Author: Adrian's Got the Moose

Vang Vieng would be just another dirt poor Laotian town if it didn’t have unspoiled natural beauty on its outskirts, and some enterprising individuals came up with the idea to rent truck inner tubes to backpackers to float down Nam Song River, and then others set up bars along the same river, so backpackers can get plastered on bathtub local spirits and beer, and engage in heavy petting while near naked, with their new-found friends. Due to pressure from Western governments who objected to their youth dying by the dozen due to drowning while heavily intoxicated, tubing was shut down, and when it restarted many of the bars shut down, and with some half-hearted safety demonstrations mandated.

The town resembles a low rent version of Bangkok’s Khao Sahn road, and while I enjoyed my stay it feels a little forced, and the locals a little too eager to empty my pockets.

After two days languishing in Vang Vieng, I succumbed to the allure of tubing. I walked to the tubing agency, paid my fee, and was promptly told to return in an hour when they had more people. I had a hasty and tasty lunch of a Lao-style sandwich loaded with salami and avocado, then returned, and was promptly ordered into the back of a truck. We were driven around for half an hour, picking up people until the truck resembled a sardine can.

We were then driven out of town to the starting point, where we got our brief safety talk, and then we were on our way.

I found the current too strong (this was just after the rainy season) for relaxed tubing, which lead to too short a time between the three bar stops. I spent the first bar stop alone, nursing a Big Beer Lao, thinking I was too old for this shit. At the second stop, I was feeling more sanguine about the situation, and spent some time sitting at a table with some English tubers, but struggled to join in with the conversation.  One of the guides decided to start a conga line, which was entertaining but I was certainly not drunk enough to join in.

It’s worth noting here that I don’t magically become more sociable when I travel, sometimes I push myself to be more sociable, and this gets mixed results, from me and other people.

On the last section before the last bar, I was invited into a flotilla of tubes and tubers, featuring two vivacious American ladies, two very young and charming Dutch lads, and one very polite Indian man. We continued our time together at the last bar, and later had a few more drinks at the Mad Monkey, before breaking up the party due to quite a few of them going hot air balooning early the next day.

The next day I hired a scooter and spent the day checking out a few of the blue lagoons, which were quite impressive.

However the scenery was quite incredible just from the road, so I spent a lot of time just riding around taking in views.

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My four day stay in the Laos capital of Vientine was entirely unworthy of my time, except for a visit to the Australian Embassy and the Buddha Park.

Back in Australia, where the sun shines, our kind-of great nation was debating and voting on something that should have been passed into law in the sixties. But I’ll get off my soapbox, shall I? It did give me a valid reason to visit an Australian Embassy, for the first time ever. The embassy is conveniently located five kilometres away from the centre, along the coast and nestled around other embassies, company HQs and NGO offices with image-conscience PR departments. I got a motorbike taxi to the embassy, and while holding on for dear life I noticed a building labelled Aussie Mart, and knew I must be getting close.

I showed my passport and signed in, passed through a metal detector and was issued with a snazzy visitor lanyard. I then stepped onto what by treaties and convention is considered Australian rather than Laotian soil, which made me feel wonderful after months of travel.

I walked through a well-maintained garden but was mildly disappointed I didn’t see any gum trees, complete with koalas munching on leaves. I stepped into a building that smelt and felt like the lobby of a hospital. As soon as I sat down I was ushered into a smaller room, where a flawlessly polite lady checked my credentials again and  I filled out a declaration, then the voting form. I was offered some Anzac cookies, which were baked by the consulate’s spouse, which I am pleased to report, were delicious and just about made me cry. I asked the lady to thank the consulate’s spouse for me and I departed Australian soil, and reluctantly handed back my lanyard.

The Aussie Mart was two buildings over from my embassy, next to the Singapore Embassy, and was a treasure trove of Tim-Tams, Vegemite, Dawn Dish Soap and other Australian staples. I managed to restrain myself and only buy some TNCC jelly babies, and on the walk back to town I munched on Anzac biscuits and jelly babies, and was a happy and content Vegemite.

The next day, having baulked at paying a whole day’s budget on a one way taxi to the Buddha Park, I hiked to the local bus station and took the Number 14 bus for the twenty five kilometre trip out of town. It was slow, uncomfortable and tedious, but was worth it just for the expression on the locals when they saw me board the bus, exact change  in hand.

The Buddha Park commenced contruction in 1958 by a priest-Sharman Bunleva Swilat. The statues are of gods, animals, and demons. 

The focal point of the park is a sculpture that has been described as a pumpkin, and has three levels, representing Heaven, Earth and hell, which you can enter climb through.

