Back in Strung Treng after a short trip to Ban Lung. It was mostly uneventfull except for the trip back today. The driver of the mini-bus I was riding in managed to throw out the rear suspension on a series of potholes. Took them about 1 1/2 hours to take everything apart and put the axle back where it belonged. I've been waiting for one of these experiences. Seems like everyone I've talked to here has had a bus, taxi, or boat breakdown but my transportaion has been suprisingly reliable.

Tomorrow I head to Laos. Although I'm really looking forward to Laos I am sorry to be leaving Cambodia already. I ended up enjoying my time here more than I expected.

Myfirst stop in Laos will be the island of Don Khon in the so-called 4000 Islands region. After that I'm going to spend 4-5 days exploring the islands before starting to work my way north. I expect to be offline until I reach Pakse about a week from now. In fact, I expect that my internet access will be less frequent for most of my time in Laos.

Sorry for the recent lack of pictures.

I'm in Stung Treng after spending a night each in Kampong Cham and Kratie. The trip from Kampong Cham up here has been nice with two short half-day boat rides up the Mekong.

Stung Treng is the last town on the way to the Laos border, however I'm not planning on leaving Cambodia quite yet. Tomorrow I'm heading to Ban Lung for a short side trip before heading up to Laos next Wednesday.

I was going to try to post a couple pictures but the computer isn't cooperating so it looks like it's not going to happen. Oh well, I'll try again when I get back here in a couple days.

I've decided to skip the south coast and start working my way up towards Laos. I have to enter before the 28'th if I want to use my current visa. It's going to take me a couple days to get there and I'll probably take a side trip on the way up.

The Laos border crossing is in a pretty remote area so I expect to have only occasional internet access for the week to 10 days it takes me to get to Pakse in Laos.

I'm going to skip the south coast and start working my way up towards Laos. I have to enter before the 28'th if I want to use my current visa. It's going to take me a couple days to get there and I'll probably take a side trip on the way up.

The Laos border crossing is in a pretty remote area so I expect to have only occasional internet access for the week to 10 days it takes me to get to Pakse in Laos.

I'm going to skip the south coast and start working my way up towards Laos. I have to enter before the 28'th if I want to use my current visa. It's going to take me a couple days to get there and I'll probably take a side trip on the way up.

The Laos border crossing is in a pretty remote area so I expect to have only occasional internet access for the week to 10 days it takes me to get to Pakse in Laos.

So, I made it all the way up to Prasat Preah Vihar. The transportation involved much pain, and the temple itself ended up being just OK, but the trip was a fantastic experience.

I left early Thursday morning and caught a pickup to Kompong Thom. The pickup was one of the deluxe ones that has benches and a roof in the back. However the trip ended up being 5 hours instead of the 2 1/2 to 3 I was expecting from the guidebook. There was a pickup just about ready to leave for Tbeng Meanchey so I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat (a fish in broth with rice) before setting out. The trip to Tbeng Meanchey (on the back of a regular pickup) wasn't as long but the road was in pretty miserable condition for the last half.

I spent the first night in a guesthouse in Tbeng Meanchey. The mattress was probably the hardest I've had in Cambodia but strangely enough was covered in silk sheets. Go figure.

In the morning I steeled myself for another rough trip and grabbed another pickup up to Choam Ksant. The LP describes this stretch as a "cruel imitation of a road" and they're not kidding. Luckily it was dry which, while still bumpy, is considerably less trouble than when it's muddy. I ended up sitting up front in the cab which isolated me from a lot of it. The trip took only 4 hours and ended up being easier than I'd expected.

Choam Ksant is a tiny little village near the Thailand Border. The guesthouse ended being very pleasant and eating was a fun experience. There was one food stall with nothing even close to a menu. I ate rice with whatever they'd happened to cook. The first night was a green beans and mystery meat (probably pork) and wasn't too bad. However, the second night they served fish and Chinese cabbage with a black bean and garlic sauce. Hands down the best meal I've had in Cambodia :). During the day I walked around the village and took a couple pictures. This first one is one of my favorite pictures from this trip:



On day 3 I hired a moto and driver to take me to Prasat Preah Vihar. The ride was much easier than the trip described in the guide book. There is a new road in great condition right to the base of the mountain instead of the oxcart paths described in the book. The hike up the mountain was something else - it was a hard 2 hour climb up a steep road. As I mentioned the temple itself wasn't anything great though. Here's a picture anyway:



Preah Vihar was the final Khmer Rouge stronghold and the whole province is basically one big minefield. This ended up being one of the most interesting aspects of the trip for me. Starting about half-way between Kompong Thom and Tbeng Meanchey on Thursday you start seeing signs with maps showing safe areas that have been cleared around villages. Then later that day there is the orange or red skull-and-crossbone signs along side the road marking a known and un-cleared field.

