Rules of Driving in Cambodia and Vietnam

1. The most important part of your car/motorbike to maintain is the horn. It must always be functioning properly.

2. While driving, keep one hand free for the horn at all times.

3. If you have not used the horn in the previous minute or so, honk just to make sure it is still working.

4. When approaching one of the very infrequent stoplights, if red, consider stopping.

5. Driving on the right hand side is suggested. If you aren't driving far, or don't feel inclined for any reason to stay on the right, use the left.

6. When approaching an intersection with no stop sign or stoplight (almost all intersections), consider slowing to make sure there is no one coming from the other direction, or just keep your hand on the horn and drive on through.

7. Consider upgrading your horn to a louder model that will better alert all people within 4 blocks that you are currently driving and possess a horn.

Fish that bite and tigers that don't

Before leaving Thailand I spent a few days in Kanchanaburi (which I still cannot pronounce correctly - they put the emphasis on different syllables than we would in English, so I would say Kan - CHAN - a - bu - ri, but I think they say Kan - chan - A - bu - ri, and they don't understand if you say it with the wrong emphasis either). This is the place where the bridge over the river Kwai, also known as the death railway is, but there are other nice things to see there too. I went to the bridge and a museum about the construction of it, and another day I took a trip to a waterfall and a place called the Tiger Temple. Thailand has many waterfalls so saying as it was the last day I was going to be in the country I figured I had to visit one. It had 7 tiers and you were allowed to swim in the pools between some of them. There was another girl on the tour that I'd met a few weeks back diving on Ko Tao, and we just hung out in one of the pools because it was nice and cool in there and very hot outside. The only problem was there were fish that bit in the water. Upon first getting in, it was very weird and I wasn't sure I could stay in. They were pretty small and the bites didn't hurt, it was just startling, and they'd come one after the other and keep biting. I found that if I kept moving they didn't bother me as much so I got in for a swim. The tiger temple just used to be a regular Buddhist temple but some villagers found an injured baby tiger and didn't know what to do with it so they gave it to the monks who took care of it. Other people started bringing tigers there too and then they had babies and now there are lots of tigers, making it the tiger temple. The monks say they've trained the tigers to be very gentle, but I think they might just be drugged since they hardly noticed when people came up to them. It was a pretty weird place, for part of the day they take most of the tigers to one area and you can get your picture taken with them. I thought they'd just take your picture with one tiger, but they brought you around to about 5 of them to get a picture with each.

The bridge over the river Kwai

The waterfall where we swam

Swimming in the waterfall

With one tiger

With another tiger

Pictures from the trip from Bangkok to Cambodia

Walking into Cambodia




At the visa office in Cambodia. I believe this is a box for comments, however I would like to blame them for making what should have taken maybe 20 minutes into a 3 hour ordeal.




Chaos of motorcycles, buses and people walking on the "road" once in Cambodia





My Cambodian boyfriend. Actually just one of the many guys that followed us for half an hour trying to get us to take their taxi.





Once at my guesthouse in Siem Reap: the dog was expecting puppies in the next few days (sadly I never saw them) and was getting ready I guess.

Angkor Wat Pictures

The first day I spent in Siem Reap, the city near Angkor Wat (which is just one of the many temples in the area), I didn't do much because I was tired out from spending the whole previous day traveling. In the evening I went for dinner and sat next to some people that I started talking to. They had just arrived and had a tour guide and driver booked for the next 3 days and said I was welcome to come along with them, so I took them up on the offer instead of having to do any work to find my own tour guide or just visiting the temples on my own without knowing what I was looking at. The next morning we went and saw a few of the not so interesting temples, but in the evening we went back and went to a really cool one that had been taken over by the jungle and was used in the movie Tomb Raider. The next morning I got up at 4:45 so we could go to Angkor Wat itself to see the sunrise, but it was raining pretty heavily and there was no sun to see rise. It started pouring so we left and came back later and saw a few more not so interesting temples, then went to one that had a nice view of the sunset. It was pretty sunny in the afternoon, but there were low clouds and therefore no sunset to see either. After 2 days I was totally templed out so I left the next day for Phnom Penh. I took tons of pictures and right now don't know which place is which, but here is a selection of some of the nicer pictures:

Robin, Mike and I in front of the gate around the first temple we visited

Buddha inside the temple

Part of the same temple

At the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed inside a giant tree growing around the temple

A tree growing over another tree on top of the temple

The first monkeys I saw were around the temples. This one was inside and is holding a frog.

