Day 22: Phnom Penh (Friday, July 18)

Today we left Vientiane in the morning - check out our hotel's sweet, old school London cab. Laos drives on the right, not the left, so curious that they have a British car, but whatever.

We flew into Phnom Penh (and bumped into Andy and Harsh from UCLA on the plane) and spent the afternoon checking out the sights there, and we had an evening flight from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap on Siem Reap Airways (aka Bangkok Airways). We couldn't check-in for our Siem Reap flight until 5pm, but we were able to store our bags at the airport lost and found, so we grabbed a taxi and went to the National Museum. If we thought that Vietnam took long lunch breaks, Cambodia is much worse... most of the sights are closed from 11a-2p!!

The National Museum is worth visiting because it houses a lot of the Buddhist art that used to be in the temples in Angkor and other parts of the country. To protect them from looters, they are stored and preserved in the museum. There are a lot of really sad aspects to Cambodia, but one is that the illegal antiquities trade is robbing them of a lot of their heritage. Folks steal statues or the heads of statues and then sell them through the black market in Thailand. One of the statues in the museum had been missing a head until they posted the statue in some database and the Metropolitan Museum of Art recognized it as matching one of the heads in their collection. Fortunately, in that case the head has been returned to Cambodia and the statue is whole again. If the theft wasn't bad enough, it seems as if most of the thieves are actually police officers or other government officials. The portrait painted for us was one of extreme corruption - everywhere. Anyway, back to Phnom Penh. Since nothing else was open, we went to have lunch at Frizz which is pretty close to the National Museum and Royal Palace Museum. It was traditional khmer food, and it was really, really good. Viv had a chicken and eggplant dish that had excellent flavor - very good smoky eggplan flavor (though it did look like a pile of goop on rice) - and Matt had grilled chicken flavored with khmer spices - also excellent.

After lunch we hurried over to the Royal Palace, not really sure what to expect. At first we were a little shocked at the $6 entry fee - well above anything else we had been charged on the trip - but the information book that came with it was reminiscient of a western museum and definitely appreciated. The palace itself is remarkable. We took a bunch of pictures of the buildings, but you're not allowed to take pictures inside - too bad. We weren't sure we were going to make it over there, but it was definitely worth it. Don't miss it if you're in Phnom Penh.

We jumped on a tuk tuk and went to Tuol Sleng, the high school turned prison (S21) which housed an enormous number of prisoners (estimates from 16,000-20,000) - almost all of whom were executed under the Khmer Rouge. This is a truly depressing museum - similar to the holocaust museum or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It starts off tame enough - showing prison beds and torture implements - not dissimilar from the Hanoi Hilton. Next, though, you start to appreciate the magnitude of it all - there is a room that houses nothing but chalkboards covered in pictures (essentially mug shots) of the prisoners. While the Khmer Rouge were ruthless, they were also asurdly organized, photographing every single prisoner. The final building is by far the most moving, though, as it contains both photo exhibits related to books that have been published (chronicling the lives of those involved in the revolution and those who lost family members to the Khmer Rouge) and ultimately a display of skulls recovered from the Killing Fields, complete with autopsy report on the type of skull and trajectory of the bullet through the skull. I won't post any pictures, but it is truly a mind blowing experience to reflect on what happened here in the mid-70s. The hardest aspect to come to terms with, for us at least, is that there was no apparent rhyme or reason to the killings - it was a strict power play. They started by killing the residents of the cities (who they perceived to be against them), but ultimately they killed most of the volunteers that signed up to join their side, as well.

We needed to get back to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap, but there are no taxis to be found in Phnom Penh - only tuk tuks. We really weren't relishing the ride in a tuk tuk (Phnom Penh was surprisingly bustling with cars, trucks etc, and the air was reiminiscient of Bangkok or Saigon - not so tasty!)... but with no other option, we ended up in a tuk tuk and made it in time for our flight. Tomorrow we get to start exploring the Ankorian temples... and then Ashish, Amanda and Matt K are joining us in the afternoon.

Day 21: Vientiane (Thursday, July 17)

Our lone day in Vientiane was a busy one… we started with a tuk tuk ride up to Phra That Luang – pretty much the national symbol of Laos. The stupa is spectacular, and it definitely feels like ay visit to Laos is incomplete until you make it here. The stupa is surrounded by several temples, as well, which are quite beautiful in their own right. We walked around in the light rain and really enjoyed the area. There were several large busloads of tourists there, but it was big enough that we didn’t feel crowded.

Next, we had our tuk tuk driver take to back down to Patuxay – aka, the Victory Monument. It sure looks like the Arc de Triomphe, but the top is completely done in Lao stylings. There are a couple of fountains out front in the surrounding park area that looked pretty neat, but we only caught the tail end of their performance (only twice daily). We paid the nominal fee to climb to the top to get a good view of the city… really not that impressive. They do manage to cram a bunch of souvenir stands inside on the way up, though.

