Vang Vieng

Our journey on the Chinese bullet train was as expected: efficient airport style security (Callum had to give up his deodorant which was somewhat worrying), ordered boarding and a clean and very fast train. Unfortunately, the rest of our day was not to go as well. We arrived at the hotel to find that the whole of Vang Vieng had no power in the day and our building site of a hotel had stationed a generator outside of our room. The pool and whole area was covered in building dust; there was no way we were staying there. After discussions with the hotel and Agoda and despite the hotel offering to upgrade us as well as move the generator (they were so nice we felt bad about leaving especially as they offered to get us a tuktuk), we quickly booked another on the outskirts of the town. When we arrived there, we weren’t met with the hotel from the reviews but one that did have a lovely receptionist who did everything and great views of the hot air balloons flying across the mountains- if you look over the mud flats! We decided to stay and Callum went out to source beer and crisps as, of course, no one could cook as there was no power😁.

The town itself is far from lovely but the area gorgeous. We got possibly the worst scooter ever from our hotel (no indicators , took 10 goes to start it or open the seat and the brakes weren’t the best) and set off exploring walking up viewpoints getting covered in mud and swimming in lagoons. The caves were amazing and went on a long way through the mountain. We were there with just one other person and we scrambled over huge rocks with our head torches looking for the odd painted arrow to show the way. The roads were pretty bad so the following day we got a buggy instead which felt somewhat safer the downside being that Callum thought he was driving a formula one car.

Vientiane

Next, we headed to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We’d read there wasn’t much to do here and there really wasn’t. We went to a tourist attraction, Buddha Park, which just had lots of Buddha statues and the weirdest pumpkin installation that had Buddhas and skulls inside. It was quite small to get through all the holes to climb up and Callum had the locals in stitches trying to get back down😂. He really needs to do some yoga for a bit of flexibility! We walked around the Patuaxi monument, luckily, whilst the fountain display started. This is meant to resemble the Arc de Triomphe and with the boulevard running up you could really see the French influence. It was built to commemorate those that died in the struggle for independence from France. Our last stop was the COPE museum which taught us more about the Secret War in Laos. The USA had more than 580,000 bombing missions over Laos, one mission every 8 minutes , 24 hours a day for 8 years to prevent the supply line being established and run to Vietnam. 30% of the bombs didn’t explode and so approximately 80 million bombs were left unexploded at the end of the war – the figures are just staggering. Unfortunately, many of these have exploded since whilst farmers plough their fields , people cook outside or where children play as they mistake them for balls. The COPE organisation supports these victims and it was so interesting to see the prosthetics used both now and in the past. We did hope that Callum’s dads prosthetic leg had ended up here.

Whilst there was nothing wrong with the city, nothing really stood out about it either except maybe the pizza we had there which we had been dying for – there’s only so many noodle and rice dishes you can have before you crave some western food.

The people of Laos have all been lovely but the roads, or lack of, made us rethink our plans. We had thought to go south for a 4 day scooter trip through the countryside to see some fantastic caves and waterfalls but I decided at the 10km an hour we had averaged in Vang Vieng and with those roads, my behind and back wouldn’t cope. Instead, we booked a flight to Pnomh Penh and I promised Callum we would move slower from now on.

Phnom Penh

Because of our last minute change of plan, we needed US dollars (and only dollars) to pay for the visa. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get any in Vientiane so were told to exchange kip for dollars at the airport. However, they lied! There was nowhere at the airport either so we sat in departures worrying about whether there’d be an atm or exchange in immigration. Luckily, there was so we could pay though we did see someone there in a panic as he was in the same boat we’d been. Note to self – ignore your husband when he says you don’t need dollars travelling abroad! We now also have lots of Kip we can’t get rid of – we can do a great exchange rate should anyone be coming this way😁.We /I were so stressed that we just sat by the pool in the afternoon and drank happy hour margaritas!

We had a lazy start the next day (possibly due to the margaritas) and went to a disappointing museum that contained stones from Angkor Wat (better seen in situ in our opinion) and wandered round near the Grand Palace, waterfront and Central Market from Top Gear fame!

The following morning, we headed off to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the site of S21 buildings that used to be a school but was converted to place to torture “confessions” from people before they were shipped to the Killing Fields to die. I was in 2 minds as to whether to put pictures of this and the other museum in but all the way through the audio guides they ask you to share what you saw. Shamefully, we really didn’t know much about the genocide here and were shocked by the shear numbers: Polpot’s regime brutally murdered 3 million of its own people within 4 years, forcibly relocated all the people from the cities to the countryside and attacked anyone with glasses, soft hands or qualifications as possible traitors – “It is better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.” was his phrase. The audio guide was one of the best I’ve ever heard and there were many red faces (including ours) where you could see that visitors held back tears from what we were hearing and seeing.

We had planned to go the Killing Fields that afternoon but decided to leave it to the next day so instead visited the most important Wat and had a few hours by the pool (with a massive friendly bird) and then headed to the small night market for dinner.

We went to the Killing Fields with some trepidation after what we’d seen the day before. Again, there was an excellent audio guide but here the beautiful surroundings with the sound of birds was somehow surreal against what we heard. People died very quickly here on their arrival with machetes, hammers and any other cheap way and we’re thrown into mass graves- bullets were too expensive to waste! We hadn’t realised they have found more than 300 of these sites all over Cambodia and again realised how little we knew. Our memories of the time are of hearing about starving children in a Blue Peter appeal and a bit on John Craven’s Newsround and we did wonder if our children know anything about it all. It struck us that this is what teenagers need to learning about later on in school – not doing WW2 three times!

Sorry this post is a rather long and solemn with lots of shocking facts and war information but we felt it is important to share what felt quite harrowing at times as well as the fun bits of our time away. We enjoyed Phnomh Penh but are looking forward to seeing the sea for the first time this trip as we now head for the beach!