Living' it up French colonial style in Kampot and Kep, Cambodia

In its heyday, Kep was a fancy coastal resort town favoured by the French, although it was abandoned by holiday makers following Cambodian independence and subsequently looted by the Khmer Rouge - leaving behind an array of ruined villas.

The town is very spread out with a beach square in the middle, separated from the main urban bit to the East and the famous crab market to the West by a couple of stretches of empty coast road. It's quiet and what street lighting there is goes off about 9pm. The people are very laid back and friendly, and far more likely to spend their time playing kick volleyball (fun to watch) than trying to sell you stuff. We were relieved to find not all towns as intense as Sihanoukville or Phnom Penh, where you can feel like a walking ATM sometimes.

Kep also has one of the tiniest national parks going, really just one forested hill rising up from the beach. We walked its 8km circumference in flip flops (due to rubbish rental bikes and my shoes having broken). Posted on trees along the way are signs informing any who care to read about the resident flora and fauna. At one point while we were learning about lychees we spotted a troop of monkeys above us, who clearly knew all about them.

Welcome to Kep

Kep is great for food, if a bit pricy. (By the way, Cambodia has an odd dual-currency; ATMs dispense US dollars, which are interchangeable with the native Riel. This means I get more confused than usual when checking change). We had an astonishingly good seafood dinner at Breezes restaurant, with grilled barracuda wraps and prawn crackers used as little edible trays for shrimp salad (brilliant idea). Kimly restaurant was great too, although Jon had to make do with shark as they were out of stingray.

Crab is the town's main draw, and so to try it out we went to the crab market, which was smoky and bustly in the best tradition of food markets. When we asked for a kilo of the crustaceans, one of the ladies promptly waded out into the sea to retrieve some live crabs from a trap. These were briskly weighed, washed and chucked into a steel pan on the fire to steam (I'm sure they died quickly...). 5 minutes later we were presented with our super-fresh lunch. Eating it took far longer and was a very enjoyable mess.

The crab market

Just before we left for Kampot we sampled a fresh sugar cane drink, the famous smelly fruit called durian (banned from many hotels and minibuses but actually quite nice) and had a visit to Kep Oceanarium, which houses several surprising sea creatures brought up from the bay just outside.

Durians, sugar cane drinks and imprisoned sealife

Kampot is only about forty minutes from Kep, a much larger town (though still small really) and the major trade centre for the area. Once there we headed to market, which was chaotic but full of helpful people, to get my shoes fixed by a street side cobbler. Definitely worth doing as they did a very thorough job, re-stuck my flip flop soles into the bargain and only asked for $2 (we gave $3). The rest of the market was full of excitingly unidentifiable fruit - we bought a large quantity of what turned out to be longan and sapodilla, plus some mini rather tasty oranges.

Shoe fixing, sapodilla, longan and mini rather tasty oranges

The town is noisy in a mainly good way. There are several fascinating windowless buildings which play birdsong at high volume to attract unwitting birds to nest inside the cave-like interior. Bird's nest soup is big business! Our arrival also coincided with 'wedding season', and all over the place (usually in the middle of the road) pink marquees were going up and tables laid out to celebrate Khmer nuptials. All very festive, but we were driven onto the streets till midnight after appalling, ear-splitting karaoke kicked off at one near our guesthouse.

Kampot is world famous for pepper and also has large salt farms - it's the condiment capital of Cambodia! We took a quick tour to see it all. The salt farms consist of many tennis-court sized beds, raked flat and then filled with seawater which evaporates over about 10 days, leaving behind a bed full of salt crystals! It's then collected and stored in sheds ready to be shipped out for cleaning.

The pepper plantation (Starling Farm) was equally interesting and much greener. All black, white, and red pepper comes from the same plant (news to us), but is harvested and dried differently. The peppercorns picked on the cusp of turning yellow and sun-dried turn black; those left to ripen and turn red can be dried for red pepper or blanched first for white. The green berries are eaten fresh in stir-frys too and are super hot but very good!

Salt and pepper!

