Temple-trekking the amazing Angkor!

26th - 29th July 2012

1 sunrise, 2 days, 10 temples, 14 hours of exploring, 30km on a bicycle, 45km on a tuk-tuk and 450 photos later - temple trekking at the amazing Angkor Wat was completed!

The Temples of Angkor are billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World and are really the only reason to come to Siem Reap and, believe me, it is well worth the visit. It was spectacular, if a little tough going at times! 

We arrived in Siem Reap late in the afternoon on Thursday 26th July so after familiarising ourselves with the town, we started the preparations for the marathon session which was to be temple-trekking at the Temples of Angkor. You know that I really meant business when my camel pack came out again (or the catheter thing as I was calling it until yesterday as I didn't know the proper name for it!

We hired a tuk-tuk and driver for our first full day in Siem Reap (Friday 27th July) to bring us to the Angkor so organised him to collect us at 5am.  The day didn't start too good when Ronan knocked his camera over (first time on his new tripod) and it went sliding down a hill but I managed to catch it just before it slipped into the lake - phew! It was a ridiculously close one. Then straight afterwards I walked into an ant farm and had about 100 little buggers crawling all over my feet biting me! Ouchies!

We were eager to do sunrise here considering this is the stereotypical image of Angkor Wat:

Unfortunately this is a stock photo from google images!

Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and we  had no sunrise at all, just a vague changing of the sky from black to grey.  It was still amazing though and had a really great atmosphere so was worth the early rise for that alone. Ronan's new photography skills helped though and we got some really great shots.

Although we have bought a huge oil painting of the sunset that will show us what we should have seen forever more!  We spent the rest of the morning going around the other temples in the complex, Angkor Wat is only one of about a thousand temples in the Angkor Wat complex but it is the biggest, and arguably, the most spectacular.  There were numerous scenes from Tomb Raider filmed around the temples so some of you might recognise some of them from the film.

Peek-a-boo

Tomb Raider tree

By the power of Greyskull

As the Angkor complex is spread over 1,000 sq kilometres, we used our tuk-tuk driver to bring us to some of the further away temples for our first visit and we decided to cycle out ourselves for our second visit to main ones closer to Siem Reap.  The cycle was about 30km in total which was fine except we had done so much walking around while we were out there that we were wrecked cycling back in. As it had been raining the streets were soaking so we were never as tired and dirty (I mean totally filthy!) as when we arrived back in the hotel this afternoon (Sunday 29th July) after 8.5hours. We had another early start leaving the hotel at 6am to get out there before it got really  hot and to try to beat the huge crowds.  It worked though!

When we weren't temple-trekking we could be found relaxing by the pool, eating and drinking to recover.

All cafes should be set up like this!

 This was my favourite bar, it made me laugh everytime we passed it!

A dollar goes a long way

23rd - 26th July 2012
The bus journey to Phnom Penh was uneventful thank god! We have heard so many horror stories about crossing the Cambodian border and how the officials demand bribes to let you into Cambodia but the bus company we went with (Sinh Tourist) organised all our visas and a rep brought us across in a group so no bribing required by us! It was quite funny though seeing our big bus drive onto this pretty small ferry to cross the river with loads of motorcycles and tuk tuks!!

We arrived at about 1pm having left Saigon at 6.30am. We couldn't check into our hotel as the room wasn't ready which was really annoying considering the amount of places we had checked into at 7am! We went for lunch and had a bacon butty with proper rashers - first western food we have had in weeks and it was delicious! All restaurants, shops and tuk tuk drivers deal only in US dollars (ATM's even only throw out dollars) so you're unlikely to see local currency unless your change is less than a dollar! We found this to be quite strange. Sure, Vietnam accepted dollars for large transactions (avoided having to pay in tens of millions of dong) but to ignore your national tender is a bit weird.
The guy who worked in our hotel was explaining a little about the local area to us on our arrival and where things are. He proceeded to tell us about a shopping centre where they have this thing called an elevator that brings you from one floor to another when you press the button! We thought this explanation was very strange until we went to said shopping centre and realised that people appeared to have a fear of using the elevators and each lift even had a lift attendant to press the button! God love them!

