The Road to Cambodia (or why I should take it easy today!)
So yesterday started off well enough, We were swimming in a pool with our lovely english travel companions after a night of Karaoke debauchery. Brant has taken to
the Diving board with some "Mad Skillz" a one-and a half flip... Unprecedented!.
I'm sticking to working on my dive...

- a note here...I have taken very seriously of late to jumping from dangerous heights! It began at the waterfall in Luang Prabang...and continued on to the "Beer Laos Olympics 2005" in Don Det. Beer and Lao Lao does not a Greg Lougainis make! oh hi meghan/Canada 3 you are an inspiration.
TAKE ME TO THE TALISMAN CENTRE...I WANNA GET REAL HIGH. -

...and so at breakfast the londoners broke the news they would not be going to Cambodia with us as was the original plan. This, I think is where our day took a very serious turn for the worst. At the bus Station in Kohrat, after two days of non-stop travel from the 4000 Islands to the middle-class billboard wrought Thailand, we said our goodbyes.

Another 7 hour journey to the Thai-Cam border at Poipet, and I had heard "major leagues"by Pavement one to many times. We met some great Canadian kids on route- a blessing since we had heard that the Cambodian crossing is best to do in numbers. Everything went swimmingly (high-dive pun here) across the border, as the Thai anthem played the sun set and we met the poorest children of our journey thus far.

Then we got on the road to Siem Reap. A supposed 3 hour journey, and to my delight in A white Toyota Camry. No one can fully explain just how horrible a road we got on. I have spent a bit of time on logging roads in Northern B.C. but even they have been maintained once since 1961. Not so in the case of the Cambodian highway. The guide books all write about a bumpy ride, but after twenty minutes of white knuckling the holy-shit handle and the ominous threat of motion sickness affecting Tiffany beside me in the backseat...I began to realize this was not fun.

Then the torrential downpour which turn the black sky into and onslaught of falling drops, and the dirt pothole road into mud. I have never seen so much lightning, period. It continuosly lit the sky for the next hour. Remarks were made about how and what would God throw at us next, crammed in our little Toyota.

2hours later -*POP*-

Now you would think that even in a country that wishes to do nothing with it's heaviest thouroughfare, that the people would be ready to deal with something as little as a blown tire.
No. not really.

We drove on the back tire''s rim to the closest hut and woke up the family of Ten that resided there. The back-up tire of course was also blown, and so we had to go about the task of removing by sheer man-power the tube of one tire, and putting it in the blown one. Our driver, who recieved probably only a portion of the 10-dollars per person fee, was beside himself. As the " proffesional" tire remover got to work of dancing around the rim.
Needless to say after many hours (It was 12:00 am)of dancing, and beating of rims, no tire was removed. We had all settled to sleep on the dirty ground beside The worlds worst highway...and then our driver like a ray of light who had left to Siem reap on a motorcycle came back with a brand new tire.
We set off and bumped along the highway again for another hour and a half, Arriving in Siem Reap at 2:30 am.

As I went to sleep last night, I could here tiffany wretching in the room next to us. I couldn't help but think it a fitting end, and yet I wish her a very speedy recovery, God knows it could have been anyone of us that got the Touristo set in by such a journey.
A credit to all involved...We kept our spirits high throughout, what was easily the worst part of our journey thusfar. Now I sit in Siem Reap, and I am happy to sit in the A.C. looking at a screen and only hope there is a diving platform in the very near future for which to cast off such a bad-case of tire-luck.
HERE WE COME ANGKOR WAT.
SHABBA
- posted by Combine Harvester @ 12:44 AM 0 comments

 
Thank you Mr. O you really were as hospitable as I've been told.
How about a vacation from Vang Vieng allready. I must apologize for that last post, the pillbox was a minibus, and I was on it, or in the sun for much longer than my limit for capable typing.
To be honest I'm not to much better for words here today, but I'll inundate you with updates for the sake of keeping the records in line.
It occured to me today, and I don't want to expound on the matter to heavily, that at home I was a beast trapped within my mind, and within the confines of regularity. I had a schedule, no matter how loose, and that schedule was met. Now throw that mindset into the hyperreal travel scenario...
Like the mouth of the most beautiful cave or a float down a river surrounded by trees and life you have never before thought real...
well, It took a month but this is sinking in.
I must say that in Vang Vieng I have experienced many wonders of such ilk...but the hangover was setting in fast, and now we run for the 'big?' city with 25 dollars owed to a motorcycle rental, and a lost beer laos shirt...it was pink, and now its green at the bottom of a river.
The streets are still lined with thousands of water warriors, truckloads of up to 30 children throwing sandwich bag water bombs, every personal possesion is double wrapped in cheap market baggies...we three are completely drenched in Vientiane.
The bus keeps haulin along too, tomorrow morning at sevan a.m. we part for Savankhett with the only money we'll carry until Cambodia.
teatime...cheers.
- posted by Combine Harvester @ 3:07 AM 0 comments

 
KIND OF BUT NOT REALLY...
In a pillbox for six hours and I think e've all had time to take in Laos enough to translate it to you, the good working folk from around the planeta.
This party has begun, we're talking new year, and there are farang wondering the streets at this, 7:30pm (such a late hour for our newfound communist love country)
As everything, including light in most cases, is shut down by midnight, we're really trying to make the most of our days.
The odd bit is the day makes it for you.
consider our latest guest house "the otherside" (thanks keith although, it did take quite a while to seek out, the new huts they've built are shitacular.) No picture can really ammount to our backyard in this place. We back onto what I believe is called a karst, which is much akin to a mountain, but it juts out like a dagger from the earth (I considered the reasons for so many earthquakes in the region by the sheer awesome display these mountains lend to foreign eyes)
There really is so much catching up to do...and my pen can't write whilst rumbling down the rocky swaying roads from Luang Prabang to here.
To be brief...
Luang prabang was THE most beautiful city we've been to yet. and the company we've kept all the way from Chiang mai to today has been par excellence.
For anyone travelling to Southeast Asia and looking to spend only a short while, like our dear cousin Darold, we have to insist (and we would not have considered it earlier) that Laos is soo gooood! I would have bypassed Thailand almost completely for this country.
Mom, I've seen the best Waterfall in all creation. The group of us took turns singing, and diving into it's crystal pools...and that at its heighest pool some 50 meters above the bottom pool. Kuang Xi Waterfall just outside of Luang Prabang...YEAH.
I should sign off...and go get soaked in the street by another supersoaker 120000. I hope you are all wet reading this as I am writing it. If not...shower off you dirty dirties.
HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE DUDES.
- posted by Combine Harvester @ 5:29 AM 0 comments

 
Am I hungover or is that Darold?
So after a good two nights of the Singha, and a storm last night that kept us indoors and drinking with young german frauline...we were awaiting Visas for Laos.
Knock Knock Knock.
Have you ever opened a door in thailand, and there is a good buddy standing there with a big grin saying "hey!"
yeah well as far as I can tell Darold has arrived, and now he wont leave us alone.
not until we get to the ocean anyhow.
We're off to Laos then tomorrow, our bus ticket is zipped up and ready to rolly polly. It'll be a long trek, so we won't be chatting again real soon.
We'll exchange all our singhas for beer laos...and the true test of asian beer.
Gute reise, vielen gluck!
tchuss!
- posted by Combine Harvester @ 11:06 PM 1 comments