'Ere be Dragons

I've managed to find the only working internet connection on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia. Its via cell phone so please excuse an only brief update.

From Sumatra I flew via Jakarta to Bali. After one night there I got a bus and ferry across to Lombok island where I joined a boat bound for Flores. The sailing trip was awesome, despite my having to sleep on the deck. We got to stop for some great snorkelling along the way and the sunrises and sunsets over the islands were spectacular. We also had to chance to stop off at the famed island of Komodo to see the dragons - they are huge!

Over the last 2 days I've also been diving around the Komodo islands. The currents are immense so it makes for exhilarating stuff - and I've seen my first ever Manta Rays and Mandarin fish. I also got to have a stop on Rinca islands yesterday to see its dragons too.

This morning I head out to a remote little island for 3 days R&R, then I plan to come back to Flores for 3 days more diving before flying back to Bali to meet up with Wendy.

Pulau Weh?

I'm back! Well, as much as being in Medan counts as being in civilisation that is...

I was hoping on being able to fly all the way across to Bali today but a stuff-up at Banda Aceh airport means that'll have to wait till tomorrow. I've requested a spot on a boat bound for the island of Flores that leaves Lombok on the 25th and visits the Komodo islands en route. But before getting to that adventure let me explain where I've been since my last rambled posting from this same cafe in Medan.

I flew, as planned out, to Banda Aceh last Thursday and spent the night there in a homestay recommended by a Danish guy I met on the plane. That meant I got to avoid the expensive hotels I mentioned. And I was right about the NGO's by the way. Whilst I'm sure some are doing great work, most seem to have spent your donated money on lovely compounds in amongst the rubble. And there's still a lot of rubble; ferries can still be found in areas tens of miles from the sea for example. The devastation must have been horrific, the whole area is barely above see level and the tsunami smashed everything all the way up to the mountains about 50km inland, and then smashed anything that was left on the way back down.

On Friday morning I caught the ferry out to Pulau Weh, after a good 3 hours in the harbour coffee shop as it was independence day and the boat was duly delayed. But Pulau Weh was gorgeous. I initially headed to Gapang Beach as I'd been recommended a dive shop there by the guys in Borneo, but on a whim I decided to check out the other "tourist" beach, Iboih as well. I loved it and stayed there instead. Iboih is very basic and accommodation is in the form of little wooden huts perched on stilts along the shore. The communal bathrooms up the hill are just squatters with Mandi showers (a bucket). But that didn't bother anyone in the least. The views were stunning and the lack of tour group style tourists was wonderful.

The view from my hut. I could watch the reef fish swimming below from my hammock.

Looking back from the dive boat. That's my hut on the far right, second from the water.

I did my first dive within 15 minutes of putting my bags down and never really looked back. In all I did 8 dives over the last few days, they were cheap, and fantastic. The area is just littered with Moray Eels and Lionfish of all kinds, not to mention the myriad of other fish. I also got to see the massive Napoleon (Maori) wrasse up close on a few occasions, and spotted soaring Eagle Rays for the first time. This in between the now "common" sightings of reef sharks and turtles.

The Rubiah Tirta dive boat, complete with large German divemaster in the foreground.

The wonderfully characterful Mama who rented the hut to me and coaxed me into eating at her place regularly. Her Chapati is legendary by the way.

When not diving I got to relax in my hammock, do some (admittedly unsuccessful) flyfishing, and generally just relax after a hectic period of travel in Borneo and Indochina. Its now back to my version of the Amazing Race though as I dash across Indonesia to see the things I want to before Wooz arrives next month.

A special note of love to my folks after their traumatic run in with the darker side of South African life. I love you guys so much - and its supposed to be me having the life-threatening experiences, not you...

A Polynational Spree

I've found a little internet cafe here in the city of Medan on Sumatra in Indonesia. I have another 5 hours to kill before my next flight so thought I'd add some news.