We had a quiet afternoon as we so little sleep the night before! Although our hotel room wasn't really conducive to hanging around in; at one point Ronan remarked that there were people in prisons in Ireland in nicer digs than us!! And this was before we had the ant invasion.....



I was very popular when I took out the sweets :-)

We booked our trip to the Killing Fields ie Choeung Ek Genocide Centre for Tuesday.

Par for the course at this stage we decided to do it a little differently and combined this with a quad bike tour. So we did an hour on quad bikes through small rural villages seeing the way the locals live. Extreme poverty basically.
We bought sweets to give to the kids, good fun. It was really dirty going though with all the mud tracks!

Then we went to the Killing Fields. The  Killing Fields is where the Cambodian rebels killed around 20,000 people  (men, women and children) who were associated with the government, professionals and intellectuals in the 1970's. They went so far as to kill people simply because they wore glasses.  The skulls and bones are on display across 17 levels. During the rainy season bones, teeth and rags of clothes are washed up so walking along the path seeing bone & teeth fragments and bits of clothes is a stark reminder of what you are walking on. It was pretty horrendous. After this we went to the S21 prison, where all the people were kept before being transferred to the Killing Fields. All in all this was a fairly grim day. That is all the crazy depressing stuff done for a while - I think if there were a Top Ten Most Harrowing Tourist Sights listing in existence we would have done 3 of them in the last 3 days.

With all the hype about Batman over the last couple of weeks we decided to go to the cinema to do something normal for a change! We went to the cinema and Ronan's eyes lit up when he saw Batman advertised for 6.30pm - as soon as he opened his mouth, the guy working there said 'Oh Batman is only for a private screening, not on general release for a week'. So disappointed! We went to see the new Spiderman instead - Ronan's first 3D film ever so kinda random that it was in Cambodia - which was actually really good! The film was over at 9.30pm and the shopping centre had closed up which was fine except trying to get out was an experience. The whole place was a little eerie and felt like it was about 1am. We had to take the service lift (but there was an attendant to press the button though so phew!!) then go through all the staff quarters where people were getting changed, before going through the area where they park their scooters and finally out on a really dodgy street!

The following day we had a big sleep in (until 12.30pm) longest sleep in ever as we rarely sleep after 9am but we have been wrecked for the last couple of weeks so reckon we needed it! After having some brunch Ronan headed off to his photography course while I pottered about getting my nails done, writing in my travel journal and catching up on emails! It was a lovely afternoon!
Ronan's course lasted about 4 hours and he loved it! Think it's created a monster though as he has gotten obsessed and keeps talking to me about shutter speeds and exposure and loads of other things I don't understand. Although one thing I do know is the 2,500 odd photos he told up to now look rubbish in comparison to what he has done since yesterday!!

Phnom Penh City

We left Phnom Penh at 8.30am on Thursday 26th to go to Siem Reap - home of the Angkor Wat temples and a potential eighth wonder of the world!!

We found a bus company online that only started in May but sounded amazing and the reports weren't wrong. I am writing this as we are reclining on leather seats with extra legroom with air con and wifi (yes wifi on a bus! Totally unheard of here) and got croissants and water delivered to our seats! Not bad for $13 for a 6 hour journey!! Ronan is like a pig in sh!t he is so happy with this little bit of luxury! We joked that we might just spend a couple of days on this bus going between the two towns as its so nice! Although a near miss with a motorcyclist along the way coupled with a tree falling on the road literally as we approached showed us that in Cambodia no matter how nice the bus, it's the roads themselves that are the danger!  We were nearly in Siem Reap when a freak storm (possibly a mini typhoon) brewed out of nowhere and a tree fell on the road right in front of the bus. This was a little scary and considering the road was blocked with this tree, it didn't occur to the bus driver that maybe we should pull into an open space rather than hanging on the side of the road with loads of other trees that could potentially come down! The storm moved on almost as fast as it came and the locals came out with their little hand axes and had the whole thing chopped and road cleared in 10mins. We had arrived in Siem Reap!!

