After a couple of months in Southern Africa with a LOT of time in our vehicle, we’ve decided to take a very different approach for the remainder of the year in South East Asia by minimising time moving about.
Our low key pace became even more chilled because of a passport issue that kept us from moving on for ten days. It was our first real mishap of our travels but no real harm was done as we had no fixed plans for our time in the region. We enjoyed the extra chill time and opted to travel slowly through the south of Cambodia rather than our original intentions of passing through the north of the country and looping into Laos and northern Thailand.
We’re beginning to get accustomed to the idea of returning home in less than a month. It’s amazing how the year has flown! The kids can’t wait for Xmas in Chiang Mai with their cuzzies and then to get back to life with their buddies around early in the New Year.
Our South East Asian travels started with a few days in Bangkok, then east to the island of Koh Chang where we had a prolonged stay due to the passport issues. Once we finally got to Cambodia we headed to the magnificent Angkor Wat, then down to Phnom Penh before relaxing in tranquil Kampot and enjoying the beautiful island of Koh Ta Kiev which is surviving on borrowed time before the developers move in…
Bangkok was very different to how I remembered it twenty years back and has developed hugely. The daily manic-ness I remember from back then has become more orderly. The transport infrastructure half finished after the Asian crisis of the late 1990s is now up and running. Old buildings and shacks have given way to gentrified buildings. And the tuk-tuks have all but disappeared off the streets.
In the part of Bangkok that we were in, the city was barely recognisable as Thailand – it felt more like Japan, with ramen and sushi shops on every corner and ridiculous Japanese style packaging in the markets with pricing to match.
Could this be the definition of ‘pointlessness’?
Some things hadn’t changed though, like the types of things people here still eat… Sofia wanted to buy these guys just to set them free.
We learned to cook some more conventional vegetarian food by extending our international culinary skills picked up on this trip
…and enjoyed ourselves with other big city activities.
Then it was chill time in Koh Chang. Like virtually all the Thai islands, Koh Chang has become more of a package holiday destination with a lot of big developments up the western coast. However, there are still pockets for backpackers to enjoy like the superb Pajamas hostel on beautiful Klong Prao beach, even if it was somewhat resort-like itself.
These cats had the pace about right. They would sometimes not move the entire day.
It was one of those places where you book for a few days and end up staying for a week with a steady flow of cool people coming and going. Liam spent a lot of time further developing one of life’s essential skills.
We stayed longer to be a part of the Loy Kratong (floating lantern) festival
The Pajamas family
As a part of the celebration we visited a festival at a local temple where the kids were surprisingly enthusiastic to sample a smorgasbord of grubs and insects.
‘Deee-lish’
Releasing the lanterns into the river symbolises letting go of anger, hatred, negative thoughts and past mistakes
…Which left room for us to make some brand new fresh mistakes the next day when we went to enter Cambodia at the Pailin border. In fairness the mistake was made ten days earlier when we entered into Thailand using the kids’ New Zealand passports. We were refused entry into Cambodia as the kids’ passports are due to expire within the minimum requirement of six months and we were unable to switch to their Austrian passports which expire later as they didn’t have the required Thai exit stamp which was in the NZ passports. Long story short; a bureaucratic quagmire.
It meant we needed to backtrack the four hour journey to the island. Sofia’s expression is probably more representative of the general mood on the return trip.
What it all meant was another ten days on Koh Chang while we had new passports sent from New Zealand. Thankfully it could all be done online with no visit to an embassy necessary.
It was easily our biggest mishap of the trip, but that is more of a reflection of how few and minor the mishaps have been so far.
We decided to make the most of our time back on the island. As might be expected in a place like Koh Chang, the silver lining of the whole episode turned out to be bigger than the ‘cloud’. The biggest upside came when we decided to make our prolonged stay productive by learning some new skills. We discovered some outstanding online university courses through ‘Coursera’ and have since gone on to learn about a whole variety of fascinating subjects.
Of course, we did a lot of island stuff too…
We went on several moped adventures around the island
Exploring mangroves
And an excellent treetop adventure course
We learnt how to make spring rolls
…And of course did some Instagram photo shoots!
It was more difficult to leave the second time than the first
Finally we made it across the border to Battambang in Cambodia where we enjoyed the excellent Phare Ponleu Selpak performance
And visited the nearby Phnom Sampov temple
…where we were treated to a performance of a different kind by hundreds of thousands of bats
Enroute to an organic silk worm farm
Then it was off to enjoy the tranquil solitude at the sunrise over Ankhor Wat
With about a thousand others(!)
The number of tourists there early in the morning was more than we’ve ever seen on any of our travels anywhere. Thankfully the place is sprawled out over more than 100 hectares meaning the crowds became increasingly dispersed as the day went on.
The temple of Ta Prohm was one of our favourites.
Getting around on petrol scooters is prohibited meaning most people hire vehicles with drivers. Thankfully E-scooters allowed us to get around at our own relaxed pace.
Ta Som
The lake around Neak Poun was beautiful in the late afternoon
There was something magical about visiting Preah Kahn alone at sunset. The place was oozing with atmosphere.
Only Liam enjoyed Angkor Putt more than Angkor Wat –
Sofia is still working through some ‘golf rage’ that hit her back in 2010 in Carlucciland…
Then it was off to the capital Phnom Penh. The Tuol Seng Genocide museum gave a harrowing account of the utter madness of the Polpot regime. Around 20,000 people were tortured and murdered on the site of the museum. Around two million were killed by the Khmer Rouge, or a quarter of the country’s population at the time. Together with the museum of WWII in Gdansk, and the apartheid history in South Africa, we’ve seen a lot about the dark side of human nature on this trip.
A blank slate at an Art Bar in the city
Then it was decision time. Our original thoughts were to head North to Laos but for the first time on the trip, time was a constraint due to the extra time on Koh Chang. Instead we headed down to chilled Kampot where we kayaked through the Emerald Cathedral.
Like everywhere in Cambodia, there was sadly a large amount of trash in the waterways. The kids did their little bit to stop it getting into the ocean.
The highlight of our stay was some rock climbing, abseiling, caving, and via ferrata in the nearby limestone cliffs.
We also did a bit of a tiki tour around the surrounding countryside to an organic pepper plantation
Where we were surprised at the variety of pepper for sampling
The Magic Sponge hostel we stayed at was another one of those where a few days just isn’t enough. It had its own mini golf course. Liam and I spent hours finding the best lines on every hole and it paid off with Liam breaking the ten year old course record!
Then it was down south to pass through Sihanoukville. Travellers who had been there called it either ‘Sh*tville’ or ‘Sihanoukhell.’ The whole city is being converted into a Chinese gambling holiday resort on a massive scale with noise, dust and debris everywhere.
Thankfully we were just passing through on our way to the beautiful island of Koh Ta Kiev
Remarkably, the island remains mostly pristine – other than the trash constantly washing up on its gorgeous shoreline. The ultra chilled Crusoe hostel we stayed at had a great scheme of giving a free drink for every potato sack full of trash collected.
The only population on the island is at this fishing village built on stilts off the eastern coast.
Sadly, this piece of paradise, like most similar places before it will disappear shortly. The island is tagged for massive development in the next couple of years.
This fits with our overall impression of Cambodia. For both better and for worse, the pace of change here at the moment is stunning. It reminded us a lot of the changes in Nepal. While it will improve the incomes and perhaps the lifestyle of the country’s people, there is clearly poor governance and corruption and the development appears to be at the expense of the beauty and the environment of the country. Hopefully a sensible balance can be found.
