Archive for June, 2008

pakse

June 28, 2008 · Filed under laos, people · Tagged , , , , , ,

WE ARE IN Pakse, Laos‘ third biggest town and the first town when you enter Laos from the south. It’s near four waterfalls which are best visited with a motorcycle. The one at Champee was the most abandoned and the most idyllic.

In town we combine the usual food hunt with sightseeing.

Friday night the terraces just outside the centre are packed. Between the two bridges that cross the Mekong bar after bar compete with each other in liveliness. Sound systems boom, tables are exclusively filled with Beerlao, people are merry.

The service is split in two; one waiter or waitress takes and brings your order, another waitress (or a ladyboy) comes to your table to pour the drinks and returns to refill the glass until the bottle is empty and takes the next order. When you leave the first waiter brings the bill.

At a certain point the riot police, armed with a machine gun each, moves in. They loaf around the pavement between the terrace and the moped parking for a minute or two and then leave. It seems to be their routine, as nobody pays attention to them. At around 9.30 the terraces empty.

As loud the waterfront was, as quiet are the terraces in the centre, which seems to be reserved for backpackers. Could it be the Lonely Planet effect? At the Jasmin Indian restaurant staff wear shirts that have the slogan ‘as listed in Lonely Planet’ embroidered. Hope this is my last note on f o o d but their curries and naan are really delicious.

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ecotourism

June 23, 2008 · Filed under laos, on the road, people · Tagged , , , , , ,

At the crossing in Phiasay a sign reads ‘Kingfisher Ecolodge + restaurant’, another sign reads Kiet Ngong cultural village. We ignore them at first but turn around and turn away from the road to Pakse, intrigued onto a hilly dirt road.

We should have remembered the headline ‘Laos developed ecotourism’ in the official tourist magazine of Laos. Ecotourism. Here’s a concept the villagers of Kiet Ngong are putting into practise. We enter the village and there’s an elephant carrying a rider and two extremely bored looking westerners, one holding a video camera on his lap, the other holds his head on his palm. Playtime is over, back to the hotel. A gleaming silver van awaits them opposite the visitor centre, the driver next to a tree with a chained monkey climbing back and forth.

We keep following the signs ‘ecolodge’ that now are put up every few metres. The path narrows and passes a stand with the sign ‘it’s ok to bargain over the handicrafts’. When we reach the gate there’s one more sign. It reads ‘closed may 1 – june 30′.

Yes, it’s announced on the website the manager says. We blink. High heels, hair combed down in a straight angle, snow white cotton skirt and about to climb into a Toyota SUV. Here we are at dusk, after 100 kilometres on the bike, of which 10 out of the route uphill over gravel, sweaty and tired. She’s not impressed. She really can’t help us, ‘we’re closed’ she says in broken English, but in the village there’s a ‘homestay’.

Homestay. Another buzzword the locals understand. Back at the monkey tree a fleshy man asks us ‘Homestay’? and when we answer yes, he says 4 dollar. We’re to follow him on his moped. At a wooden house on poles we stop and we’re gestured to climb the stairs. A lady shows the room; it’s dark and simple, not the worst. The shower is a clay cistern and the bathroom outside.

The man doesn’t speak English so a neighbour translates. First question: How many nights? Then dinner and breakfast are added and the price jumps with every option. The counter stops at 20 dollar.

We blink. The price equals a night in an air conditioned hotel room in a tourist area, dinner and breakfast included, or four nights in an upscale guest house. The Laos village experience, sure! It’s just the greed that puts us off. That, and the fact we feel we’re standing in the lobby of a shady guest house.

So in a deep-red sunset it’s back to the crossing and check-in at a shady guest house – authentic asbestos walls included.

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cambodia obscura (2)

June 21, 2008 · Filed under cambodia, on the road, people · Tagged , ,

THIS IS the roadside of Cambodia. People snoozing in hammocks under their house. Chickens and cows cross the road lazily, children zigzag on grown-up bicycles. Abandoned food stalls with pans of strange dishes. Roadside beauty salons and hairdressers treat customers in half-open bamboo huts – if someone shows up. The heat slows down all activity.