Road clearing under way

Good night Vietnam!!!

19th - 23rd July 2012

I was saying to Ronan on our last day in Saigon that we don't have much to put into our last blog entry on Vietnam. We figured that it's because we have spent so long here that all the things we would have found obscure and blogged about are now normal! So maybe it's time to move on seeing as we are getting too comfortable!
Our first day in Saigon (Thursday 19th) was a write-off basically after our early dump off the bus and the hanging about for 6 hours to check into hotel. When we got checked in at around 10.30am we went for a snooze before going for lunch and a wander around the city. We had loads of little practical things to do like sorting laundry, booking a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels and organising our bus to Cambodia.  Our Cambodia plans have been chopping and changing for the past couple of weeks as we were trying to incorporate some beach time to get scuba diving again. But it was just working out at putting too much pressure on us in a short time frame considering the horror stories we have heard about Cambodian buses taking at least twice as long as they say. Ronan has a photography course booked for Wednesday 25th so needed to be sure that we were in Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) for that. During our early morning wait, we chatted and just made the decision to just hit the 2 major cities in Cambodia (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap) and look for scuba diving in a later part of the trip. I was so sad when we were booking our bus tickets to Phnom Penh that Ronan went and looked up flights from Dublin to Hanoi! We can get back here for €900 each in case anyone's wondering!! It will be happening.

That evening we went to a fabulous restaurant, a street food type place but in a restaurant environment and shocked the waiter by ordering in Vietnamese! There was a couple from New Zealand beside us and they wouldn't even order fried rice as they were afraid of the egg in it! As we have embraced the street food since China, our immune systems have definitely gotten stronger. At this stage I reckon I have been drinking local water unknown to myself between ice and lettuce being washed and no ill effects! Anything we read before coming out said to avoid ice, anything cooked outside that flies might land on, anything you can't boil or peel etc etc. We broke every rule. However if we listened to this advice, we would definitely not have the same amazing Vietnam experience!  Apparently Cambodia is like India and almost every traveller gets sick there so will be interested to see what happens there!

On Friday 20th we did the famous Cu Chi tunnels tour. The Cu Chi tunnels were a network of tunnels that the Vietnamese rebels lived in to hide from the American army during the war. There was a 250km series of tunnels where the lives of whole families were conducted below ground. Some of them are so tiny it's hard to believe people lived here.

Typical of us at this stage we can't do anything normal! The usual thing is to get on a bus from Saigon, take 3 hours to travel 60km with 40 other people, arrive in the height of the heat with 50 other tour buses - nah I don't think so!
Take a speedboat, get breakfast and lunch onboard, arrive at 9am with the other 10 people on our boat before a single tour bus gets there - check!!
We had an amazing couple of hours wandering around an almost empty site. We recreated this famous photo: (yes my photography skills were better than Ronan's!)


Me capturing the sequence...going

.....going

...gone

This is the only pic of me...crap!

We thought people would be queuing up to get into the hole and take this photo but no, me and Ronan were the only ones! Things are bad when I'm in the daredevil category....
Ronan wanted to shoot the AK47, didn't see the attraction myself! Girls from the hen, multiply clay pigeon shooting by 100!! The noise was horrendous and it's slightly disturbing when there is no health and safety around something like this!! He really wanted to do it, so like a dutiful wife, I grabbed some ear protectors and photographed/recorded! He thought it was deadly even if I didn't! I do draw the line at the shooting ranges in Cambodia where they apparently let you shoot a live cow though!