Day 2 at Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

"Sunset" at the last temple of day 2

More Cambodia

Another difference in Cambodia from everywhere else I've been so far is the complete absence of any Western chains. There are no McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Huts, Zaras, or the ubiquitous 7-11s (which I believe there are more of in Bangkok alone than in the entire North American continent - there is seriously a 7-11 on every corner, halfway along the block, on both sides of the road, and down the side streets). This must be one of the few places left in the world where you can't go to any of those places even in the big cities and tourist destinations, and it's really nice because of it. You can still get most of the same stuff as at home, you just have to go to a local shop or restaurant.

I've decided that in a way, the insane amount of tuktuk and motorcycle drivers is sort of good since you have to go to no effort at all to find one, unlike in Toronto. Walking around yesterday, it seemed easiest to just keep shaking my head the entire time since someone tried to give me a ride about every 10 seconds. Today some guy even ran after me and chased me down trying to get me to let him take me somewhere today, or plan to have him pick me up tomorrow.

Today I accidentally went to a museum (I wouldn't do that on purpose) when I was trying to go to the Royal Palace. They're next door to each other and both are pretty buildings, and I just followed a tour group that was buying tickets and ended up at the museum. It wasn't very big, they mostly just had a bunch of old Buddha statues but it was pretty cool. The only negative was that in every room there were people that would walk up to you and hand you some flowers that you're supposed to place in front of one of the Buddhas and then leave some money. After the first one though, I said no to the rest. I am now about to head to the genocide museum which should be sad but interesting.

No, my name is Lady

Cambodia is a pretty big change from Thailand. Thailand has tons of tourists and it seems like it is trying to get rid of all the things that Western people don't like in order to be a place that people want to come to, which makes it seem less realistic. Cambodia is not like this. All day long, anytime I go outside I am bombarded by people wanting something. There are the millions of tuktuk drivers and motorcycle drivers hanging around that want to give me a ride somewhere - "Hey lady, you want tuktuk?" - the people hanging around the fronts of restaurants trying to get me to eat there, and of course the kids. Around Angkor Wat it was the worst of anywhere. As soon as you get out of your car, they surround you and try to sell you postcards or bracelets. They start out at $1 each but pretty soon are 10 for $1. They're actually really smart kids too. If you say no to them, they ask where you're from. If you say Canada, they say, "Canada, capital Ottawa", and I think they know the capital of anywhere tourists come from. They can also count to 10 in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, Japanese, and Khmer. That's way more than I know. If you keep saying no, they say "I need money to go to school!" so you feel really bad. The problem is if you say yes to any of them, there's always other kids around with them that'll see and want you to buy from them too. Also, it just promotes kids staying on the streets if you give them money. To us, $1 isn't much, but the people that work in real jobs here don't make much more than that in a day, and when they see that kind of money just being given to people on the street begging, it doesn't make much sense to keep working.

Sometimes the people call me madam when they want me to buy something, and even though that sounds really formal and makes me feel old, it sounds so much better than "hey lady".

The Long Road to Cambodia

Yesterday I left Bangkok in the morning to come to Cambodia, partly because it was where I'd planned to head, but also because my Thailand visa expired that day so I had to leave the country. If it hadn't I might have been lazy and stayed longer because I'd heard some bad stories about getting to Cambodia. One way to get here is to buy a bus ticket all the way here for about $7 from one of the hundreds of travel agencies on Khao San Road, the backpacker ghetto in Bangkok, but these buses are very slow and take as long as possible so that you arrive late at night and they can just drop you off at a guesthouse where they get commission and you're too tired to go anywhere else. Otherwise you can get here on your own by taking a public bus to the border for $7, then taking a cab once in Cambodia for $40. I was leaning towards the tourist bus just because it was cheap and at least I'd be with a bunch of other people in the same situation, but I only got to Bangkok late at night and had to leave the next morning so I had no chance to buy a ticket.