I found the park to be a delightfully ramshackle affair, the statues have been allowed to become dirty and in some cases broken, the iron rebar showing and rusting away. I found this to be perfectly symbolic of the nature of Laos, so much faded glory lined by good intention.

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Don Det was much the way it was when I left four years ago, but even quieter. The friends I made back then had all moved on, and it seemed like the lowest of low seasons, and the high season nothing but a vague promise from a former lover best forgotten. The restaurant I had breakfast at so many times before was empty, and the bar I drank far too many beers in was dark and shuttered.

After two days at a cheap bungalow on the sunset side without a working toilet, I moved to the sunrise side to an even cheaper place where I needed to fill a bucket to flush the toilet, but at 2.5 USD a night I had no interest in complaining. I was befriended by a Texan by the name of Brian, who told me where I could buy cheap weed and advised me on the best resturants. My efforts to develop another drug dependancy came to nothing, as the cheap weed did nothing for me. I spent a pleasant week mostly in a hammock, watching Youtube via the surprisingly fast Wifi, reading trashy science fiction, and shooting the shit with Brian, seldom venturing more than a hundred metres from my bungalow.

I did go for a short walk at one point to the so called village based around the local school, and the old French Pier, which was a nice stretch of the legs. It was scenic enough and I had a chat on the way with a English engineering student, but this was enough sightseeing for a while.

When I started taking an interest in the sex lives of the geckos living around the bungalows I knew it was just about time to leave. I could have happily rided out my visa on Don Det, but I still had a long way to go.

I took a walk to the sunset side for a beer and to of course watch the sunset, which was the first time I saw anything like a crowd anywhere on Don Det this trip. Back at the Indian restaurant near my bungalow I booked boat and bus tickets to get me to Pakse.  Brian was also leaving on the same day, and it would be  nice to have some company for a bit longer.

The last night on the island I ate a space cake, and felt absolutely nothing from it until the morning, where I dry-heaved multiple times, and felt incredibly hungover, which struck me as grossly unfair. In this fragile state, I managed to pack and walk to the pier, and board the ferry and then the bus to Pakse. My only memory from the bus ride was a short break somewhere and a French backpacker asked me about my tattoo, and my poor attempt to explain it. I shared a Tuk-tuk with Brian to the cheapest hotel we could find on Agoda, where the receptionist fumbled his way through check-in and then led me to my very basic room, where I promptly fell asleep.

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Border Crossing. Five English lads, another Australian, and myself in a minivan designed for people about a foot shorter than the shortest of us. Every one of us is showing the scars of our travels. A supposedly friendly soccer game had lead to much damage to English flesh, one of them displaying a large chunk of missing skin on his knee that really should be dressed. My foot is still problematic, swollen and painful but is on the mend. It seems that everyone had a boozy last night in Siem Reap, everyone is half asleep, hungover and easily confused, which does not bode well for dealing with officials. The bus reeks of nervous, boozy sweat, which I am contributing to. Last night after drinking and shopping I bought beers back to my hostel and drank more with the owner of the hostel. I have not had enough sleep. I am wondering how I am going to handle Laos roads, I have a blister pack of motion sickness pills but that does nothing for my nerves.

I am distracted by dramas from the English, one of them (the one with the skinned knee) has left his passport behind, and many frantic conversations with the driver lead to phone calls to Siem Reap, a friend of the driver is going to head to the hostel, pick up the passport and drive towards the border, but this is going to cost him dearly. With masturbation-like guilt, I succumb to checking my wallet for my passport. We stop at one of those petrol station rest stops, and I stock up on iced coffee and lollies, and I wash down some motion sickness pills with Pocari Sweat. We change buses, causing further confusion, then continue on. We stop again, at a restaurant I assume is owned by the driver’s family. Our luggage is piled up and the bus leaves, we are told to fill up with fuel.

I eat a mediocre stir-fry and drink not quite cold enough beer, while a local fixer shows up to offer us money exchange and Lao Sim cards.

Another bus shows up, and we load up again. The area near the border seems to be given over to marginally viable agriculture, and it’s clear that the government spares no thought in maintaining infrastructure, except for the ever-present political signs. Our driver nonchalantly steers the minibus around the worse of the potholes, but not skillfully enough judging by the swearing by the English, as if they have never seen a unsealed road in their young, sheltered lives.