We then got to go through some of the tunnels. The first set were fairly big - I could scurry through them bent over without too much hassle. There are exits every 20m so you could exit when you wanted. The rest of the group did one but myself and Ronan keep going for ages. We then got to the second series which were smaller, no takers for this apart from us so off we headed with our wee torch (thanks Emma &Steve) and went for ages as they were getting smaller and smaller. We ended up in a living room at the end of it! For this one we had to squat down and run from a squatting position! And yes we knew about it the following day when our thighs were killing us!! As there was no else waiting behind us we got to mess about with photos and video clips!

It was a brilliant morning topped off with a fab lunch on the boat on the return journey!

The rest of the day was just chilling out, eating, drinking, doing some forward planning. That night we went to a barbeque garden where you order raw meat and cook it yourself. Ronan was in his element and it was the perfect way to round off his testosterone fuelled day!

We had a sleep in on Saturday before getting up and doing the Lonely Planet walking tour of the city. It was 4km long so we did it over a few hours, stopping for coffee and not over-taxing ourselves! We saw this cutest little dog in the cafe where we were having coffee, felt sorry for him having to wear a jacket in 34 degrees heat and with all that hair! He proceeded to wee all over the floor so the sympathy waned slightly.

Sally and John facebooked to say they arrived today so we arranged to meet them that evening.  I started to feel strange in the afternoon, very jittery and a little ill. Again I was saying to Ronan I don't know what's wrong, I feel strange. Anyways we figured it was the coffee again so I am no longer allowed anything except lattes! We finished our walking tour with a drink in a rooftop bar as suggested by the Lonely Planet. It was crazy expensive but really good, definitely not the sort of place you expect the LP to send you to!

So we headed back to our hotel after this but not before randomly bumping into Sally and John! I think this is the 5th time we met randomly on the street and these are not small cities! We arranged drinks and dinner for that evening. We had to change hotels as the one we were in was expensive and not good value for money. The one we changed to was the shittest hotel we had stayed in so far but was $13/€10 a night for the two of us! The fact we had to sleep with a chair against the door and the toilet leaked everywhere didn't matter.

Sunday was our last day in Vietnam so we had to do the last remaining big sight in Saigon, which was the War Remnants Museum. I actually can't go into this as I could be here all day but it was easily the most harrowing, awful thing I have ever being to. I left half through what they call the 'Agent Orange' room in tears. There were only so many photos of kids with physical disabilities and actual deformed foetuses that I could handle. These were caused by a chemical the Americans used in the war and are causing problems even for second and third generations. The most recent case featured was a child born in 2000 with deformities because of chemical warfare from 25 years ago. Ignorance really is bliss where this is concerned. It was horrendous and extremely upsetting.

We had arranged to meet Sally and John for The Last Supper so we went for our first love - street food at the markets. We went for the usual vietnamese dishes we have been ordering as well as trying something new - there was just something tempting about the whole frog barbecuing away - we were very disappointed when it came out all broken up and not really looking frog-like! Surprisingly it actually tasted really good!

The Last Supper!!!

The coloured rice looked so nice and interesting that we were dying to taste it ....

...until it came out looking like this. Not one of the most successful street food experiences!

However the frog on the other hand was delish!

Yummy!!

So after the meal we went all out and went for a bottle of the good old local Dalat wine - €4 a bottle can't go wrong! After putting off the inevitable it was time to say goodbye! They are staying longer in Vietnam so we will be well gone by the time they reach Cambodia! After a great 3.5 weeks of meeting up in every town that was it! It was about 12.30am this stage, party animals or what, but we still had to pack our rucksacks and be up for 5.30am to get the bus.  After packing we eventually got to bed at around 2am.

When we got back to the hotel we had 15min battle to get our passports back in order to pack them! I amn't really comfortable with how the Vietnamese hotels keep your passports but have no choice! Eventually the dude broke out google translate so we were able to type out what we wanted and got them.  Although we had the same guy trying to check out in the morning so another nightmare trying to explain our special cheap rate (we bargained the hotel rate down with a girl who could speak English but of course nothing in writing) and deposit already paid, while being cranky and tired and rushing for a bus!!!

