random pix: 4,000 Islands animals

I kind of fell in love with all of the water buffalo... I'm a dork. We don't have wildlife (or anything alive besides people) in Songyuan, so I'm easily excited!

 

This guy lived up in the roof of our first bungalow. He was really bright green with red spots and like ten inches long. I only saw his out once, but he liked to poke his head out and spy on us.

Something about the cow next to the motorbike = awesome.

4,000 Islands (days 9-12)

The next morning, the remaining three of us hopped on a bus to 4,000 Islands, Laos. 4,000 Islands is right on the border of Cambodia and Laos, on the Mekong River. The bus was something ridiculously long, like 12 hours. It took all day. That was where I learned that somewhere in there, people stopped calling it "Laos" and started calling it "Lao". Not sure where the "s" went...

We got to the mainland area pretty late. We took a small boat over to Don Det, the main island, where we wanted to stay. We checked out a few of the bungalows (this was the first place we weren't able to find anything on Hostelworld.com for ahead of time), checked in to one, grabbed some dinner and then partied a bit in the bar of our bungalow with everyone else that had arrived on our bus.

This was our first bungalow.

This was laying in the hammock of our second bungalow in the same complex.

The next day my friend from the States and I awoke to find a goodbye note on our doorstep from the girl we'd been traveling with that had been teaching in Korea. She was meeting a friend from the States later in the week and had some other places she wanted to check out so she had woken up early and left. And then there were two.

The first day on the island, we didn't do too much. We hung out and relaxed in cafes, read our books, etc. We found a game of Jenga in one of them and met a couple (he was Scottish, she was English) to play with. We ended up hanging out with them quite a bit over the next few days.

That night we went out with them and picked up a stray 19 year old American that was traveling alone as well. All over the island, the menus had "happy" food listed (pot food). The American wanted to try a brownie, so my friend and I ordered one to split as well. After almost an hour, we agreed we were all feeling nothing so we parted ways. My friend and I hit up the bar at out bungalow for a nightcap. And then the brownie kicked in; it was a serious brownie, and I only had half. I didn't want to be indoors for like three hours after that.

The next day, we got up and decided to have a walk around the perimeter of the island. We had talked about going kayaking, but it was raining when we got up, so we figured it was going to rain all day. Then it didn't. The walk was beautiful though, and took just about all day.

I never did find out hat the deal was with these.

Having not planned anything for the whole trip, my one requirement was that my friend take me to a beach or water I could swim in. No one seemed to go IN the Mekong, which was really disappointing. Luckily, toward the end of the walk, we found some children in the river, so I got in and played with them.

We ended up doing our kayaking trip the following day. It was amazing. Really made me with I had an Otter Box for my iPhone so I could have gotten some pictures. We hiked and kayaked all day. We saw the largest waterfalls in southeast Asia, we saw freshwater dolphins about 50 feet from our kayak, we swam in the Mekong, we were on both Laotian and Cambodian soil at some point... it was great. When we got back, we got back in the river and floated in tubes and had beers with some Frenchmen we had met.

Even though Don Det was really chill, it was the off season and there weren't a lot of people, there wasn't a whole lot going on, it was really beautiful and relaxing, a nice place to just hang out for a while. We saw a lot of people during the days and most of them seemed to be about our age, but they didn't get super crazy, which was actually kind of nice.

random photos: misc Cambodia

I thought this was the funniest thing ever. A billboard for a brand of condoms called "OK"... first off, "OK"?!?! That's the best you could come up with?! The brand of choice for abortion clinics and date rapists. Secondly, why are there four guys at a ktv with no girls on the billboard?! What is going on here?!

These little shrines were everywhere in Cambodia, every business or home has them.

Even though it rained frequently throughout my time in Cambodia (it WAS rainy season after all), it really wasn't bad. It didn't hamper any plans at all.

This was the most bizarre fruit ever. The second you put it in your mouth, you had the worst case of cottonmouth ever. It instantaneously sucked all the moisture out. It didn't really taste good. It was kind of an all around fail.

A bug bit my foot like the second day there. Then about 4 days later my foot started turning black. It was no bueno. We drew a circle around the black and said if it spread any more we'd go to the hospital (I hate doctors). Luckily, the smiley contained the black and it went away, eventually.

Phnom Pehn (days 6-8)

The next morning we got up early to catch a bus to Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. Our hotel was really sweet and gave us all scarves as a sort of going away present when we left.

When we got to Phnom Pehn, we went for a short walk around our neighborhood and then the girls decided to go out wandering while my friend from the States relaxed at the hostel for a bit.

Why is there a cave in this garage? Who knows...

Us girls ended up at a grocery store and had an absolute blast. I think we scared some people there with how excited we got about some of the things we found. Coming from living in China and South Korea, because Phnom Pehn is a pretty big city, we were able to find things we hadn't seen in months (and naturally there was some new stuff that was fun to look at also).

H-TWO-O? And it's a soda? What?

