A few more pics from Cambodia

A few pics from Cambodia

Phnom Penh

Back to Phnom Penh, to the maze of alleyways and dark passageways that comprise the old lakeside warren of cheap guesthouses and hotels, bars and cafes. It was thirty eight degrees again yesterday and the asphalt seemed to breath out fire in the evening. Last night I booked into a room with an air conditioner for once - paying a whole eight dollars!!! The air conditioner blew softly onto my face, cooling it, but not altering the temperature of the room by even one degree. But it was enough to lull me to sleep to the sound of pounding disco music, waking up in the night to the sound of pounding rain, like a thousand drummers beating out their rythms on the tin roof.

I dozed off again to wake late. Loud claps of thunder had been added to the pounding rain, and as I entered the lounge area/deck of the hotel, a couple of hippies that I had met the day before came up the stairs looking like drowned rats. "The water is ankle deep out there" they said "and you have to walk through it quite a way to get to a tuktuk". I decided not to go out to breakfast.

Lakeside was once a beautiful place, but developers have dumped a huge pile of earth in the middle of the lake, making it much smaller. They are going to build on the pile of earth. Then in one year they are going to knock down all the little hotels and cafes on this side of the lake and build multistory hotels. I'm glad I got here before that happened.

Flight out of Phnom Penh tonight. Not looking forward to it.
I will put some photos on the blog when I get back to England.

Banteay Srei Temple

This temple, whose name probably meant auspicious city, was built in honour of Shiva, with a lingum.

The walls are exquisitely carved. There are seven headed men waving their multiple arms around, Indra on a three headed elephant, leafy nagas with lion heads, monsters touching the breasts of women, men holding other men by their hair before killing them, beautiful scrolling leafy branches, dragons with leafy branches coming out of their mouths. The bas reliefs are clear, sharp, apparently untouched by the passage of time and weather. This may have been because they were so deeply carved, or it may have had something to do with the quality of the stone which, unlike the usual sandstone used for these temples, is pink.

We arrived at this temple in the middle of the day. Not one of those temples with trees in amongst the ruins, there was no shade. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back all the time that I stood admiring these beautiful carvings.

In the evening, I came upon a gay bar where a cabaret was in full swing. A group of Californian men welcomed me at their table and plied me with cocktails.

Next day I went in search of a place called Aqua. It took me a long time because I walked down the wrong road and ended up walking about five kilometres through a waterside village, where houses on tall stilts backed onto a little river, now reduced to a mere trickle. It might have been very pleasant, if they had not thrown so much rubbish out of the backs of their houses onto the river bank.

Eventually I found Aqua, a beautiful swimming pool owned by an English man called John. The pool is surrounded by lush tropical jungle, shady places, sunny places and a bar that juts right out into the pool. Someone has built bar stools in the pool and a ledge all round the bar, so you can sit with your legs in the water at the bar. A couple of Irish girls serve at the bar. "There's no point in my going back to Ireland" said one  "I have a degree in architecture but there's no work."

Aqua is frequented by a crowd of volunteers, all teaching English to village children around Siem Reap. They come here after work and stand around in the pool, with just their heads poking out of the water, like so many water buffaloes, chatting.

The Roluos Group of Khmer Temples

38 degrees in the shade. And there's no shade around most of these temples!

Preah Ko
Crumbling brick built temples with carved stone lintels and side panels in the morning sun. The carving is almast baroque in its intricacy, multiple nagas covered in leafy apparel, men riding horses emerging at intervals from the nagas backs, dragons spitting out curling leaves and dancing figures. The bricks are crumbling and the stone carvings peeling off.

Preah Ko was dedicated to Indravarman II, the founder of the Angkor empire, in 879 and thus began a tradition of temples dedicated to ancestors which subsequent Angkorian kings had to build, preferably before building a temple dedicated to their chosen religion.

Originally these temples were covered in white finely carved stucco.

Bakong
A collection of brick temples are completely surrounded by a moat with stone walls, at Bakong. The central one was built on top of a stepped stone pyramid. All apart from this one are in a terminal state of disrepair. But there's a nice new monastery here with its own new temple - abandon the old and build the new - twas ever thus in Cambodia. Vestiges of carved stone lintels remain here and there. These too would have been clothed in white stucco, intricately carved.

Only now that Cambodia (and the world) realises what a treasure house they possess do they begin, tentatively, with lots of help from other countries, to preserve what is left of their ancient temples.  Around the temples the trees have also been left in peace (in the rest of Cambodia they have been obliterated.) So visiting temples and walking through these magnificent trees, you can begin to imagine what a beautiful country Cambodia once was.

Lolei
Another crumbling brick temple, with a new temple right bang slap beside it.

Preah Khan

Jayavarman VII dedicated Preah Khan temple to Lokesvara, the saviour of Mahayana Buddhism, who represented his father, in 1191. Preah Khan was a city with a population divided according to function.

Banteay Kdei Temple

Jayavarman VII bult this Buddhist temple to house hundreds of Buddhist statues. After he died it was converted to a Shiva temple. Hundreds of Buddha statues, most of which were broken, were buried. Recent Japanese excavations brought these statues to light

Ta Prohm Temple

Ta Prohm, meaning Old Brahma, was originally called Rajavihara, meaning Royal Monastery. Jayavarman VII consecrated a statue in Ta Prohm temple to Prajnaparamita, the personificaton of wisdom, whom the king identified with his mother. He built it as a Mahayana Buddhist temple, but after the king died the next king converted it to a Hindu temple, removing a lot of the Buddha statues.

The path leading to Ta Prohm goes through a quiet forest with many species of big old trees, all conveniently labled. Crickets make a deafening noise in the tree tops. Before I came to south east Asia, I had no idea that crickets could make so much noise.

Liquid roots of the trees flow over the temple walls, like streams and rivulets, rocking the stone walls until they begin to fall apart. They are repairing this temple, painstakingly putting back the fallen stones, rebuilding the walls. But they haven't removed any of the trees yet. Judging by the swarms of tourists (more even than in Angkor Wat, it seems to me) they will have to leave at least some of the more spectacular trees that the tourists come to see.

Siem Reap

So Many Temples

Khmer temples litter the landscape around Siem Reap - beautiful stone-built temples, with carvings of battles, ancient Brahmanical myth and dancing Apsaras (bare breasted girls wearing beautiful skirts, jewellery and fantastic hairstyles). Millions of tourists come to visit these temples every year and Siem Reap caters for them all. There are those who fly in and stay in five star hotels and are driven to the temples in air conditioned cars. There are those who arrive by bus and hire tuktuks to visit the temples and there are those who arrive on bicycles with tents on the back. Siem Reap has something for everybody: wide tree-lined streets, riverside hotels with beautiful gardens and markets selling street food. It even has a street called Pub Street.

The ancient Khmer Kings of Cambodia, or Fu Nan, as the Chinese called it, were called King of the Mountain. Mountains were sacred to them, so when Indian civilization arrived in the region the Khmer kings incorporated mountain worship into their new Brahminical and Buddhist religions. The best examples of this can be seen at Wat Phu (Champassak) and at Motan Mountain in Ba Phnom district, where Khmer kings erected linga as symbols of Shiva. Linga symbolised the sun for the ancient Khmers, while the yoni (female genitalia) symbolised the earth. Their ancient myth spoke of the union of the sun with the earth, out of which the universe was created.

Brahmanism was an ancient Indian religion, based on the Vedas (ancient Sanscrit texts). The Vedas were revealed to a Rishi (a Hindu ascetic or hermit) , who then had to write them down as fast as they were dictated to him (by the gods).
The three gods central to Brahmanism are:
Brahma, the god of creation
Vishnu, the god of preservation
Shiva, the god of dissolution and the god of the mountain

Shiva, who rides on the bull, Nandi, is represented by a lingum, a trident, footprints, the third eye, the sound OM, the crescent moon and a snake-shaped necklace.

King Jayavarman II was the founder of the Angkor monarchy. During his reign Angkor civilization flourished. He built numerous temples and shrines on Phnom Kulen, to house stone and precious metal linga.

King Indravarman had his throne in Roluos, but he abandoned the city and founded a new capital at Yasodharapura (Angkor). At the centre of the city there is a hill called Bakheng. This was the nearest thing to a mountain so the king built a temple there with one hundred and nine towers. This temple is now crumbling away. Parts of it can still be visited but other parts have been cordoned off.