We ditched the tuk tuk and just walked down to the morning market next. Even though it was nearly lunch time, the market was still bustling. Apparently it’s more of an all-day market, but it keeps the morning market name. There were a couple of giant lanes of stands, as well as, a proper, indoor mall. We walked all around the indoor mall (Viv got a dress and Matt tried to buy shoes, but they weren’t interested in negotiating), and a bit through the outdoor section before we decided we’d had enough market. Then we kept walking to Wat Si Saket. This is the oldest temple in Vientiane because it was the only temple not destroyed when the Siamese invaded. The notable aspects are the incredibly old (and almost faded murals in the sanctuary) and the extensive collection of Buddha figures all around the temple grounds. It was a pretty quick visit, but well worth it.













On our walk around town, we passed by the Presidential Palace and a food cart serving Bread with Pate... Aline, this picture's for you.

After a nice lunch and a leisurely walk through the central touristy part of the city, we returned to our hotel to take a break and relax until dinner. We made reservations at Le Silapa, a classic French restaurant. The wine list was very reasonably priced, especially for the region, and was well stocked with good selections. Our meal selection was a little strange… Viv had all duck (foie gras and duck breast) and Matt had all beef (beef consommé with ginger-lemongrass ravioli and tenderloin). Everything was delicious, especially the foie gras (complete with a sichuan pepper/pineapple jam!!).

Day 20: Luang Prabang (Wednesday, July 16)

Wednesday was our last day in Luang Prabang, and we had an evening flight (yes, on Laos Airlines) to Vientiane, the modern capital of Laos. We had a leisurely start to the day and went to see some of the other major wats in LP. First up was Wat Mai (May), down the main road from our hotel, just past the Royal Palace Museum. The relief carvings at Wat Mai are truly outstanding – from the daily life to the religious stories, everything is captured in the carvings on the building. Inside, the Buddha statues were very impressive, as well – including an emerald-looking Buddha.

Next up was the Laos Arts and Ethnology Center. This was a pretty small facility, but the exhibition was outstanding. There was much more explanation in the stories than at the ethnology museum in Hanoi. This was a highly informative stop, so if you’re in LP, we definitely recommend a few minutes at the LAEC. After we finished the tour, we walked over to Wat Visunnarat, home of the watermelon stupa. I’m not sure of the comparison, but it was a neat little wat with some great views of the top of Mt Phousi.

We had lunch at the Blue Lagoon Café – solid French/Lao food, though a bit over-priced for the region. Just as we were pondering our afternoon plans, the heavens opened up and it poured for a solid 30 minutes. Eventually the rain tapered off into a light drizzle, so we decided to brave it and head over to Wat Mahathat (or Wat That on some maps). This wat’s main entrance was completely decked out with painted relief – truly beautiful. We’re a little worried about being templed-out since we have a day in Vientiane and then three days in Siem Reap coming up, but everything we saw in LP really was outstanding.

Our flight to Vientiane was delayed by a couple of hours, and there really isn’t anything in the LP airport, but we stuck it out and eventually we took off – no problems once again (our last flight on Laos airlines) and we were in Vientiane in 40 minutes.

Day 19: Luang Prabang (Tuesday, July 15)

On the flight from New York to Hong Kong, Matt was catching up on magazine reading (hard to maintain pace with so many subscriptions during school!!) and came across the recent Gourmet issue that rated cooking schools all over the world. The article was great, covering schools in countries around the world ranging from 1 day sessions to week long, in-depth courses. There just happened to be a recommendation for a cooking school in Luang Prabang, and since we’re spending four days here, we decided to sign up – Tamarind Laos. Tamarind is a café, as well, that focuses on traditional Lao cuisine. The class started at 9am, with the requisite market tour. The market in LP is not so different than other markets we’ve been to in these parts, except it had a bizarre wholesale/retail aspect. Most of the fruits (Thailand) and vegetables (Vientiane) come from outside LP. There’s one section of the market where people bring it in to LP to sell, but they leave around midday. Then there’s another section of locals that buy from the early market and then resell later in the day. Very curious. There was, of course, the pig butcher – with the entire pig from the head, to the brains, to congealed blood, and more. The one new ingredient for us, though, was buffalo bile. Not sure who has the job to collect the buffalo bile, or how one would even start to go about that, but anyway… here it is.