Um, yes, that IS "Sugar Daddy" brand sugar. And he is a luchadore.

Gross. This is right up there with the corn juice they drink in China.

That night, we had to do it up right, because it was my Songyuan friend's last night with us. Phnom Pehn isn't a big party city, most things close down early, but we somehow managed to stay out until about 4am and cram like four night's worth of activities into one. We started drinking at our hostel and got a pretty good start there. Then we tried to go to the market because my Songyuan friend wanted to eat crickets, but it was already closed so we went out to eat instead.

As soon as we got to dinner, I told my friends I'd be right back and walked off. While they ate, I went in search of crickets. I went down a side street, talked to a hooker who helped me hire a guy on a motorbike to take me around, and after about 45 minutes, stops at at least 12 different barbeque stands and a good tour of the city, I returned to my friends the successful victor and plopped a bag of crickets on the table. They had no idea where I had gone, so they were a little upset, but the crickets were completely worth it. They're mostly just crunch and taste like barbeque.

After that, we went to a reggae hookah bar, then we got fishy pedicures and then we ended the night at a tranny hooker dance club called Heart Of Darkness. Naturally, none of us girls noticed the trannys or the hookers, only my friend from the States.

The next day, my Songyuan friend left and the other three of us were feeling pretty rough, so we just hung around the hostel and went in the pool (yes, the hostel had a pool, it was awesome). We didn't really do anything that night either.

The one thing my States friend had wanted to do was check out the genocide museum and the killing fields, so we did that the following day. That might have been one of the most depressing experiences of my entire life. Afterwards, we got in the tuk tuk and didn't even speak to each other for at least a half hour.

This might be the coolest tree ever. It also happens to be at the killing field.

random pix: Battambang

Many of the strays are super cute but not exactly healthy.

 

This poor little girl's brother chased her around with makeup, lol.

Battambang (day 5)

Our first full day in Battambang, my friend from the States and I rented a motorbike, my Songyuan friend and our new friend from Busan got a tuk tuk, and we paid the driver to be our tour guide for all that the city had to offer. This turned out to be an all around awesome plan.

Our driver had amazing English, was really friendly and really knowledgeable. It was crazy that he was able to remain so positive while telling us about some of the atrocities the Khmer Rouge had committed against the general population of Cambodia while we were at the temples. They basically killed everyone with an education, or that looked like they might have an education (i.e. everyone that wore glasses), in order to create a society that would just work and not ask questions. His family members were killed by these people and he was still such a happy guy telling us about all of it.

The first place he took us was to grab some bamboo sticky rice (this had another name that I completely forgot, also, this was where he started talking about the Khmer Rouge, so I DO have a logical thought sequence here). To make this, rice, milk and beans are stuffed into a hollowed out section of bamboo, wrapped in banana leaves and then placed over the fire. To eat it, you peel the bamboo away and break of chunks of the mixture; it kind of all sticks together and isn't messy at all. It was really good.

This was right across the street from our first temple of the day.

So, what I said above about the Khmer Rouge? Look at some of the labels on the map at this temple...

Looks like monks live here...

These kids were having following us around practicing English a bit; they were adorable.

After that, he took us to what he called the fish market.

drying fish

catfish heads

fish paste

making more fishy products

Next, we went to watch a woman make rice paper. That was really cool to watch, she's got it down to such a science. The rice paper is so delicate, but she never rips it and it always comes out perfectly.

step 1

step 2

step 3

On our way to the next stop (lunch) the tuk tuk got a flat tire, so they had to melt it to close the hole.

This guy painted the whole temple. He'd been at it for at least two months.

Khmer Rouge killing pit at the temple. They would keep prisoners captive in the temple itself and then push them down this hole into a cave to kill them.

Temple on top of a mountain = gorgeous

After this temple, the tuk tuk took my Songyuan and Busan friends back to the hostel and my friend from the States and I took the motorbike on our own adventure. We checked out some more of the countryside, basically just driving down random roads that were clearly not heavily traveled, it was an amazing afternoon.

No, the elephant isn't real. This was at a temple we stopped at.

We stopped to walk through some rice paddies and these kids we had driven by came chasing us. They ran along the borders of the paddies to get to us and they were having a grand old time. When they reached us, I turned around and started chasing them so we had a funny game going.

 

We went to some other rice paddies and found this little shelter and decided to watch the sunset.

Getting there I misjudged the stability of some mud and was completely surprised when I sank in up to my knees!

That night, the four of us tried to have a night on the town. Everything in Battambang closes so early though, it seemed that our only option was ktv. We found a ktv near to our hotel and were at the door when my friend from the States (the only male in the group) turned around and was like, "We're not going in there..." A Cambodian guy sitting across the street saw the whole thing and started laughing hysterically. Apparently the ktv was a whore house and us girls were just completely oblivious. Our next best option (and the only thing open) was the convenience store across the street. A bunch of Cambodians had grabbed beers and were sitting outside drinking and watching a movie on a projector, so we followed suit.

Yes, this is a pull tab bottle.