Travels

The last two week featured visits from Patrick (yey!)

 We hung out in Hanoi for a few days. Spent plenty of time walking around the streets getting accosted by fruit selling women (they have this desire to thrust their fruit baskets at me and insist that photos are taken. I declined this offer.), avoiding scams by bread selling women (I just wanted one sweet bread for each of us... she put about 15 things in a bag and demanded exorbitant amounts of money, when she continued to resist giving only two things I decided I had had enough and walked off..... she then followed and grabbed hold of me twice trying to sell the damn bread) and taking in the insanity that is Hanoi.
These photos were taken on our walk (complete with the necessary ice cream stops) around the lake. Hanoi is actually quite a beautiful city, lots of green space. This lake in the centre of the old town is just one of the garden areas that locals like to come to to relax, exercise and do some ballroom dancing.
The story goes that an emperor was boating on the lake and a magic turtle gave him a sword with which he was able to defeat his enemies. Some time later on another boat trip the turtle returned and snatched back the sword... where it waits at the bottom of the lake.

We also went to see water puppet theatre. This was awesome! I didn't really know what to expect, but the puppets are controlled via underwater rods and levers, with the puppeteers hiding in the water behind a screen. You could only really see the rods if you looked closely, and only because we were sitting above the water a bit. But the arms and heads move around with no visible strings or controllers. It was great. All the scenes also related to water type activities, like rice planting, buffalo swimming, fishing and dragons. The fire breathing / water shooting dragons with segmented bodies that moved through the water were amazing. But I failed to take any photos, partly because I was busy watching and party because the person two rows ahead of us who kept lifting her camera up high to take photos was incredibly annoying - and I didn't want to be that guy!

With our Hanoi Kids guides

I also heard about an organisation called Hanoi Kids. They offer free tours of the city by university students who are wanting to practice their English by regularly talking to native English speakers. The deal is that we as tourists pay for the transport costs and any entry fees. And in return we get a tour, explanations of places that often don't have many English signs and the chance to chat with locals about their lives and experiences (which we all enjoyed so much we ended up spending over an hour drinking one cup of coffee!).



With them we visited the Hanoi Hilton (aka prison originally built by the french to contain and torture Vietnamese revolutionaries, later used to contain captured US pilots). This is a bit of a surreal place with a heavy influence on the mistreatment of Vietnamese by the French and a couple of rooms devoted to showing how well they looked after the American prisoners. I assume that the actual treatment was probably somewhere in between what America says and what Vietnam says.... that's usually the way.

with a statue representative the height of Vietnamese people
at whatever point in time that was (I forgot)

We also visited the temple of literature. It was quite interesting to hear the history of this temple, and the modern uses from the point of view of uni students (who regularly come to pray for luck before exams)

We attempted to visit Ho Chi Minh's tomb.... but neither our hotel reception (when we asked if our clothes were conservative enough), nor the guides actually mentioned that on Friday afternoons it is closed. So we walked around the outside a bit.

The view from our bungalow

Mai Chau was stunning! It took four hours in a van to get there, but definitely worth it! I was a little worried that it would be a bit of a tinsly tourist town (like my experience of visiting that "traditional village" near Buon Ma Thout). It was actually really empty and relaxing, we were even there on a weekend (apparently a lot of locals visit on weekends) but even then it wasn't too busy. The air was clean and the lack of traffic was welcome after a few days in Hanoi! Bike riding and hanging out in the rice fields was fun.
Climbing up to the 1000 steps caves was less fun and more hot, especially as I am told it is in fact 1200 steps! But the satisfaction of beating the steps was worth it... I guess. We also found a mysterious path at the back of the cave which was obviously designed to be explored - it had hand rails.... but then the guide yelled at us to come back and appear to be quite agitated. Maybe there were ghosts back there. I find lots of times that people here do thing I can't explain it all comes down to ghost actions.

Yey, bikes!

 
 Staying in Mai Chau also means you get obligatory after dinner entertainment in the form of "traditional dances".