At Tamarind, all of the cooking is done in the traditional style, so you ground everything in a giant mortar and pestle, and everything is cooked over charcoal – quite cool. First, we made some dipping sauces. Matt’s (tomato and red chili) was very spicy, and Viv’s (eggplant and green chili) was less so… but still too spicy for her. Next we made amok, a classic dish of fish steamed in a banana leaf. We followed that with lemongrass stuffed with chicken. Of the four lemongrass we stuffed, two were deep fried and two were grilled. The grilled versions tasted best to us. As a class, we also made Orlam, or Luang Prabang style stew. This was a lot of vegetables and herbs, so tons of prep work, with some grilled chicken thrown in at the end. Finally, we made buffalo meat salad. And yes, for one of our two dishes, we used the buffalo bile in our course. Supposedly it helps to tenderize the meat, but we didn’t notice a major difference. If we didn’t know it was there, then we would have never have guessed it was there.

After our time at Tamarind, we made it over to see some of the major wats in town – Wat Xieng Thong and Wat Sene. Both wats were very nice. Xieng Thong is a large complex, almost at the tip of the peninsula in LP, with many buildings in the complex housing some great statues. Wat Sene was actually just down a block from our hotel, and it is famous for its large standing Buddha statue. After a quick pass through of the two wats, we took a quick break at the hotel and then had a Lao traditional massage (great deal at Spa Garden – 90 minutes for ~$10). When our 90 minutes was up, we were relaxed and ready for more shopping, so we went to the night market. We browed the whole market (pretty huge, but mostly the same stuff) and came away with a handful of t-shirts, some wooden spoons and a skirt for Viv. We were starving, so we opted for a quick dinner at The Pizza, a very popular place with the westerners, serving up good pizza and mediocre pasta.

Day 18: Luang Prabang (Monday, July 14)

Every morning, the monks in LP (and there are a ton of them, as this really is the land of wats) proceed through the town and collect alms from the Buddhist faithful. It’s an important part of their culture, and sadly it seems as if the tourists have been ruining it (crowding the street to watch the monks pass by, getting in their way, and distracting them with photographs). We were a little worried since we had heard the procession can be quite loud and our hotel room faced right onto the main street, but we never heard it. If we hadn’t just naturally woken up early today, we would have missed it entirely. As it was, we barely caught the tail end. Here’s a blurred photo (very artistic, eh?) of some of the monks walking in front of our hotel. We didn’t see any locals offering alms – maybe that happens farther along?

Today was our outdoor adventure in Laos. We spent the day rafting on the Nam Xeung river, starting about two hours outside of LP. We used Green Discovery for our trip, and they seem to have a good number of options (and they operate out of just about every part of Laos). We picked the Nam Xeung since it was supposed to be more exciting than the other rivers at the time. There were three rapids on our trip – a Class 1, Class 3 and Class 2. The Class 3 rapid was fun, but otherwise it was a little weak. In between, we had large stretches of calm river – good for swimming, but not as interesting. The trip was fun and were rafting with a bunch of Scots, plus a couple of fellow Americans, Andy and Harsh, who had just graduated from UCLA.

On the way back to the hotel, Matt stopped at the burger stand on the side of road proclaiming “Good Taste and Cheapest Burger in LP.” For a little under $2, it was actually pretty good. The bun was great, and the flavors were all good, they just need to work on their patty formation. Later, we went out for dinner at Apsara, a hotel around the corner from our own hotel. Dinner was quite good, and there was only one other table occupied while we were there.

Day 17: Luang Prabang (Sunday, July 13)

Since we planned the Laos portion of our trip while we were in Vietnam, we had spent a lot of time thinking about what to do. We have decided only to visit Luang Prabang and Vientiane – skipping the oft-visited Vang Vieng, as well as some of the more remote areas – in order to avoid a “pack it all in” mentality. Most of our time will be here in Luang Prabang (LP), land of 1,000 wats, checking out the local scene, the wats, and the nearby rivers. For our first day, we took it pretty easy. After breakfast at the 3 Nagas (best breakfast of the trip so far), we walked over to the Royal Palace Museum and the wat that is on the grounds. This was a really beautiful wat. Unfortunately, rain and great marble steps are a bad combination with flip flops, so Matt managed to fall twice in 10 seconds while we were on the way down. Somehow, the camera emerged mostly unscathed, as did Matt minus a sore wrist. The museum itself was also quite striking, full of great relics from the nearby wats (to prevent looting), but we weren’t allowed to take any pictures, so use your imagination to picture some really great Buddhist art and artifacts. The highlight is the Prabang Buddha. During Laos new year in LP, the Buddha is paraded around the city and everyone throws water on everyone else (to cleanse you of your sins). It sounds like quite the party, so if you’re in Laos in mid-April, you should get over to LP!