King Jayavarman IV moved the capital from Angkor to Kohker and built temples there.
The next king, Rajendravarman, started off in Kohker, but then decided to move back to Angkor, where he built the East Mebon temple in 952 and the temple of Pre Rup in 961.

Then along came king Jayavarman V (968-1000) and Suryavarman I (1002-1050).
Suryavarman I built Wat Phu in 1006 and Preah Viheer from 1005-1050.

Suryavarman II conquered every nation around him, extending his empire from the east coast of present day Vietnam to the border with Burma in the west, to present day Malaysia in the south and half way up present day Laos in the North. When he had finished beating up his neighbours, he built the most perfect temple at Angkor Wat, dedicated to Vishnu.

Angkor Wat
According to George Coedes, Angkor Wat is a replica of the universe in stone and represents an earthly model of the cosmic world. The main tower rises from the centre of the monument and symbolises the mythical mount Meru, at the centre of the universe. It's five towers correspond to the five peaks of Mount Meru; the outer gallery represents the mountains at the edge of the world and the surrounding moat represents the oceans beyond.

The long stone walls are carved with bas reliefs, arranged for viewing from left to right, in the same manner as the religious ceremonies are carried out for tombs in Hinduism. In the West gallery in the third enclosure the bas reliefs represent Indian myths from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (battles) and other ancient Vedic texts. The west and east part of the south gallery have bas reliefs depicting the historical procession of Suryavarman II and Heaven and Hell. In the east gallery you should be able to see the famous churning of the oceans of milk, but unfortunately this was being restored when I was there.

Angkor Wat is a vast labyrinth with steep steps leading up to the various levels. It is difficult to imagine what the whole temple is like when you are in it. Really you need to be above it, which is why they have a hot air balloon to take people up above it (at a price).  I spent several hours in the company of a young Polish girl, who had just finished her degree in Sanskrit languages at Edinburgh university. She pointed out all the different gods, fighting in the battles depicted in the bas reliefs.

Then my tuktuk driver took me to Angkor Thom, another ancient Khmer city, with the most beautiful stone gate at the entrance. This was the gate that I had come all this way to see.

The Bayon temple in Angkor Thom is smaller than Angkor Wat and not as well preserved. But the bas reliefs on the walls are magnificent. They depict battles with the neighbouring Cham, who are represented as small, weedy little soldiers, whereas the Khmer soldiers are big, strong, brave men, beating the poor Cham to a pulp.

Like Angkor Wat, the Bayon temple has exquisitely carved door lintels, peaked towers and labyrinthine passageways and steep steps.

My tuktuk driver left me at the entrance to the Bayon temple and told me to make my way through the wood, where I would see other temples in various states of decay. Wandering through the wood, past magnificent ancient trees whose Latin binomials had been printed on labels, helpfully attached to them, I came to a bucolic scene: cows grazing in a pasture in front of a ruined temple. The cows were not impressed with me trying to capture them up close on camera and made as if to head butt me, so I left them in peace, searching for something to eat in this dried out piece of land.

We drove to a couple more small temples, then my camera ran out of battery.
Back in Siem Reap a band of legless Cambodian musicians were performing in Pub Street, a girl was sitting with her legs in a fish tank, the street was teeming with people, the bars packed.

Phnom Penh

My tuktuk took me off the beaten track, into a warren of winding, narrow streets, where the upper stories of old buildings, in a multitude of different styles, jutted out above the lower stories. The higher parts of the buildings leaned towards each other until someone stretching a hand out of a window could hold hands with someone putting a hand out of a window on the other side of the street. Little bars and cafes on the ground floors were illuminated invitingly.  This is old Phnom Penh, destined for demolition.

The tuktuk stopped at the entrance to a collection of old wooden buildings on stilts built right over the water at the edge of the lake. As I entered it was dark, lit like a Fellini film set. There was loud reggae music playing, drunken Westerners shouting, groups of Africans huddled round tables and Cambodian prostitutes wandering about. This was a fragile floating palace, with wooden bridges across the water, leading to long boardwalks with tropical plants in pots and rooms leading off. Cane chairs with big red cushions were scattered about on a large boardwalk overlooking the lake. There were a few mattresses on the floor for the tired, the stoned and the stargazers (they would have to imagine the stars because there was much too much light all around).

I booked into a basic, cheap room upstairs, which was surprisingly quiet. But decided against joining the noisy crowd downstairs and went, instead to one of the nearby cafes to eat, drink beer with huge lumps of ice and chat to the Australian woman who had fallen in love with Cambodia and worked in the bar in exchange for food and beer. She spent her days volunteering in an orphanage and she wanted to live in Cambodia forever.

Journey to Cambodia

I waited from half past seven until a quarter to eight for the pre-paid transport to pick me up (at half past seven) and take me to the port - to catch the eight thirty ferry. Eventually a man on a motorbike arrived and handed me a mobile phone. On the other end of the phone someone was trying to explain to me why his vehicle had failed to start, and telling me to get into the taxi outside the agency. The taxi went in the opposite direction from where we needed to go, then stopped in a wood, with absolutely no explanation. Minutes passed, my anxiety levels were rising, then a couple ambled out of a house and got into the taxi. When we finally got onto the road to the ferry, the driver put his foot down, but five minutes before we reached the port he stopped and started a long conversation with a woman in the street. All three of us remonstrated loudly with him, but he ignored us completely. When we reached the port, we discovered that we now had to walk (dragging our luggage) along a long causway to the boat. We tried to run, with difficulty and just reached the boat seconds before it left.

The sea was choppy. I had to get out on deck. Deck, unfortunately, was a small area behnd the engine, hot and noisy, already crammed with Vietnamese people, their hens and cocks and sacks of merchandise. After a while I managed to squeeze in and sit on the back rail, in the corner, where the sea sprayed over me the whole way. I arrived encrusted with salt.

We were not impressed with the bus that they had laid on for us. The suspension was knackered and the thing bounced so high that the driver had to keep slowing down. We had all paid over the odds for a nice new bus, but we didn't get it. Yet another border crossing rip off. On the other side of the border they transferred us to another bus going to Phnom Penh, only marginally better than the first one. The air conditioning worked on one side of the bus but not on the other and I was put in the back seat, where I couldn't see out because I was above the level of the windows.

Half way to Phnom Penh a four by four crashed into the bus, buckling the side of the bus over the wheel. After messing around with the police for an hour or so, the driver and his crew found a sledgehammer and bashed away at the bent metal for an hour until they had bent it back enough to allow the wheel to turn. In the process a piece of the side of the bus fell off. Then we all got back in and the bus limped to the nearest town, turned off the road into a place full of broken and bent vehicles and stopped. Everyone cheered. Half an hour later we were all on yet another bus, on our way to Phnom Penh. We arrived at eight in the evening, hot, hungry, thirsty and tired.

Last Day in Phu Quoc

I travelled round the island today on the back of a motorbike. I would not have chosen this mode of transport, but no other option was available, so donning my mask, sunglasses and the helmet offered to me, we set off, on red dirt roads, through forest, past forested hills and mountains. My driver insisted on taking me to see a 'waterfall', which of course did not exist because it is the dry season. But there was a dam and an artificial lake, surrounded by thickly wooded hills, supremely serene, under the hot sun burning in the bright blue sky. Then he took me to the beach where everyone in the know goes - Sao Beach - a beach on the far side of the island, far away from the town and the hotels (and the sewage). The sea here was emerald green and clear, unlike the scummy sea on the other side of the island, where I had been swimming.

Then we drove back along the other coast until we came to the museum, which he insisted was 'very nice' although he had never been in it. On five floors, you start off on the ground floor, looking at fossilised wood, then slices of natural wood from an infinite variety of local trees (who knows how many of them still exist), a few of which had Latin binomials, but most of which only had Vietamese names. Then you progress upstairs through neolithic tools found in Phu Quoc, to pottery, neolithic, then later, up to the invasion of the French colonisers, the fight against them and the three prisons built on Phu quoc to house first the anti-French resistance fighters, then later the communists by the americans, with some pretty horrific photos of the tiger cages they put them in and the bones of the prisoners they killed. I had not realised that the wars that took place in Vietnam spread so far south.

