Josh and Debs, last leg of the trip - Cambodia and Laos

So here we are back in New Zealand. Sorry it's been so long before we posted an update on the last leg of our trip. Coming back home can be a busy experience.

The last 20 days of our trip were essentially a high-speed dash through Cambodia and into Laos with the aim of making it up to Hanoi, Vietnam. However we had our second failure in trying to secure a Vietnam visa – the Vietnam consulate in Laos was closed for most of the time we were there (due to a combination of Laos New Year and the birthday of some official in Vietnam). So we slowed down a bit in Laos and got to explore off the beaten track a bit. This part of the trip was mainly about visiting and seeing the sights and getting a brief taste of culture along the way, so there are lots of photos.

The two main aims in Cambodia were to visit Angkor Wat (wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat) the mystical temple/city complex of the ancient Khmer empire, and to visit Becky and Efren Roxas, Servants workers living in Phnom Penh. A third main aim was to get through the border to Laos.

Some of our impressions of Cambodia:
- It is very orange. The earth is orange, which means the dust is orange, which means a lot of other things that are exposed to dust (which is most things outside) are orange. A lot of the buildings have also been painted orange which probably does a good job of disguising the effects of the dust.

- It is a lot less developed than Thailand. The roads are mainly sealed but are in poor condition in a lot of places. This turns long bus into an extended massage chair experience.

- The people are very friendly and also very good at talking you into “deals”. On our first day, after being connected by several people all the way from the border to Siem Reap, we found ourselves booked into a guesthouse that we really didn't want to stay at. After collecting ourselves we checked out straight away and went to find somewhere better. We didn't find that people were really trying to scam us (apart from selling us a can of Sprite for $4.00), it's just that at each point where you need to make a decision about what to do someone will be very persuasivly pushing one option. Being new to the country it was very hard to figure it all out. Everyone helps each other out with business so we learned.

- Knowing the political history of Cambodia (wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields) gave us a sense of heaviness as we were travelling through. Thirty years ago the country was just starting to crawl out of the clutches of a muderous, and deluded, regime. Most of the rice paddies we saw stretching around us for kilometers would have been built and farmed under supervision of machine guns. Some of the people on the busses with us could have easily been either victims of the time, or Communist party cadres with the machine guns. The country appears to be recovering now, and tourists are flooding in to bouy the economy. However we later learned that the Cambodian government is essentially selling off large areas of the country to foreign owners in a frenzy of capitalistic fervour (although they still claim to be socialist). This is causing thousands of residents to be displaced from their traditional homes (guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/26/cambodia). It was sad to learn about this because the country has a lot of potential to host tourists in a more equitable, people-focussed way.

We caught up with Becky and Efren Roxas for an afternoon in Phonm Penh (Cambodia's capital). They are Servants workers who have come to Phnom Penh from Manila. They are in a unique situation of having grown up in an urban poor neighbourhood, worked for change in their own lives and squatter community in Manila, then following the call to go and work for change in a squatter community in Cambodia. They have been working with their community on the banks of the Mekong for seven years. They currently run an English school there and Efren is involved in supporting several churches in Phnom Penh. They were very warm and welcoming to us and showed us around where they live and work.

Then we left for Laos. Our trip from Phonm Penh to the border was broken by a one-night stop in the town of Kratie. It was in Kratie where we became properly aquainted to the Mekong River. It captured our attention for a whole evening as we watched the tired, red sun set slowly over it. The next day we caught our ride to the border. We thought we had orderd a minibus but the driver turned up in the family sedan, which was already full. After getting a tire changed and picking up two more passengers we left town. All up there were 10 of us in a standard sedan, including two in the driver's seat! Fortunately the ride was only an hour as the child next to Debs was being sick for about half the trip. We got dropped off by the side of the road with our connecting person and waited for the bus. When the huge bus turned up there was only us, one other couple and two local guys on it. Talk about a contrast to the sardine-style family car!

