I have yet to meet someone who disliked Pai, Thailand. In fact, I have yet to meet someone who didn’t LOVE Pai. But rather than tell you about the motorbike adventures, waterfalls, lazy hammock days at Spicy Pai, and psychedelic nights at Sunset Bar, I’ll just insist you go there and find out just how great it is for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.
Here are some gems of Pai:
Atop Kuang Si waterfall.
Luang Prabang way out in the distance.
One of many temples throughout Luang Prabang.
Small town feel. With a Mount Phousi off in the distance (notice the gold on top).
I spent at least two days there just walking around, exploring and taking in the feel of the city. I visited some shops, ate some amazing food, and walked across an old, rickety bridge that had my palms sweating like a teenage boy anticipating his first kiss.
The two defining aspects to Luang Prabang, in my opinion, are the monks and ecotourism. A tradition that is under threat is the morning alms. Tourists come through, gawk, get too close, and commonly disturb the procession of monks in saffron robes chanting and pacing through the streets, collecting rice from the Buddhists in the town. The people of Luang Prabang are up no later than 6am to sit on tiny stools on the street in order to give a small portion of rice to each monk that passes. This is their fill for the day, though they do compile and divide it evenly once they return to the temple.
Repurposed “decorations” for a business.
Ecotourism is also a really cool thing about Laos. It is incredibly beautiful and filled with smiling, friendly people seemingly everywhere you go. The first day of exploring led me to the Aussie Bar simply because as I was passing I noticed the Rugby World Cup on TV. Here I met a Kiwi woman about 30 years my senior who invited me on a trekking and kayaking tour with her later in the week. I accepted.
Kayaking on the river.
One of three types of houses in the village. Each tribe has their own style of house.
As we moved through we saw people weaving baskets, embroidering clothing and pillow cases, and staying in shade to keep out of the heat.
Embroidering while the baby sleeps.
A rubber tree! The farmer peels off a strip of bark so it leads right into the bowl. The white stuff is unprocessed, natural rubber!
After our final descent we crossed the river yet again to collect our kayaks. 20 minutes later we were at Tad Se waterfall and it was time for lunch. I laughed in the face of lunch. My body still couldn’t handle food. Though I despise elephant tourism, of which there was plenty here, I did enjoy my time at the falls.
The water was cold and blue and looked quite fresh. I had intended to swim, but feeling as icky as I was, I was happy to simply lay in a chair on the man-made deck adjacent to the swimming area. It was nice enough.
The waterfall “swimming area.”
The falls empty to the river. They are just behind me in my kayak.
Kuang Si waterfall.
A lower terrace of Kuang Si waterfall.
Before you get to the falls, you are greeted with sunning bears in a sanctuary. Traditional Asian medicine calls for bear bile, among other things, to heal people of various ailments, and here these bears are safe. They were playing and lounging around. I especially liked the guy in the hammock–bear after my own heart.
A nice thing about this waterfall is the amount of places you can get wet. There are terraced pools of perfect blue water, like a beautiful lagoon, even at the very beginning. There are even some with tables and benches built right in. Keep climbing and you’ll find the grand fall. There is a bridge and some walkways built around and over the water here to facilitate the countless peace sign selfies that grace its face.
The perfect, calm lagoon at the top of the falls.
The stairway inside the falls.
Peering over the top of Kuang Si waterfall.
Pathways to cross the bkie lagoon at the top of the waterfall.
This picture is Laos in a nutshell.
-Utopia Bar & Restaurant. This looks like the perfect place to get stoned. It’s not. They’ll literally call the police on you. And I was told (and am unsure how true it is) that you don’t get fed in prison in Laos. Apparently your family must bring you food. Don’t get arrested.
At Utopia.
At Utopia.
Yoga at Utopia. Get there early as they start on time and it fillsbup quick. Bring cash!
-People. Get to know some people from Laos. They’re so kind and friendly and you’re not going to find people like them easily in cities like Siem Reap or Hanoi.
After five days, me and my stomach bacteria headed for Thailand…again…on a mission to Pai.
You might think that Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand would be relatively similar to one another, given how close they are geographically. You would be wrong.
These are ethnically rich and culturally diverse nations that have been influenced by a lot of the same people through periods of war and colonization. There is a very stark difference in the way people interact with you as a foreigner in Indochina and in some places it’s a bit overwhelming.
Messing around at the Royal Palace.