In Bangkok there are 4 bus terminals that send out buses in different directions, so you have to know where you're going to go to the right station. Also, there are tons of different bus companies, all with different standards, so you have a bunch of choices but don't really know what you're going to get. I went to the right bus terminal where I just bought the first ticket I saw to the border. It was just after 8, and the bus was leaving at 9:30. Right after I got my ticket, I looked at another ticket booth and saw they had a bus leaving at 8:30 and it was cheaper, so I was waiting around for no reason. I got on the bus which was supposed to take about 3.5 - 4 hours, but because of the rain and the fact we stopped every 20 minutes it took about 5 hours. It drops you off at the bus station in the town at the border, so you have to take a tuk tuk to the actual border. There were 2 other travelers on my bus, so we shared a tuk tuk and planned to find our way to Siem Reap, Cambodia together.

The border here isn't like anywhere I've been before - there's one where you exit Thailand, then you walk a little ways to get to the next one which is to enter Cambodia. We got to the Thai border with no problem, but then had to wait for a while because the girl I was with was Armenian and had to wait for some Thai visa stuff to be done. To get a Cambodian visa you have to pay $20 and bring a passport-sized picture, which neither I nor the guy I was with had. We asked the Thai border people if there was somewhere to get a picture taken, and they said it was past the Thai border, so we went through. We walked along the part between Thailand and Cambodia which is filled with casinos and kids asking for money, looking for a place to get a picture done but didn't find anything before we got to the Cambodian border. We asked the officials there, and they said it was okay if we just paid them $37. I'd heard about the officials asking for more money than was necessary, so I said no. We walked back towards Thailand, asking people around where to go. Not many people understood, and there were hardly any other foreigners crossing the border, so we really didn't know what to do. We ended up walking back and forth (with my heavy backpack on) for probably 2 hours until we realized there just was no place for a picture and the Thai officials must have meant we could just pay the border people more. In the end I was somehow able to get my visa for the $20 it was supposed to be plus $3 for not having a photo, like the Thai people had said it would cost. When I paid and gave in my passport for the visa, the official said it would take 3 hours, but if I gave him $5 more it would only be 3 minutes. Again I said no because I'd heard this is what they tell people, but it doesn't take 3 hours ever. I only waited about 10 minutes, so I was glad I didn't give him extra. In the end, my visa doesn't even have my picture on it, I think the Cambodians just have a collection of photos of people that have crossed the border.

After getting your visa you have to walk to the Cambodian border and fill out another paper and get your passport stamped. Here we met 2 other travellers, some German guys that were really upset about getting ripped off by the border officials. We decided to try to get a cab with them. They were very cheap though and refused to listen to any of the people offering us rides because they didn't trust any of them, and they wanted to take a bus to another town away from the border where you can get a taxi without getting ripped off. There was a free shuttle bus to the bus station, but they thought that was a scam too so we didn't take it and instead walked along the muddy road for 20 minutes. It was almost 6:00 by this point, and the other 3 of us weren't so upset about just getting a cab all the way to Siem Reap even if it cost a little more. There was a guy offering us a taxi for $40, which was cheaper than the reliable taxi that the guesthouse I was going to could have arranged to pick me up. There was one other guy waiting at the bus station we were at, so the 4 of us took the cab.

The ride can take 3 hours in good conditions, but since it's now the rainy season the road is deteriorating and it took us 4 hours. When I say road, I mean that in the loosest way possible - it varied between mud that felt like we were driving on ice because we kept fishtailing, and dirt with such huge potholes that we often scraped the bottom of the car. It was even more fun because I got the middle seat in the back. I was really tired after traveling all day, but there was no possible way to sleep on that ride. Once it got dark out there was almost nothing to see since there are no lights along the road and there were very few houses or anything around. That all changed as we got into Siem Reap; one minute we were driving through the middle of nowhere along a terrible dirt road, and the next we were on pavement driving by the most expensive, beautiful hotels I've seen in a while. I was the only one in the car with reservations, so we were all just going to go where I was staying. Our driver however decided to take us to the guesthouse that would pay him commission. The owner came out and told us to stay there, but we said no, and tried to explain that we had reservations elsewhere. He asked where and I told him, and asked if he knew where it was. He did, but wouldn't tell us. I asked if he would tell the driver how to get there. He kept walking away, but finally he said to take 2 lefts. We did that, but it wasn't there. I told the driver to pull over while I called to find out the location, but as he pulled onto another street we saw it!

