Days 12, 13 & 14 - Phnom Penh and Siem Reap / Angkor Wat

Sorry for the delay, the connection is unstable out here =P

Anyways, on Saturday we went into Phnom Penh at 8.30 to see the Royal Palace. It was pretty standard. ;p After that, we went to see the National Museum - It had a lot of statues from the Khmer reign in the 14th century.

We then went to see a buddhist temple, and Wat Phnom (a temple on a hill in the centre of town). We were done just before lunch. For the rest of the day, we relaxed, went to the pool etc.

On sunday we got up at 6 to go to Siem Reap, the basis of a lot of trips to Angkor Wat, the biggest temple complex in Cambodia. After 5 hours of driving, we reached the town, and after lunch we went to see Ta Phrom. It's an old temple still covered in roots and vegetation.

Today we went to see Angkor Thom (the old royal city) and Angkor Wat (the main temple). It's very, very big.

Tomorrow, we're getting up at 5:30 (-,-) to go back to Phnom Penh, and with boat to Chau Doc down the Mekong from there.

See you all soon;

Kristoffer

Days 9, 10 and 11 - Vientiane and Phnom Penh

Sorry for lack of updates, had some connection problems (still no pictures =/).

On day 9, we took the bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiane in the morning. We arrived at 12 and had lunch before going to the hotel.

In the afternoon, we went to see the Morning Market (which is open all day, oddly).

On Day 10, we went to see two temples and the national monument in Vientiane. We then went to have lunch and had a relaxed afternoon.

On day 11, we flew from Vientiane to Phnom Penh (Cambodia). We went to see Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields) and the S-21 prison. It was rather depressing.

Tomorrow we'll be seeing the royal palace.

See you all soon;
~Kristoffer

Days 7 & 8 - Phonsavan and Vang Vieng

Hello again! Sorry for lack of updates yesterday - Hotel internet was down in Phonsavan. Blame old ADSL connections. :(

Anyways, nothing much has happened - Yesterday we drove in a bus for 7 hours (Luang Prabang -> Phonsavan), and today we... Drove in the same bus for another 6 hours (Phonsavan -> Vang Vieng). And tomorrow... We're going to.... Yeah you guessed it, drive in a bus for another 5 hours :D (Destination Vientiane).

That's pretty much it - This morning we went to see the Plain of Jars near Phonsavan before leaving. The area is among the most dangerous archaelogical sites in the world because of the UXO hazard (Unexploded Ordnance) remaining from the Vietnam War. Nothing happened though. :)

That's all for today - Still too low bandwidth to upload pictures =/ I'll try in Vientiane.

~Kristoffer

Days 5 & 6 - Luang Prabang

On saturday morning, we got out of bed at 05:15 (ow). We had to take a plane at 9 to Luang Prabang from Hanoi - it's an old town in Laos.

Arriving at 10:30, we went to the hotel, then into town to have lunch. At 13:30, we met up back at the hotel to go for a walk into the town.

We took a tuc-tuc (it's a small motorbike taxi that can carry 7 people) over to the Royal Palace (which is now a national museum). The reason Luang Prabang has a royal palace is that Laos was originally split into 3 kingdoms - it was only united recently - and Luang was the capital of one.

We took the tucs to a buddhist temple, and on to Phou See - a(nother) temple on the top of a hill in the center of Luang Prabang. After that, we went back to the hotel.

On Sunday, we took a longtail boat up the Mekong River to the Pak Ou caves (roughly 25km from Luang Prabang). Because of the current, it's a 2 hour journey upriver and a 1 hour journey downriver. The caves themselves are not important to the Lao, but they contain over 4000 Buddha-statues of various age.

Back in Luang Prabang, we drove to the Kuang Si waterfalls - another 25 km - where we bathed for an hour before going back to town for the night.

Tomorrow, we'll be driving to Phonsavan for most of the day - it's the town that is going to be the base for our visit to the Plain of Jars.

Also, I apologize for the lack of pictures - due to hotel bandwidth it's completely impossible to upload anything here. I'll try in Phonsavan.