The area between Choam Ksant and Prasat Preah Vihar are absolutely choked with live mine fields. Some are marked with the orange signs and others with rows of posts along side the roads. Others are unmarked but after a while you can kind of tell that an area is probably mined. In some places there are small communities (too small to even be considered villages) literally in the middle of the minefields.

The final 1/2 kilometer of the hike up to the temple you pass through an area that is actively being de-mined. The road is lined with small white sticks, each of which marks the current location of a mine. Some of the sticks are less than 2 feet from the side of the road, and they are everywhere - even inside the temple grounds. The second picture in this next group shows one of these fields being cleared.



The last 2 days of the trip were pretty much working my way back to Phnom Penh although I stayed overnight in Kompong Thom instead of Tbeng Meanchey. This gave me time to visit the pre-Angkor era ruins at Sambor Prei Kuk before heading home yesterday afternoon. Made for a long day all the way from Choam Ksant though. Here are a couple pictures of the temples:



I ended up making the final leg of the trip by minibus instead of by pickup. This was much faster, but surprisingly ended up being the most uncomfortable leg of the journey. I did enjoy watching the young lady next to me snack on some fried spiders (big fried spiders) that she picked up when we stopped for refreshments in Skuon.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I'd like to head down south to see the semi-abandoned towns at Bokor and Kep but that means I'll definitely have to get a new Lao visa before I leave since the one I picked up in Bangkok needs to be used by the 28'th.

Mission accomplished and I'm back in PP. The trip was interesting but I'm worn out. Details tomorrow.

Small world. This morning I met someone who went to my high school in Philly. He graduated 10 years after me but it was still fun comparing notes on the school and the Philadelphia suburbs where we both grew up.

I'm still feeling pretty good. Assuming I'm still OK tomorrow morning I'm going to start working my way north to try to get to Prasat Preah Vihar temple. The trip could take anywhere from 5 days to a week round trip and I doubt I'll have internet access until I get back to Phnom Penh. This trip gets me pretty far from real civilization. Tbeng Meanchey, the town where I hope to stay tomorrow night, only has electricity for a couple hours in the evening. And that's the provincial capitol - a booming metropolis compared to the next stop after that.

Hopefully everything will go well in which case I expect to be back in Phnom Penh on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, wish me luck.

Back in Phnom Penh. Yesterday's boat ride from Siem Reap was OK, but far from as nice as the one from Battambang last week. There were some nice parts though:



Whatever I had in Siem Reap came back with a vengance yesterday afternoon but I'm feeling great now. I took it very easy today. I did nothing abut lay on a couch and read in the common area at my guesthouse. I'm going to take another day off tomorrow before starting to move again.

The guesthouse I'm stagying at is on Boeng Kak lake in Phnom Penh. The lake is supposed to be extremely polluted but it's very picturesque (and it doesn't smell or anything). The sunsets over the lake are amazing. The one tonight was particularly nice since we actually had some clouds, as opposed to the horizon-to-horizon blue skys I've had to live with for most of my time in Cambodia.

Siem Reap / Ankor has been nice although I am getting a bit tired of sitting on the back of a motorcycle. Yesterday was a rough day because I wasn't feeling so hot. Today has been much better.



In a couple hours I head back to Ankor Wat for one last sunset in the temples. Tonight is my last night in Siem Reap - tomorrow I head back to Phnom Penh for a day or two. After that I think I'm going to make an attempt at seeing Prasat Preah Vihar way up in the boonies in northern Cambodia.

To start off with, here are the pics from the boat trip that I was unable to post last night.