Time for some photos... (click on the slideshow to get captions on the photos)




The border crossing to Laos proved very straight forward, in contrast to the crazy stories we had read on the internet. We traveled by bus and boat to the island of Don Det. Don Det is a beautiful farming island in the middle of the slow-flowing Mekong. It is probably one of the most idylic places we've ever been to. However it has become over-run with backpackers and the backpackers have all but erased the local culture, replacing it with their own. We found it hard to fully enjoy our stay for this reason. Other islands in the area have imposed strict rules for visitors, such as modest bathing attire, no marijuana etc, because they don't want their villages to turn in “another Don Det”. We did have some fun exploring and relaxing. A highlight was taking a boat trip to see the rare Mekong freshwater dolphins, well their fins and blowholes anyway (apparently they are lazy).

After Don Det we headed to the capital of southern Laos, Pakse. Pakse doesn't really have a lot going for it apart from some nice river-side restaurants and a massive hotel that used to be a palace. It does have ATM machines though, and a supermarket. In Pakse we witnessed the start of Laos New Year. We knew something was up when the Electricity Department and the Agriculture Ministry around the corner started setting up big tents and massive speakers. Several days later we were well aquainted with Lao party music, at high volume. We tried to escape by hiring a motorbike and doing a tour of the Bolaven Plateau – a high-elevation area with some beautiful waterfalls. We did find some amazing waterfall and Josh did plenty of swimming. We also thoroughly enjoyed whizzing around the place on a motorbike. However, Laos New Year turned up everywhere we went. In the town of Paksong we drove past the Police Department in full swing with more Lao party music. That day we found ourselves eating fried rice with a drunk policeman at a local restaurant. The situation became more bizarre when one of the restaurant's goats wandered on the road and got flattened by a passing truck. The only one seemingly worried about it was the goat's sibling which wandered around bleating for the next 20 minutes.

At our next stop the town was only just gearing up for New Year celebrations. We booked a room at a relaxing looking guesthouse by the river but we were woken up at 8:30 in the morning by two local concerts, both equally as loud, playing Lao party music at us from both sides of the guest house. We decided to move to avoid going completely mad.

The journey back to Pakse was unforgettable. The ultimate event of the New Year, both in Laos and Thailand, is the national waterfight. This meant that in every town we passed through there were crowds of people beside the road armed with buckets, hoses and water guns. The aim was to get everybody as wet as possible. So we were well and truly saturated by the time we were halfway home. The event also involves people piling onto the back of a 4x4 and then it's a battle of the trucks versus the roadside crowds. The trucks also got us wet while we were driving and it's fair to say a bucket of water at 60 km/hr gives you a decent whack. As much as we tried to avoid getting doused at every turn, it was a fun event to be part of. Everyone just really lets go for a couple of days and has a big party before getting into the hard work of farming in the rainy season.



After leaving Laos we spent two nights in Ubon Ratchathani in Thailand. There we chatted to a retired American Bhuddist who has set up a fish farm in the wops of Eastern Thailand. We also experienced the start of the rainy season which meant epic thunder storms and heavy downpours. It felt like a good time to finish up the trip. After some last minute gift shopping in Bangkok we were on our way home.

Coming back to NZ has felt really good to both of us. We've got a lot of thinking to do about what this trip has meant for us. For now we don't feel any great need to head back over to SE Asia. We do love the connections we have made made and grown with the people we visited. We also want hang on to the sense of perspective we have gained from spending time with our friends in Manila. We feel like we experienced almost overwhelming amounts of neediness, and at times felt simultaneously fully responsible and completely helpless. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. And possibly what we are called to do is be faithful with what we are given to meet the needs that are in front of us, and let go of our egos in the process. It's one of those things that's easier said than done, but God knows it needs to be done.

Hope you enjoyed reading our stories. It's been fun putting it all together.

Love, Josh and Debs.