Pokhara & Chitwan

Pokhara, the city on the lake. Pokhara is a quiet place with not a great deal to do but the atmosphere and the views are really great. Spending most of my days doing all my shopping (with the help of my Nepalese trekking guide who got me local prices) I also managed to get out of Pokhara slightly and visit two nearby tibetan settlements. The settlements were basic and the people very friendly but the vibe of it all was still very depressing, a people living displaced is never a happy sight.
From Pokhara i was lucky enough to see views of the full Annapurna Range as the clouds cleared one morning while I was there for the first time in 4 months!!
It was in Pokhara that I purchased my 'Bagh Chal' board game, a Nepalese classic similar in some ways to chess or checkers, where one player is the tigers and the other the goats.
In Chitwan national park i managed to see wild Rhino's charge (from the safety of elephant back) and river crocodiles. Apart from this however, I was not too impressed with Chitwan, a town that seemed to be a backwater of the world and as national park that we as tourists barely scraped the fringes of. Compared to Borneo Chitwan was almost pathetic, only the Rhino's and the friendly local people made it worth visiting.

Kathmandu, Rafting and the Annapurna circuit, part 1

It felt good to be arriving in Kathmandu, to be away from South East Asia for a while and back to a place that I love so much. This time Kathmandu seemed much more peaceful than the last time I was here, most of the people happy that peace was now here between the Maoists and the King. Tej picked me up from the airport and so far his service has been excellent. Filling in my time in Kathmandu I walked to Durbar square, visited Patan's Durbar square, and went to see the Burning Ghats where funerals are held and where Nepal's most holy Hindu Temple lies. I wandered Thamel's shops but did not have enough money to buy, and I read for several hours by the light of my head torch after a heavy downpour of rain put the city into several hours of blackout. I really enjoyed my time in Kathmandu but for me it was also mostly just a prelude to my time back in the mountains....
Before setting off on my trek around the Annapurna circuit I was booked in for a one day trip of rafting down the Trisuli river. I had read the scenery around Trisuli was not so nice but I found it to be absolutely beautiful. The rafting itself was loads of fun, wet season conditions making for big rapids and for several occasions when we all had to dive for cover into the raft. I was not so happy being placed in a raft full of Indian tourists that included an old mother who should never have been in the river and never once even made an attempt to paddle, and another young man who skimmed the surface with every stroke, essentially doing nothing. But in the end it didn't matter, rafting was just so much fun regardless. Unfortunately I did not get any photos as taking my camera into the raft would have been suicide, but I have my memories...
After rafting it was time to start my trekking in the Annapurna region. This time of year the weather was very cloudy as it is wet season but the clouds that kept the mountains hidden also kept the tourists away. For almost three full days I walked without seeing another tourist, past waterfalls and picturesque villages. My goal was to make it over the high pass of thorong-la, and despite being bedridden for a day with some unknown illness that had me in a terrible state I recovered and crossed the pass in just 7 hours. For me, I must say I preffered the scenery of the everest region to the Annapurna's but I must also admit I did miss alot of the bigger mountains this time around because of cloud cover.
Fin.

Bangkok, My Second Home

Coming back to Bangkok was full of mixed emotions for me. It felt good to be coming back to somewhere familiar and where it is easy to do things, but it also felt a bit of a shame to be leaving the peaceful slow pace of Laos and Cambodia. Coming from these two countries, thailand's relative affluence to these two nations was starkly evident. While in Bangkok this time I visited the Moon bar at the banyan hotel for views of the city from the 59th floor, which was incredible. apart from that i've had a drunken khao san session and some massive catching up to do on flights etc..
Tomorrow, I leave for Nepal.

On the road to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor

Crossing the border to Cambodia was suprisingly easy with no bribes needed. Traveling to Siem Reap however was much slower, taking two days and forcing us to stay a night in the unexciting town of Kratie. the next day we took the long journey to Siem Reap which was made interesting by a roadside stop where the locals were selling deep fried tarantula's and crickets and some local kids that were great fun to play with. Arriving in Siem Reap, we checked into a hotel that had a massive crocodile pit out the back. Siem Reap has changed massively since the last time I was there four years ago and is now a nice little tourist town. Were I not feeling sick and in need of some antibiotics I would have definitely stayed longer but I needed to get back to bangkok, so we planned to visit Angkor the day after our arrival.
Angkor was as amazing as I had hoped, with Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and the Bayon being the best of the sites we visited. As far as Angkor is concerned, the photos will tell the story better anyway...