I foolishly assumed that cities within Cambodia would feel similar, and I was greeted with four very different experiences in each place I visited. Phnom Penh was chaotic. An authentically dirty, third-world capital city. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t made for tourists, but there they (we, tourists) are, obvious strangers in a strange land. Here the obvious, nearly obligatory, attractions are the Killing Fields and the S21 museum. They are fucked up reminders of the extreme horror that humanity is capable of, and though it isn’t easy to see, I believe it is our responsibility to learn as much history first-hand as possible. If you want to know more about that, read my last post “War Crimes in Indochina.”
In Phnom Penh I also visited the Royal Palace, including the Silver Pagoda, Russian Market and Night Market. Don’t we all just fucking love palaces, markets and temples?!?! I’m rolling my eyes.
At the Royal Palace.
The Silver Pagoda at the Royal Palace.
Many of these are beautiful, worthwhile and amazing, but would you go to Europe for two months and only look at those things? Maybe you would, you loser. But what I like the most about traveling is getting a feel for the city and for its people, and how you are different and the same. I definitely enjoy markets for this reason, to be fair, but I also enjoy spending time just observing.
The Royal Palace.
I didn’t really spend much time in Sihanoukville proper, but it’s low season now and everything is quiet. No complaints from me, though, that’s for sure. I scurried my way to Otres Beach, a 15 minute or so tuk-tuk ride from the town center, and when I walked into Sea Garden I fell in love instantly. Though it was the last sunny day I would see there, I’m glad it was shining when I arrived.
Sea Garden is one of a handful of bungalow accommodations directly on Otres Beach and the vibe there is everything. Go there. Just do it. Tell Joe that Kate sent you. He won’t remember me, I’m sure, but tell him anyway, he’s a cool dude. This place is clean, friendly, cozy and chill while still being very minimal. It’s just an awesome place I’m grateful to have experienced.
A bungalow at Sea Garden in Otres Beach, Sihanoukville, Cambodia.
Anyway, the whole point of me going to Otres beach was so I could catch a boat to Koh Ta Kiev, the island no one has heard of. It took me uncharacteristically long to get there because I was misdirected, then the tuk-tuk broke down, then I ran uphill pushing the tuk-tuk. When I arrived at the boat pick-up spot for when there’s inclement weather (a Navy base), the entrance was blocked, so I got out and started walking. One of the boat captains cruised through a small gap in the fence on his motorbike and myself and another guy hopped on the bike with hi–three people, four bags, one bike–and rode to the water.
Sea Garden.
Sunset at Sea Garden, Otres Beach, Sihanoukville, Cambodia.
The tractor.
Riding the tractor with all the supplies.
Sunset at Ten103.
I seriously loved this place. I would love to go back for several months and live as a part of the incredible team of humans who live and work together for Ten103 Treehouse Bay, whom I got to know pretty well. No wifi, no electricity, no running water, no problem.
The water right off Ten103 Treehouse Bay on Koh Ta Kiev island.
Breakfast time at Ten103.
After several days I returned to the mainland and reconnected. I showered and it was glorious. I sat down to pee and it was amazing. It was also still raining but I decided to hang at Sea Garden again for a couple more days to re-acclimate. 
I got an AMAZING massage at Relax in Sihanoukville, posted a package that required me to lick about 13 stamps, and chilled out with some new friends. But I did have to move on, so I took an overnight sleeper bus from Sihanoukville to Siem Reap.
Leaving Koh Ta Kiev.
Lucky for me, I had some solid bunk mates. We all had shared beds on the bus. As a solo traveler, I slept next to a really nice stranger, an Australian girl, and we talked with the two across the aisle from us. Canadians. After several stops, some sketchy pee breaks and 11 hours, we arrived in Siem Reap.
Day one was a wash as it was raining and the Canadians, plus three Brits they knew, and I drank all day. We experienced a party hostel off season, which was mildly pathetic, and Pub Street, which is exactly what you’d expect it to be.
The next morning I rolled out of bed for a solo adventure (with my awesome tuk-tuk driver, Vanna!) and we headed out to a temple I should really know the name of. It was much less crowded than the internationally known Angkor complex, though a Chinese family, part of a large tour, did throw their baby into my arms and proceded to take turns in pictures. #familyalbum
We walked the temple and grounds, hung around on vines and watched some kids fish.
At this point I was dead tired and hungover. But we were headed to one of the floating villages…which was actually much more interesting than I thought it would be. I hired a boat and our driver turned the key in the ignition and steered us out with his Honda steering wheel and gas pedal. We cruised to the village, seeing lots of fish traps along the way.
