Roads Less Traveled

Travel day from hell?  Sounds like this:

Leave beautiful, restful, tropical paradise at 8:30 a.m.; the time changes to 7:30 a.m. when we step off the island (ask us about “island time”); ride by second choppy speedboat for 45 minutes back to Sihanoukville; get back in very big (but not so cold) van for (shorter) 3 hour ride to Phnom Penh; catch plane from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, where we actually did have a very pleasant surprise:  Mr. Santhou, first and favorite guide, was there to meet us to take us on one more tour, to the floating fishing village of Kompong Kleang.  This very unusual community lives entirely on the water, so long as there is water!  There is a floating school, a floating basketball court, a floating church (first church we have seen on this trip), a temple HIGH UP on stilts.

Seen on the road from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh:

At the floating village:

After our stop at the floating village, however, the respite is over.  We re-engage in the travel day from hell.  After a quick shower at the Journeys Within hotel facility, it’s off to Siem Reap Airport again to board a flight to Seoul at 11:40 p.m.  We arrive in Seoul at 7 a.m., and we barely survive the 9 hour layover (5 hours in the Asiana lounge and 4 hours killing time in the airport itself).  Nearly comatose, we board in Seoul at 4 p.m. for our 11 hour flight to Los Angeles.  It’s a good thing we had those days at Song Saa to prepare us for this travel combination.  We’re glad to be home, glad to eat something other than rice, glad for what we have learned about Cambodia, Laos, and the very special people we have met along the way.  And we are blessed to have had this time together.

This morning Mr. Kia met us at 8:30 and drove us in a (very large and very cold) van to Sihanoukville, some 4 hours outside of Phnom Penh.  This was not much fun.  We then transferred to a speedboat for a 45 minutes boat trip to Song Saa Private Island.  The boat trip was also not much fun (there were a few near misses during the choppy ride).

But when we got there . . . oh my . . .

We had a wonderful two-bedroom villa on this beautiful island.  And we did not have to do one single thing if we didn’t feel like it.  So we ate a lot, slept a lot, enjoyed the sun, watched movies, and relaxed.  We dined by sunset over the ocean or on the beach.  It was a paradise!

We spent the afternoon of June 16th in Phnom Penh–flew there from Luang Prabang via Vietienne, long layover, needed yet another visa, sigh.  Our guide, Mr. Narith, met us at the airport with our driver, Mr. Kia.  Mr. Narith took us to lunch at Friends, a restaurant run by street youth.  After a delicious meal, we toured the Royal Palace, an incredible complex, still the royal residence (the 61 year old king lives there with his mama). 

The wet season arrived (on top of us) while we were touring, but we still managed to take in the temple at the Royal Palace–where we saw the Emerald Buddha (actually a large jade buddha) and several solid gold buddha statues.  The royal family once kept elephants in a wing of the complex–lots of elephant paraphernalia located there now.

We then toured the National Museum, where we saw several Angkorean pieces of sculpture–beautiful, but particularly snooze-worthy after such a long day.  The girls and I were delighted to check into our Raffles hotel suite (gorgeous).  Turns out that Phnom Penh was hosting the 37th World Heritage Session, and many of the dignitaries were staying at our hotel–hence, the metal detector at the entrance.  We still managed to find a tuk-tuk to take us out to shop at the Friends store, a vintage clothing store, a few other fun places, to dinner, then back to the hotel to prepare for our last stop, Song Saa.

Yesterday (June 16) was a long travel day, so I am catching up from Phnom Penh.  June 15th was probably our longest and hardest day, but also extremely rewarding.  We woke at sunrise and met our guide and driver at 5:30 a.m.  We drove down to the village in Luang Prabang to give morning alms to the monks.  Our guide took us to a side street in the village, where we sat on a bamboo mat with bowls of sticky rice in front of us to wait for the monks.  We were appropriately dressed in long skirts, with white scarves over our shoulders.

In a short time, we saw them.  Lined up single file, the monks walked by in their orange robes, a bright color in the dawn light.  The monks wore simply their robes; the novices wore belts, red or yellow, around their robes.  Several lines of monks passed us in silence.  As they passed, we put sticky rice in their collection bowls.  This is a daily ritual in the village–the community provides sufficient rice to feed the monks their two meals, breakfast and lunch.  The monks line up from oldest to youngest–some of the novices looked like they could not be more than 7 or 8 years old, but women are not permitted to look at the faces of the monks as they pass, so I am guessing age based on my perception of their height and the aging of their hands, and on photos taken by our guide.

I noticed that some of the alms bowls had money as well as rice in them–the Thai visitors apparently give money rather than rice to the monks.  The monks walk quickly by, and it was difficult to get the sticky rice ready in time to put into the bowls.  We would try during short breaks between lines to get sticky rice portions ready for the next set of monks, but we were not always successful.  I’ll admit to dropping some sticky rice, and once I hit the lid of a bowl in my haste, which almost made me giggle, but that is NOT something that is done in this particular ritual.

