Cambodia: Kampot & Phnom Penh

The river and it's curious decorations

Krong Kampot is a little town at the south western part of the country, it doesn't really offer that much to see other than a few viewing points and the Praek Tuek Chhu river, but it often serves as a base city to explore the vast surroundings.

But the reason of my visit is a different one. Due to the lack of time that I have left in Cambodia (2 days) I can’t really visit one of the islands or even Sihanoukville for that matter. On the other hand, I do know that Paul is in Kampot and that he is heading towards the capital the next day. Something that fits perfectly into my plans. So I decided to meet Paul in Kampot, explore the little town and proceed to Phnom Penh on the next morning.

As I arrive I end up in a little café that works with deaf people, this made me think about the concept and how the fact the there's more places like this in Cambodia than in Spain.

The Durian Roundabout

I meet Paul and we go for a little walk around the town. The viewing points are just a few, one of those being a roundabout with a massive Durian fruit in the middle. 

We also find the remaining of an old cinema theatre, which is quite famous in the area. But the front place of the cinema seems to be ideal for parking, because every single time that we walked by it we found a bunch of cars parked in front. Not really great for pictures.

It's also remarkable that all the building in this area look like they have a southern European style, and as I read into some  information about the town I see that it's because of the Portuguese and French influence from back in the days. Does this French influence mean that I'm finally getting some decent bread in South East Asia!? 

We decided to go for a few drinks, and the prices are so low that you can't really drink water here. So we snack a bit and have a few drinks, preparing ourselves for the exhausting sunset and firefly cruise that we booked for this afternoon. 

The cruise would have been enjoyable, I'm sure about that, if it wasn't for the people that joined us. A group of old Australians, and not that I have anything against elders or Australians, no, the problem was their mentality. One of them hated everyone that wasn't Australian, but then again his girlfriend was a 20 year younger Cambodian woman. And even worse, this woman's kid was a little spoiled brat and made the trip worse by telling the captain "I'm bored, can we please turn back" and ruining our chances to see the fireflies. 

Anyway, in search of a place for dinner we find a locally famous pizza place, run by an an Italian who got tired of Europe and decided that he wanted a relaxing South East Asian life, he runs the place with his Mom and a very limited amount of stock, no pressure, no haste, just his passion for his food and good company. We had to wait for quite a long while before getting our order, but it was soo worth it (by the time we got the order he had sold out all his stock) We had excellent Italian food for a very decent price. 

The next morning we have a bus awaiting us at 7 a.m. with our final Cambodian destination: Phnom Penh. The capital of the country. 

A Stupa in honor of the victims

As we arrive we drop everything off, and on my way to the bank I find a Tuk tuk driver that is willing to do the tour of the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields for 15$ (I had red that the average price is around 20$ or more) great! This means that we have the whole day to visit the two must see places of the city.

The killing fields are truly as impressive as they say. Especially with the audio tour, you get an image of how terrible the events where during the Kampuchea Communism era. The guide explains what used to be done and even shows a few places that are very capable of shocking you so much that you drop a tear.

I would love to say that the next stop was less impacting but I’m afraid that it's not the case. The S-21 Prison is just as shocking as the fields, and maybe even more, because everything is still standing just as it was the day that they found it. Here you hear about how the rest of the world lived without even knowing what was going on in Cambodia. How even after the fall of his communistic regime, Poll Pot (the dictator) still got a place at the UN world conference, instead of the actual regime.

Lots of shocking things and unbelievable information, but I don’t want to expand to much on what happend in the country during these dark communistic years, as you have plenty of tools to find information about it yourself if you really want to know more about it.

After few minutes of silence on the way back to the hostel we start planning the night. The Russian market seems to be a great thing to visit if you are in town. It's a 40 minutes walk away from the hostel, but being young and fit we decide to walk there. It wasn't that bad and we got there fairly quick. But the market closes at around 6-7. And by the time we get there (something like half past 7) everything is closed. Yay…

Luckily for us, there is a little night market in the same area, nothing that you can compare to the Thai night markets, but with enough food stands to chose from. 

Which was actually, all what we were looking for.

Back in the hostel we notice how the staff is in a party mood as they are is getting everyone shots and drinks on the house, Paul and I join in for a short while before eventually saying good bye to each other.

It was a pleasure travelling with you Paul and I hope that you enjoy Nepal and the tiny mountain it has.