Eventually the bus pulls up just outside the border, and we are instructed we have to walk across ourselves. Our bags are unloaded, and the minibus roars off. We collect ourselves in small groups and start walking towards the Cambodian exit. Our passports are found uninteresting, stamped out and our bags are X-rayed by a machine that looks like it was made during the Cold War. We hike across No Man’s Land, through untended gardens and forgotten slabs of concrete. At the Laos Immigration I am shaken down for forty USD for the visa, and then a further two dollars to fund the officers’s new motorbike. It’s obviously a shakedown but they have me by my balls and they know it, so I cough up. At the other side our passportless English companion is no where to be seen, but in any case here we seperate, myself, a pretty French couple and a single French guy go on one bus to the ferry to Don Det, which was luckily uneventful.

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Tuesday night. I’m drinking beer at a steady rate at a bar just off Pub Street, but oddly seems busier than the main event. and the music is marginally better, if too mainstream for my tastes (…and they were all yellow). A party of Western Australians are at a table next to mine, and their voices are both making me homesick and disgusted. The pair in front of me is either a May/September couple or dad and daughter. Not knowing is bugging me greatly. In any case she drips sexuality, from her languishing pose to her bared shoulders with Sak Yant tattoos, which he seems entirely immune to.

I was feeling The Fear. A non-specific anxiety clouding my every action and thought. Maybe it’s the last two days of argument and miscommunication with someone I love. Maybe it’s my constant budget concerns. Maybe it’s my infected foot that I really should be seeing a doctor about, and if I don’t find one here, my chances of finding one in Laos is even worse. Or it could be homesickness, something that no backpacker should ever admit to, like genital herpes or going to Mcdonald’s. This is the longest I have ever been away from Australia, and part of me just wants to book the first flight back home. Perhaps I am too old for this, I am now closer in age to the retiree organised tour crowd than most of the backpackers in the hostels. It’s getting hard to relate to people who never experienced travel without smartphones. I want to keep drinking here until it starts making sense.

What I end up doing is paying my bill and walking back to my hostel, stopping at a pharmacy on the way. Five minutes later and four US dollars later I am walking out with a five-day supply of Cloxacillin and some anti-inflammatories. Technically, antibiotics are illegal for sale without a prescription, but the line between legality and practice is vague at best in Cambodia, especially if you are a tourist. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I buy a beer from the store opposite my hostel to wash down the pills.

Things are looking up.

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Siem Reap, almost as far north in Cambodia as you can go, gateway to Angkor Wat. For many travellers, this is as much of Cambodia as they will ever see. It shows, the sidewalks are quite walkable, The tuk-tuk drivers look well-fed, and the security guards are almost paying attention to what’s around them. However the tap water still smells, and I keep wondering what businesses have against herbicides.

I had been warned by the hostel owner in Battambang that Siem Reap was very quiet, that dorm beds could be had for a single US dollar a night. My room was basic, but at only $5 a night was still cheap and kept me away from interupted sleep in dorms.

After a snooze and a swim in the hostel’s pool, I made my way in the rain to Pub Street. The massage girls who had vexed me so greatly six years ago, seemed entirely absent, but the Tuk-tuk drivers helpfully offered me to set me up with ladies, uppers, downers, and finally, in desperation, transportation.

I noticed that the patrons walking and sitting on Pub Street were mostly older Westerners, with a light splash of Koreans and Japanese. No locals at all except for the staff, but it was a Wednesday night. I drank a few happy hour beers before I got bored and ordered a Grab to get back to my hostel.

The next time I braved Pub Street was a Friday night, and a little later in the evening. More tourists, and small handfuls of well-heeled Kymers, but not exactly pumping. I enjoyed a few draft beers, and then a delicious mango daiquiri at Arum’s suggestion, the effects of which I didn’t feel until I stood up and almost fell over. I decided this was a good time to try a fish massage. The idea is that you put your long-suffering tourist feet into the fish tank, and the carp (Garra rufa) eat the dead skin from your feet, leaving them as smooth as a baby’s bottom. It costs three USD, and you get either free water or a beer. Of course, I asked for the beer, the last thing I needed at this juncture was to sober up. I gingerly put my feet in the water, and the fish started to take an interest in my uncared-for feet. Some of them fought over prime real estate on my left foot, which was a little strange to see. It felt very odd, sometimes pleasant, often way too ticklish to be comfortable even in my altered state, and sometimes painful with one of the more vigorous and larger fish.

However I was exposed to other predators, a Western man unaccompanied is viewed by the local sex workers as problem they can solve. One of the local freelancers, started flirting with me, not scandalisly dressed but my spidey sense was tingling, and I tried my best to ignore her. I finished my beer, checked to see if the lady was not within eyesight, and made a run to the Seven Eleven at the end of Pub Street. As soon as I left Seven Eleven, I tried ordering a Grab but my phone went flat, so I made my unsteady walk back to my hostel. While crossing the traffic barrier the previous freelancer made a last effort to invite me to one of those charge by the hour hotels, but I managed to keep saying no thank you and didn’t break my half-drunk stride.

