mai is a beautiful area. It was a walled-in city and parts of the wall, along with the moat, remain. The majority of the backpacker hostels, restaurants, etc are within this area, as are many wats (palaces). I spent a few (HOT) days walking around and taking in the city. And eating a lot of wonderful vegetarian food! :D

From Chiang Mai I flew to Luang Prabang, Laos. Amazing. Laos is now on the top of my favorite countries list. What makes the country so fabulous? Good question… let’s see… Beautiful scenery. Delicious coffee. Great night market in Luang Prabang (including an all-you-can-eat-for-one-dollar all vegetarian buffet!). You can actually walk in peace without constantly hearing “tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk?” or “moto, moto?”. Wildly fun tubing in Vang Vieng. Free whisky shots all day (and night) long in Vang Vieng – adding to the fun, naturally. Not completely overrun by tourists (yet). Honestly, you just need to experience it! Everyone I’ve met has loved Laos. I think if you’ve traveled a bit around other SE Asian countries first you’ll appreciate it even more.

I spent a few days in Luang Prabang: walking along the Mekong, shopping at the night market, enjoying great coffee at various cafes, chatting with a monk in a small temple, and overall relaxing in the peace and beauty of the town.

My next stop was Vang Vieng for a couple of crazy days! I arrived there in the evening and was soon out dancing and enjoying a bucket of whiskey coke. We followed the crowd and went to a few bars before crashing for the night. The next day we all slept in and took our time getting going. Eventually a group of us headed down to the river for tubing. Myself and Stephen, a guy from Sweden, were the only ones who actually rented the tubes and attempted to make it down the river (we didn’t start early enough, and it was low season – thus a very weak current – so we didn’t get to make it all the way down; just a bit further than the last bar). All along the river are bars that have various drink specials and different types of activities, like trampoline swings and zip lines. Due, again, to time (and also to lack of money) we only made a couple stops. How do you make a stop, you ask? It’s simple – you see a bar where you want to stop, you signal to someone working at the bar, they toss a rope to you, you grab on, and they pull you in! After our day tubing, we made it back up to our hostel (which, btw, was an awesome hostel called Spicy Laos – highly recommended!). A bunch of us bought our hostel’s tank tops (“same same but spicier”) and we all headed out for another night of drinks and dancing, being sure to grab any newcomers and bring them along with us. I ended my night with a banana pancake around 3am. Did I mention the pancakes? And the baguette sandwiches? Stands selling them, at all hours of the day, for very reasonable prices. Oh, also, one more thing to add about Vang Vieng. For some strange reason the majority of the restaurants around the small town show either Friends or Family Guy on a constant loop. We spent a couple hours each day just chilling, eating, and watching a few episodes of Friends. Odd.

My last stop in Laos was Vientiane, the capital. This city is not very impressive, especially after my first two stops. I only had about a day to spend there so I didn’t do much sight-seeing.

I flew from Vientiane to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Siem Reap is a pretty cool town; I wish I had stayed in a hostel closer to the main area. My hostel was very nice, and the people were extremely helpful and kind, but I lacked much communication with other backpackers. I headed into the main part of town after putting my stuff at my hostel and enjoyed some good food and shopping. However, throughout the town there are many, many children selling miscellaneous merchandise and begging for money. Heart-breaking. They know random facts about different countries and even states and will tell you what they know as they try to make a sale.  It was really hard to ignore them, especially the ones that followed me around or that I saw more than once (somehow they always recognized me - even though they see hundreds of tourists a day). The next morning I was up early to catch sunrise over Angkor Wat. After sunrise I continued on to the other main temples. All of the temples were amazing. I called it a day after about 6 bottles of water, and it wasn’t even noon yet! Have I mentioned how HOT it was? It was around 40C (104F) almost every day I was in SE Asia!! I returned from the temples and then headed into the main part of town. I treated myself to Mexican, including a scrumptious mango margarita, before heading back to crash early at my hostel.

The next day I took a bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. I stayed in a nice hostel there, called Hostel Nomads. I met a guy from France at breakfast and we decided to spend the afternoon touring the Killing Fields and S-21 together. We hardly said a word to each other all afternoon due to the, well, horribleness of it all. Can’t believe I had never even heard of Pol Pot before moving to Asia. My last morning in Cambodia was spent chatting with other travelers; we talked through breakfast into lunch. That’s one of my favorite things about traveling – meeting others, from all over, and sharing experiences.

From Phnom Penh I headed to Vietnam… that will be my next post!

Go here for pictures from Chiang Mai, Laos, and Cambodia! ^^