When we finally returned to my 'hotel' I was covered in a thick layer of red dust from head to foot. Hopefully the mask had kept some of it out of my lungs. This hotel doesn't provide soap, so there is a certain amount of red dust on the towel now.

Getting the boat tomorrow back to the mainland - Ha Tien, then on to Pnom Penh by bus.

Phu Quoc

Warm tropical seas, palm fringed beaches, luxurious resorts tastefully hidden behind trees; Phu Quoc is the new Phu ket, where the rich come to relax. The beach this morning was full of huge, fat Russians, who are utterly unfriendly. I, of course, have found a five dollar room, in the town, but within a five minute walk of the beach. I thought it would be a good idea to swim a little, get some fresh air after all the traffic fumes of the past few weeks, but I'm not sure I can survive the feeling of isolation here. I'm begining to feel a nice scruffy backpacker hostel in Siem Reip beckoning me away. And Siem Reip is a long way away - a boat trip to Vietnam, then several days travel by local bus (or by any kind of bus for that matter). I had found a railway line on the map that would have taken me to Batambang (near Siem Reip) but it turns out that it is defunct, so it's back to the buses.

Phu Quoc, in case anyone is wondering, is an island off the coast of Cambodia, but the Vietnamese are hanging on to it like grim death. Ninety percent of the island is protected forest national park. The population is small, so driving across the island is a pleasant experience, through forest and mountains, so different from the Vietnamese Mekong delta, where the roads are lined with shacks wherever you go.

Boat Restaurant in Cantho

Yesterday evening, walking along the riverfront, I came to a boat with three decks, stacked on top of each other, sitting solidly in the water by the riverside. There was a wedding going on in the middle deck, but the top deck was empty. Table cloths blew about in the wind as waitresses laid the tables. I ordered a beer. I asked for some ice. The waitress brought me a straw. I asked for it in Vietnamese. She had a tantrum and ran off to complain to another waitress. Someone else brought me some ice.

A group of Vietnamese people sat at the table next to mine. They smiled. They said hello. Eventually one of them admitted that he lived in the US, so he spoke English (not very well). I ordered some fish balls. They ordered rice, greens, meat and beer. They soon started buying beer for me, then offering me food, then they told me that I should not leave because the boat was going on a little night cruise.

By now the whole top deck was full, every table surrounded by Vietnamese people. The sun had set and fairy lights flashed on and off above the deck. A series of singers performed on stage at the other end of the deck, Vietnamese traditional songs and pop songs alternately. Different singers performed downstairs for the wedding. There was so much noise from the music and the happy conversations of the diners that no-one heard the boat leave. It glided down the river sedately for an hour or so, then glided back.

Today I caught a bus to Rach Gia and caught a boat to the island of Phu Quoc, which is about as far south as I can get in Vietnam.

Floating Markets at Cantho in the Mekong Delta

I took yet another boat trip, this time with a couple of English guys, setting off at five thirty in the morning, to get to the floating markets at their busiest. Little boats laden with pineapples, melons, potatoes, cabbages, mangoes, etc all cluster together at the edge of the river. Boats of every size come to buy from them. Little boats sell hot coffee, bananas and snacks. Tourists arrive in boats of all sizes and buy fruit, pasties and great round crispy pancakes, their boats wedged in among the floating market boats, taking photos. Vietnamese women row little boats standing up. It is dawn and a hive of activity. Some of the boats leave as the sun comes up.

We continued to a  place where we got out to watch rice-noodle making by hand. The wet mixture was spread onto a round flat griddle, covered with a lid, left a few seconds to cook, then removed and placed on a bamboo rack to dry. The dried round flat pancakes are pushed through a machine that slices them into thin strips, about the thickness of a rubber band. The women employed in this tedious, repetitive work chatted non-stop to relieve the boredom.

We continued on to another floating market, where we stayed, wedged in, until the boats began to disperse. Then our boatman took us to a riverside restaurant, where we happily ordered lunch, before looking at our watches and realising that it was eleven o'clock. Oh well, we've been up since five without breakfast. Seems like a good time to eat, we thought. Women came and massaged our backs and shoulders, without a word. then they asked us for fifty thousand dong each. We refused to pay. then the restaurant tried to overcharge us and also added the massage to the bill. We paid for our food and drink and left.

The boatman took the boat into a part of the waterway where mangroves grew. The water was full of rubbish and he had to keep stopping to disentangle the propeller from the plastic bags that wrapped themselves around it.The mangroves didn't look healthy.

After a while we turned into a canal with cleaner looking water and healthier looking mangroves. But they were not like the mangroves I remember from the  Everglades in Florida, where they are properly protected. People had chopped branches off to stop them spreading too far into the channel, branches hanging down did not quite touch the water and those sticking up out of the mud were bare and leafless. Some of the trees had whole patches of leafless branches.

Last night I met a young German woman studying mangroves in Vietnam as her PhD project. She told me that people damaged the mangroves by walking in the mud where the new shoots were growing, in order to collect mussles and shellfish. Her project was to find out whether these people were local to the area, why they came there and all sorts of other things about their lives, then to think of ways in which to communicate with them about the damage they were doing to the environment that provided them with their living. But somehow I don't think the mangroves we saw were damaged by people collecting shellfish. I have a suspicion that pollution may have been the cause.

Into the backwaters of the Mekong Delta

We took a little boat upriver, that turned into a narrower channel, then turned into an even narrower channel, deep in the coconut forest. Frondy branches leaned over the river on both sides and coconut palms rose up all around us. Every few hundred yards we went past huge piles of coconuts, either arriving, or being cracked open to take out the coconut flesh, which is then washed in a series of baths. The washed flesh is taken to a press, to extract the oil.

At a certain point we left the boat and walked to a little house in the forest, where a table and stools awaited us with fresh coconuts, open so that we could drink the juice with straws, together with little plates of sweet pineapple pieces and bananas.. The women of the house were making cane mats, pushing the pieces of cane into the mat by hand and using a loom to press each piece of cane into the mat tightly.

We were transported from the house on an open carriage, pulled by a motorbike, along narrow paths through the forest until the paved paths came to an end and we continued on foot til we came to a bridge, where a smiling woman waited for us in a little boat. Squatting on the end of the boat she rowed us through the narrow channel, showing us her perfect teeth in a beautiful smile, as we passed through the quiet forest, back to our waiting boat.

The sun was setting as we emerged from the narrow channel into the wide river and we saw that we were opposite our hotel. We had travelled in a circle round a small area of the coconut forest.

Mekong Delta, Vietnam

We caught the local rattley bus out of Saigon, which travels fast - not like the lazy Lao busses, which go at about twenty km per hour, stopping every five minutes. These Vietnamese buses go like the wind, hitting every pothole with relish. The whole area is densly populated, including the delta, where we cross over river after river, until we reached our destination. After we left the bus we decided to ford the river and go to an island called Ben Tre. We discovered that a huge bridge had been built, since our guide books were written, so the ferry no longer worked. We walked to the bridge, under the beating sun, where we hoped to pick up a bus, instead of which we were picked up by a couple of motorbikes, not something I had intended to do. But Diana shamed me into it. It´s quite safe, she said. Everyone travels like this. And so they do, whole families on one bike, bikes carrying chickens, entire roadside stalls, toilets, even live pigs. They carry loads many times bigger than the bikes, sometimes hiding the bike almost completely. So I sat on the back of this bike, driving over bridge after bridge, over river after river, past forests of coconut palms and houses.

Ben tre is not the sort of place tourists go to, which pleases Diana enormously. We seem to be the only non-Vietnamese in this hotel, which is the most luxurious hotel I have been in the whole time I´ve been travelling. We have a huge room with a river view, air conditioning, fridge, TV and bathroom, all for seven dollars each. Teak furniture in the lobby, inlaid with mother of pearl flowers and birds - very kitch. A breakfast room open on the river side, with river views, full of Vietnamese families eating noodle soup with pork for breakfast. Cargo boats ply the river, carrying all kinds of cargo, including coconuts, which Ben Tre is famous for. Yesterday evening, Diana drank the milk of two fresh coconuts.