People of all ages were in boats, working or playing in the water. I’m surprised they haven’t evolved to full amphibian. At the far end of the village there were some restaurants and a beautiful floating forest. A little further was Cambodia’s response to the Great Lakes. I couldn’t see the other end of it, just water and weeds as far as the eye could see, even standing on the bow of the boat. Vanna told me that you could travel to Phnom Penh on that lake. Crazy, I had absolutely no idea that existed.
We turned back to grab some food. At the floating restaurant we messed with the caged crocodiles (farmed for food), lazed in hammocks, ate and stared into the flooded forest.
Floating/Flooded Forest.
Lunchtime.
Next thing I know I’m surrounded by tiny perfect angel children and a woman is telling me to purchase books and pencils for them. Obviously I did. Because I’m a humanitarian. And I’m a sucker for kids even when I know I’m falling victim to a scam. But whatever, those kids were happy and so was I.
Angel babies.
That night I passed out at 7:30.
Day three I was up at 4:30am to head to Angkor Wat for sunrise…me and everyone else. And, as it turns out, both the Canadians and the Brits. It was a pretty underwhelming sunrise with a huge crowd, but the temple complex was really cool.
Reality.
Expectation.
After sunrise we all grabbed coffee and headed into the temple. The architecture, carvings, reliefs and composition are just so damn old and unlike anything I had seen up to that point.
We saw four or five temples over the span of several hours, and by the time the day was ending they started to blend together, so here are some gems:
Staged photo, but still pretty damn cool.
Does this remind anyone else of Legends of the Hidden Temple??
Monks at Angkor Wat.
At Angkor Wat
The Brits, Canadians and I all went out for some pizza that night and I passed out super early again. No shame. We all chilled together the next day until I had to leave for the airport. And damn, Laos is a whole different animal.
The sky above Vietnam.
I left Hoi An for Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and stood on the grounds of modern history. The busy streets of Saigon were more friendly than those in Hanoi, but equally as crazy.
The palace, where the South Vietnamese finally surrendered.
The Post Office in Saigon.
The Vietnam War was a crazy time. It was a war my father was drafted into. It is something I can talk about with many of my family members for a first hand account of what that was like. This wasn’t some battle thousands of years ago that’s completely unrelatable. This was recent and super intense. In one day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and the American War museum. I had some really intense mixed emotions going on.
Actual size entrance to one of the VCs tunnels.
The two hour drive from HCMC to Cu Chi was pretty uneventful, save a tourist trap stop that featured people affected by Agent Orange exposure creating Vietnamese crafts, and a video about the American war.
To be fair, this video looked like 1960s propaganda. It was super retro and played in black and white. But, honestly, I had never felt a huge, overwhelming, sudden surge of patriotism so intense before watching this video. The video showed re-created battle scenes and talked about the war and the people who fought. The Vietnamese weren’t paid to fight in money, but in honor. So they introduced people who won medals for “killing 160 Americans” and things like this. After 10 minutes I fell asleep and just couldn’t listen to it anymore.
Inside one of the entrances to the tunnel system.
The tunnel tour was super basic and that was fine. The tunnels made me feel claustrophobic and I cannot imagine living like that. Considering how I felt makes me understand more tangibly the situation above ground for all people. Definitely not a good place.
B52 bomb crater.
Here we were taken down a path and shown various life size dioramas of how the Vietnamese handled the war at home, as well as some tunnels and traps. Like I said, the tunnels made me claustrophobic, but the re-created traps made me sick. Thinking about the thousands of Americans that died or were maimed in these traps, people whose story is still discussed first-hand, got me angry. I don’t think either side of the war was in the right, and I believe that awful acts were committed by both the Vietnamese and the Americans, but I was upset at that place. It was a strange feeling to see war from the perspective of the other side.
U.S. tank .
Seeing as my countrymen died in this tank, I felt like I shouldn’t smile. But I did. Because I can be awkward.
After the tunnels it was time for the American War museum. Now, many people would say that this is all just a bullshit propaganda museum. They probably wouldn’t be wrong, but I have to believe that at least some of it is true, even if I don’t want to. Seeing pictures of extreme ailments and deformities caused by Agent Orange exposure, pictures of American soldiers behind beheaded VC, recovered ammunition, guns and weapons, kinda fucked me up. I mean, I cried a significant amount in there. Thinking about their lives and their families really made me so sad. I saw the cages prisoners were kept in, and there were lots of US military vehicles outside, as well.
So at this point I’m feeling an overwhelming sense of American pride and shame simultaneously. It was a weird day, emotionally, so I ended it with a few beers.
Two days later I was at the Killing Fields in Cambodia.