This is a kind of awkward affair, the first dance featured eight people standing in a line holding hands, then swinging their arms back and forth. A bit like a grade 1 Christmas show dance. But with adults. After this first dance the men dancers all sat down and enjoyed the bucket bong in the corner while the ladies danced. As the grand finale everyone returned for a bamboo dance. Hard to explain without seeing it yourself. but two people hold two pieces of bamboo on the ground and hit them down twice, then smash them together. Meanwhile dancers jump in and put pf the bamboo, avoid getting their ankles smashed. Everyone was brought up to join in the dance. Which got more and more hilarious as we discovered how bad at timing the group of Vietnamese girls on the tour were..... especially when they wanted to hold the bamboo and do that bit! a couple of people got bruised ankles in that portion of the dancing!

Halong bay

Next stop, Halong bay!
Boating around, drinking expensive cocktails (I have been in Vietnam too long and every seems expensive now. These were $4-6 cocktails.... I will not cope with Australia prices) and relaxing on the beach. Pretty awesome!

Halong bay is made up of limestone cliff islands. The landscape is pretty stunning and once you get out and away from the ridiculous amounts of diesel smoke it is amazing. As a bonus, because it is limestone cliffs it has lots of caves, like this one. I have found that Vietnam in general has a bit of an obsession with caves, and they have many caves. This one featured bonus lights-of-every-colour and rocks that looked vaguely like stuff if you squinted really hard and pretended!

Fishing boats in a sheltered bay

We also kayaked around some of the cliffs and through caves.

Swimming wasn't totally the nicest, because even moored in the "clean water swimming spot" there were patches of oil in the water. I really hope that boat owners (at least the tourist boats) see that people are not into the smokey polluting boats and they need to do some vaguely regular maintenance to actually keep the bay nice!

But swimming did involve water entry from the very top of the boat. So I was into the jumping-off-the-sun-deck thing :)

I had heard from various people that Halong Bay was disappointing, or dirty and polluted. I found it beautiful! Yes, there was pollution from all the boats, but some places seem to be striving to reduce that. Our hotel on Monkey island was collecting all the flotsam that came near the beach and burning it. I am sure it's probably as much about keeping their private beach nice as it i about reducing pollution. But they didn't wait for the tide to wash stuff away.

Hopefully everyone (tourists and locals alike) will try to keep it nice. but we had a great time!

That's pretty much our first week wrapped up. Will add more about the second week later!

sunset drinks on the balcony. life is good

Laos - the North

Firstly - apologies for the delays in updates. This is partly due to meeting up with more friends and embarking on a tour of Laos - with an extremely full itinerary! and party because my laptop has finally decided that bits regularly breaking off it isn't enough and it refuses to turn on.
So the next few collections of stories and photos may appear out of order - or with much delays!

From Luang Prabang we drove up the most impressive range road I have ever been on.
It was like the gillies range on steroids.... then some.
300km of winding up a mountain, then down the other side, then up another mountain and down the other side. I am actually not really sure if at the end of all it we were at the top, or at the bottom. It was a long long 9 hours in a winding van. For the two people in our party who get travel sick this was a particularly hellish trip! But the scenery was stunning!

We were rewarded when we finally arrived in Phonosovan. Land of the Jars. well, Plain of jars. Basically it is full of giant stone jars and unexploded bombs.

 

The Jars are of mysterious and not entirely understood origin. They are carved out of rock and clumped together in sites. Best guess seems to be that they were used to put human remains in, then when the person had completely decomposed the remains were removed and buried nearby. Or possible people were cremated inside, then buried afterwards.

This red sign apparently says - don't go past here. Bombs.
You do just keep getting reminded here!

Locally there are many stories - we heard that after a great battle the victorious army used them to make "Lao Lao" or rice whiskey. Which would have been a lot of effort for some lao lao - these things are
massive! and carved out of solid rock!
We also heard that a giant built them.... but I am not quite clear why the giant man wanted to build them.

Some talk was of a fertility ceremony, complete with claims of people being locked inside until they made a baby (Actually, I can't really remember if we were told about people getting locked inside - or we made that part up)

It was pretty amazing to see the field full of jars. Some of them 2 metres tall, most around 1 or 1.5. Plus the sun came out for us (an improvement on when we arrived the day before in pouring rain and everyone told us the weather would be the same today!). The view around fields and farm was stunning. Bright blue sky, lush green grass, deep red fertile looking soil.
But looking into the farm land did bring back the truth of the area..... bombies.