 ~Kristoffer

Days 3 & 4 - Halong Bay

Back from Halong!

Yesterday and today (thursday and friday) we've been to Halong Bay. It's about 160 km from Hanoi (Roughly 4 hours' drive...!), and it's an unique natural formation.

We arrived at Halong Harbour at roughly 12:20 thursday. The cruise was very good - The bay in itself is peaceful, and the cliffs are very picturesque.

We anchored for the night around 18:00 and had dinner at 20:00. All the meals were seafoodish Set menus (a vietnamese concept, similar to Cyprus' meze). It seemed to be a popular anchoring spot (four other cruising boats were anchored there). Due to atmospheric conditions, the moon was impressively red at moonrise, though it faded as it rose.

We got up at 7, had breakfast, and returned to the harbour at roughly 11:30. We were back in Hanoi by 15:40.

We're flying to Luang Prabang in Laos tomorrow.

~Kristoffer

Day 2 - Presidential Palace, One-Pillar Pagoda, Litterature Temple and Water Puppetry

Hello again - Today we've been seeing some more specific things, pictures incoming :)

(Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum)

We went off at 8:30 to see the Ho Chi Minh Mauseloeum (from the outside) and the presidential gardens. The presidential palace is very impressive (it's a french-style one built by the governor of Indochina), but Ho Chi Minh himself never lived there while he ruled - he  built a "house-on-stilts" (which is, basically, what it says) in the gardens and lived there minimalistically while he lived.

The gardens are very expansive, and they also house the One-Pillar Pagoda - a wood temple on a stone pillar built to honor the goddess of fertility.

We went on to see the temple of litterature - commonly regarded as the world's oldest university, it was built in the eleventh century to honor Confucius. In 1076 it was repurposed into a royal school.

After that, we went to the Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of Hanoi. A big, tranquil lake, it houses a temple to a folk hero (Tran Hung Dao) as well as a preserved turtle supposedly found in the lake (the rumor is that the government occasionally lets tamed turtles into the lake to preserve the myth that the turtles live there).

After that, we went to eat lunch, followed by a trip to a local market. Everything is very cheap, but we didn't buy anything there.

At 17:00 we went to see the Vietnamese Water Puppetry. It is unique to Vietnam and best seen in Hanoi.

Tomorrow, we're going to the Ha Long Bay, and we'll be back on friday - Ill post back then :) see you all, and thank you for your interest.

~Kristoffer

Day 1 - Hanoi

We've arrived in Hanoi today. The plane landed at 04:45 in the morning - roughly 23:45 middle european time - but it took another hour to get going. We got on the bus to the hotel - the drive from Hanoi Airport takes roughly 45 minutes, and dropped off our bagage at the hotel (Hanoi ICC).

Now, there're two things to say about Hanoi - You can buy everything for an extremely low price, and there is a -lot- of motorcycles. And by a lot, I mean 20-30 per intersection. That, and the traffic "rules" (If you need to cross the road, you start walking, and the trafficants will either stop or drive around you (it's very interesting to watch) ) makes Hanoi one of the busiest cities I've visited yet.

(that's an ordinary road above.)

The Vietnamese are a people stricken by poverty, and this is apparent when you visit Hanoi - the streets are lined with one-room shops selling anything from souvenirs to clothes over snacks. Most food is sold on markets. Street merchants also patrol the city, trying to sell  bananas, hats or souvenir fans. The economic culture in Vietnam is based on haggling - merchants will usually name an overly high price, which you're supposed to negotiate down (even though one can be discouraged from haggling - a difference in 10,000 Dong (ordinary street-level wares cost from 20,000 to 100,000 Dong) "translates" to roughly 3 DKK, or 0.5 euro). As mentioned, everything is extremely cheap - a two-course meal at a good restaurant costs roughly 60 DKK, or 8 euro...

Most of today passed with walking around the city / going on Sightseeing. I'll be back tomorrow with a more detailed experience (we're due to visit a few more specified locations). See you then!

~Kristoffer