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Posts Tagged ‘Backpackers’

• 17 Jul

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • Cambodia
  • Southern Cambodia

  Sihanoukville

  2

  Further north in the coast, the area around Sihanoukville is being spoiled by property investors speculating with the coastal terrains, constructing resorts and privatising beaches, since tourism is proving the industry of the future. We were expecting to find hordes of tourists and Khmer families enjoying the beaches and massive tourist development all around the area, but we got such a nice surprise once we arrived there.

  

  Making plans in advance is sometimes good but it can also be unadvisable – at least we don’t like it. Before arriving in Sihanoukville, we had decided to apply for our Visa for Vietnam in the Sihanuokville Consulate, which meant we had to plan which day we would be entrying in Vietnam and therefore planing how long we would be in Sihanoukville, when we would be in back in Phnom Penh and when we will cross the border (too much planing for us, believe me!!). Since we thought that we wouldn’t like so much the atmosphere here we planned to be only for 3 days in Sihanoukville before heading back to Phnom Penh.

  

  We arrived early in the morning, making all the way along the coast in the back of a truck of a Cambodian family. Hitch-hiking in Cambodia isn’t that bad, although not as many people is willing to take you as in Thailand. We went directly to the Vietnam Consulate and did all the burocracy stuff, which took less than we thought, pretty straight forward. Once we got the Visa we were ready to look for a place to stay and explore the city. The first impression about the town wasn’t that bad, since the views of the sea were fine and there seemed not to be as many visitors as we were fearing. We did a long walk carrying our backpack through the town until we found a good, cheap room in Weather Station Hill, where we were able to rent a motorbike –it was supposed to be banned for tourists in this town- to explore the surrounding beaches. We did a loop around the coastline, from east to north, and visited all the beaches in the area. Now it comes the reason why we first said that making plans can be unadvisable, because what we were expecting to be an awful and overcrowded tourist resort like Benidorm –a bad example of tourism development in the Spanish coast- was in fact a much relaxed place to stay with nice beaches outside the main touristic area of town, like Otres beach, a dessertic white sand beach that we almost had for us alone.

  

  So, due to planning in advance we could not spend as much time in Sihanoukville’s lonely beaches as we would have like to. But anyway it was a pleasant stay away of the noise and the inconveniences of big cities and mass tourism. There were not so many visitors around as we expected, probably because it was low season. Being able to visit places not crowded with tourists is one of the things that we like the most, which convinces us that travelling in low season is best for us.

  

• 14 Jul

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • Cambodia
  • Southern Cambodia

  Kampot, Kep and Koh Tonsay Island

  0

  The south coast of Cambodia is blessed with tropical white sand beaches, little islands, small fishing communities and national parks. It is a good place to relax, after being in the stressing city of Phnom Penh. It is also visited by very little number of tourists, since development here is very low at the moment.

  

  Historically, the towns of Kep and Kampot where the most important centres in the region. Kep is no more than a fishing village on a small headland of palm-fringed coast, with narrow and grubby beaches, although it has a laid-back atmosphere which makes it a perfect place to just relax. It was founded as a colonial retreat for the French in 1908 and later was one of King Sihanouk’s favorite spots in Cambodia, where he used to entertain visiting foreign dignataries. The remains of magnificient colonial villas can be seen along the seafront, most of them destroyed by the Khmer Rouge guerrilla during the civil war.

     

  We arrived to Kep by bus and found a guest house just by the sea. Enjoyed a couple of days there, just relaxing in the hammoks or strolling the coast line. We also did a day boat trip to one of the nearby islands, Koh Tonsay ( Rabbit Island). The island was a lot nicer than Kep seashore, with white sand and palm trees beaches, and an even more relaxed atmosphere. Just few tourists there, hanging on their hammoks, sunbathing, swimming or enjoying the pleasure of just doing nothing. The island perimeter could be explored in a couple of hours, but had a dense jungle in the middle that seemed quite impenetrable.

  

  Three days after we moved to the riverside town of Kampot, which we wanted to use as a base to explore Bokor National Park and its abandoned hill station by motorbike. The bad news were that the road was closed due to improvement works on the pavement, so the only way to get there was with an organised trekking tour which we were not interested to join because of its elevated price. So we continued with our trip, heading to Sihanoukville on the next morning. We were not really interested in visiting this town, since we have read it is the main tourist town of Cambodia’s coast, full of tourists and well-to-do Khmers on the weekends. But we were hoping to arrange our Vietnam Tourist Visa there and thus leave Cambodia sometime soon.