The night before we spent some time at the Mine Advisory Group (MAG) museum. It was shocking to get the full picture of how ravaged by bombs Laos is. Especially considering that they never engaged in war, and America technically "wasn't dropping bombs". More horrifying is the nature of cluster bombs - which are designed to kill and maim people - not to destroy military building or weapons. Add the fact that about 30% didn't explode on impact (usually on impact with villages and farms that may have been along the route of the Ho Chi Minh trail - or that the Army decided to destroy so that communists couldn't use them for food or supplies. Not that there was any suggestion these villages were providing them with food).

Anyway, about 30% of the 2 million+ tons of bombs didn't explode. Instead they are in farms, or school yards, or stuck halfway up a clump of bamboo just waiting for someone to shake the tree. People are constantly afraid of farming their own land, afraid of their kids playing or even going to school. Whole villages are unable to have a stable source of food because clearing new farm land, or new space for houses is terrifying! In one village the locals were able to identify over 100 bombs that they knew the location of from memory, and this is not the first clearing mission in that village.

The most shocking, disgusting part of this all.... assuming that you have got past the fact that 30 years on children die when they pick up a bright yellow, tennis ball sized object.... is that humans are still using cluster bombs.

MAG marker - basically stay on the white side
because the grey side might blow you up!

I don't really know how normal, regular people can help stop this. But we absolutely need to. War is a terrible horrible thing... but leaving millions of tiny bombs strewn around civilian land forcing people to live in fear, and risk their life just to provide their kids with barely enough to eat is unacceptable and we normal people need to find a way to stop it, because it is obvious that the people with bombs won't stop on their own.

Laos - the land of much templing

Yes, templing is a new word, verb meaning to visit temples. If you go to Laos you might just find that you also need templing in your vocabulary. It seems to be the popular tourist pastime!!

Laos is beautiful! It is the chilled out, calm, slow relaxed version of Cambodia or Vietnam. Only while walking around the tourist centric night markets did we ever here "hello, you buy something" and it was from maybe every 10th stall, not the constant barrage of harassment you get in similar situations in Vietnam or Cambodia.

Some of our highlights -
This temple in southern Laos that is dated at around the 5th century. It was a nice afternoon of wandering around and enjoying the view. We even ran into some other aussies that we met 3 weeks earlier in southern Cambodia!
The view here was stunning - all of Laos had pretty amazing views- unfortunately we couldn't linger too long because our plane from Cambodia was 3 or 4 hours late, and we had a long, long way to drive that afternoon!

The view down to the older temple

Down to the 4000 islands (or, possibly 400 islands seeing as it's wet season and so the river is up). We boated down the mekong and went looking for freshwater dolphins. Weirdly to look for the dolphins you boat to one specific place in the dead centre of the river and wait. Not sure why people seem to expect the dolphins to be only in that one spot..... but they weren't the day we were there!

someone asked the guide what the water wheel was for....
He claimed it was to change the direction of the water and
seemed quite put out when we disagreed and suggested it
is for power generation. Not really sure how it would change the
water direction even if that was the aim.

We spent some time visiting various waterfalls. One included a shrine - which appeared to be a giant tree encased in glass. We never managed to establish why they helicoptered this tree out of the river after it feel over and built a shrine it. I have to assume it was a special tree.

We went into the Danger Zone!

We also found a pretty cool coffee plantation /shop. We didn't have time to do the whole tour, but the guy was very informative informative and when he didn't have enough roasted coffee for us to purchase he showed us how to roast it.

From there we headed up to luang prabang for the real templing to begin. Not to mention some nice shopping in the night markets and sampling some good rice wine. As opposed to sampling Vietnamese rice wine - which can be used as a fuel source, this one was smooth and nice!

Luang Prabang also had this amazing waterfall. It was really a series of waterfalls heading up a hill, which meant we were able to just walk up a little way from the change areas and have a water hole all to ourselves (it was a weekend and this place is obviously very popular with tourists and locals alike). The amazing part is the water, which was crystal clear and a very inviting blue.