The next night I tried again, and I noticed the same freelancer, this time showing off a lot more skin and some very high heels. She didn’t notice me as she spoke to an older gent, but I wished her happy hunting as I continued. I ended the night at Barcode, a gay bar with a nightly cabaret show. I enjoyed the show a great deal and got a kiss on the cheek by one of the more impressive performers, who decided I was not allowed to hide in the corner like a Mormon in a strip club.

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I only ever can be a belated and unreliable witness to atrocity, I mutter to myself as I carefully walk up the stairs. I have used that line before, and I suspect it’s partly copied from something Hemmingway wrote, but I’m still proud of it.

My driver dutifully dropped me off where I requested on the app, which was of course not where I should have started my exploration. But that’s the nature of doing this without the benefit of professional help. I walked through what seemed like the monk’s quarters, then found the steps leading up to the top of the hill, flanked on either side by impressive, and fairly new statues. Apart from sweating profusely, I am harassed by an unhealthy-looking dog most of the way to the top.

I was here to further punish myself emotionally, visiting the so-called Killing Cave of Phonom Sampeau, and nearby attractions on the hill with the same name.

The site has been home to numerous temples, some in caves, for centuries. But this is Cambodia, and no story here has a happy ending. A temple at the top was used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison, now repainted and reconsecrated.

The Khmer Rouge used a number of caves here as execution sites, leading the victims to the horizontal mouth of the caves, killing them, and letting the bodies fall into the darkness.

Men, women and children were executed separately and thousands met their end here.

At the bottom of the main cave, a stupa contains a display case full of bones of just a small percentage of the victims.

It’s worth noting here that this site is very understated compared to the sites I have previously chronicled. No entrance fees, no government officials in sight. If I chose to touch the skulls nothing would stop me except the monk offering blessings next door, and my remaining sense of propriety. I made a donation to that monk and received a blessing, and quickly put my shoes back on and almost ran to the surface. I made a small payment to my unasked-for student guide and left him behind to explore less claustrophobic and upsetting places. I followed a trail through the low vegetation and found a large Buddha statue and surronding smaller statues, which was lovely, but in a bad state of disrepair.

I sat here on a dirty stone bench for half an hour, reading my Kindle and contemplating why I kept doing this to myself before moving on.

I made my way down the hill, and discovered several other statues and ponds, overgrown and forgotten. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a thriving site of worship before it was tainted.

Eventually I made my way to the lower section of the hill, to my final task, the famous Bat Cave. I settle down to drink beer and wait for the bats. Every early evening, over a million Wrinkle-Lipped bats (Chaerphon Plicatus) leave their caves in droves to hunt insects in the nearby lakes and rivers. Each bat can eat one and a half times its body weight in a night. The insects they eat are pest species in the rice crops, and it is estimated that the bats save twenty thousand Cambodians from food insecurity. Or in my opinion further insecurity. The road below the caves has become a tourist site in itself, and locals set up tables and chairs and sell beers to thirsty tourists. Of course I am happy to continue and contribute to this tradition.

Also here is a soon to be complete Buddha Statue, workers were on the scaffold as I arrived, apparently the project has stalled before due to lack of funds.

After my forth beer, the bats got their act together and departed for the evening, which is quite an impressive display.

By the time I had gotten bored of the bats, I was impaired and melancholy. A local tour guide supplemented his takings by taking me back to town with his fed up looking Frenchman client.

That night I felt a desperate need to be anywhere other than Cambodia, and I blew a tidy sum on pizza and ice cream, which could have been served up anywhere in the world.

The proprietor of the hostel in Kampot barely looked up as I dropped off the key on the desk and departed. I booked my bus ticket to Sihanoukville with a smaller company running minibuses, and was happily shocked when I discovered that the staff member had an excellent feathered friend.

The minibus was an older model, but I tend to be more concerned with the driver than the vehicle in SE Asia. An hour out of Kampot the road becomes an unsealed mess, forcing the driver to slow to a walking pace as he negotiated a path through the worst of the potholes.

Sometimes due to heavy vehicle traffic, the bus was forced onto the very soft shoulder, leaving the whole bus to be on an angle, which made me rather nervous, but our driver knew how far he could push this. I noted in alarm that there were several stockpiles of blue metal on the side of the road as if the money to fix the road only lasted long enough to transport the materials on-site. Two hours and a bruised coccyx later we reached the outskirts of Sihanoukville.