• 12 Jul

  

  Posted by
  Hector

  
  

  Category

  • Cambodia
  • Phnom Penh
  • Southern Cambodia

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital

  0

  According to the normal pattern, the capital of a country is the busiest and most modern city of the nation. This happens again in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The streets are noisy, dirty and polluted because of the high concentration of vehicles -private cars, tuk tuks, taxis, big motorbikes, mopeds, buses, truks and many more- which also makes to cross the road a pretty dangerous action, since everybody drive as they please –with red light, in the wrong sense of the road or on the pedestrian zones-. We haven’t had any problem with the traffic so far, but have had to stand in the middle of the road more than once, waiting for the vehicles to stop at the red traffic light. We have spent many hours wandering around town and have suffered from the fumes until our lungs could feel it. Now, from a smoke free area in an internet cafe our throat is getting better but, in case we come back to this city, we will consider to wear this surgical masks that many locals do wear.

     

  About the city itself there is not much to highlight due to its lack of sights. The city is chaotic and charmless. There are no nice parks, interesting neirbourhoods or impresive buildings, apart from the scarce french colonial architecture, the central market or the Royal Palace. Having visited the Grand Palace in Bangkok before, it wasn’t appealing enough for us to visit it here. Furthermore, walking around Phnom Penh can be very tough and tiring, since it’s very hot all day long. There is no breeze nor shadow in this city, which makes it very unpleasant to stroll around. And we are in the wet season, who knows what hell could be in the dry one!!! The best moments of our stay have been chating with locals in the street and a couple of visits to the exterior of some french colonial villas, which looked really beatiful however their decadent aspect. Spending two days here for us was more than enough and we decided to head towards the Cambodian coast, searching for a relaxed and refreshing place to hang aroung for a while.

  

• 08 Jul

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • Angkor
  • Cambodia
  • Hostels
  • Northern Cambodia

  Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor

  0

  Our third destination in the country was Siem Reap, the closest town –around 6 km- to the ancient temple ruins of the reign of Angkor. The town is a secure investment place for anybody wanting to start up a tourism related business due to the proximity of Angkor Wat and the rest of the tourist sites. This is why many of the hotels and restaurants are massive and run by westeners. An example we found would be Babel Siem Reap Guest House, a highly reccommended place to stay for its clean, spacious rooms and for the new owners, a spanish, an italian and a french guy, all of them very friendly and helpful. Another recommended guest house right next would be the Good Kind Guest House, where we actually were staying and from where we arranged our visit to the Angkor area, bus tickets, etc. There was one amazing cambodian guy -Seiha- who was responsible for the guests and who made his best to accomplish their needs. Thank you very much for everything!!

  

  There is much to say about the temples of Angkor, capital of Cambodia’s anciente Khmer empire, but we don’t have the space to explain it all here, it would be too long. More than one hundred Angkorian monuments are all spread in a very vast extension (over some 3000 sq Km) surrounded by water and forest, linked by kilometres of sinuous roads which you may cover by bicycle or tuk tuk. We took the second option since we had bought a 3 days ticket -40 USD and apparently, enough time to see the most important sites- and the temperature during the day seemed to be too hot to cycle, so it felt to be a good way to do the whole loop around the temples. And it certainly was because we were able to rest on the meantime between one temple and another plus being underneath a shadow and with an english speaking driver who explained us a few things about the complex. Our only mistake was trying to do too many things on the second day though. We planned to be touring the sites from sunrise to sunset nonstop and were completely knocked out by midday, returning to the hotel short time later. Unfortunately we did not see neither sunrise –rainy season means usually clouds!- nor sunset, which are supposed to be the best times of the day to take pics, but enjoyed our visit to the max anyway, specially in the more remote, jungle covered temples such as Ta Prohm and Preah Palilay, which we were lucky to visit being the only people there, a completely different experience. All in all we had a very good time exploring the ruins but something must be said too: we have had enough of seeing Khmer temples for a while!!!

  

• 06 Jul

  

  Posted by
  Hector

  
  

  Category

  • Cambodia

  First days in Cambodia

  0

  Right after crossing the border, we realised that Poi Pet was not the best place to stay at for the night. Casinos, duty free shops, cars, mud everywhere and taxi and tuk-tuk touts made from it a very bad choice to spend our time, plus it was almost as expensive as any average european big city but with a half of the quality standards. Getting out of town was difficult at that time of the day -more than 8 pm- since public local transport seemed to be inexistent. After one hour of arguing and bargaining hard we arranged a shared taxi for half the price of what they were asking for at the beginning and could get to Sisophon on the same day.