I very much enjoyed swimming and sitting in the water. I think I need to spend more time just hanging out in creeks and waterfalls - it always makes me feel perfect and relaxed and grounded.

We couldn't linger too long however as we had a Baci ceremony to get to.


The Baci ceremony was done by ex-monks and nuns. Basically it is a blessing and good luck ceremony. The white strings were tied to our wrists and with each one that was tied on the monk or nun tying it gave a special blessing.

This statue was probably my favorite.
I have no idea why he is lying on what
seems to be the roof of this little house!

We got up extra bright and early and gave alms to the monks. We were told we didn't need any thing special. I specifically asked if we needed a scarf, or if we needed to kneel..... the guide said no and he took us to buy biscuits (which, turned out to be individually wrapped chocolate coated biscuits). When we turned up in the morning with out bag of biscuits the kindly women next door took one look.... then went and got us each a scarf and showed us how to wear it, then they got some cardboard to kneel on.... and gave us their mats! Then they got bowls so that we weren't using plastic bags to hold our offerings. Then as each monk comes past we each put and offering in the bowl. Which made it hard to judge - do I have enough.... do I have too much, should we each give a chocolate to every monk.... or will we run out! Anyway, we were very grateful to the ladies who helped us out!

Vientaine featured plenty more temples. Which we were well done with by this point! but Buddha park does deserve a mention, for being so massive and for being quite creepy. If memory serves there are over 200 statues related in some way to Buddhist stories. Turns out the statues that aren't totally creepy themselves, have creepy back stories.One example being a statue of a man and a woman kneeling down holding out her hands. They looked fairly normal - but turns out he was going around cutting off people's fingers because he thought if he had 1000 fingers he would be immortal, and the woman is his mum whose had that last fingers that he needed.

This little girl and her brother live in a village we
stopped off in. Kari gave her a koala and she immediately
handed it back to her brother. So we gave her another one for
herself. 

I believe this is a frog monster eating the moon

Siem Reap

making palm leaf walls

We started our time in Siem Reap not with a trip to the temples, but instead by going on an eco-tour/sustainable help-local-people type tour. It involved visiting a local village and having lunch with a family (who get paid for cooking our food), helping families to do what ever jobs it is they regularly do so we can see what life is like for them, and walking around meeting people.

grandmother and children of the family we made walls for

We rode into town on an ox cart and met a local family who were busy weaving palm leaves into walls for their house. They showed us how to help and we sat down and made a few wall pieces. These will get fitted together to form totally waterproof walls and roof for the family.
Our guide also talked us through some of the other activities that they often do in the village and how local people typically live. Upon finding out we were Australian he also exclaimed - Australia.... your prime minister is funny. This was not the first time someone has made that as the first statement about Australia, but funny varies from crazy to stupid or hilarious.

school made from water bottles

We also went walking through the village and visited the school sponsored by this tour organization. They provide the school free for children to help them learn English and practice other subjects. Most kids only attend school for half days in Cambodia, so for the other half they can come here. The walls are made of water bottles filled with rubbish/plstic bags/cloth. Great recycling I think!!

the hilarious sewing women

There was also a hilarious collection of sewing ladies working at the school. They insisted we come in a sit down with them, showed us what they are making, and seemed to find anything we said or did outrageously funny!!



The next day we settled in for a good dose of temples! My advice to anyone thinking of visit Cambodia / Ankor Wat would absolutely be to go in summer. Yes, it is somewhat hot.... but Australia is somewhat hot anyway. Yes there is a good chance that you might get rained on - but this cools you down from problem number 1. Mostly, the level of other people is dramatically reduced! Even at this reduced amount I found walking around Siem Reap difficult due to the number of tourists (mostly it was those that are so drunk they are dancing in the streets in a bikini, or so rude they are walking around temples in a mid-drift top and short shorts that got on my nerves). We were able to get away from people and sometimes see temples more or less alone.... but in the main sites were having to squeeze past people and wait for entire bus loads of people to take 20 selfies each before we could look at a carving. I imagine that in winter - which is high season, it must be hellish here!