4000 Islands

Situated down the very bottom of Laos, near the Cambodian border, are a group of small Mekong islands known as the '4000 islands' and they weould have to be one of the quietest locations I have visited. Well, Don Khong anyway, Don Det is actually quite busy with tourists. Traveling with Ciaran, my mate from home, and a nice English girl we had met in Vientiene, we stayed on don Khong for our first day and night. Walking through the streets to explore the islands little kids on bikes would ride past us and shout out 'pen' at us. We though it must be Lao for something but when we asked at the hotel the owner told us that they kids were literally shouting pen, as in a pen for writing, as not many kids had one to do their school work with. Hearing this my mate from home and I bought all the pens the island shop had and hired some push bikes to ride around distributing them. It was a good experience to see the children's faces light up when we gave them the pens but also very depressing to know we could only do so little and that these children wanted to learn so much but didn't even have a pen to do it with!
The next day we headed to don Khong, where our accomodation was just $2.50 a night! This island is definitely the more popular amongst tourists with quite a few around but it was still nice to hire push bikes again and ride around the island to see the waterfall, and local kids riding a water buffalo. Poverty in this part of Laos is everywhere. We stayed on Don Det for two nights, relaxing in our hammocks and visiting the largest waterfall, per volume of water, in South East Asia. We also had a heavy night of drinking here that involved nursing a blow up dolphin. Ready for something more, we headed south to Cambodia, to visit Angkor.

Vang Vieng and Vientiene

Vang Vieng is probably Laos most popular tourist destination and it shows. Restaurants in the area play friends and family guy dvds all day every day and the mix of drunk or recovering tourists sprawl around everywhere. Tubing is the thing to do here and apart from that there isn't a whole lot else to be seen. That said, tubing was unreal fun floating down the river all day stopping at bars for a beer or a swing into the river. On the day we did it we didnt get back until around 8:30 when it was well and truly dark. And we had another fun night out there drinking buckets of free whisky until 4am. The only problem is that seeing this sort of thing in Laos, and participating in it as we did, seems to be a depressing look into the future of Laos tourism slowly going the way of Southern Thailand. Once we had done our day tubing and visited a nice freshwater spring that runs out of one of the nearby caves, Ciaran and I were more than ready to say goodbye to Vang Vieng and its seedy atmosphere.
Vientiene, Laos capital city, is as busy as it gets in Laos. Luckily, this translates to still being less busy then islands like Phuket or Koh Samui. Not a whole lot to do in Vientiene but the Buddha Park was really interesting, and I also went to the water park when I was feling hungover for some pretty fun waterslides... what an 'off the beaten track thing to do', haha. It was in Vientiene that I also met with up with a mate from home for two weeks and it was nice to see a familiar face, and to catch up we headed out partying with a big group of random tourists that had slowly formed throughout the night to a packed Laos nightclub that had more lasers bouncing around than in a star wars film. on the way to the club I managed to climb on the roof of the Tuk Tuk and get a bit of a surf in through the windy streets...
Oh yeah, I should also mention that we met a celebrity of sorts, runner up for Malaysian Idol from some years back who joined us at our table for a few post performance drinks. It was one of the best nights out i've had in a while...

Ponsavan

Our reason for heading to Ponsavan was more or less just to check out the nearby plain of Jars, then move on to Vang Vieng. Arriving at night after a bus trip of amazing scenery we checked into a lonely planet recommended guesthouse that was a shitty place down a long muddy road behind a truck yard. On that recommendation lonely planet scores zero. The next morning we went to book a trip to the plain of jars but they were all around $15US so we decided to hire some push bikes and ride the 15km to site 1 instead. The ride was flat enough but I was feeling the first symptoms of a sickness that would last until I got back to bangkok and on to some anti-biotics so it really took it out of me. As for the Jars themselves they are certainly worth seeing, but are by no stretch a must see item on your travel list. The best part of Ponsavan was actually the MAG tourist office there where we watched bomb harvest and bombies on dvd, and the loads of UXO that litters the restuarants and tour operator offices in the area. With the jars over and done with, it was time to move on to Vang Vieng for some tubing.

Sam Neau & UXO

Traveling to Sam Neau was a new level of rough travel for me. To get there, Ciaran and I took a 20 hour overnight public bus that had been so overfilled that there we not only no seats but also absolutely no space in the aisles. The only spot left for us was on the spare tyre next to the back door, which we shared with two other people who leaned all over us. Add to this blaring Laos music cutting in and out for the whole trip, a smell like rotten cabbage and people throwing food all over the ground and you starting to get the picture, although this was definitely one of those experiences that can only really be lived, not explained. It was pretty funny actually.
Once we finally arrived we went and found Laith who took us out into the field to see the UXO Lao workers searing for bombs. It was absolutely fascinating. Laith explained loads to us about the bombs and how UXO LAO and MAG operate, as well as some interesting things he has found out while living in Laos. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any explosions but we did see a cluster bomb in the ground the workers were going to blow up in the afternoon. While out this way we also visited some caves in Xieng Khouang where Lao people hid during the bombing raids and they were really interesting. After spending a few days here with Laith we headed onwards to Phonsavan aware that Sam Neau would have been more or less a nothing place if we didn't know Laith and get to see the UXO guys work.