  

  Sisophon was as dead and dark as a cementery, so we stayed at the first hotel we found and just relaxed –watched a movie on the satellite TV, such a luxury- and slept until the next day. On the next morning we found difficulties again to find a honest taxi driver (there were again no buses or public transport) who would take us to our next stop, so we decided to take it easy and just have a good energising meal before deciding with whom to travel. Sitting in the restaurant, we kept on seeing locals who arrived in a pick up truck or a van and continued their way after having lunch. After asking a couple of them for their direction, we were invited by someone to travel with him to Siem Reap, obviously for free and with no hassle. It was great!! He was a young cambodian man working for an american oil company, so he could speak english very well and was able to explain us many things about his country’s history. The trail was in a pretty bad state, full of holes, rocks, mud or dust, and it doesn’t seem that it will be improved in long time. Apparently Thai Airways has the monopoly of the flights between Bangkok and Siem Reap (where the famous Angkor temple ruins are) and they pay to the corrupt government of Cambodia to not seal the road, so they can get all the tourist flow to Angkor. Such is the reality in this country, corruption everywhere. It took us almost 2 hours to get to Siem Reap, but the journey was fantastic, talking with him about politics, culture and corruption problems of Cambodia.

• 04 Jul

  

  Posted by
  Hector

  
  

  Category

  • Cambodia
  • Curiosities

  Facing the mafia at the Cambodian border of Poi Pet

  0

  After so many days enjoying the comodities of Bangkok’s tourist area, Kao San Road, we were decided to get back in the trail and move to a new country, a new language and a new culture. Our first contact with all these things, right in the gate to Cambodia was pretty awful. After having spent around 6 hours sitting in a 3^rd class train and having had to hitch hike from the railway station to the border due to the abussive price of taxis and tuk-tuks, we were not expecting to be forced to face such a bad welcome from the Cambodian border authorities. Many travellers talk about it, but one never thinks it is going to be that way.

  Once having left Thailand border and wanting to pass through the Cambodian inmigration bureaucracy as soon as possible as it was getting dark, the officers at the Cambodian border tried to make us pay 1000 Thai Baht each for our one month tourist visa -around 30 US dollars- while we knew the fee is only 20 USD. There was no way to discuss with them about the real price, it was paying in Baht or returning to Thailand. There was even a sign saying “tourist Visa 20 USD” right on the officer’s window!!! The officers started to get nervous as we kept on asking to pay in dollars and they even told us we would not get the Visa otherwise. It was already dark and we feared we would get stucked in the middle of both borders with no Visa. Other tourists were crossing the border at that time, all of them paying without making any question about the Visa price change, so we started to think we should pay the 30 USD -1000 Baht- even though we knew it was a scam. They were the authority there and there was nothing we could do. We exchanged the money in the only office available at the border -the one from the officers, of course, and at very low rate, that was part of the scam-. As we were ready to pay the extra money to get the Visa and finish with all that hassle, one light lit on our heads and we asked the officer for his name and identification number. He couldn’t be more surprised with such request. We told him, we would pay the money only if he would give us his details, so that we could contact the embassy on the next day to report the irregularity. He returned our passports and denied us the Visa. We insisted we need to get that Visa, and that we would pay the amount he was asking for, but we wanted his name. After some more minutes of tension in which the air was too thick to breath properly, he returned us our 2000 Baht and accepted the payment in USD -20 and no one more!- So, we did it and left that place as soon as we could! We were already in Cambodia. The challenge now was to get away of that awful border town, Poi Pet, in which there seemed to be no law, but the one of money.

• 29 Jun

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • Bangkok
  • Laos
  • Thailand

  Back in Bangkok

  2

  On the same day we had arrived back to Pakse from our three days motorbike loop through the Bolaven Plateau, we took a songthaew (kind of a pick up van with two benches very common in Laos as a local bus) to the Thailand border crossing of Vang Tao. Once in Thailand again, we decided to try our luck and increase our hitch hiking experience and got a free ride to Ubon, the closest railway station with a daily train service to Bangkok. Our expectations of getting an sleeper train and have a good rest that night could not be accomplished and we had to complete our 10 hours night ride in a quite small and hard 3^rd class sitting bench. One of the inconveniences of travelling without any fixed plan or booking-security, but who needs that…? At least not us.

  

  So, we arrived in Bangkok early on the next morning tired and close to a neck contracture from the many contortions in the train. We catched a bus to Kao San Road, the tourist area of the city, got a room and went to eat something. We were back in Bangkok, something we had been secretly expecting in our mind. Somehow, we love this city and we still have so much to discover here…

• 25 Jun

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • Hostels
  • Laos
  • Southern Laos

  The Bolaven Plateau

  0

  The fertile Bolaven Plateau is a semi remote area in the south eastern part of Laos, famous for its cool climate, waterfalls, fertile soil and high grade coffee plantations. In the last years, some “good roads” –sealed- have been constructed and it is now easier to travel around the province either by motorbike or by public transport. We decided to rent a 110 c.c. motorbike, the most convenient way to cover the area. Shopping around in Pakse we found a brand new Honda with only 15000 km and for a reasonable price and started the loop on the same afternoon.