Phnom Penh is ugly because by the time anyone realised they could make it beautiful it was too late. Sihanoukville is ugly out of a twisted sense of civic pride. Rampant Chinese investment has left the place a horrid monstrosity of over-development. Russian interests have led to high crime, and according to the expat I shared a beer with last time I was here, means it is easier to get a sad handjob from a Russian than any local. But I was not here for handjobs, sad or otherwise. I was only interested in getting to Koh Rong Samloen. I only had enough time to order, but not drink a latte before a lady escorted us from the bus office to the pier. Still clutching my coffee, I managed to go to the Seven-Eleven to buy some jubes and some questionable Dim Sum on a stick, then jumped on the ferry. Luckily and dispite the best efforts of the skipper, I ate and kept down the coffee, jubes and dim sum by the time we docked at Koh Rong Samleon.

Island life is slow. You wake up, eat when you want, swim when you want and shower and head to bed when ever you feel like it. I spent four nights on the island, quickly settling into the routine.

Second night in and I was safely tucked into my dorm bed with the curtain drawn when, with a very Italian arrogance, the lady in the bunk above me peeked into my space and asked if I knew how to turn off the air con. No idea I replied, in shock at this breach of etiquette. A few hours later I was being kept awake by the same Italian moaning, and whacking the rail. Next thing I know she’s again in my space, and asked me if I could sleep on my side so I don’t snore. Wordlessly I turn onto my side, while thinking how the fuck was I snoring when I was awake because of her? Nothing is said the next day, but I overhear another lady telling a friend on the phone that a friend of hers in the hostel had a kidney infection, which is, of course, a problem when it is easier to get hash brownies than antibiotics on the island. I wonder if those two things were related.

On my day on the island I decided to take a walk to the other side of the island to Lazy Beach. It starts off looking like the early stage of a highway build, and then I turn into a more standard jungle path.

A wasp decides to attack me on the big toe, but I manage to brush it away before it does too much damage, and I keep walking. I end up at the rear of a semi-abandoned resort, and then the beach.

I spend a quarter of an hour swimming in the choppy surf before having a read in the shade before heading back.

After a late lunch, I go for a lazy walk to the far end of the bay, to check out a waterfall, which turned out to be a little disappointing.

However, the walk did show me the tumultuous nature of the tourist industry on the island. I saw an empty resort with a skeleton staff feeding scraps to dogs, and abandoned villas, with overgrown gardens. Again I can’t help wonder how it would be now if COVID never happened.

When I returned to my hostel I discovered that a tour group had been dropped off, and were busy taking advantage of the happy hour half-priced cocktails. While this no doubt made the owner happy, I felt that the number of Eurotrash babes in the shallow water taking selfies had reached critical mass, and I took my first beer for the day a few metres up the beach.

The hotel I am staying at is owned by an Australian, and they have the TV in the bar streaming Foxtel, an Australian cable network. I keep glancing up and seeing familiar advertisements for Bunnings, Hungry Jacks and My Chemist Warehouse, in between highlights of AFL.

On my last night, I glanced up at the TV above reception and it’s playing Miss Cambodia. I don’t need this, I mutter to myself, then grab my phone to message Arum that I love her.

I take a Tuktuk to Bassac Street, the local nightlife “walking street” that every Cambodian has told me I must visit. I have dinner and beers, and watch some fairly entertaining Karaoke, but after Hanoi and Saigon, it’s fairly quiet and tame. The Tuktuk driver on the way back barely waits for me to sit down before roaring off, and changes gears as if the clutch slept with his wife.

The coffee at the hotel is nothing more than instant, so I discover a small stall thirty metres away, where the lady owner, Passregsa, does a steady trade to nurses from the local hospital, parents to students at the nearby school, and many local professionals. There might not be air conditioning, but she charges a third of the price of the Starbucks around the corner.

The Russian Market. The Russians have moved on but the name remains. Clothes, fragrances, homewares and trinkets, motorbike parts and just about anything you can think of is available here. Also food, which for me was Mae Pok, and as an added bonus the last of the fishball soup in the pot. The fishball soup is not to my taste but I gave it ago before pushing it to the side.

On a whim with time to kill before my bus out of town, I decided to get a massage. The masseur was attractive, but not scantily dressed, so I assumed everything was legitimate. Then she pointed at my groin and said something I couldn’t understand. I managed to convey that I didn’t want any “extras”, but I considered myself lucky that I left with my virtue intact.

At a petrol station on the outskirts of town, our bus parked at a forty-five-degree angle from the bowsers. Next door is a villa, virtually a mansion. Over the road is a line of hovels that probably flood every time it rains.