Next we climbed Mt Phousi (only 330 something steps to the top) to get some great views of the peninsula. Then we remembered that we had forgotten to take our malaria meds in the morning, and Matt wanted to ice his wrist, so we went back to the hotel for a midday break. Post-break, we walked down to the Mekong and hired a boat to take us to the Pak Ou caves, two hours upriver from Luang Prabang. Inside the caves are hundreds of Buddha sculptures. The caves themselves aren’t all that exciting, but the boat ride on the Mekong was nice – lots of good scenery.

We planned to grab a drink along the river at a café highlighted in the Luxe guide… but alas, the café was now only a store. So instead, we went to a wine bar we had seen earlier on the main drag to have a couple glasses of wine and some calamari as a snack. There are actually a couple of wine bars in LP… very curious, indeed. The wine is a mix of Chilean, Australia and French for the most part. We just had some of the cheap Chilean stuff (that’s what was available by the glass) – nothing special, but definitely drinkable. After a while, we went over to L’Elephant for dinner – a fairly classic French interpretation, but definitely tasty… and quite popular, apparently. Dinner was good until the folks at the table next to us started smoking like chimneys. That was our cue to head back to the 3 Nagas and hit the sack.

Day 16: Travel to Laos (Saturday, July 12)

After breakfast, Viv rushed to fit in a massage at a spa we saw by Cantina Central the previous night. Matt checked out a few more stores by the hotel before returning to the room to pack everything up. We met up again for an early lunch at the “best bakery” in town, according to our concierge. This was important, since to this point we had been consistently disappointed with the bread and baked goods. We had high expectations given the large French influence, but most places came up just a little short. Luckily, our concierge did not disappoint and the bread was fantastic. We grabbed three different banh mi (sandwiches) and returned our room to eat and then go to the airport. The banh mi were all delicious, especially the BBQ version. At $1 each, this was one of the best deals of the trip.

With the main portion of our time in Vietnam coming to an end, it’s a great time to reflect on our experience here. Overall, it has been a fantastic time with relatively few disappointments. The food has been really, really great, and we’ve been able to learn a lot about the history and culture, as well as have some fun in the outdoors. Some thoughts…
- The traffic really is insane. not because there’s so much of it, like in Bangkok, but because there are no rules whatsoever. just cross the street… all those motorbikes will find a way around you – trust us.
- Coke and Pepsi are everywhere, but the fast food chains are not. This was actually pretty refreshing… no McDonald’s, no Starbucks. There were a few KFCs, but that’s about it.
- While Coke and Pepsi are everywhere, Diet Pepsi is disgusting. It has a serious fruit juice flavor in Vietnam, not unlike Dr. Pepper in Britain (people that work at Pepsi… what’s up with this?).
- The international brands dominate in water too - Coke (Joy), Pepsi (Aquafina) and Nestle (?). We only saw a couple of Vietnamese brands the whole time. But of the three, Aquafina has captured our hearts here. Not because of the water itself but because of the packaging. The Coke and Nestle bottles are so thin (have to downgauge to save money!) that they are nearly impossible to open if wet or if your hands are wet. And even if you start to get it open, you almost always lose water in the process.
- What’s up with the 2 hour break for lunch at all the museums?
- The outdoor activities (hiking in Sapa and Cat Tien) have been truly fantastic. If you come to Vietnam, take the time to get of the cities
- Why must every question be answered with “yes”? Even if the answer is actually “no”! They’ve gotten the polite part of customer service down, but they could use some work on effective – and this is the case even at some of the nicest hotels in the country (Sheraton Hanoi, I’m looking at you)

We’ll be back in Vietnam in a week and a half to check out the beach scene at Phu Quoc, but until then we’re off to Laos and Cambodia. The travel to Laos was relatively uneventful even though we couldn’t check through, so we had to claim our bags in Hanoi and then find the international departures terminal and re-check in for the next flight. We thought we were flying Vietnam Airlines from Hanoi to Luang Prabang, but it turned out to be a codeshare flight operated by Laos Airlines. Yes, the “You’re Safe With Us” Laos Airlines. Seriously, what kind of slogan is that for an airline? Luckily, we were flying on an ATR-72, not the Chinese-made X12. Apparently, all of their crashes have occurred on X12s in the rain. And yes, it was raining in Luang Prabang when we landed, but hey, we’re safe! Actually, it was probably our smoothest flight yet. Props to Laos Airlines.

Laos won its first points over Vietnam when we got to Luang Prabang. In Vietnam when you walk out of the airport, you are immediately bombarded by scores of taxi and tuk tuk drivers trying to get your attention and take you bags to lead you to their vehicle. There may be an official taxi stand, but even then you never know if the meter is going to work or going to be rigged. It’s not a serious problem, but it’s definitely annoying. In Laos, by contrast, you walk to a counter, tell the staff where you’re headed and then they hand you a ticket and match you with a driver; and it’s a fixed price from the airport to town. Here’s a picture of our room at the 3 Nagas hotel.