That was Monday morning 23rd July, currently writing this on the bus to Phnom Penh having left Saigon at 6.30am.

So long Vietnam, it's been amazing. We will be back!  We have had so many amazing experiences here from our Halong Bay tour, cooking course, scuba diving, easy rider tour, Cu Chi tunnels, it's been a fabulous 3.5 weeks!

Biking off the beaten track!

15th - 18th July

So far in Vietnam we have stuck strictly to the backpacker route but this was about to change! Thanks to a fab wedding present from Linda and Marian we had booked a 3 day easy rider tour through a 500km stretch of the central highlands of Vietnam which is a tour on the back of a motorcycle with the driver as your guide.  It was another amazing, surreal experience - to be cruising through the central highlands with the wind blowing through my hair (metaphorically speaking only as I had a crash helmet on) seeing rural life as it goes on as normal.

We left the beaches of Nha Trang on Sunday morning on 15th July with our drivers Jean and Tu.  

We were travelling 200km that day but taking the full day to do it. The phrase 'it's not about the destination, it's about the journeys' definitely applies to these three days. 
The second day was only 125km but we spent some time at a waterfall and swimming in the fast flowing river at the Dray Nur park.
The final day we travelled 175km to our next city, Dalat, spending time seeing some of the big sights that are the main reason for coming here like the Linh An pagoda, happy Buddha and Elephant Falls waterfall. Each day we averaged about 8 hours on the motorcycles including stops.

Over the 3 days we stopped at at least 40 different places seeing how rural families make a living doing tasks that the modern western world couldn't fathom undertaking without machinery such as making bricks for building houses, rice harvesting including shelling each grain of rice individually by hand, manufacture of silk from the worm and bleeding rubber trees. If you had seen the amount of work that goes into the rubber trees you would never throw an eraser in the bin again! Here is a snapshot of just some of the things we saw along the way.

Blacksmith husband and wife tag team

Rice harvesting

Cartilage from an american bomber

Tough day

Poor pigs off to the market

Local taxi (genuinely)

Rubber trees

Each easy rider tour is different as the guide just stops along the way as he sees people working in their homes. They aren't expecting us and don't get paid for letting us look around their house and industries but are so friendly and welcoming, offering tea and hospitality at every turn. Some of the ladies were just happy to be able to touch my pale white arm!

We were lucky enough to have some amazing experiences from having some of the finest coffee in the world (yes I struggled to sleep after it again but couldn't pass up the opportunity to try the richest and silkest coffee ever) to having dragon fruit literally just picked off a plant and still hot from the sun (this is my new obsession now).   We also got to meet some ethnic minority tribes such as the Ede people and the K'ho tribes. At one stage I was ahead of Ronan as my bike was faster and when he turned the corner this is what he saw:

I'm awkward with kids at the best time ever but this wasn't helped by the communication barrier! Luckily our guide had brought sweets for them to break the ice.  We visited a graveyard for the Ede people which was a little freaky as they have pipes coming out of the graves and going into the dead person's mouth. They use this pipe to feed the dead 3 meals a day for 3 months after their death. Then they don't visit the grave again until the funeral celebration after 3 years.

All through the country we had being aware of people talking about us but we never knew what they were saying obviously but I always felt self-conscious and assumed it was bad but our guide translated and it was usually about how nice the colour of my skin was! Although it was a little creepy when he translated that an old man said I'd a nice body!! Ewww! Jean said he's used to seeing Americans coming through!**

 ** note this is a quote and not representative of my views on Americans!

The Vietnamese love white skin and see it was a sign of education and wealth as it means you don't have to work outside in the sun but have an indoor job. For this reason most women wear heavy layers and loads of clothes when outside to avoid the sun for vanity reasons not protection! It's a common sight to see jumpers, coats, socks, scarves and gloves in 34 degrees heat! Anyways so I'm getting complimented on the whiteness of my skin and here is me thinking that i had a nice tan! They sell skin whitening cream in the shops here, no fake tan to be got! So the guide said that when the Vietnamese talk about you loudly in public it's always complimentary and when they whisper behind their hands it's an insult! Very interesting and nice to know.