Today I finally got to see Ankor Wat (wow!) and some of the other Ankor temples. Ankor really is amazing. Unfortunately none of my pictures of Ankor Wat itself are all that great but I'm posting one of them anyway (#3 below - the rest are of other Ankor temples in Siem Reap).

Made it to Siem Reap. The boat trip was beautiful. No temple pics yet, although I'd planned to post a couple shots from the boat trip. Unfortunately the connection isn't cooperating. If I can get on a decent connection expect a flood of temple pictures starting tomorrow.

Took another motorbike tour today and, as usual, had a blast.

At the end of the day my driver and I took a bamboo train back to Battambang (see the last picture). This was a bamboo platform about 6x10 feet that runs on the train tracks. It's powered by a engine that looks like it came from a lawnmower. When someone wants to use one they just put it together from parts lying by the side of the track. When we caught up with one that was having engine problems they just dismantled it and set it aside so we could get by. Quite a interesting mode of transport.



Tomorrow morning I catch a boat to Siem Reap for the Ankor temples.

In case you've ever wondered how many Khmers you can stuff in the back of a pickup truck I now have the answer. Turns out it's 29. Plus me. Plus 4 more on the roof and whoknowshowmany inside the cab. Plus baggage (i.e. 50 pound sacks of rice and such). And this was no F-350. Noooo, this was a little Japanese (Isuzu) truck.

Anyway, it was a long dusty day but I made it to Battambang. No pics tonight.

Didn't do too much today other than walk around to see some of the nearbye sights in Phnom Penh.



Tomorrow I'll probably head to Battambang in the eastern part of the country. It looks like a nice place to stop and the boat trip from there to Siem Reap is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the country. Tomorrow's ride should be a good introduction to Cambodian road travel.

I made it to Phnom Penh. No pictures from Cambodia yet, but I took a few of the floating village around Chau Doc this morning before we set off.



The crossing into Cambodia was painless. There was a short stop at the border to clear Vietnamese immigration. For some reason my bag raised a flag going through the x-ray, but when they asked me to open it they didn't even bother looking inside before sending me on my way.

After clearing Vietnamese immigration it was a short walk across the border to another boat that took us to Cambodian immigration and then on to a stop near Phnom Penh. The final leg was a two hour bus ride into the city. According to an expat on the bus this road is one of the better ones in Cambodia. I can't wait to see what the normal roads are like.

The Mekong tour has been great. Sorry I haven't had a chance to post in a couple days. I spent most of Thursday and Friday cruising on various branches and canals in the Mekong delta. At several points we stopped and saw a some of the local industry such as a ceramics plant and a coconut candy factory. It was a nice view of Mekong river life.

We spent the first night in Cantho, where I finally got around to eating cobra. Surprisingly, unlike every other exotic food, it didn't taste just like chicken! The taste was actually much closer to turkey.



The second day of the trip was similar with more time spent just taking in the sights along the river. We visited several floating markets, including a large one a Cantho. The day finished with a long boat ride up to Chau Doc where we spent the second night of the tour.



This morning I split off from my tour group and spent an extra day in Chau Doc while the other people in the group either returned to Saigon or went on to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. I join up with another tour group tomorrow morning for some final sight-seeing in the area before heading to Cambodia by boat.

My trip today was wonderful. I hired another motorbike guide to take me around to some of the sights around Chau Doc. The time spent driving around the countryside turned out to be better than the things I originally wanted to see. We were off in deep rice-growing country and the scenery and small villages were beautiful. It was nice to get off the tourist track for a while and ended up being the perfect way to spend my last day in Vietnam.

One of the sights I saw (see the first picture in the next group) was the "bone pagoda" at Ba Chuc. In 1978 the Khmer Rouge crossed the border and slaughtered over 3000 people in this town. In fact only 2 people from the town are known to have survived. This pagoda houses the skulls of 1000 of the victims. Although not on the scale of the killing fields memorials that I expect to see in Cambodia it was still pretty powerful stuff.

The day finished up with a trip up Sam Mountain back near Chau Doc. The views of the surrounding villages and rice fields were amazing. The pictures I took don't do it justice.



That's probably enough for now. Time to head out and have my last Vietnamese meal in Vietnam. I really can't believe it's my final night here. The last month just flew bye.