Thailand: Koh Samui

Little island in front of the Chaweng beach 

I arrive at Koh Samui after a long train ride and a boat trip which together sum up to 14h of travelling. My first impression of the island where quite mixed, the water around the dock seemed quite dirty and the little town at the dock side looked way to crowded. luckily, the dock town wasn't my final destination on the island. So I get in the cab and head towards the other side of the island: Chaweng, it's said to be one of the nicest beaches of the island, with coral reefs at the northern and the southern sides of the beach, and 6km of beautifully white sand in between.

So obviously the first thing that I do when I arrive at Chaweng is have a look at the beach. And I got hit by a slight feeling of disappointment, the beach was amazingly long and looked beautiful, but it wasn't kept clean. As I walked along direction north I encountered so many rash in the sand, from old flip flops with plants growing on it up to empty oil cans.

I continue my walk up north, and at one point you have these lovely islands in front of the beach in search of the coral that I heard of I walked for about an hour and decided to get something to eat before continuing.
Sadly enough, even after walking all the way up to the northern part of the beach and even higher, I found no coral reefs to snorkel around. I did find out that there are plenty of trips going to the national park for a day, but there was no possibility of snorkelling around the area.

Grandad's rock

This changed up my plans a little bit and the next morning instead of going on a snorkelling adventure I decided to rent a scooter together with a guy I met at the hostel to explore the island. I knew that going around the island would take a maximum of 45 minutes by car. So I decided to have a look at the two waterfalls at the southern part, and on my way there pay a little visit to the well known Grandparent rocks.
The Grandparent rocks are not more than a bunch of rocks, under which you can find two special ones: Granddad rock and Grandmother, and they have this name due to their shape, which, as you can imagine, look like their respective sexual organ.

Waterfall nr1 

The waterfalls where very nice to see, unlike those of Pai, they where full of water and and had quite powerful currents. The first one we visited was the waterfall 2, which required a little 15 minute walk to reach. But the walk was kind of the nicest part of the waterfall, which, at the bottom had a little natural pool where you could jump in (It was very crowded up there though). While the second one was very easy to acces, the waterfall itself was bigger and there was another natural pool here which was three times the size of the first one.

After the waterfalls we decided to have a look at the Big Buddha, at the northern side of the island, but before heading there I had to get some passport pictures for my Cambodia visum, so we decided to meet back at the hostel once I had everything. I went to get the pictures, and on my way back, Google maps decided to tell me that there was a short-cut from where I was to the hostel, of course, without thinking twice I take this short-cut and here is where the fun begins. The road i got on was a dirt road, and with recent rains it had transformed in a mud road at some parts, of course, I was already half way there so I wasn't going to turn back around. I gather all my courage and accelerate through the mud... Aaand I got stuck, I had to push the bike out and of course I made sure that everything around me was now covered in mud. On my way back I passed by a local house and asked if I could clean my feet a bit, the Thai laughed and the helped me with cleaning the bike. Of course, these things only happen when you are alone.

After the short mud adventure we head towards the Big Buddha in the north, and we notice that we will probably make it just in time to get tome nice pictures of the sunset. The Buddha was not really all that special but the sunset pictures I got over the sea where amazing.

For dinner we had a look at the night market, which in this place was more of a food market than a night market, you had one or two stands where you could buy souvenirs and similarities while all the rest of the stands where just food stands. Not that I'm complaining though, I loved the massive amount of options that I had for my dinner.

And I had to get a good dinner, because the following day would be a loong looong travel day. Leaving from Koh Samui at 12 in the morning and arriving at Bangkok at 6 in the morning the following day, just to get a bus there towards Siem Reap.
Lots of hours of sitting await me.

Thailand: Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai

After Pai we plan out our next destination: Chiang Rai, and after reading a few guides and blogs we feel prepared and decide to spend no more than 1 night in Chiang Rai, because lots of places state that there isn't that much to do besides the White temple and the black house.

But before heading to Chiang Rai we have a one night stop at Chiang Mai, otherwise we would arrive way to late in Chiang Rai to see anything. On top of that, it's Sunday! and in Chiang Mai there seems to be a very nice Sunday night market, so we plan towards that.

But just a few hours before reaching Chiang Mai it starts to rain slightly, we don't give it to much attention and check in in our hostel. We drop of the bags and want to head out to have a little drink but then we notice. The rain that we didn't pay attention to before had escalated into a greater storm and made it close to impossible to head out. To kill some time we decide to play a few games of pool and wait for the storm to blow over. Eventually the rain stops and we manage to catch a glimpse of the amazing Sunday night market.