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Saigon

Sleeper bus from Hoi An to Na Trang.
The 'beds' in this bus were not flat. The first third of the bed slopes at an angle of forty five degrees over the end of the bed behind, and the remaining two thirds of the bed are flat. The beds are designed for small Vietnamese people to lie propped up in this position. Tall Westerners have to try to fit in somehow. My legs were a few inches too long, so I had to bend my feet to one side or the other, or bend my knees. A six foot man has to lie with his knees bent, or his feet sticking out into the corridoor. The bus driver had a foul temper and swore at everyone every time we got on the bus or off the bus. He let Vietnamese passengers on the bus all night. They lay in the corridoors, blocking them completely. He refused to stop for four hours to let the passengers get out to go to the toilet. In the end there was a massive protest and he had to stop - but in a wasteland full of rubbish with one flooded toilet. Some of us decided it would be better to squat down in the undergrowth, which we did. Sleep was broken repeatedly. Not a good way to travel.

Sleeper bus from Na Trang to Saigon
Same kind of bus with the same problems, except that it was the day time. The bus drove along a wide, flat valley, between gently sloping peaked mountains on either side. Brilliant green rice fields stretched from one side of the valley to the other for mile after mile after mile. The Vietnamese use irrigation, chemical fertiliser and pesticides to grow as many crops a year as they can. Groves of coconut palms and huge plantations of pineapples broke up the expanse of rice fields from time to time.

The bus drove like a dragon through the outskirts of Saigon, blasting traffic out of its way with its horn blaring constantly. We drove through an industrial wasteland for hours, past dirt, smoke and factories of every kind. Eventually the bus deposited us in a bus station somewhere in Saigon. No-one wanted to tell us which bus station it was and the taxi drivers were all running an overcharging mafia. We tried to find a bus that would take us to the centre but the bus wouldn't stop. Then a young Vietnamese man took pity on us, got us on the right bus and accompanied us to the centre, where he found out the way to the hotel we wanted to stay at and took us all the way to it.

The traffic in Saigon is even more hellish than in Hanoi, because the roads are wider and there is more of it. The only way across the road it to walk through the traffic, which travels much faster in Saigon. I have found a new travel companion - Diana, an intrepid German woman, who, like me, wants to go to the delta independently. I'm planning our escape from this hell-hole of a city as soon as possible.

Hoi An

I have been in Hoi An quite long enough. There's just so much trawling around beautiful old teak shops in the heat that you can do. Time to move on. Which means going on a sleeper bus tonight to Na Trang. I have heard varying reports about these sleeper buses - mainly from very big men who didn't fit into the beds. Since I am five foot seven, I hope that I will fit in OK! They designed these buses for little Vietnamese people, who probably fit three to a bed.

Yesterday I had a chocolate tart. Made with dark, supersmooth chocolate. Heaven only knows where they got the chocolate from. You don't see it in South East Asia at all, mainly because it has to be kept in the fridge to prevent it trickling away in a pool. This was the most divine tart, the first chocolate I have eaten for over two months. And probably the last I will taste for the next month!

Na Trang next stop, then straight on down to Ho Chi Minh city, which I would dearly like to avoid, but the only way to avoid it would be to fly over it, which I do not intend to do. So if I survive the experience, Iwill head straight to the Mekong delta, to explore the islands, before heading into Cambodia.

Hoi An - Temples at My Son

It's hot, hot, hot in Hoi An. Beautiful old town with lovely teak shopfronts. Today a bus load of us went to visit the remains of the temples at My Son. The temples were lost in the jungle for hundreds of years, until a French explorer discovered them in the eighteenth century. Built out of brick at the height of the Cham Empire, the bricks were carved into graceful figures that covered the temples. They were high, ornate and impressive. Unfortunately the Americans bombed them, damaging them badly. The ruins of a few of them remain, with some beautiful stone statues inside.

Vegetation sprouts from the ruins, which stand among trees, creepers and every kind of plant. Blue mountain peaks form a backdrop. I travelled today with a feisty sixty two year old Californian woman, who set off down the track leading to the temples at a smart lick.

Danang

As the bus drives into Danang, the first impression is - concrete blocks of flats streaked with black mildew scattered about in a litter-strewn wasteland - depressing.

But the centre of Danang is chic. Riverside bars and cafes where well-heeled Vietnamese gather in noisy groups, streets illuminated by multicoloured Christmas decorative lights and lanterns hanging from trees.
When I reached my guesthouse, the owner offered me rice wine, which we drank in tiny glasses "My sister made this" he said "It's very good"

Today I went to visit the Cham Museum - the reason for coming to Danang. Yesterday I did not see one Westerner in Danang. But today the museum was crawling with them. The rooms echoed with the shouted explanations of the many guides, all competing with each other. Thank goodness I had half an hour to myself before they all arrived.

Cham sculpture is sinuous and sexy, somewhat reminiscent of ancient Indian temple sculptures.
The Kingdom of Champa was an Indianised kingdom of Malayo-Polynesian origins. It controlled southern and cental Vietnam from the seventh century until 1832. The finest works of art were created between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Cham culture was influenced over the centuries by China, India, Cambodia and Java. The scholars used Sanskrit. Hinduism was the state religion. There are a few ruined temples left, but the American bombs destroyed a lot. Their temples were tall, built of brick and highly decorative.

Imperial Tombs, Hue, Vietnam

Last night I went to the roof top of the Imperial Hotel, where a small bottle of beer costs three whole dollars!!! But they give it to you with a frozen glass. A whole group of us watched the sunset over the old city of Hue from the rooftop. Then I tried to find a bar where Philipinos were playing, but failed, so returned to the Backpacker's Hostel, werhe Happy Hour was in full swing. They were serving a drink called Passion Fruit leg opener!!! two for one for a mere seventy pence. It was the most delicious drink I have ever tasted. Only the end of happy hour put a stop to my drinking this lovely drink.

I went on a tour of the tombs of the Emperors of Vietnam - one of those tours where every hotel books people onto the tour of their choice, then buses of various sizes go round picking up the people for each particular tour from all the hotels. Except that my bus was also picking up people to take them to the bus station to catch a bus to Hoi An. But the Vietnamese can multi-task, organise, co-operate and coordinate. It took half an hour to pick up, drop, pick up some more and eventually leave Hue. Then, in what seemed like seconds, we were in depest countryside, green and dense all around us.

The tombs were hidden underground. They took great care to hide their dead emperors, even digging long tunnels, creating whole underground rooms, transporting the body secretly through the tunnels, then filling them in so that no-one would be able to find them and their accompanying treasures.

So what we went to see were the buildings the Emperors built in the countryside before they died, set in the middle of parkland, complete with artifical lakes, idyllic places for the Emperors to rest, relax meditate and write poetry.

One Emperor wanted to be very avant guarde, so he imported cement (unknown in Vietnam in that era) to build with. The cement is scultpted into dragons, flowers, climbing plants and all manner of mythical beasts.
Inside one of the buildings he ordered craftsmen to cover the walls with mosaics, but rather than use coloured glass, as is traditional, he had them make mosaics out of pieces of fine porcelain.

Hue, Vietnam

Everyone on the bus said you can't take kip (Lao money) out of Laos. So when a band of women got onto the bus just before the border, asking if we wanted to change money, everyone changed money. But they gave me a lousy rate. Later, at the border, I saw a money exchange booth. I took my last 6,000 kip there they they changed it at the correct rate. Who propogates this myth that you can't change money? This was the first Vietnamese rip off. Followed shortly after by the taxi in Hue, who wanted four dollars to take us to the centre, a trip we could have managed on foot, if we had had the faintest idea where we were. Then the hotel that gave us rooms for 120,000 dong, half an hour later, by which time we had dragged our bags upstairs and started unpacking them, discovered that she "was in trouble with her boss" and had to charge us 150,000 dong.

Welcome to Vietnam. All this was a bit of a disappointment after honest Laos. And Hue is a big city, also a bit of a shock after living in bamboo huts in the hills of Laos.

However, I decided to improve the shining hour by visiting the ancient imperial walled city, and the forbidden city - a walled city within a walled city. The Americans bombed the ancient city to bits, but they left the old city walls. There are two moats, rather full of weed due to eutrification, which interferes with the water lilies and purple water hyacinths, which struggle bravely to survive.