Some of the bigger sights we went to included the waterfall in Dray Nur Park where we also went swimming, the Linh An Pagoda with the happy Giant Buddha and Elephant Falls. I actually didn't go down to Elephant Falls myself cos it was so dangerous with broken handrail, really steep, slippy steps and I was wearing flip flops. Ronan went down and had to hang from a tree and launch himself from one rock to another. He came back filthy and sweating like mad!

We were eating with the guides in all the local restaurants and as is usual for us on this trip, we loved it! They guys also said that I was better with the chopsticks than Ronan! In fairness he was starving and literally shovelling the food into his mouth at the time!

As all good things have to come to an end and it was a culture shock reaching the city of Dalat after 3 glorious days of countryside! We had a little bit of drama when we landed to the hotel we had booked to find she had given our room away. We had booked into a more expensive place than we had being staying in with a hot tub on the roof (I know, such backpackers) and she tried to move us to a different hotel at the same rate but without the same facilities so we said no as it was a rip off! We went to a couple of places that were full up so got a little worried as it was getting dark. We eventually got a place anyways so it worked out fine. The beauty of Vietnam is the way you can rock up to a hotel, ask to see the room and then decide whether or not you want to stay!

We went for dinner that evening and a Dutch couple from our Nha Trang hotel arrived in bedside us! We keep meeting the same people randomly! Sally and John facebooked to say they were in Dalat also and then we met them randomly on the street on the Wednesday morning. And it's not a small city!

Dalat hadn't much to offer as we had done the main sights on the easy rider so we decided to leave on the night bus on Wednesday 18th. As I said we met Sally and John randomly on the street and arranged to meet for dinner that evening. Then myself and Ronan went to a place known as the Crazy House and met them there again!  The Crazy House is a guest house which is basically a crazy architects' imagination running wild - think an Alice in Wonderland theme!



It started to rain so the 4 of us decided to do lunch and drinks while the shower passed! Ran into a random cafe to get out of the rain and as we were looking around I realised there were photos of my friend Linda and the 4 girls she did the easy rider trip with last year EVERYWHERE!! So random as they didn't even know they were the poster girls for the easy riders! That evening we did dinner and more drinks with Sally and John before getting the night bus at 10pm.

Settled in for the night!

It was supposed to take 8 hours so we were due in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (no sure what we should be calling it to be honest!) at 6am. We got two seats in the back row, with no box to put our feet into like the other seats had, so had acres of space and even Ronan, the giant himself, got to sleep comfortably! But our sleep was rudely interrupted at 4.30am when we were chucked off the bus as we had arrived 1.5hours early!





All good and well until we saw they dropped us at a bus station outside the town where conveniently there were motorcycle taxis everywhere to help us and bring us to our destination! This is another scam between bus drivers and taxi drivers so the stubbornness in us won out and we decided we weren't paying a tenner! With the help of google maps we figured out we had a 2km walk with our bags to get to our hotel so off we set!

Of course we couldn't check in at that time so we went to an all night bar and sat there watching while it turned from late night bar to breakfast restaurant around 5.30am while slowly the prostitutes were replaced by street food vendors! We sat and had brekkie before going to our hotel. We couldn't check in there until 10am (the room was ready but they wanted us to pay a half day room fee to check in early) so we trotted off to walk around the town a bit and hung around another cafe until 10am. You would think that 6hours hanging about at that time of the morning would be tough going but it wasn't too bad. We have become experts at killing time efficiently and it was actually grand. The only reason I got these 3 blog entries done actually! It was funny looking around at other backpackers with really cross heads on them waiting for their hotels to let them in and me and Ronan in great form laughing away!

Feeling a little sad that we have reached our last stop in Vietnam, the time has flown and we both love it so much, don't wanna leave!