The next morning catch the Green bus to Chiang Rai. It's cold so we are really dressed appropriately, I even had to get my wollen pull over. Once in Chiang Rai we check in in our hostels and don't really do to much more because of the bad weather. We end up hanging around a bit in my hostel meeting some more people and playing a bit of pool.
The sun sets and we head towards the Chiang Rai night market, a big disappointed if you compare it to the one on Sunday in Chiang Mai, but the cold might have added to this experience.

As soon as we woke up the next morning we had a look at the local transport to head to the White temple. The weather had become worse over the days and it was very, very cold today. With 2 pullovers we get on the bus and we still manage to feel cold. I have to say that the white temple is amazing though, and if the weather is nice it is probably something very impressive to see. But with the cold we didn't really appreciate to much of it, we rushed the visit a bit, and the main thing that we wanted to do: Entering the white temple, was something that we couldn't do, the inside of the temple was closed for an unknown reason. A big shame, because it seems that the inside of the temple is decorated with various western movie/comic characters.

The black house is something we ended up not visiting, because it was the other part of town, which ment more than an hour drive from where we were, and we really found it too cold. But it seems to be a museum of a local (rich) artist, that decided to expose his work in his own gallery due to the vandalisation of his pieces in public galleries. This is said to occur because of the style that the artist has, he seems to make art that is very death related, and it seems that the Buddhism community doesn't appreciate this to much.

On our way back to Chiang Mai we decided what our next destination would be: Ayutthaya.

Thailand: Pai

On my way to the market

I arrive at Pai around 4 p.m. and head towards the hostel to check in, after settling I head towards the tiny city centrum to meet Paul, and just as I reach the centrum I get to see how they are setting up a little night market, so as soon as I found Paul we went to have a look at the market.

The first stand that catches our attention is a tea stand where you can various kinds of tea served in a bamboo stick, and after getting the bamboo stick you can have it refiled for 10 bat. That’s like 25 cents!!

The best thing about the Pai night market is all the street food, probably 40% of the stands that you had on the market where just food, so many different things to try. You had Thai cuisine, Chinese cuisine, Indian and even Italian! There was a little stand serving lasagne and cannelloni. We end up getting a noodle salad which I think was Chinese style and something that looked like a pancake, but fried and served with condensed milk (sometimes even with egg, cheese, banana and condensed milk, just in case that you feel like trying a strange combination.

To end the night we find a little local bar that claims to do 16 different kind of mojitos, interesting, so we have a look, it ended up being 16 different kinds but all with almost the same flavour. Mojito with passion fruit that tasted a bit too much like a regular mojito because of the amount of mint used, and one with mango that didn't seem to be all that different. Anyway, the music was good and there was a nice atmosphere, which is nice.

The white Buddha 

The next morning we got up pretty early because Paul said that the motorbikes would all be gone by 7 a.m. which I later found out wasn't really the case. We got the motorbike and decided to explore the surrounding of Pai.

The first waterfall was kind of a disappointment, when we got there there was barely any water flowing down the river, a tiny bit of water following its path down the rocks. We continue towards a little natural park nearby, a park that would lead to the hermit caves, but after an hour drive we didn't seem to get any closer, and on top of that, the road was becoming a gravel road, so we decided to head back to have a look at the famous Pai Canyon, the so called Grand Canyon of Thailand.
But on our way there we got distracted by a massive statue of a white Buddha that we could see up in the mountains, so we absolutely decided to have a look there. The walk up to the top resulted being quite long and exhausting but it was well worth it once we saw the scenery available from up there.

We then continued to the canyon and with the views being this incredible we decided to come back for the sunset.


After the canyon we proceded to the nearby strawberry farm, which is something that I think is extremely over hyped, because all you could really see where a few miles of strawberry bushes, but people seemed to think that it was very special, because they where all taking tons of pictures.  

We continued towards the second waterfall as it wasn't too far from where we were, just to have a look at it. So once we got there, even though that we weren't expecting much, we still managed to be a bit disappointed, the river was dry, all we could see was a bit of water running of the wall, even less than on the first one.

So on our way back to town we take a moment to visit the land split farm. It once was a regular farm but because of a split that occurred in 2008 his land became imposible to farm, so the owner decided to make it a tourist attraction where he serves his own drinks and fruits, and then it's up to you to leave a little something to help the family.

By the time that the sun started to fall we grabbed a bear an headed towards the canyon. The view of the sun setting with the canyon on the foreground and the mountains in the background made it ideal to take some amazing pictures.
And on our way back we noticed the stunning full moon which gave some incredible pictures as well.
We ended the night in a very nice bar with live jazz music and Thai rum.