Bokor Hill, to the West, has an apparently amazing 'ghost town' type abandoned French hill station on top. I say apparently, as we didn't quite make it up... The summit is 8km from town on the flat and then up a continuous climb of 32km. We rented mountain bikes for the trip, were making good ground and had just 10km to go when Jon's chain snapped! Some locals attempted to help out (with a pair of pliers), but had very uncertain knowledge of rear derailleurs. Despite our best efforts at communication, the chain ended up reattached in a big loop, making pedaling impossible! Luckily freewheeling 22km back down to the main road was more awesome than arduous, and once there Jon hung onto my rucksack and I towed him back towards town. With 1km to go a roadside mechanic was able to 'fix' it (with a lump hammer) in the correct routing. He did a very good job considering - not sure how long it'll last but good enough to give back to the rental shop! To celebrate I ate a huge rack of ribs at the Rusty Keyhole, an event in itself.

Freewheeling down Bokor Hill

Other activities included paddle boarding around mangroves and a spot of rock climbing. Paddle boarding involves standing on a surfboard type thing with a long paddle to maneuver yourself, and is slow, surreal and very fun. We set off on the river in the late afternoon, in time to see the local fishing boats set off for sea. They fish all night and take the catch to market on the way home. The mangroves off the river felt prehistoric, full of huge ferns through which ran little channels of flat dark water. We arrived back after dark feeling awesome.

Paddle boarding

We climbed with Climbodia, a new company set up by a Belgian with a passion for a local cave he first saw last year. He's set up via ferratas, that is, safety cables to clip your harness to while traversing around the rock face and inside the cave, plus abseiling points down chimneys in the rock and a few top-rope climbing routes. He's waiting on a box of rock anchors from customs to expand his routes around the hill but the ones he has already were challenging enough for us!

The cave itself has a few shrines and several wooden ladders and walkways. We were informed that the latter are actually props left behind by a French film production while they were filming 'The White Soldier' recently! Most of Kampot's expats were apparently used as extras, and the locals got the ladders plus cut-price army boots and other goodies after filming. We'll have to see if we can watch it once it's out!

-Kath

Climbodia!

Also around Kampot and Kep...

p.s. We are now famous! Well, maybe a bit. Our pictures are now in the slideshow on Cycling Sukhotai website (www.cycling-sukhothai.com) from a tour we did in October last year. On the slippery slope to stardom.

From 4000 islands down to 1

Si Phan Don, in Southern Laos, is a collection of islands in the Mekong river. The name directly translates as "the four thousand islands" but it is unlikely anyone counted and if they did they probably rounded up. We chose to stop on an island called Don Det ("Don" meaning "Island"), a fairly backpacker heavy place that is currently suffering from a brilliant plague of kittens.

To get there involved a boat and soon after leaving the mainland shore the engine stalled and we drifted helplessly in the current. Two other boats sprung to action at a leisurely pace, splashing everyone on board with terrifyingly liberal swings of the propellor shafts, and guided the weary vessel up to the island coast.

That propellor shaft, some litter kittens and a bit of a bridge

After this excitement we landed and for the next few days we mainly mooched about the bustling villages watching the odd boat race, talked to expats who had opted for the easy life and generally had a good old relax in a sun soaked hammock. Some of this downtime was somewhat enforced by a winter cold which I picked up - completely unexpected and unwelcome in the tropical climate!

Don Det has a railway bridge over to neighboring island Don Khon. This bridge is a relic of French colonists who tried desperately to get boats up the Mekong river and link the territories of French-Indochina - but failed due to the sheer scale of the waterfalls and rapids here. Their loss was our gain, though, as the waterfalls are spectacular. We cycled over to Don Khon on rusty rented single-speeds and some places really made us feel like David Attenborough may be narrating above us somewhere.

Si Phan Don

Then Christmas day made its daybreak with brilliant sunshine and a sense of being very far from home. Thankfully, a Scouser run restaurant called King Kong had arranged a proper British Christmas turkey roast, complete with gravy and roast potatoes, and a trifle for dessert (which confused a lot of people who had never heard of such a wondrous thing)!