There are still some imperial palaces in the forbidden city. I'm not sure whether they were re-built or whether they survived the bombs.

Savanaket

To tell you the truth I didn't get very far from the bus station. Last night the bus from Paxe arrived at nine. It took five hours to go two hundred kilometres. That was because it stopped to pick up passengers, stopped so the lady sitting in the front could buy a basket, stopped so that the man sitting in the back could go and collect his chicken from his village, stopped so that the bus conductor could go and visit his auntie, stopped to wait for another bus that might, or might not connect with this bus, stopped so that the driver could get out and say hello to someone, stopped to pick up sacks of something, and so on. It seemed to spend more time stopped than moving.

So by the time that I arrived I wanted nothing more than to find a cheap hotel, which I did, within spitting distance of the bus station. I checked in and went to a local restaurant where lots of young Lao people were drinking beer and making a lot of noise. The food had a lot of chilli in it. The restaurant had long rough-hewn wooden tables and benches and plaster (or maybe concrete) statues of dinosaurs, elephants, zebras and penguins, all the same size, among a forest of green potted plants. Two big-leaved trees provided dappled shade. A TV was playing an American film with no sound, while a separate system played Lao pop music. The young Lao people all cheered and laughed when a couple kissed in the film. They gave me friendly smiles from time to time.

Vat Phou, Champasak, Laos

Vat Phu is a Khmer temple complex at the foot of Mount Phou Kao, overlooking the Mekong flood plain. Phou Kao mountain is 1,416 metres high and the peak is a natural lingam, ten metres high. The ancient Khmers called Phou Kao mountain Lingaparvata (Sanskrit). They chose this site to pay tribute to the mountain lingam, which people could see from miles around. The earliest remains in the site are seventh century, but most of the site was rebuilt in the tenth and eleventh century. The site was maintained by the rulers of Angkor until the fourteenth century. In the thirteenth century the whole complex was converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. The locals still use the temples today.


The shrine was built out of stone in the eleventh century AD on a natural terrace of Phou Kao, where there is a fresh water spring. The temple complex below is laid out in a linear plan, covering 1,400 square metres, rising up the lower slopes of the mountain. This linear/axial layout is rare in pre-Angkor temples, and in Angkorian temples, and clearly reflects the conscious use of the natural terrain to maximum effect. With the magestic mountain rising up behind the temple complex, and the pools at the base, the effect is spectacular.


At the lowest level there are two tenth century pools, flanked by an elaborate stone embankment. There is a processional causeway between them, lined by stone lingams on both sides. Beyond this there are the remains of two very large temples, each with four galleries around a courtyard. There is currently an Italian/Lao project to salvage what is left of these temples. A lot of Lao workers were lounging around, watching a few move stones with the help of a mechanical digger. Carved stones lie around outside the remains of the temples in untidy piles. A lot of these stones have been taken to be used in other buildings, including the steps up to the shrine.


The shrine at the top was originally dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva, who was represented by a big stone lingam, kept permanently wet by a spring, which was channeled to flow through the shrine and over it. But when the temple complex converted to Buddhism the lingam was taken away and replaced by a statue of Buddha, which the locals have adorned with yellow cloth.Yet the Buddhists left the linga lining the causeway below, as they left the Hindu sculptures which decorate the doorways of the shrine. Ever since the sixth century Buddhism and Hinduism have co-existed peacefully in the Champasak area.


Steep stone steps lead up to the shrine. Trees with knarled bark cling to the sides of the steps, insinuating their roots between the stones of the supporting walls and hiding the shrine from view until you reach the top. Sweet smelling blossoms fall from the trees. Part of the shrine is still intact with beautiful carved doorways. Tufts of grass sprout from the roof. The building is surrounded by huge trees.

I had fish with lemongrass, steamed in a banana leaf for lunch. Delicious.Then in the afternoon I got lucky. The hotel where I was staying the night before uses a boatman to deliver guests to his hotel. Just as I arrived back from Vat Phou, he told me that five guests had just been delivered and the boatman had to go back to Paxe. He would take me for sixty thousand kip (four pounds fifty), as he had to return anyway.

The Mekong is very wide at this point, stately and shallow, but with deceptively fast currents. It runs alongside a ridge of mountains on the Champasak side, while the other side is flat. There are villages and palm trees on the banks and fishing boats, sand banks and numerous flat stones emerge from the river. The boat goes past an island covered in thick jungle. Dead branches stick out of the water. Fish traps are clearly marked by floating plastic bottles.

Tad Lo

It took all day yesterday in local busses to get to Paxe. Sebastian and Janes went ahead of us and caught the bus to Tad Lo. We got to Paxe too late for that, so took a cheap room in the bus station, then went to a Lao restaurant where none of the wairesses spoke word of english. We were served by a lady boy (a man who dresses as a woman) who never smiled.

The next day we cught a bus to Tad Lo. Half way there the bus stopped. We go out.There was a queue of busses, tuktuks and cars. Francesco and I walked down the road, where we found that the bridge had collapsed. Bulldozers had created a diversion. But it had rained torrentially in the night and the diversion had turned into slippery mud. Two vehicles were stuck. Just then  a four by four arrived and proceeded to tow the the two vehicles out of the mud. Francesco begged he driver to take us to Tad Lo. At first he refused, then he relented, so we ran back to our bus, got our bags and finished our journey in a four by four.

Later in the day the rain stopped and it became very humid and hot. We went for a walk by the river, where Sebastian tried to swm, but it was too shallow, then through fields, a local village, where the ground was completely covered in shit - pig shit, chicken shit, cow shit - probably cat and dog shit too. Local boys were playing football with bare feet in the middle of this.

We walked past burnt fields, the tree stumps sticking up pathetically, past fields recovering from slash and burn agriculture, sprouting all kinds of lush, green vegetation.

The group of four split up this morning.The boys hired motorbikes to explore the Bolovan plateau. Janes set off on the regular bus to Paxe and I hitch hiked in a semicircle round the central mountain in the middle of the plateau. The road for the first part of the journey was a bumpy dirt track, through plantations of coffee and fruit, banana trees and thatched villages. At one point a driver in a tray top let me ride in the back, with his spare tyres and spare fuel. His wife didn't like the look of me enough to share the front seat with me.

From Paxe to Champasak the road was being rebuilt - that's to say bulldozers had piled earth up and flattened it. But our old bus had to drive on a swtchback of beaten tracks. Progress was painfully slow.

Vientiane

I stayed in a cheap guesthouse in Vientiane that laid on breakfast from eight til eleven, every morning. At eight a few hopeful guests sit in the lobby, where instant coffee and hot water are supplied. About a quarter of an hour later plates begin to appear with toast and  fried eggs, about one plate every five minutes. Then plates of fruit. The lobby begins to fill up. People sit at the tables outside. At about nine o'clock they bring folding tables out, then a big bowl of rice. Later a big steaming bowl of green thai curry appears, with chicken and vegetables. Half an hour later a big bowl of salad joins the rest. Then gradually little plates of sticky rice cooked in coconut milk with mango and miniscule pieces of cake arrive. It is an intensely social affair.

Bus
I took a bus to Paxsan. Every seat was full. Then more passengers got on and were provided with plastic stools in the centre isle. In the suburbs we stopped and vendors climbed in selling bread, meat on sticks, fruit, drinks, magazines. They squeezed past the people sitting in the aisle shouting their wares. Then just as suddenly, they all piled off. Further along the road we stopped and people got out to pee and more vendors got in. These stayed with us until the next stop where half the bus got out to pee and the vendors disappeared.The bus played Lao pop music videos for the first hour, then a Lao comedy show, that had the whole bus roaring with laughter.

This is the first bit of flat countryside that I have seen. It's mostly rice fields, which are dry and brown.

I got out at Paxan, which is just a straight bit of road with a few houses on either side. There seem to be three guest houses and one restaurant. I went to the bus station where a tuktuk said it would cost me fifty thousand kip to go to Lak Sao.

On the trip to Lak Sao I met Sebastioan and Janes, who persuaded me to get out at Ba Na Hin and join them on a trip to the famous seven km long cave. Later we met Francesco, who took us to his guest house and told us about a local Italian restaurant."How come," we wanted to know "there's an Italian restautant in this tiny place?" It turns out that an Italian company are building a dam near here. The wife of one of the engineers decided to open a restaurant, because she was bored. And of course all the Italian workers come to her restaurant after work to drink. At ten thirty she puts the shutters down and has a lock in.