  

  We stopped for the first night at Tad Lo waterfalls, where a dense concentration of lodges and guest houses spreads along the river. It is in that kind of moments when we realise how good it is to be travelling in the low season, since most of the hotels are empty (bad for them but more intimate for us). From there we took the road on the next morning to go to Sekong. The scenic road was kind of short ride for us and we decided to continue over towards Attapeau, where we spent the afternoon between the local market and the town bridge, from where we could enjoy an spectacular sunset over the river and a pretty full moon later on.

  

  On the third day, we took an offroad path (not paved) to Paksong, the capital of the coffee plantations. With “coffee plantations” we were specting something bigger, something much more spectacular. In any case, the path we took to get there and our stay in Paksong were completely rewarding. We found a beautiful wooden guest house a bit appart of the town (Boraven Guest House) with a lonely tree on the courtyard, which two friendly Gibbons considered their home. Much of the time in Paksong we were playing, observing and feeding them. We were impressed in how friendly and playful they were. On the next day, early in the morning, we continued back to Pakse, where we arrived at early noon and got ready to cross the border to Thailand again on our search for a place to fix our camera…

  

• 19 Jun

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • Laos
  • Southern Laos

  Champasak and the Wat Phu ruins

  0

  Our visit to Champasak was brief but exciting. The city itself has not much to offer but it is located in a pretty emerald green scenery. We arrived in the early afternoon, after crossing the Mekong river with a local ferry, and were ready to start exploring the town in almost an hour, the time which took us to find by foot a convenient guest house for our one night stay. There we rented brand new bicycles (never again with a hired old bike!!) and went to the nearby ancient Angkor style temple ruins.

  

  The ancient Khmer religious complex spreads over the lower slopes of Phu Pasak, a sacred mountain for the local people. The archaeological site is divided into three levels joined by a long, stepped promenade flanked by statues of lions and nagas (mythical water serpent common in Thai and Lao legends and art). The lower level consists in the long causeway promenade flanked either side by ceremonial ponds that once was the entrance to the temple complex. The middle level comprises the sandstone Khmer pavilions with fine sculpture and reliefs. On the uppermost level is the main temple sanctuary itself.

  

  The crumbling pavilions, the Shiva ligam sanctuary, the enigmatic crocodile stone, the stairs covered with grass and moss, and the surrounding dense vegetation give Wat Phu an almost mystical atmosphere. It was great up there, sitting among old ruins, an impressive cliff and the emerald green nature, but we could not enjoy our visit properly because it was the closing time and it was pouring rain like in the peaks of the rainy season.

  

• 17 Jun

  

  Posted by
  Julia

  
  

  Category

  • 4000 Islands
  • Laos
  • Mekhong River
  • Southern Laos

  Don Det and Don Khone, the smaller islands

  0

  Unexpected things are the most rewardable things that may happen while travelling and we didn’t expect Don Det to be so laid back and beautiful, so it was really pleasant to stay there for almost a week. The accommodation offer in Don Det consists in many similar wooden bungalows overlooking the river. They all look the same but there are little aspects that make big differences. We found our place in Vixai Guest House on the sunset side of the island, a family run Guest House in which the ambience was really peaceful and from where it felt very difficult to leave on the last day. The Vixai family were great hosts –always with a smile and ready to help- and it was real fun to interact with them, share a ride on their long-tail boat along the archipelago, play with their son Sitta and try to make bamboo instruments with Vixai. The room was pretty basic –mattress, mosquito net and no power or light, just candles-. The attached shared terrace/balcony outside the room worked out as a living room –with hammocks, table and chairs- and was less than 2 metres above the Mekong water, so you could almost wash your feet from there. The view was superb: water, islands, birds, vegetation and the wonderful sky with its blue colour and its amazing cloud shapes and colours.

  

  Most of the time we just explored the island, walked among the rice paddies while the farmers where planting the rice, interacted with the locals in rain-calling ceremonies (so much fun!), played with the kids and mostly just chilled out. We also rented a bike and visited on a day trip Don Khone island, further south and linked to Don Det by an old bridge. We saw the beautiful Li Phi waterfalls, visited villages, tried to spot the Irrawady dolphins with no luck and refreshed in a couple of nice beaches formed in the river island. The journey was great but hard, since the bicycles were pretty bad and the paths were full of stones, plus the path was sometimes an adventure like when we had to cross a rudimentary bridge made out of a couple of wood planks and an old and rusty railway line from the french colonial times pushing our bikes and maintaining the equilibrium as good as we could. The many hours we spent riding around ended up with aching bums but admiring a great sunrise from the hammock in our room balcony with an ice coffee, the perfect way to finish the day.