We returned to the Kiridara Hotel for breakfast, then met our guide to head to the Mekong River.  We boarded a boat and headed to Xieng Mien to walk through the village and to see three temples.  Although it is the rainy season, there has not been much rain to speak of at this point, so the river is low.  This necessitated climbing up fairly steep river banks before climbing very long flights of stairs.  I owe huge thanks to Delaney and Kendall for helping me manage the stairs!

The first temple, Wat Xieng Mene, is right in the middle of the village.  It is a very active temple–a beautiful building.  There is a drum at the temple that is used when important announcements are made in the village.  From this temple, we walked through the village to Wat Chomphet.  The walk was not a difficult one, but the climb to the temple, well, that’s another story–143 steps straight up!  This temple was built in the 1700s–UNESCO has taken over preservation of this temple.  While some monks are still in residence there, it is much less active than Wat Xieng Mene. The temple is quite bare, no paintings, little gold, but beautiful in its simplicity.  Our last temple of the day was Wat Long Khoune, which I’ll describe as “in between” the levels of activity of the prior temples–many monks in residence, beautiful paintings on the exterior of the temple of scenes from the life of Buddha.

We visited Ban Jan, described as a “pottery village,” but we saw a sum total of two people making pottery.  What was interesting about it was that the woman was turning by hand the wheel on which her husband was creating a pot.  Between the two of them, they can make a very large pot in about one hour.  They (or their strong son) then carry the pot to the “kiln,” which is a large hole in the ground for firing their pottery.  We purchased two small pottery vases, then headed back down about a thousand steps to our boat.  By that point, the girls and I were hot, tired, and ready for lunch (we had, after all, been going since 5:30 a.m.).  We lunched on the boat–hallelujah, no steps for that–then a chief from one of the fishing villages floated up by the boat to take us to check his fishing traps.  I sent the girls out on the longboat.  There was simply no way I was going to fit in it comfortably, not after several stairmaster-trips-from-hell that day.  Mr. Khamla, our guide, was quite sure we would be lucky and find tons of fish.  This was not the case–no fish, and all returned empty-handed.

Next stop: Ban Xing, the Lion Village.  We again walked up one million steps to the village to meet the elders.  This is a very old village.  Unfortunately, we arrived before they were expecting us, so we had to cool our heels for a while in someone’s house.  We believe we were in the home of the grouchy old man who turned out to be the village wise man and in charge of the Lao baci ceremony performed in our honor.  This wasn’t readily apparent, although he walked down the hall and changed his clothes in front of us in preparation for the ceremony.  He then gave us small glasses of water from a bowl in the house–we were extremely nervous to drink the water, since it did not come from an unsealed water bottle, but Mr. Khamla, by now our very questionable guide, assured us it had been boiled.  How he could possibly know this, we have no idea.

That being said, when the elders of the village joined us in a circle and chanted a prayer for us, we were honored.  Each elder then tied a string around our wrists while chanting an individual prayer for us.  It was quite touching.  They offered us what they had to give:  boiled chicken (yes, we had to eat a bite, and I am pretty sure that chicken had been running around the yard as we walked up to the village), sticky rice, a new bottle of water (thank goodness), sun-dried rice cakes, and bags of pretzels (go figure).

Following the ceremony, we visited with the elders–really loved the chief and his wife.  The chief had been elected six times by his village and had served for about ten years.  His wife had a beautiful smile, and all had many questions for us, particularly for Delaney and Kendall and particularly relating to when they planned to marry.  Mr. Khamla translated, somewhat reluctantly, but we had a good visit with them all.  They largely wrote me off when they learned (after asking) my age:  “over fifty,” heads shaking, too bad.  They enjoyed looking at my photos on my iPhone!

After the baci ceremony, we headed back up the Mekong River–according to the itinerary, we were supposed to enjoy the sunset on the river, but honestly we could not take another step, and we returned to town for dinner and an early bedtime.  Our fullest day of the trip!

We have just returned from our “Shangri Lao Full Day Expedition.”  We drove by minibus to the Shangri Lao Elephant Village, only 15 km outside of Luang Prabang, but a good 45 minutes this morning, thanks to the three “lost” other participants in our group.  Our guide tried to hunt them down at a few more hotels–no luck–so off we drove, after a slight delay.  Even though the elephant village is close, (serious) road construction is in progress, so serious that we parked the minibus and walked the last short distance because of a huge crane working in the middle of the road.  (OSHA would not be happy with safety conditions here.)