Once you cope with / find strategies to lessen the other tourists' presence - you start to realise the massive size of these temples. It is pretty incredible. Ankow Wat itself is the largest religious building in the world. It also features amazing carvings depecting legends around the base. We declined the offer of a tour (although other people said they regretted not getting a tour.... We had done some pre reading and were too cheap to pay 3 each!). We were glad we did, I read aloud from the lonely planet book at the start of each carving wall so we all knew what was going on. At one point we were overtaken by a group with guide - who must have been providing much less information than the single paragraph I had!

My favorite was definitely Beng Melea. It took us almost 2 hours to get there in tuk tuk.... but because we left at dawn we were already finished walking around and leaving as bus tours arrived. The rest of the time we were completely alone. This is one of the jungle temples. It is slowly getting eaten by forest. It is kind of nice to see that once people leave.... the earth will just take back it's space. Grow over anything we leave behind. It must be very hard for the people in charge though. On one hand they cant move these trees because the trees are now holding up temples, plus people find it so interesting and serene to see the forest taking over. But on the other side of the argument, if they don't do something it won't be too long before the temple is nothing by crumbs at the base of the jungle.

The boat from hell, actually a lovely trip!

We decided to take a boat from Battambang to Siem Reap.
This involved deliberation over a few days as we read various reviews for this boat trip (which would be 8ish hours stuck on a boat once we committed!). Reviews tended to suggest that the boat was a hellish horror ride and everyone was surely going to die on the capsized boat. Other reviews described it as the best part of their trip to Cambodia!

We decided that as long as our expectations were way low.... things could only go up and it would be a better way to see floating village and general life in Cambodia than taking a tour out of Cambodia's most touristy town ever!

our boat

farmlands from the boat

We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the boat. We decided we maybe set expectations a little too low.....There were 6 or 7 of us sitting on the roof (better views, a breeze and more space!) Plus around 20ish people down below.Also note the dark storm clouds that were threatening (and occasionally wetting) us the entire journey.

We were sharing the top of the boat with a dutch girl who kept telling us about how bad the sun is and that we all should go downstairs (she did go downstairs when it warmed up at about 8.30) - we figured that we had hats, long shirts, sunscreen.... and at least here there is an ozone layer to protect us! a kiwi guy, and 2 British girls who really should have been the ones getting the sun lecture.

Having to reapply sunscreen every hour (almost!) and have raincoats on hand for quick cover-ups was worth it for these views!

trading boat, it appeared to trade exclusively in green coconuts and blue poly-pipes

we did get blue sky for parts of the journey

We also past lots of little fishing boats and floating villages. Or people going to or from market, kids being delivered by boat to the floating school. Very different lives! Lots of kids smiling and waving and yelling out hello too. We stopped at various locations dropping of supplies and people before we reached the giant Tonle Sap lake.

Local kids and families

Some of the highlights

These are actually crocodile farms. When we went past a couple I was trying to work out why their fish farm had some much space out of the water. Then, after I managed to see into one, trying to work out why they had tires in them.... Eventually I got a better look and realized they were full of crocodiles

This weed is devastating the rivers. It is seeing stuff like this that makes me so glad that customs and DPI are so strict on people bringing stuff into the country. Apparently this was originally introduced by the French from the Amazon, because they thought it would be a good place for fish to breed and so the people can catch more fish. Turn out, the fish don't eat it, it grows incredibly fast and it jams up boat motors when you drive over it.

Tonle Sap lake. It is gigantic! I don't think think the lake is even really full yet because it is still the very start of the wet season!

exploring Battambang

The bamboo train carriages

Exploring Battambang first required a 6 hour bus ride. Luckily we managed to get into a minivan, so not a giant bus and we managed to get the seats up the front. Although, when we asked the travel agent lady if we can sit in the front she got this confused and scared and appalled look on her face. Then said... "you can sit in the back, not the front.... driver sits in the front". People are so literal! It is like, everyone has autism and takes everything totally literally all the time.

This kid hitched a ride with our train.
He got let off halfway along the track
at what I assume was his house

We found a friendly enough tuk tuk driver to take us from the bus to the hotel and so decided to got on a tour with him the next day.



