Laos

Time goes slowly in Loas. There is no hurry.

The day starts at dawn, when the sun comes up over the horizon. The monks walk through the streets to collect food for the day, the breakfast stalls pop up every here and there and the marked is already bustling long before I've finished my breakfast.

And then it starts to get warmer. The cool morning air is replaced by the heat of the mid day. All I want to do at this time of day is to go swim in the river. So I do. Because there is nothing else that really needs to be done except to lay in the hammock and read my book. But that can be done in the early morning or the late afternoon when the temperatures are cooler and the urge to jump in the river is not so strong.

By 10 o'clock in the evening the day is over in the little village in Northern Laos where I am staying. The generators are turned of and the few small shops and restaurants around closes. The village goes to sleep, and so do I.

Five days passes like this and life is good. But then reality hits in and all of a sudden it is elephants parading the streets in the morning, not monks. Elephants decorated in colorful clothes and patterns and we get to pet them, feed them and hang out with them for two days. Elephants are fascinating and beautiful creatures!

Afternoons are spent in the monasteries with the monks, chanting and meditating. And the people. Wonderful people that has come to mean a lot to me.



There is so much beauty in my life.

A trip to the Burmeese border

It sounds so simple, doesn't it? But oh-no, it turned out to be quite an adventure! I'll start from the beginning.

A group of students from Bangkok came up to the farm where I was staying in northern Thailand one day. They were going to one of the hill tribe villages in the area to give them loads of stuff that they had collected in Bangkok and everyone staying on the farm was invited to come with them for the day.

After breakfast we jump on the back of one of the many vans going and set of towards the mountains. We sit there talking, drinking beer, enjoying the beautiful scenery and I feel so lucky to be exactly where I am. Life is beautiful.


We drive for a few hours before we arrive at the small hillside village where the school is. The children come running and gather around as we unload the trucks. The kids are adorable, dressed in traditional clothes and rather shy when it comes to us foreigners. We just manages to get everything under roof before a massive rainfall comes upon us.It rains for about 20minutes before it clears up again, the sun comes out and we go back to playing with the children.

Sandot (the guy who runs the farm I'm staying at)asks if we wanna head further up in the mountains to visit the village where most of the kids are from. To us that sounded like an offer we couldn't resist, so we jump on the back of the cars again and wave goodbye to the kids.

We quickly realize that driving further is not going top be easy. The rains have made the dirt roads to mud roads, and after about five minutes driving we get stuck. A huge tree has fallen across the road, seeing that it is useless for us to try and move it, we decide to walk the three kilometers to the village.

Three kilometers doesn't sound a lot, but on the muddy mountain roads, it took us about one hour.

As we're about half way there, the sky darkens yet again and we see big clouds heavy with rain rolling towards us across the valley. Not knowing how far we have left, we don't really know what to do, but decide to continue to the village. Hopefully we reach it before the sky opens again.

I enjoy the walk, the scenery is gorgeous, the people I'm with are great and we have loads of fun getting to the village. Shoes was given up on a long time ago so we wander the muddy roads beer foot and by the time we reach the village, we are all covered in mud.

Within five minutes of reaching the village, the sky opens and it pours down like I've never seen it before. We seek refuge in a small shop where we sit with the locals watching the roads turn to rivers within minutes. The wind howls, bamboo snaps and breaks all around us as we sit there and wait for it to stop. When we didn't think it could get any worse, it starts to hagl!


We give up hope on getting back that eavening and come to terms with the fact that we most likely have to spend the night there, when Sandot turns up with his car and is ready to take us back. The only problem is that we are 15 people, and his little car cant really handle that many people. We weren 8 on the back, 5 inside and 2 were hanging from each door. The car was sliding sideways on the slippery roads and all of a sudden, the suspencion breaks. Everyonehas to get out and walk back to where the other cars are waiting. The rain is not as bad anymore, but the roadsareway worse than when we came in to the village. We struggle up the hills, taking three steps forward and sliding two steps back. Muddy, wet and exhausted we finally make it to the cars, climb in and head back to the farm in the freezing night.