I finally arrived at 10:30, after 15 hours of traveling, just to get a couple hundred kilometres away. I had my own room and bathroom though so I was happy. I was also able to get something to eat for the first time since breakfast that morning at 6:30, and have a shower to clean off the mud all over me from walking on the muddy road at the border. Today I was going to get started seeing Angkor Wat, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_wat, the major tourist attraction around here, but really just needed to sleep in. I've been walking around town here and it is really crazy, there are kids following me all around for blocks at a time trying to sell things, and there are really run down places. Cambodia didn't even have any ATMs 2 years ago. This is contrasted with the fancy hotels with rooms for $2000 per night, and the beautiful coffee shop with an art exhibit where I stopped for some water.

does this work today?

I am a master Thai chef

I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city which is located in the Northwest of the country for 5 days. Some of the attractions are treks through the wilderness with visits to hilltribe people, elephant rides, bamboo rafting down the river, and pretty much anything outdoors. I was feeling too lazy for this sort of thing, but luckily one of the other highly recommended attractions is to take a Thai cooking course, so I signed up for one of those. I don't cook much at home so I wasn't sure how capable I'd be of all of a sudden making Thai food no less, but I figured a day full of food sounded like I should try anyways.

My class turned out to be just me and 2 girls from my dorm, so we had lots of attention from our 2 teachers. We started the day by going to the market where we were each responsible for picking up a few ingredients. I had to get mint, spring onions, and pea eggplant (which I'd never heard of, but is eggplant that looks like big peas). Then we had some free time to look around the market. There were some stinky areas with meat just sitting around in the heat, lots of vegetables, flowers, and bowls full of live fish which I got splashed by as one was being taken out to be cut up for a buyer.

We went back to the school and watched the instructor prepare the first meal of the day, fried noodles with pork. It took very little time to make, then we got to try some. It was really tasty and I wanted more than just one bite, but it was time for us to make it ourselves. I was a bit slow in doing everything and my stove didn't turn on very well, but I managed everything okay. We then got to try out what we'd just made, and mine was just as good as the instructor's but a lot less spicy. I ate the whole thing and wanted more, but it was time for the next dish. The next 3 dishes we'd prepare and set aside, then stop for a lunch break and eat them all. First we made steamed fish in banana leaves with lots of different spices, then yellow curry with chicken and potatoes, then chicken with cashew nuts (my favourite Thai dish). I wasn't really into the fish because I didn't like the spices, but the chicken and the curry were fantastic and I hardly had room to eat both of them. I was very surprised by my ability to cook something so tasty, and I even like what I'd made better than any food I'd eaten at a restaurant here so far. After lunch we still had 2 more dishes to cook which I really couldn't even imagine because I was so full and lazy already after 4 courses. The next thing we made, a spicy prawn salad, I wasn't interested in because I don't like prawns and it involved lots of cilantro, so I don't know how I did with that one. For dessert we made bananas in coconut milk and that was good.

Some things I was surprised about were what went into the sauces. Just about everything had oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sugar in it. Even the non-dessert dishes all had lots of sugar, both palm sugar and white sugar. That must be how everything was so extra tasty. One of the dishes even had a sauce base made by boiling vinegar and dissolving lots of sugar into it. I'd like to try to make this stuff at home because it was really tasty and it was actually me that made it, but I'm not sure I'd be able to find all the ingredients (do they sell palm sugar in Canada?).

Elephant Pictures

Mommy and baby together.






This dog ran and grabbed a chicken and killed it, but let it die really slowly. He looked pretty proud of himself though.





2 elephants play fighting with each other.










Baby elephant playing in the mud right after being washed in the river.









Baby elephants playing in the river.