First up the bamboo train. These train carriages are flat boards with a little motor and two sets of wheels that hook onto the very dodgy train track. Turn out, real trains don't run on this track because the lines are so dodgy and wavy and terrible. For $5 each we got to ride out to the end of the line and back.  It was actually a lot more fun than I had expected. We got to look at the countryside scenery, wave at kids, and the train went quite fast - now I see why people referred to it like a horizontal roller coaster! Especially as some parts the train tracks were noticeably uneven.

Unfortunately at the end of the line you are made to get off and spend 10 minutes standing awkwardly in the centre of a group of market stalls selling scarves and "bamboo train tshirts". At least, awkward if you don't want to buy - or even look at the products in the shop (not look at was because I didn't want the harassing. total indifference is the way to go).

The wibbly tracks

Also a collection of children trying to give us free little things (grasshoppers, stars etc) made from palm leaves. "For you" "no thank you" "Free, free for you" "no thankyou" "TAKE IT it free take it". For a "free" item the kids were incredibly rude and pushy. No doubt because once you take the free thing you are guilted into buying a selection of crap woven bracelets. Or something. I refuse to buy anything, accept tours for money, or give money to kids. My theory is if they are earning cash having fun talking with tourists or by handing out bracelets what is their motivation to go to school? Many kids I have met in Vietnam are so excited to see tourists and talk to them to practice English. And if these kids wanted to talk to us that would have been great fun for everyone - and I would have happily hosted an impromptu English lesson. But no, just forcefully yelling TAKE IT FREE does not make me inclined to interact with them at all.

Anywho, The bamboo train then got loaded back onto the platform for our return journey. we obviously got here before the rest of the tourists because on the return journey we had to disembark and dismantle our train to let other people go on the one way track. The rule is..... the least loaded train has to make way for the other train. It was fun to have to jump off and wave to people going past.... or be the victorious ones who didn't have to jump off!

This is how the dismantle the train to let others pass

The end was also a bit of a let down.... the money taking person started telling us to tip the driver. Personally I hate this. We payed $15 for this short ride on a basic train thing. Our tuk tuk for the whole day of driving around various bumpy country roads, talking to us and telling us stories and Cambodian fables and all his petrol/tuktuk/bike repairs was $20. We actually told the guy that $15 seems like enough money. I think tips are for specially good service. The driver didn't talk with us (I know he probably didn't speak English.... but I have had amazing and hilarious conversations / interactions with people with no actual language being understood on either side). It also wasn't the driver who asked for / looked annoyed when we didn't tip - It was the money taking guy who just sits around in the shade all day. So I wonder if when people tip, he pays the driver less and keeps more for himself. But maybe I am being too sceptical.

Much stairs at Ba Nan

Next we went to Ba Nan temples. These were surprising far away, but a really nice drive down little country roads and past villages. Lots of kids waving and shouting hi! We then had to tackle to formidable 356 steps to the top. The first section seemed like a cruel punishment (not sure why it was so bad.... in Phnom Penh we were staying on the 4th floor of an elevator-less hotel). I actually expected once we reached the top we would have another set as big as the first.... but it was nice and small.
The view over some forests and bamboo groves as well as the old, crumbling temples at the top made the climb well worth it.
Back down for lunch. We were pretty glad that we ate lunch AFTER the climb, we saw a few of the people who were at the bamboo train arriving and lunching - I pity them climbing those stairs on a full stomach!

More stairs. they seemed never ending!

There were 5 temples like this as the reward
at the top of all those stairs!

We were also pretty impressed that people
must have carried all these stones all
the way up this hill!

Some seem a little.... lean-y

Next we loaded back into the tuk-tuk, this time it was a little bit mystery tour like because we forgot to ask where we were going. It was also down a road that had suffered the beginnings of the wet season. But it was interesting because this road is obviously a short cut that gets a lot less tourist actions. People were staring and waving a lot more!