Christmas Toblerone!!

Boxing day was a day of treats as we decided to transit to Cambodia. Everything was fine until the border crossing, which involved a "health check", or an introduction to scambodia (a clever combination of "scam" and "Cambodia"), where someone hovers a plastic beeping box over your face and charges you $2 for the privilege of being healthy enough to enter the country. Our connecting bus arrived 2 hours late, crammed as many people in as the suspension could hold and then crawled down the sandy crevise (supposedly a road) to Phnom Penh. A bus journey like that makes you type bitterly.

Always room for one more.

We arrived 4 hours late, at midnight, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city, at the mercy of the tuk tuk drivers to take us to guesthouses at least 4km away. Our tuk tuk ride was shared by a homesick Spaniard and we watched the scene change from gold crazed opulence to child beggars and saw piles of roadside litter with a feral cat chasing 2 giant rats.

Arriving at almost 1am was strange as we were used to midnight curfews in Laos. Even that late we could get amazing gnocchi from an inexpensive Italian restaurant, and the city was still very alive as we hit the hay.

We were just passing through Phnom Penh and unfortunately mainly saw dirt and sleaze while we there. This was somewhat accented when we accidently left an ereader in a guesthouse as we checked out. The device had magically disappeared by the time we returned - which felt pretty raw.

The next quick stop was in the Southern coast town of Sihanoukville which was way over touristy and in-your-face so we dived for refuge into Top Cat Cinema's comforting armchairs and caught up with Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit 2. However the coast is nice for a bike ride to a quieter beach called "Otres" which while still busy is much less intense.  Here you can sit by the sea and enjoy Khmer dishes like the excellently named Amok Fish Curry (coconut milk based brothy curry) and Beef Lok Lak (tender strips of beef sautéed with mild spices with rice and just maybe a fried egg).

Sihanoukville - where a Praying Mantis landed on my arm

Off the coast of Sihanoukville is a small island called Ko Ta Kiev which, apart from a small Cambodian naval base, has "Crusoe Island" which rents tents to pitch by the beach. We got a boat there and pitched a tent on our very own section of white sand, just a short treacherous climb away from the communal eating area. We stayed a few nights and this area helped build a community feel between the dispersed beach campers. There was a lack of wifi to enforce conversation.

There was a great sense of freedom on the island and swimming in our own bit of sea every morning felt great. We only shared the beach with scurrying crabs (some of which were hermit crabs with hilariously bad fitting shells) and the odd lizard who mainly went about their own business. During the day, apart from a little tentative sunbathing we had to fortify our tent against the high tide (which only happened at night) as from inside the tent we could hear the rising water as if it were about to whisk us away to the ocean.

The best thing to do there is snorkeling. It was our first time and apart from initially hyperventilating from the shock of breathing with your mouth underwater, we got the hang of it. There are vast thriving coral reefs here supporting schools of cute little fish and viscious spiky sea urchins. It's a bizarre multicoloured sight which can't be captured without a waterproof camera. At points the sea floor drops to 4 meters or so and you can see strange shimmering life forms of a very imaginative design.

Ko Ta Kiev

Showers on the island are the traditional Khmer "bucket of well water" which is bracing if a little futile as you will immediately be covered in sand again. We heard that one of the Khmer staff was once driven to a city and when faced with his first hot shower was surprised, unsure and turned the heater off. Apparently not everyone enjoys the supposed luxury.

For New Years Eve around 65 people came to the island for a hog roast and a party. This was some great marshmallow roasting, mock sports fun and a brilliant way to meet people and avoid feeling homesick at a festive time. We found out here about a local phenomenon of bioluminescent plankton on the surface of some parts of sea at night.

The next evening, which without light pollution was full of surprisingly vivid stars, a small group of us headed out for an midnight swim (at 11pm) to see the bioluminescence. The sea with the plankton looks completely normal, but as you splash about brilliant blue spark-like flashes shoot around you. The effect increases further out to sea until you can make sea angels (like snow angels but with bioluminescent plankton) and you are surrounded by a blue glow. It was really a very surreal experience which will not be easy to forget.