We ordered a litre of wine and big plates of pasta.
Next day we went to the only restaurant we could find for breakfast. It was the greasiest, most disgusting breakfast that I have had since I've been in Laos.

Then we caught the tuktuk to the cave.
The tuktuk went to the market to pick up some boxes of groceries and a sack of rice. Then it turned back on itself, picked up a box of eggs, two crates of beer and some more groceries and two people. We continued. We stopped for a woman with a sack of rice. We stopped to pick up four containers of petrol. We picked up more people, who put mysterious objects on the roof. There was a bag of catfish (still live) under the seat. By now we were fairly squashed between boxes, bags and containers and several Lao people, who left the tuktuk gradually, taking their provisions with them. It took two hours to reach the cave.

A river runs through the cave. We had to take a long tailed boat, which stuck in the shallow water frequently, obliging us to get out and walk in the fast-moving river, on pebbles that shifted under out feet.

One boatman sat at the front of the boat, miner's lamp strapped to his head, acting as headlamp for the boat, illuminating the way for the boatman at the back, also wearing a miner's headlight and steering the boat. Every time the boat grounded we had to get out, and the boatmen pushed the boat along the gravelley bottom, sometimes up rapids.

At one point we came to an illuminated area with stalactites and stalacmites where we got out to climb up the bank and explore them. Sometimes the cave opened into cathedral tall areas, sometimes passing through narrow passageways. There seemed to be a network of tunnels, passageways, caverns, eventually coming out into luxurant vegetation.

We stopped at a boat landing and climbed onto the bank. Under the trees there were stalls selling buiscuits and crisps, alongside tables and benches. The boatmen were drinking Lao Whiskey. We ate a few buiscuits, drank some water, then back in the boat for the return journey, this time missing out the illuminated stalactites.

The journey back in the tuktuk was very cold. We gradually got colder and colder, eventually arriving frozen.

Next day we caught a couple of busses to Thakek, where we met a tuktuk driver who took us to a beautiful guesthouse. We hired him for the afternoon to take us to yet more caves, one absolutely full of stalactites with a lake at the bottom. Then he took us to a beautiful lake, at the foot of limestone karst formations. Sebastian went swimming while we watched and took photos of him.

Vientiane

I meant to catch the local bus from Luang Prabang. So I set my alarm for five thirty am Monday. It didn't go off - maybe because it was Tuesday. So I rushed to the bus station only to find that all the local busses had gone. I could catch a VIP bus for double the price if I wanted. OK, I thought, against my better judgement - I'll give it a try. VIP is a misnomer. It's a huge double decker thing with filthy windows that you can hardly see out of, which, because it is air conditioned, don't open. It has soft suspension, which, because the roads are so auful, make it bounce up and down like a yoyo. And because the road twists and turns up and down mountains all the way to Viang Veng (which is almost all the way) the combined effect is to churn the passengers like cream, making them into butter - or rather, because the contents of the passengers' stomachs is not cream but a mixture of other things, bringing their breakfast, last night's supper and maybe even meals long forgotten, back up their throats. I have seldom felt so ill. Ten hours later we finally arrived in Vientiane, utterly wrecked. I was not the only one who vowed never to take a VIP bus again. Clattery old local busses from now on. And short journeys.

Too exhausted to treck round Vientiane for hours looking for a cheap room, I settled for a bunk bed in a dorm full of young men who, fortunately, were completely exhausted from their visit to Viang Veng. Most of them went to sleep with the light on at nine oclock.

This morning, on venturing out, I was assailed by the sweet smell of freshly baked croissants. The only cafe open in the street was serving breakfast to people, who, like me, couldn't resist the smell of freshly baked croissants and good coffee. Vientiane is a quiet place with wide, tree-lined streets and lovely restaurants serving every kind of food.

I have just been to the national museum, a rather scruffy place exhibiting all sorts of prehistoric pots (mostly stuck together with glue), bronze drums and other artifacts dug up by Swedish archeologists. Upstairs there are lots of photos of members of the Lao resistance - first resistance to the French, then later to the Americans, who installed a puppet government after the French left. I didn't get to the end of the exhibition because they shut for lunch at twelve o'clock. I could go back there if I wanted, using the same entrance ticket I paid for this morning.

There are lots of hippies and freaks here in Vientiane, some quite old. There is even a ninety one year old women from north Wales. "Anywhere," she said "is better than north Wales, at any time of the year". "So why don't you move?" I asked her. "Well," she said "would you live in Thailand?" I failed to follow the logic of this non-sequiteur, so left it at that. "I'm going to catch a local bus to Luang Prabang tomorrow" she announced, after telling me stories of forgetting which hotel she had left her rucksack in, getting the police involved in looking for it, getting sick in Thailand and being nursed by kind local people. I reckon she gets by because people are so amazed that she is travelling at her age that they take pity on her and look after her.

I met other people who I had spent time with in Muang Gnoi, who had saved themselves the trauma of the bus by flying from Luang Prabang to Vientiane.

UXO

UXO, or unexploded ordinance.
There is a UXO Museum in Luang Prabang, but you could be forgiven for not noticing it. Everywhere I asked I was told "No UXO museum in Luang Prabang. only in Phonsavan." But after several hours I found it, behind the statue of the president.

There are scary pictures of villagers using unexploded bombs to build their houses and of people wounded by UXO. Bombs are used as fences and barbecues. Bombie cases are made into lamp shades, candlestick holders, metal is smelted for knives, explosives are used for fishing and de-stumping.

UXO Lao is a national organisation. It trains and employs people to defuse and clear UXO and educates people about UXO safety. UXO Lao also provides technical advice and support for Lao PDR in its campaign for a global ban on cluster munitions.

Between 1964 and 1973 the US dropped an estimated two million tons of bombs in Laos, making it the most heavily bombed country in the world. Most of these bombs were cluster bombs, each one of which contains hundreds of 'bombies'. When the bomb breaks open, it releases bombies that cover an area the size of two to three football fields. As many as eighty million bombies failed to explode. In addition over four million big bombs, mortars, artillery shells, landmines and grenades still litter the country.

15 out of the 17 provinces in Laos have significant UXO contamination. At least twenty five percent of settlements report UXO.

The most heavily bombed area was the Ho Chi Minh trail. Hundreds of kilometres long, the Ho Chi Minh trail was a network of tracks from North Vietnam through east Lao to South Vietnam. The Americans bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail daily for nine years, but the north Vietnamese never stopped using it for even a day.The Americans also dropped defoliants, including Agent Orange. They tried spraying the whole area with liquid detergent to make it slippery. Chemicals continue to pollute food and water and children continue to be born deformed. Scarcely any research has been carried out to determine how bad this problem is.

Although banned, there is a roaring trade in UXO scrap metal. One person is killed or injured almost every day by UXO in Laos. Scrap collection is the most common cause of known UXO deaths (because of course a lot of the time people do not report the death, because the person was illegally collecting UXO scrap metal). In heavily contaminated areas many families have metal detectors, which are now cheap to buy. They are so poor that they are prepared to risk death in order to make money selling scrap metal (which of course often contains unexploded ordinance).

Lao is the most bombie-contaminated country in the world. And it has more post-conflict cluster bomb casualties than any other country in the world. BLU-26 were the most commonly used cluster bombs. 

In a typical year UXO Lao removes and destroys apoximately 65,500 UXO items. It is the largest of seven organisations all operating in Lao. There are clearance teams, survey teams, roving teams and community awareness teams. 700 of the 1,000 strong workforce are dedicated to clearance. These include deminers, international advisors, drivers, and medics.

Villages that need UXO removed apply to UXO Lao for clearance. Unfortunately the organisation doesn't have enough resources to deal with all the applications they receive, so they have to prioritise (places like school yards).

In 2008, 94 countries signed the cluster bomb treaty.

Which countries didn't sign the treaty?