Monkeys hanging on the stairs

Turns out we were headed for a mountain with more steps (yey). The tuk tuk driver did give us the option of paying $3 each to get driven up the mountain. We opted to be cheapscates and get some extra exercise on the stairs. I am so glad we did. The views at each different height were really interesting. Plas I found a random little cave to explore, but I didn't have a light... and no one else came in with me so I had to turn back before it got too dark.We also turned a corner to discover..... treacherous path of monkeys.... Yes, last week I let monkeys crawl all over my head. and that was fun - but I was fairly certain that those monkeys wouldn't bite me (although, one did bite Nancye a little bit) and I was totally sure that those monkeys wouldn't have rabies. These monkeys seemed much less predictable.
We opted to follow the rules of the wildlife path - don't show your teeth, don't threaten and don't look them in the eyes, and slowly walk past the monkeys.
The strategy worked and no one got attacked. Our guide did later tell us that sometimes the monkeys bite people (thanks for the warning buddy!) but I believe those people had fruit / tried to touch or pet the monkeys.

monkeys hanging in trees above the stairs (just waiting
to drop down on someone)

At the top was a pagoda, a series of people guarding the pagoda from monkeys (with slingshots) and a few people trying to sell drinks to thirsty tourists. We found some stairs leading through a cave/valley and back up the other side. We then heading off down the road to find the killing caves (a place where the Khmer Rouge would kill people and use the cave as disposal for bodies). Here we had a 13-ish year old boy come running up and inform us that the killing caves are that way (up a side path that looked to us like it went to a statue of a buddha and nothing much else. We thanked him, and tried to work out how we can walk up there without him being our "guide". Eventually telling him that we don't need a guide. I felt a bit like he did help us, and maybe I should tip him a tiny amount. But he kept harassing us. Telling us that he needs money for school and going and going and going. We also quickly realised that actually, where we were walking towards would have taken us directly to the cave, and his directions were a detour designed to make us feel like we need to pay him.

The view from the top. 

the random cave we found to walk through.

The caves here didn't really have any information or much to look at. But, we also didn't have to pay to get in. I was glad that we walked up the stairs though - that was definitely the highlight of that part of the trip.

The amazing incredible fairly lame bat cave

Once back down the driver asked if we want to stay to watch the bats come out. He said it would be at about 5pm (in an hour). I have seen plenty of fruit bats at Tolga.... but I didn't mind sitting and having a cool drink to wait if the other people wanted to watch. 5 turned into 6.... and we were fairly ready to leave - but just as we asked to go the bats started. I guess if you watched the bats for an hour, the shear number might be amazing. but I expected more to be pouring out like some amazing column of batty goodness.







The next morning we were up bright and early to have breakfast. We thought it would be easiest to get breakfast at our hotel....  the sign said we had to order 30minutes before - but that way we could finish getting ready for our morning cooking class while we wait and still have time to walk into town for the class.

Market tour with the cooking class

Over an hour later I started to hunger rage a little bit.... particularly when we saw 3 takeaway boxes that had to be our breakfasts disappear into the hotel... and 10 minutes later no food was visible. I found a back room with our food, two people wandering around (as far as I could see neither were preparing our food or putting it on plates) they didn't speak English so I went to find the reception woman. She was wandering around cleaning a table and chairs (admittedly, this was where they served us breakfast - so she was making it nice.... but she had an hour and a half to do this earlier). After I got a bit short with her about where the damn cooked breakfast that surely must be cold is, she did go inside, and 5 minutes later our breakfast arrived.

live fish (well, some live)

less live bugs mmmm bugs

We devoured it before they returned with butter and jam for the toast. Not sure if that meant we ate way too fast.... or shows how much longer they took to bring some butter for the eggs and toast.

The cooking class was much more fun! and much more delicious! We learnt to make 3 dishes and ate them..... and I will be hosting some Asian dinner parties when I return! I miss cooking for myself!

We got a market tour, bought some of the ingredients for the food and then learnt to make Beef Lok Lak, Fish Amok and spring rolls.

That night we headed off the see the Cambodian Circus. This was originally set up as an arts school for refugees in camps on the Thai border who did art therapy to help them after the Khmer Rouge. It was hugely successful and evolved to include dance, music and circus. The aim was partly to help people but also to prevent the arts from being lost because many artists were killed during the khmer rouge regime.

Now the school is set up in a very poor community which has a lot of problems with drugs / gambling / etc. They aim to get all the kids to school, and also teach them skills that they can use at the circus and to get jobs other places.

Me with the performers :) 

The skills of the guys were amazing! I loved it! I mean, I love most circuses.... but this was extra awesome! I actually plan to go again in the next few days in Siem Reap (they have a second school there!).