- Jon

Vang Vieng and quickly down South in Laos

The next stop off in Laos was Vang Vieng - a town renowned as the capital for the artful sport of tubing. This, for those unfamiliar with the term, involves sitting in an inflated rubber tube and floating down a river. It's not a very difficult sport.

Tubing begins with you renting out a tube and being given a lift 3km up stream. The government has taken away most of the rope swings and slides into the rocky shallow water due to people breaking themselves, so the trip downsteam is apparently a lot more serene than it used to be. In fact it's about the most relaxing way to spend a sunny afternoon. You can break up the serene by mooring at bars along the way to discuss tubing tactics with fellow tubers and have a game of bowls or basketball.

In the tubing

As the day winds down and you approach the town there is a section of rapids where a crudely scrawled "End of Tubing" sign stands next to a restaurant. Trying to disembark here may result in you falling on rocks, losing a flip-flop and flailing desperately for your life. This happened to us. Tubing was super.

Still in the tubing

The scenery around Vang Vieng is really quite something, with huge limestone rocks jutting out of the ground and a scattering of caves and pools. We hired a couple of mountain bikes to explore and headed out towards "The Blue Lagoon", known for it's azure pools of loveliness - but again we were duped by a crudely drawn fake sign to a tiny blue-ish lagoon where a lovely but unwanted Laos guide led us to a nearby cave in flip-flops and without a flashlight. Our concern grew as he slid off rocks in the dark and we decided to instead visit nearby "Nam Borkeo Phaboua Cave" by ourselves. Here was a clear swimming pool full of impossible to catch fish, some crazy stalagmites like something out of the film Alien and some terrifyingly large, and even more terrifyingly fast, spiders crawling about in the pitch black humidity.

Caving and whatnot

Being in a town surrounded by big rocks also made us fancy a climb, so we booked a day of top-rope climbing on Sleeper Wall, which is basically two cliffs which face each other and shade each other from the sun. We ended up doing 8 climbs of increasing difficulty with a helpful Laos guide who would encouragingly shout tips such as "Left foot to right hand" and "Right foot above your head" before chuckling wildly. He was actually reasonably trustworthy though and encouraged a Canadian vs English climb-off - not a victory for the English thanks to my inability to get my left foot to my right ear.

The sleeping wall

The town is a great place to relax in the evening as well, but our visas were running out so we got a bus South to the capital Vientiene and applied for a week's extension. The process took a day longer than expected, and we couldn't find much to do in the big city so we moved on quickly.

Vientiane getting ready for Christmas

On the way South we were wanting to see Konglor Cave, a vast 7.5km cavern system which can only be explored by a boat on a river that runs under a mountain. We had missed the first bus of the day due to the visa extension so instead got a later bus to the town of Tha Khaek, asking the driver to drop us off at the only crossroads en route (Laos has few roads so crossroads are rare). Here we stood looking helpless until a taxi picked us up to take us to Ban Nahin (also confusingly known as Ban Khoun Kham) which is an hour from the cave.

The road there was cold. However, to cheer us up there were rows upon rows of Jurassic hills covered in mist which didn't get photographed due to the aforementioned chilliness. This village was the least developed we've visited yet, with no wifi and very few English speakers. As usual for Laos everyone was super friendly, with one restaurant owner making me take some free plasters when he noticed, with horror, that I'd bandaged my split thumbnail with electrical tape.

The next day we hired some awful piece of Chinese engineering they were passing as a moped, and tried to head to Konglor cave. At first we made the mistake of asking directions from a non-English speaking shopkeeper who did the Thai/Laos thing of pointing down any road and nodding (this is at least the third time it's happened to us). After following this track for a half an hour we thought we should double check, and upon asking another local I was laughed at (in the kindest way you can be laughed at) and pointed back down the road we'd come from.

Anyway, we eventually found the cave an hour and a half away down some mud roads and paths and past lots of "Sabaidee!" shouting smiling children. We paid for a guide and a longtail boat and set off.