Up River

I have been travelling up the Nam Ou, a tributary of the Mekong, and back for the past week. We travel in a very small boat with hard wooden planks to sit on. We stop at the river bank when the boat driver wants to stop for a pee. Then everyone scuttles off to squat behind some rock. We move slowly past blue dragons-back mountain ridges in the distance, beyond wooded hills. At one point we crunched onto something - rocks? the river bottom? Our driver turned round and gave us a big grin, then continued. Past Pac Ou caves we turned off the Mekong into a narrow channel, through high Karst formations. After the brown, muddy Mekong, the water of the Nam Ou is glassy green. Suddenly it was so shallow that we all had to get out and push the boat. We continued, crunching the river bed from time to time.

After seven hours we stopped at Nong Kiau, a little village beside a huge concrete bridge, the other side of which are rows of bamboo huts for tourists to stay . Spectacular high Karst formations loom either side of the river. The boat lands at the base of a dirt track, leading up to a ramshackle village of tin-roofed shacks. No-one meets us at the boat landing, offers to carry our bags or transport us by tuktuk to the nearest guesthouse. We are completely ignored! I drag my bag up the rough, stoney dirt track to the village, then all the way along the village high street - more dirt track -  to the bridge, where suddely the road turns to tarmac. On the other side of the bridge is a beautful cafe - a wooden platform under a roof with carved wooden railings all round and the whole expanse above it open, with views of the river, palm trees, bamboo sided huts, fishing boats and the steep cliffs of the Karst formations, trees clinging to their sides.

Next day I went for a walk with an American woman who is living and teaching in Seoul, Korea. We walked along a nice, flat, paved road, high peaked mountains all around us, covered in jungle, until we came to a sign indicating the way to the caves. A man in a little bamboo hut sold us tickets to see the caves. We followed a path through dense undergrowth, over a little stream then up steep steps to the cave. We saw the bamboo ladder that people used to use before the steps were built. It must have been difficult climbing that ladder with sacks of rice, barrols of water and other necessities. Incidentally a former president of Lao spent some time living in a cave during one of the many wars that afflicted Laos.

Muang Gnoi

A little boat took us up river to Muang Gnoi. The rapids are faster and more furious than down river and the boat kicks up a huge spray as we go against them.

Muang Gnoi is a dirt road with bamboo hut guesthouses on either side. It is about a thousand metres altitude, so cold at night, but very hot in the middle of the day.There are no roads to or from it, just the ever-dwindling river. Diesel-powered generators run from six til nine pm and for an hour in the morning.

At half past one it was hot and hazy. The only sounds were the cocks crowing. The river, which was distant and low was glassy, reflecting the riverside trees and feathery bamboo. Steep, peaked mountains are thickly covered in forest. Giant banana leaves wave lazily in the breeze. The woman of the house has put her baby in a basket, suspended from a beam by two ropes. She pushes it to make it swing. The baby is silent.I have a little shack at the edge of the forest to sleep in. There's a shared toilet and dip and pour cold-water washing facilities.

The trip down river back to Luang Prabang was slow and long. The river level seems to have fallen. Twice we had to get out of the boat and walk several hundred metres along the bank, while the boat (lighter wihout us in it) continued on its way, then picked us up further down stream. Frequently the boat slowed almost to a standstill as we navigated rocks. It took over seven hours.

Across the Bamboo Bridge

Early in the morning, I set off from Luang Prabang, to the edge of the river Nam Ou, where a steep path leads down to a bamboo bridge across the river. At the river's edge a ticket seller sits in a little bamboo booth, selling tickets to cross the river. On the other side, up a steep, narrow path through vegetable gardens and bamboo forests to a village. A dirt track leads to another village, where many of the households have big weaving looms. Women weave complex patterns with amazing agility. I stood watching, fascinated for a long time, but could not begin to describe the techniques they were using.

Early in the morning I was the only westener in this weaving wonderland. Beatiful woven designs were displayed in most of the houses, shops and even warehouses. A woman showed me how she made paper out of mulberry bark, saoking it in water, then pounding it before spreading it out on racks to dry in the sun.

Back in Luang Prabang

The bus ride from Muang Sing to Luang Namtha zigzags along the bottom of a steep sided valley covered in thick luxuriant jungle. Which sounds lovely. Except that the already full bus went on a little detour round the back streets of Muang Sing to pick up a man with a sack and a hoe, then did another little detour to pick up another man with a sack. Then we headed back to the hospital to pick up a girl with an intravenous drip attached to her arm, the other end of which was attached to a bottle, which her mother was obliged to hold above the grl's head for the whole two hour journey, lurching round corners at top speed. Most of the passengers had to get out in order to fit the patient and her mother in, then, somehow or other the rest squashed themselves into the remaining spaces.

The bus set off playing local pop music, the passengers chatting loudly. Then gradually, as we started to go round the hundredth bend, the chatting was overtaken by communal retching. Those with window seats vomitted out of the windows, those without vommitted into plastic bags. I didn't see whether the poor woman holding up the intravenous drip bottle joined in the vomitfest or not. I daren't turn round.

The bus journey from Luang Namtha to Luang Prabang took eight hours - eight hours on roads that for the most part had no tarmac. In some places they were building the roads. Sometimes the traffic ground to a halt while buldozers shunted backwards and forwards, shifting huge piles of earth. The scenery was spectacular, when we could see it, through the thick clouds of dust that the convoy of busses, trucks and cars stirred up, rattling and bumping along theses beaten tracks. Steep, green forest-clad hillsides, blue mountain peaks, thatched roofed villages, lush vegetation all around.

I have found a cheap hotel in Luang Prabang. It is truly basic. But the seating/restaurant area outside is completely surrounded by banana trees, palm trees, flowers, vines, green leaves of every kind. A very tranquil place in a back street between two temples.

Muang Sing

Today we travelled with chickens on the roof of the minivan, which would have been funny if they had not crapped all over my bag! Muang Sing is another dusty frontier town - on the border with China. Akha tribe women sit on the side of the road stitching seeds and beads onto belts and bags.

I went for a one day treck when I was in Luang Namtha. We followed a steep narrow path up the side of a thikly forested hill, until we came to a stopping place, where our guides built a fire and roasted fishes on split sticks. They spread banana leaves onto the bamboo picnic table and laid out bundles of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, pieces of dill omlette, boiled greens and roast fish.

After lunch we walked though bamboo forests, past banana trees (the animals had eaten all the bananas) and more forest, coming down into the valley carpeted with rice fields. We stopped at a lone house built out of wood and bamboo to wait for the old couple who were valiently bringing up the rear.

Luang Namtha

So happy to be back in Laos, where the hills are green and beautiful and the girls wear long skirts.

It took me a long time to get to the bus station at Houixei this morning, and by the time I arrived the nine o'clock bus for Luang namtha had left. They sold me a ticket anyway and put my bag on the back seat of the bus. Gradually during the course of the morning people drifted in to the bus station and sat watching a TV soap. There were only two buses in the bus station, which was surrounded by a field. On one side of the field a few tables and chairs under some trees indicated a cafe of sorts. A woman was making green papaya salad, so I had some. A group of Lao men were drinking beer. And so the morning passed, reading, wandering about, sitting. Then at midday the bus filled up and left.

A few miles out of Houixei the road surface gave up altogether. For the next two hours the bus rattled and ground up bendy mountain roads in a cloud of dust. The one hundred and eighty kilometre trip took four hours, four hours of green hillsides, thatched roof houses on stilts, slash and burn agriculture, rice fields and the bus driver singing along to the Lao pop music CDs he played at top volume

Back to the Laos Border

Back to the border, watching the sun go down over the Mekong, from Chaing Khong. On the other side of the river Houixei awaits.

Doi Tung Royal Villa

In theory it should be possible to get to Doi Tung by public transport. In practice I got the bus as far as it would take me, then when it deposited me at the side of the road, where it veered off to the left, the only form of transport on offer at this point was a motorbike. I looked at the motorbike and decided that I would rather go back to Chiang Rai than sit on the back of that thing for forty kilometres. Then I had a bright idea. Why not hitch a ride with one of the tourist cars going past every two minutes. Luckily for me one stopped for lunch and the occupants, a surly bunch of Finnish people, grudgingly let me ride in the boot, like a dog, and like a dog they ignored me for the whole ride, up the swirling, curving mountain road, through steep sided hills.