Tuk-tuk in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Mankind is capable of such beautiful and terrifying extremes. Every beautiful thing I know and love is, somehow, connected to humanity, but so are my nightmares. The Tuol Sleng Genocide (S21) museum and The Choeung Ek Killing Fields are stories of horrors even more recent than the American War in Vietnam.
Human remains on display at the memorial pagoda at Choeng Ek.
The museum is in the same buildings and rooms that were used to torture and detain prisoners arrested by the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. Each room contains pictures, beds, restraints, cells, or a combination. There are rooms filled with mug shots taken upon arrival at S21, almost all of which were murdered during the Khmer Rouge genocide that killed nearly 2.5 million people. There are survivor stories that haunt and always end with a reminder to learn from this and not turn a blind eye again. There are still a few blood stains on the floors of the tiny cells and there are skulls exhibiting how each person was killed. Torture was also explained. It was very hot and a lot of reading, but well worth the understating, especially as a prelude to the Killing Fields.
One of four sides of the memorial pagoda at Choeng Ek.
Here you are given a headset in your native language and use it to guide you around the mass graves and former sites of Choeung Ek’s execution site. No matter where you step, you are likely walking on bones. You can see bones and cloth rising to the surface all over the place. The paths tightly wind around the graves, which seem endless, honestly. There are a few graves given special attention, like the biggest one (by amount of people), and the one that was filled with women and children. People have placed bracelets around the fenced area, and even offer food and things at the base of the most chilling place on site.
Mass grave at Choeng Ek.
Because ammunition was scarce and expensive, executioners often bludgeoned people to death. At the killing tree, executioners regularly smashed children against the trunk of a tree until they were dead, and then tossed them into the adjacent pit. When this place was discovered, there was still blood, bone and brain matter on the tree.
The Killing Tree.
The centerpiece here is the memorial pagoda. It is stacked several stories high with skulls and bones of the people found here. Each one is marked with likely cause of death…and it is gruesome.
Memorial Pagoda st Choeng Ek Killing Fields.
Human skulls in the memorial pagoda.
The brutality of humanity is amazing. Terrifying and incredible. And for all the blood that spilled in this area in the last 50 years, the people are welcoming and kind overall. They are poor but never stop smiling. And I can’t help but think about what many of these people must have seen. I guess this is why we travel.
Bones and clothes that have surfaced over the years.
Ha Long Bay
I digress.
I landed in Hanoi and immediately realized how much I’ve changed in the last year. Landing in such a hot and frenzied place this time last year would have probably given me a bit of pause for concern, of which I had none this go-around. Fight with the taxi drivers, make them take you all the way there, try and fool me. I dared them. They didn’t.
Just like in Korea, the Vietnamese try to stay out of the sun by covering up as much as possible. Many women were wearing clothes like this over their normal clothes on motorbikes.
I had a great time staying and catching up with Niall and his fiancée Amy at their apartment the next couple days. Once I figured out how to cross the (chaotically) busy intersection in front of their apartment building without crying, I was golden.
Hanoi, Vietnam
HA LONG BAY
I signed up for the not-so-expensive but non-party boat tour for two days and one night. We took a very small bus from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay for about three hours (ROUGH) with one tourist-aimed stop between. Our guide was really sweet and funny and overall it was a good time.
The tour included a stop off at a huge cave, called the Gate to Heaven, I believe. It was a huge, beautiful cave decorated with the ugliest, tackiest colored lights. This is also the first time I realized how jaded I am.
This place was discovered and ruined because the Vietnamese knew they could make money off of it by selling the “experience” to tourists, and here I was…buying it. I hated myself for it. And for all the little staged things we did on the trip, like kayaking with about four other cruising boats at some staged “fishing village” and anchoring for the night with even more other boats off of Cat Ba island, where other tourists slept.
All my cynicism couldn’t take away from how amazingly beautiful these limestone islands are, however.
We all went for a sunset swim in the (quite literally) piss warm and murky water. Not exactly what I had expected, but then again things rarely turn out how you expect them to.
After a chill night of dinner, beers and conversation, I went to sleep and *luckily* didn’t see any cockroaches in my room all night. Yay!
The next day we learned how to roll up spring rolls as we headed back to port. We ended up eating the delicious things as part of lunch, while listening to the unfortunate sounds of an AWFUL British girl yelling at all the workers because the tables were too small for her highness to dine at. She was a bitch. I hate her.
I digress.
All in all, as obviously set up for tourism as it was, I had a good time. I met some great people and experienced Ha Long Bay in the most common way. A couple days later and I was off to Hoi An…where I spent all of my money.
Juice The Squeeze 