Kendall and Delaney rode an elephant called Mae Kham Koun, the largest elephant at the elephant village.  This elephant stepped on a UXO (Un-Exploded Ordinance, per the guide)  in 2001 while working in the logging business.  She lost part of her left front foot, but this did not slow her down on today’s ride–instead, frequent stops along the way to gather huge quantities of grass suitable for munching slowed our pace.  My elephant was called Mae Buakham.  Her owner, Mr. Phaeng, was also her mahout, and he managed to talk me into getting out of the traditional Howdah seat and riding on her neck for a short distance.  This is not easily accomplished when you are 51 almost 52.  It involves wedging your knees behind your elephant’s ears, balancing on your hands, and praying that your elephant does not decide to unseat you.  As I say, I rode only a short distance this way.  I then had to reverse the process to get back into the Howdah seat–not too gracefully!  Delaney and Kendall took turns on their elephant’s neck–except that the elephant decided to have a bit of a run while Delaney was precariously perched.  Happily, no one fell off her elephant during our two-hour ride.  We passed through incredible parts of the jungle in a teak tree forest.  We passed by some rice fields along the way where farmers and their families had moments earlier finished making their sticky rice.  The fires used to cook the rice were still smoldering.

We left our elephants at lunchtime, after properly thanking them with a large bunch of green bananas.  My elephant dearly loved her bananas and continued to reach for them long after they were gone.  An elephant’s trunk is not an easy thing to avoid if you are in close proximity!  The girls and I had a lunch of traditional Lao food in a secluded hut by the Huay Sae River.  We mostly ate the sticky rice.

After lunch, we hiked “the easy route” to a waterfall that was unfortunately dry–it’s not the wet season yet.  This was a 30 minute, fast-paced march down the steep side of the mountain we had just ridden up by elephant.  Our guide ultimately found a walking stick/branch for me to use for a hiking aid, but it was quite a hike.  We then took a bamboo boat back to the elephant camp, enjoying our coffee break (hot water and Nescafe).

Our minibus ride back to the hotel was a long one–we got stuck between two construction machines and literally watched the road in front of us be completely covered in dirt and rocks next to the road construction.  Another machine then came by to clear a narrow path for the minibus–we were relieved to make it out of there in one piece.

We have congratulated ourselves on an adventurous day.  We will go to bed very early tonight, because our guide picks us up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow to give morning alms to the monks.  But first, off to a much-needed massage.

Today we traveled to the Living Land Company to get the full rice cultivation experience.  We had a fabulously muddy time!  Rolling our pants up as far as we could, we waded into the rice paddie (mud field at the time) with Susan, the water buffalo, to try our hand at plowing.  By wading, I mean sinking into the knee-high, water-filled field of mud. Post-plowing, we planted rice–of the entire group of maybe 12 people, I am the only one who fell in the mud.  At least I did not do a face plant.  Red ants found Kendall’s feet, but she quickly discovered that a mud bath would take some of the sting out.  Delaney and Kendall each husked the rice with the foot rice pounder (great cardio), and they also had an excellent upper body workout while juicing sugar cane.  At the end of the very full morning, we enjoyed the fruits of our labor–sticky rice dipped in a buffalo skin/chili paste, coconut/rice thin crepes, dried rice cakes, lotus cakes, and rice wine.

We immediately had to head back to the hotel to clean up–after a short rest, we had lunch at Ock Pop  Tok, a living arts center on the banks of the Mekong River.  The Ock Pop Tok menu was unusual–offered on the menu: silk worm poo tea (we did not partake).  We spoke with some of the weavers, who use only natural dye to create the beautiful colors in their products.

We toured the City with our guide, Mr. Khamla.  Let’s just say we are missing Mr. Santhou.  Mr. Khamla used to be a monk.  He became a novice monk in order to get an education.  He did not want to work in the rice fields.  He was a novice monk for six years, then a monk for two years.  He said it was “too hard” to be a monk–as a novice, he only had to keep 10 promises; as a monk, he had to keep an additional 227 promises.  Too hard.  It seemed that the promise not to drink was a particularly difficult one for him.

Even though Mr. Khamla is not our favorite guide, his past life as a monk has been very helpful in learning about the Buddhist monks here and the temples.  We went to Wat Xieng Thong,the temple where Mr. Khamla lived for several years (he described his former temple as the “4-star-hotel of temples”).  The temple itself was constructed in 1560 and is quite beautiful, so we understand his description.  For example, the back of the temple has an exquisite mosaic of the Tree of Life.  There is a smaller, older chapel-like building right next to the temple.  I believe Mr. Khamla said it was built in the very early 1500s.  In the back of that building, there is a reclining Buddha figure–in the front, a “wishing Buddha.”   We have tons of photos of this temple, which I at some point (probably after the trip) will try to post.  With the aid of Delaney and Kendall.  There are also monks’ quarters in the temple compound itself, along with a building that holds a very elaborate funeral carriage–this building was completed only in 2012.

We stopped at the Lao National Museum on the way to the temple.  Kendall had heard about a photo exhibit at the museum.  After much prompting, we were able to get Mr. Khamla off his script and to take us to the back building of the museum, where we saw “The Floating Buddha,” a beautiful photo exhibit with stunning photos of monks in meditation.

We traveled by tuk-tuk to dinner at Tamarind, a lovely restaurant.  We met Patrice, who is traveling by herself, at dinner.  She is also staying at the Kiridara.  After dinner, we strolled through the Night Market with Patrice, bargained for a few pairs of shorts and cotton pants, then took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.  The girls and I went straight to bed–after a long day!