The "villa" at Doi Tung is a giant Swiss chalet, designed by the King's mother when she was eighty eight. But instead of building it  Swiss style out of whole trees, she had them build a concrete shell and cover it with off-cuts from the teak industry. She lined the inside of the building with wood recycled from pine packing cases. Then she designed a garden full of plants from temperate countries, so that Thai people who could not afford to travel could experience these plants.

Photographs of the Princess mother show a lovely smiling woman with white hair. Concerned that the hill tribes were destroying the environment by their slash and burn agriculture, she institued a crop-substitution and reforestation programme for twenty six villages.

The gardens at Doi Tung are full of birdsong, streams and fountains. Armies of gardeners dressed in brilliant purple shirts plant out flowers (is this part of the crop-substitution programme?)

Oub Kham Museum, Chiang Rai

I was the only tourist to visit the museum this morning. Maybe because it costs 300 baht (six pounds!) The museum is dedicated to the Lanna Kingdom, which covered a large swathe of southern China, northern Vietnam, Laos, northern Thailand, northern Burma and northern Assam. It was a federation of tribal states, each with their own king or queen, who wore clothes of gold cloth and sat on thrones covered with gold leaf. The kingdom lasted nearly two thousand years.

The museum was built by a private antique dealer, who spent his whole life travelling the length and breadth of the ancient Lanna kingdom, buying and selling antiques from the region. He managed to accummulate a goodly collection of silver, gold plated, bronze and lacquer objects and several tribal costumes, which are all housed in poorly lit glass-fronted cases, in brick built rooms with corrugated iron roofs, round a couple of courtyards.

The courtyards are decorated with old pieces of wooden sculpture, tree ferns, plastic orchids and hideous modern clay figures. Waterfalls and fountains provide a background sound , together with a tape that sounds like the soundtrack to a bad movie.

All the objects are fussily intricate. There are far too many of them in each room and the overall effect is kitch.

Lanna means a million rice fields. The Lanna kingdom originated in Chiang Saen some time before the seventh century. Chiang Saen is rich in Lanna history, archeology and art. But it was not until King Meng Rai (1239-1317) became king in 1259 that the warring tribes of the area were quelled and the kingdom united. All the kings and queens continued to rule their small principalities, under King Meng Rai. He used Chiang Saen as his northern defensive outpost. By the fourteenth century Chiang Saen had eight watch towers and eleven gates. It was one of the best planned cities in the world and a centre of Buddhist thought.

The Lanna kingdom fell apart in 1568, after an economic crisis caused by building too many temples. Then the Burmese took over.

Chiang Rai

Well I haven't changed my opinion of Chiang Rai. It's still a dump.
But it comes alive at night, with a night market that surrounds two stages, one either end of two large seating/eating areas. One end the seats and tables are all wooden and the stage is encased in a cut metal structure, built to look like a temple, that glitters silver in the night. Here customers pay top dollar for their food and drinks and are waited on. At the other end the stage is unnadorned and the tables and chairs yellow painted metal. The customers go and get their own food and drink from the stalls that line the walls of the area.
I spent time at both ends, first the posh end, watching a kitch show of transvestites in long pink dresses (when I arrived there were some young Thai musicians trying to play traditional music. I wasn't expecting this sudden turn of events!) Later in the evening I met my friend Richard and his Thai wife, who invited me to sit at the plebian tables and proceeded to cover the table with shish kebabs, chips, sushi, nuts, flagons of beer and fruit juice.

The market place is far less impressive than the one in Luang Prabang. Only a few tribal women from the Akha tribe, Lua tribe and maybe one other selling a few things. Lots of stalls selling new stuff - knickers, teashirts etc.

Chiang Rai

I needn't have worried about catching local busses in Thailand. The whole country is swarming with tourists and all the busses have their destinations written in English as well as Thai. Bus conductors come and find you and lead you to your bus, just in case you are blind or completely stupid.

The crate I came in from the Laos border was a traditional old bone shaker that rattled along pretty terrible roads , taking the corners very slowly. You pay about a pound and then sit on the thing for three hours, through desolate burnt countryside (they still burn the rice stubble - and often all sorts of other things, like banana trees, by mistake).

Well the one good thing in Chiang Rai is the chemist, which has automatic closing doors, air-conditioning and girls in white coats who look as if they have studied pharmacy and who speak good English. At the moment I really can't think of anything else to recommend it, except maybe that it's relatively quiet and cheap enough.
Thai girls are out in their short shorts and skimpy tops, hunting. An assortment of sleazy men haunt the bars, where the girls crawl all over them. I knew there was a reason why I didn't want to go to Thailand. After the modestly dressed girls of Laos, who pay no attention to tourists at all, this is a bit of a shock.

My first night I was kept awake for what seemed like hours by a discothec playing top volume and tourists shouting at the tops of their voices. Now I have moved to a quieter place.

I still have the cough, despite the antibiotics and cough medicine, but my voice is beginning to come back.

Houi Xei

Stuck in Houixei, border town on the edge of Thailand.
The boat trip up the Mekong just about finished me off.
I left Luang Prabang with a sore throat and arrived in Houixei with no voice at all and a cough like a machine gun that kept me awake all night. Too tired to move on I took everything that the local chemist had to offer, which wasn't much. A few strepsyls that tasted like they had been made locally using the Mekong river weed and left the roof of my mouth raw, some tablets that advertised themselves as cough suppressants and expectorants, but had hardly any effect at all - probably because they had been in the chemist shop for ages in the heat. The 'chemist' in this one-horse town is run by a little school girl most of the time, who dishes out antibiotics and anything else that anyone wants and takes the money. They did warn me that there is no health service in Laos.

So after four days of coughing and having no voice I'd had enough. And I'd finished most of my reading material. There is one book exchange here. I can see why people left the books that they did, but I can't understand why they bought any of them in the first place. Finding nothing that I would remotely consider reading, I decided against leaving my (quite good) books here. I will haul them with me, to Thailand.

So tomorrow morning I set off on foot down to the river, to cross over to Thailand on the other side.
Then I must catch a tuk tuk to the bus station and find a bus to Chang Rai, where I have decided to go, because it has a hospital but it's less polluted than Chang Mai. It might be a bit of a challenge finding the bus to Chang Rai with no voice! I can't read the Thai alphabet.

So all my plans to travel to the north of Lao have come to nothing. I'm leaving the country ten days before my visa expires, but the best made plans . . .and all that.

Upriver to Buddha Cave

Early morning sun 
glitters on fast moving water
the air is still
river banks rocky
feathery fronds of bamboo
sprout like green fountains.
teak plantations,
leafless and bare,
hills covered in thick undergrowth
of secondary forest,
fish traps,
palm trees
and occasional thatched stilt houses.

We went on a little boat with a noisy engine, up river, our captain steering the boat through channels between hidden rocks, one side of the river, then the other, between steep wooded banks, rocky peaks and layers of blue hills beyond. The Mekong is low. It's the dry season. As the river goes down, Lao people plant thin strips of crops on the exposed alluvial soil, right down to the water's edge.

Further upstream, steep rocky outcrops, sugared with fluffy green vegatation, rise, majestically on the edge of the river.

Steep steps lead to a cave with an impressive carved wooden entrance. All the way up the path village children sell painted shells and caged birds (for you to set free). Inside the cave there is a pantheon of miniature Buddha statues, some broken, some half eaten by woodworm, dusty and forlorn, on ledges, built up of bricks, in little natural alcoves. Deep inside the cave is a large lingam, decorated with nylon gold cloth, ribbons and the remains of melted candles.

More than four thousand Buddha sculptures, carved from wood, moulded from tree resin, coated with red and black lacquer or covered in gold leaf,. have been put in these caves by worshippers. A few are carved from animal horn or made of bronze or ceramic. Pious Buddhists have crafted these little Buddha statues to offer them in the cave.

My Mekong travels will be severely curtailed by low water and lack of boats. On sunday I am taking a boat up north, when Catherine leaves to fly back to Australia. But after that it will be busses all the way. There are no boats going south from Luang Prabang, nor indeed from Vientiane.  Ever since good roads were built the river traffic has dwindled. When the giant dams the Chinese are building are finished I fear the Mekong may be drained completely dry in the dry season.

The picture is actually of the Mekong in Thailand after the rainy season. It is much lower now.