Then there is the road. As Mr. John the expat from New York put it, ‘Be careful. They are in a hurry. In a hurry making dollars.’ Champagne-coloured Lexus cars pass in full speed and honk to get out of the way. The driver was fast enough to make a fortune and now he’s in a hurry for more. The Lexus is followed by rows of mopeds and bicycles. Not as fast but they are on the move as well.

We belong in the last category but it doesn’t mean there’s a chance to catch up with them. We are mere farangs, tourists. In the mind of the Khmer the tourist as a person and tourism as an industry are not quite the same. Tourism has top priority in Cambodia; upgrading airports, building new 500 room hotels, golf clubs in national parks. Half of the Phnom Penh Post news reports are about booming tourism. This year 2.3 mln visitors, next year the aim is 3 mln.

The Angkor Wats are flooded by foreigners, the adjacent small town Siem Reap can’t deal with such a (sewage) flow, nor can the World Heritage monuments and the environment. But they bring bags of dollars and the freak show continues.

Cambodia could be very pleasant. It has a tropical climate and many undiscovered places. The visa on arrival is issued without fuss nor demand for a bribe.

In general the Khmer speak better English than the Thai. Cambodians are very keen on learning English because it promises a job in tourism or with an NGO.

We left Cambodia after two weeks and are not very interested to go back. It’s the people. They’re too much in a hurry to cash in from you. You are a money bag, the rest doesn’t matter.

Buy food for 3-4 times the price a local pays and receive half of the portion. Try to haggle and get a friendly but definite NO in return. You can ask for the price beforehand and watch how the waitress nervously asks the manager in the back about the adjusted prices. Sit at a dirty table with used napkins all over the floor like dead mice but pay like in a restaurant. If you pay with a big note and expect change – forget it. They will find a way to reduce it by a few thousand riel and giggle behind your back while sharing the profit. They will charge you for sitting at the riverbank, for ‘community support’. but the community just plays volleyball and doesn’t care to pick up the rubbish around them. Get a room for a few dollars more and get used sheets and layers of dust free.

Money money money – and greed. Too much in a hurry not giving anything in return. We hurried as well, but hurried to leave.

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day 85

June 16, 2008 · Filed under cambodia, on the road, people · Tagged , , , ,

mon Jun 16 (day 13 in cambodia) Kampang Cham – Chlong

distance 96,2

maximum 33,8 km/h

average 16 km/h

total distance 3771 km

A rrrecord-breaking 130 km ride from Phnom Penh ends with an unexpected pleasant landing in Kampang Cham. Colonial French houses, laid-back people running the guest house. Nice room, no vermin. A relaxed night market, a nice break from the eye-twitching and price boosting that follows whenever a trader sights a farang.

The map shows a secondary road along the Mekong so in the morning we cross the bridge and turn left. A nice change from highway 7, which is too narrow for the traffic it carries.

Buddhist temples and mosques alternate. In the Muslim villages girls dressed like phantoms; black from top till toe and with black gloves they cycle, only the eyes uncovered. Wonder what would happen if you’d take a picture.

From the roadside toddlers, children, teenagers, adults scream hello hello, usually followed by a snickering. Find ourselves surrounded by a group of at least 15 people when we buy bananas.

The path meanders from wide to narrow, from main dirt road to backyard paths. Stuck in the mud around noon. Removing the mud is not as bad as in Georgia, still the job sets us back an hour or so. Non-stop pretty, pretty views. This is the real Cambodia, we keep saying. No road signs, just interconnected villages.

Dusk is an hour away and it looks like we won’t make it to Chlong, the closest town with guest houses. At a school we inform if there are alternatives. The teacher directs us to, as we understand, Khlong, 35 km down the road.

Back on asphalt at around 60 km. Night is falling. Would this be Iran, you wouldn’t need to ask for a place to stay, you’d be dragged inside a home before even asking. Somehow the chance of that happening here seems like, ehm, a snowball’s chance in hell, with the snickering from the side of the road.