Some of the elephants just follow each other around like this. There was one really sad one that was blind in both eyes from being mistreated. She had delivered a stillborn baby one day and was made to go back to work the next day (elephants mourn the dead though), and when she refused to work, the handlers poked her and shot things at her, and blinded her in one eye. That made her very angry and she acted even worse, so the man in charge decided to teach her a lesson by shooting an arrow in the other eye. Anyways, when she got to the reserve, another elephant took her under her wing and the blind one just follows her everywhere.









Lots of the elephants got tired of us feeding them too slowly, so they just tried to pull their bin of food over.











Me feeding an elephant. I was really bad at first and she kept trying to get her neighbour's food instead. Her mahout (the guy that takes care of her and works with her everyday) showed me how to feed her properly - I was trying to give her 1 cucumber at a time, but she needed at least 3. The elephants also ate entire bunches of bananas all at once.

Elephant Nature Park

One of the things I'd planned to do when I came to Southeast Asia was to ride an elephant. I'm now in the area where there's lots of elephants so I thought I'd get my chance here, but most of the elephant riding is part of a day long trek which I didn't really feel like doing especially with all the rain and only having flip flops. A girl in my room at my hostel was planning to go to an elephant sanctuary that she'd heard was somewhere you definitely had to go, so I decided to go with her for the day. It turned out to be a really good day, but it crushed my dream of riding an elephant after seeing and hearing about what they go through. The Elephant Nature Park is a reserve started by a Thai woman (Lek) who was against the mistreatment of elephants, Thailand's national symbol and an important part of their religion. She takes in elephants that have been injured from the work they're made to do, either logging or performing for tourists, and babies that have lost their mothers. Some of the elephants had really sad stories: there was one with only part of a foot because the rest was lost when she stepped on a land mine, one male with only half of one tusk because people had chainsawed off the other one, one that could hardly walk because she was made to pull logs down hills with nothing protecting her legs from the logs bashing into them, and many more for a total of 32 elephants. In the morning we heard about the elephants and then got to feed them, then we had lunch ourselves. After, we followed them to the river where we could help wash them off and watch the babies play. Then we watched a National Geographic documentary about the elephant reserve that showed how elephants are trained in Thailand, which involves putting them in a cage just big enough for them and beating them for days straight, mostly with wooden poles but also with sharp tools. The documentary was supposed to be released overseas first to get international attention before Thais could disapprove of how their country was portrayed, but some group was shown it beforehand and was so upset that they had a huge protest in Bangkok with international media present and called for a boycott of tourism in Thailand. This made a lot of people here upset, and someone was hired to kill Lek, but she was told ahead of time and is okay. Since they were unable to get her, they resorted to poisoning one of the baby elephants featured in the documentary instead. So it was really a sad day in some ways, and now I don't feel like it would be right to ride an elephant somewhere they might have beaten the elephant to train it to carry people. But it's good that at least one person here cares about how they're treated.

Bus rides

I have slept the last 2 nights on a bus. That makes 4 nights in the last month on busses. Some were bad, some were mildly better, and none yet has been very good. I never know what kind of bus I'll be on, whether there will be lots of leg room or none, or double decker or one. Last night I was excited when I got on my bus as I had a seat in the front row and could put my legs up in front of me and my seat way back. However, as soon as the man next to me fell asleep I realized things were not as good as I thought. He had the worst breath I have ever smelled so anytime he breathed in my direction I almost gagged. He fell asleep right away and kept snoring, so anytime he faced my way I would elbow him until he woke up and moved. I think he probably hated me. Luckily a bunch of people got off the bus after about an hour and no one else got on so I switched seats to have 2 to myself away from him. I then slept straight through to Chiang Mai and even though we stopped for dinner somewhere I didn't notice. I think I was tired from the last bus ride the night before, where there wasn't much room and the girl next to me kept taking up my seat. I'm just glad to sleep in a bed tonight.

Thanks for Comments!

It's really nice to see comments, it makes me feel sort of like I get to talk to people I know. Which is especially nice on days where the best live conversation I have is with the taxi driver for 20 minutes trying to explain where I want him to take me.