A real Thailand experience as Sandot said. You can never prepare for that and it's always loads of fun!

Tacomepai

Cotton picking, reagga festival, bamboo and clever solutions, hot springs and mud baths, scooter trip in the beautiful nature, communal dinner around the fire, a sky full of stars, gitar and beautiful people.

That's Tacomepai for me.

my wonderful bamboo hut

de-husking rice for dinner

THe kitchen

Hot springs and mud bath

Around the fire at night

Angkor Whaaaat?

Banteay Samre, my favorite temple!

Preah Khan

Ta Phrom, the famouse one where the trees grows over the buildings

the temple of Banteay Srey, made out of pink limestone

the beautiful faces at Bayon temple

carving somwhere

Angkor Wat

Our South Korean tourist picture

the sunset at the Sunset Temple

In the jungle!

After a few days in the sleepy town of Kratie, where I spent my days strolling around the market, drinking ice coffee and watching the Irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong river, I took an impulse trip up to Banlung in the north eastern parts of Cambodia.

Ratanakiri is a beautiful region with red dirt roads and green forestry hills and I went with some girls I had met to swim in crater lakes and shower under waterfalls, it was wonderful!

molly and me under the waterfall

The next two days we spent hiking in the jungle. We had a really col guide and a ranger that made us walking sticks and coffee cups of Bamboo. I think that is the coolest coffee cup I have ever seen!

Our man making the bamboo cups

There were hardy any paths to be seen, but the ranger knew his way around in the jungle and after about six hours of walking we arrived to where we were spending the night.

Crossing the river

Our campsite was beautifully located by a small river, and as our guides made a fire and prepared for dinner, we walked further up the river to find a place where we could swim and cool down. It was a beautiful and calm spot, and it felt great to relax after the hike.

swimming in the river

As we came back to the campsite the food is already cooking in long bamboo sticks placed on the fire and we sit down to try out our new coffee cups. The food is great and we sit by the river chatting untill the sun went down and the stars came up. When darkness came upon us, our guides asks us to borrow our flash lights cus they wanna go hunting for frogs to make us a late night snack. As we watch them disappear further up the river all we can hear is the sound of frogs and insects. I have no idea what is out there, and I really don't want to know either.

our food is in the bamboo sticks on the left

After about an hour the guides come back with a bucket full of frogs, crabs, shrimps and small fish that they cook with garlic, chili, lemon grass and some other herbs that they had found in the jungle. The frogs are delicious, and since I'm the only one who really eats any of it, I got as much frog legs as I wanted! Love it!


When there were no more jungle frogs left, we took our blankets and climbed into our hammocks and fell asleep under the starlit sky in the jungle in northern Cambodia.

Taxi ride Cambodian style

I was in Kampot in southern Cambodia just relaxing, barely moving out of my chair for three days. Just looking at the river and reading my book and enjoying doing nothing. But I couldn't stay there forever so I decide to take a shared taxi back to Phnom Penh. The bus took five hours but apparently the taxis only take three. So the choice was easy.

Me and Meredith (a girl I met at the guest house) gets picked up and the car is empty. We had been told that it would be really crowded so we were a bit surprised. But of course, we spent about an hour driving back and forth and here and there picking up people. And at the end there were eight of us in the car. Meredith and I shared the back seat with two girls that sit making out basically the whole ride, and in the front there is the driver and three sweaty football players that came straight from a match. And yes, one of them do share seats with the driver (don't understand how the driver actually manages to drive, but somehow he does, probably not the first time he does this). And then, of we go.

We go for about 100 meters and then we stop. Oh no, not more people we think. But they were just buying fish. We made sure it was placed in the trunk and not in the car. And then we head of for real this time. Music comes on. A horrible high pitch female voice talk and sing and it's painful cus it's too loud. And then there is the honking. Every 10 seconds the driver honks. Great!

And then, after five hours we arrive. Dammit, we should have taken the bus!

Vietnam in pictures

The chaotic streets of Hanoi

Christmas was spent in Halong Bay

We finally found the beach!!!

fruit seller in HoiAn

the water buffalo manFun on the beach
Rice paddies

sun rise