It's really, really big in there. All you can hear is dripping water and the boat engine. The headtorches barely reach to the ceiling in the high parts and the rock is twisted into some obscure apparitions around you. The guides were constantly adjusting trajectory for dangers in the water, and at points got out to push the boat up small waterfalls and rapids! We walked a dryish section of it which they've fitted with Doctor Who lighting to emphasize the weirdness. The scale of the cave is quite crazy. After emerging at a Lost World like scene on the other side of the mountain we had a little snack then headed back for a slightly faster run. Here the Laos guys laughed heartily as we splashed down mini rapids in the fragile longtail boat and took us under low shelves at health and safety breaking velocity. Fun for everyone!

Konglor Cave

Then it was unfortunately a big transit day to Pakse. Starting with a four hour freezing tuk tuk ride to Tha Khaek, we arrived at the bus station just as the seven hour bus for Pakse was leaving. We reacted with cat like ferocity and were on the bus lickety split. Luckily it stopped for food about an hour in as we had eaten nothing all day - so we had a bag of sticky rice, a papaya and some coffee coated peanuts. You don't forget a meal that grand.

Pakse was just a town for us to get some planning done. It's obviously the town where the money is in Laos as everything costs more and, well, there are a lot of banks. There's not much to do in the town itself but it's a major gateway town to Southern Laos. It was a surprisingly nice place with some cool architecture. After a day we raced further on South to get to the 4,000 islands in time for Christmas and to get out of Laos before those pesky visas expired.

- Jon

Pakse looking all nice

Hills, films and big empty jars in Laos

After travelling South to Luang Prabang, we took the logical next step and went back up North to visit Nong Khiaw. This small village is a few hours away by minivan, on a winding road alongside the Nam Ou river (a fun journey despite having 5 passengers for every 3 seats). As we neared our destination the karst scenery became more and more jagged, and the village itself is set in some of the most fantastical landscape I've ever seen. We spent most of our first evening there haltingly crossing the main bridge, pointing at everything and saying "well that's just ridiculous".

The village has a quiet, chilled atmosphere and there's a great Indian restaurant called Deen which does a mean Rogan Josh. As with all of Laos, we felt completely at ease walking back even on unlit streets. Gangs of kids with sticks are more likely to play fight you than beat you up and nick your bike. The only fear we felt was when we thought we had a snake down the sink plughole in our bungalow - but this turned out to be a persistant frog which is probably still there.

We were intending to go on the '100 waterfalls' trek, but Tiger Trail have a monopoly at the moment and the price was a bit much for us. Instead, we met up with some French travelers for a explore out to caves used by villagers to hide from US bombs during the Secret War.

For some exercise we also climbed up to Nong Khiaw Viewpoint, which started out steep and then became markedly steeper, more jungly and very sweaty. It was worth it for the Lord of the Rings-esque tangled forest near the summit and for the panoramic view of the whole area when we did make it up.

We headed briefly back to Luang Prabang in time to catch the first day of the 2013 Asian Film Festival, which had loads of free screenings around town. Of what we saw P-047 was my favourite, an incomprehensible but entertaining thing about a couple of Thai guys breaking into homes and 'borrowing' them for a few hours.

Also worth our time was the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre which had interesting information on local history, livelihoods and religion, plus a cafe serving an awesome 'ethnic sampler' meal - the everyday favourites of locals in a Westerner friendly format.

Then, we traveled a bit South and a long way East to Phonsavan on the Plain of Jars. This was something I was very keen to see - the stone-age jars are scattered over more than 100 sites and vary a great deal in size, although most are big enough for someone to hide in. Most intriguingly no one is sure what they're for. The best guess is funeral urns (or perhaps better, giants' whisky jars) but as they don't exist anywhere else and no other remains of the civilisation have been found, evidence is severely limited. They are very cool.

We ended up also learning a good deal about the Secret War, as the Plain of Jars was at the centre of conflict between the communist Pathet Lao army and the CIA-backed 'secret army' of Hmong people, before and during the war in Vietnam. The US dropped more bombs on Laos than it did on Germany and Japan combined in WWII, but this didn't quite have the desired effect as the Pathet Lao party took power in 1975.

Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) remains a major hazard, and all over the place you can see craters and bits of bare ground where Agent Orange still prevents growth. You can't go off the beaten track as they aren't expecting to fully clear the bombs and chemicals for another 100 years. The Laotians make aluminum cutlery from melted war scrap and use cluster bomb casings as stilts for houses, being very resourceful people.

Phonsavan itself is only 40 years old, as the old town was completely destroyed in the fighting. It is industrial and cold at night - the 1200m altitude outweighs the latitude here. It is a good environment for mulberries however. We went round a silk farm which grows mulberries; feeds the leaves to silk worms; spins, dyes (with dye produced from plants on site) and weaves the resulting silk; and does a line in mulberry tea, wine and jam on the side. Perhaps unsurprisingly they are very successful and the lady who set it up was nominated for the Nobel Prize for her efforts. Now I just need to think of something that tidy that'd work back home...

- Kath

A Nibble of Northern Laos

Laos is beautiful. It's full of never ending hills and rivers - although so far we have only followed the hilly road which follows the river so the rest may be a dump and flat.

Our first port of call was Luang Namtha in the north. From the border this is a 7 hour bus ride through a national park of solid forest which may or may not feature tigers. We saw no tigers. Tourists are made welcome in the town by a row of boards advertising the kinds of activities tourists like to do. We chose to rent a bicycle and go kayaking although not simulateously.

The kayaking is done on the river Namtha because everywhere else is too dry. We had a 2 person kayak to ourselves which was initially faulty and kept spinning in a circle. Eventually, we persuaded it down some rapids and through some trees. It's apparently severely more technical in the wet season, but it's still a giggle when it's not too treacherous.

Our guide stopped us to tour a couple of small rural tribe villages, of which there are lots in Laos. The first village was a "Lanten", or "Indigo", tribe - thus named for their dyed clothes and handicrafts (which were swiftly presented in case we may wish to purchase any). They live in bamboo houses with earth floors and have recently begun to enjoy TV and mopeds and whatnot. The tour, while giving some interesting insights, felt a little too personal though; as the people were just in their homes getting their stuff done.

The second village was of the Khmu tribe, who build houses on stilts up the side of hills. They have cooking hearths in the wooden houses made of flame resistant termite nest material, which is pretty cool; and a little ironic that termites end up protecting the wooden houses.

We took the rented bicycles around some nearby gnarly paths through some more villages to a classic Russian style dam and a watertrickle. Really though, what was striking while riding is the fertility of the land. The fields are full of grain, trees are full of bananas, rivers are full of fish and streets are full of babies. In fact, there were more babies, puppies, kittens, chicks and piglets than even Kath had time to say "aww" at. Rumours say surplus puppies, from the untrimmed hounds which roam the streets at night, are shipped off to Vietnam or to the local Chinese restaurants for delicacies. But that can't be true... right?

Next was a shaky bus ride to Luang Prabang. Shaky because the road is unfinished, but still used. Shaky because of bad timing for a vomiting bug for Kath. Shaky because we arrived in town 10 minutes before the nationwide midnight curfew and our booked guesthouse was locked tight. Everything turned out OK though. We lost a few days to illness, so spent a while relaxing and rediscovering cake and baguettes (the tasty legacy of French rule).

To burn off the bagels we did a 60km bike ride to the rather stunningly dramatic Kwang Si waterfall with its pools of azure loveliness. En route we rode through numerous villages which, like the rest of Laos, seem to be almost entirely under construction with every third house being built into classic European style digs painted in primary colours.

Luang Prabang itself is a really chilled out riverside town. You can grab a super cheap vegan street buffet, climb the hill in the middle of town to see Buddha's footprint, browse the mile long night handicraft market, watch a cool movie at L'etranger cafe or listen to Tom Waits at the Icon bar (although the owner would like it if people requested some other music from time to time - it has become a little bit of a Tom Waits mecca). Or you can just eat lots of bread.

Anyways, Laos is beautiful. And hilly with rivers. And bread.

- Jon