Arriving in Khlong, which is just another name for Chlong we find out. Khmer language is not standardised, so a word can have five different spellings and pronunciations, and every version is correct.

The first guest house too expensive for what it pretends to be and we leave. At the gate a young man under the influence invites us to his place, he has foreigners staying regularly, he says, and for a few dollars we’re welcome. We thank him and try the second guest house. This one has each price printed out next to the door to the rooms so pretty much rules out bargaining over the windowless rooms. We step on the bike and there’s the young man again. He drops the price more than half and insists we stay at his place. No more guest houses in Chlong, he says. Just a hotel.

Fed up we give it a try. And so we land in hotel Le Relais, a 19th century French colonial house overlooking the Mekong. Stylish bathroom, nice pool. And that, ladies and gentlemen, wraps up a more or less typical day of vive le vélo.

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28 dogs

June 14, 2008 · Filed under cambodia, on the road

June 8: Twenty-eight dogs from one village died the same night after being poisoned by group of robbers. The incident occurred about 2 am in Mondorom village, Ang Snuol district, Kandal province. Police officials said that they suspected the thieves were either trying to dope dogs and steal them- but this had gone wrong- or that they were trying to steal from villagers and this would be easier if they poisoned the dogs. The village is said to be unnerved by the incident.

(source Phnom Penh Post June 13-26, 2008)

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cambodia obscura (1)

June 13, 2008 · Filed under cambodia · Tagged , , ,

Food in Cambodia is funny. We just had lunch in the guesthouse restaurant and it was surprisingly tasty. In no way the usual westernised guesthouse food; a pile of garlic cloves mixed with sautéed spinach on a bed of roman lettuce, sprinkled with soy sauce and rice on the side. A pleasant surprise because in the past week we got used to, ehm, tasteless food.

In the first days we approached the lined up pans on the food stalls with Thailand fresh on our mind. Aahh.. the food in Thailand.. We quickly got out of that habit. Cow’s stomach, pig’s ears and nose, chicken neck, anything offal of the animals around us, cooked in a salty gravy and vegetables. Women balancing a basket on their head sell steamed snails or deep-fried crickets as a snack. The baguettes, without exception heavily sweetened factory-produced yeast puffs. The flies love it.

The alternative is fried or boiled rice with vegetables, but it looks very similar to unsuccessful dormitory cooking. The fish and curries have much more flavour, but are often missing on the menu in the countryside.

We glanced through the food stalls of Kampong Chhnang. It ended with a bowl of rice and omelette. In Thailand we ate the same and it was a meal. At this food stall a few spoons of rice were taken out just before serving, and the price was doubled for the privilege.

Last night we went to the Khmer Borane Restaurant as recommended by Lonely Planet (“the best selection of old royal recipes in town. You’ll realise Khmer cuisine can rival its better-known neighbours”). Unspiced fish filet with cucumbers and a few leaves of lettuce. The sauce, grated mango in salty water. R. had a plate of rice as she was recovering from a vegetarian curry that went awry.

I’m not a culinary snob, not culinary even, but jeez, what is it with Cambodians and cuisine.

So, until we recover from culture shock we stick to bananas (bundles and bundles), and sticky rice in bamboo with black beans and coconut whenever we find it.

Update: Today we discovered noodle joints that serve a pan (‘hot pot’) of bouillon on a small stove, the ingredients in bowls on the side. Add greens, noodles, mushrooms and stir. T a s t a h !

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cambodia

June 7, 2008 · Filed under cambodia, on the road · Tagged , ,

WE ARE abroad again. After two weeks of traveller-friendly Thailand we’re back in the dust, clouds of dust, noise, and messy traffic. Smouldering heaps of rubbish make it complete. Our first steps in Poipet ended in a knee-deep mud pool. Looking up too much to the Khmer welcome arch. Welcome to Cambodia!

Yes, there are a few gaps in this blog. We’ll fill them later!.

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