I left Kuala Lumpur in the wee hours this morning to fly to Penang (Georgetown), further north on the west coast of Malaysia. I only spent one full day in KL, mostly sorting out admin stuff like flights and buying some new scuba gear, but didn't really feel like doing any of the touristy things anyway. I did get to ride the monorail and see the Petronas Towers though so I guess I can tick KL off my list. From Penang I had planned to get the ferry across the Straits of Malacca to here but a typical Air Asia delay meant I wasn't in time to make the 8.45am departure. I thus forked out a bit extra for a plane ticket instead. Now I just have to wait it out here until my flight to Banda Aceh at 4.30pm.

A little look at where in the world I am right now.

Banda Aceh is infamous for a number of reasons. One being the fighting between the Indonesian government and separatists that had the whole Aceh region under martial law until as recently as August 2005. My Rough Guide chose to omit travel details for the region entirely! Banda Aceh was also arguably the worst hit town in the 2004 tsunami disaster, suffering both from the initial earthquake and from the resulting tsunami. In Banda Aceh alone 61 000 people were killed. But I'm not going there for any sort of macabre reasons, I just need to get the ferry from Banda Aceh out to Pulau Weh tomorrow morning. I've been told that island has unbelievable diving and is still relatively undiscovered.

Unfortunately it looks like my one night in Banda Aceh is going to be an expensive one. Most of the hotels haven't been rebuilt yet and those that have are filled with NGO's that have ramped the prices up. As was the case in Laos, the NGO's here in Indonesia are apparently not very popular. They have achieved very little of what they promised and seem content to drive around in their shiny SUV's and dine in the fancier foreign owned restaurants and "contribute" to the economy through purchasing "local produce" such as Jack Daniels.

Excuse me if I'm in a venting mood. I haven't had a full night's sleep in ages and seem to be hopping from one airport to the next constantly at the moment. And flying with Air Asia is very exasperating. The flights are always delayed, if not cancelled outright, and there is no assigned seating so every boarding is a free for all. And the Malaysians have retained a lot of their Chinese ancestry - Chinese people don't queue. Ever. Locals at the opening of a new KFC in Umtata would show more restraint.

I did have some good chuckles on my last 2 flights though. I've just started on Nick Hornby's The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. I highly recommend it. Peter, if you haven't tired of reading my blog back in London, I must comment that the book reminds me of you somehow (in a good way). It's a random ramble about the books he was reading over about a 2 year period, and it makes me feel like a bit of a dunce as I've only read about 3 of the titles he lists in the entire book.

But back to the road less travelled. I'll probably be on Pulau Weh for about a week. The boat dives are cheap, and the shore diving is virtually free so I don't see myself rushing to leave. Whenever I do leave that island I plan to head to Labuanbajo on the island of Flores right out towards the other end of Indonesia in the east. I want to visit the Komodo dragons and check out the diving there before heading back to Bali to meet Wooz on the 6th of September. We'll then spend three weeks between Bali and Lombok before we head back to SA via Singapore and I bid farewell to TimmyTravels. But, no fear, there's still many adventures waiting to be added in these next 6 weeks!

In the footsteps of Jacques Cousteau

In my last post I suggested I thought these 3 days in Semporna would be good. That has turned out to be a severe understatement! I can't believe I have to move on now...

The diving here makes everywhere else I've dived seem like a waste of time. Well, the diving at Pulau Sipada does at least. On my first day here I wasn't booked to go out to Sipadan so I joined the trip to nearby Sibuan Island for 3 dives. The diving on the first 2 dives from the shore wasn't spectacular, but the island itself was gorgeous. Unfortunately the island is not part of the marine reserve so dynamite fishing is still prevalent and hearing a massive BOOM nearby whilst diving is quite disconcerting. For our third dive we headed a bit further offshore and I got my first taste of what the Celebs sea has to offer. There were turtles all over the place and the colours of the coral and sheer volume of fish were amazing.

Some kids playing on the beach at Sibuan Island. I'm sorry about the low resolution of the pictures in this post. The internet is very slow so I've had to resize them all.

A fisherman's house on one of the islands around Semporna.

Finding starfish while wandering around Sibuan during a surface interval.

Sunday saw me on the first of my two trips out to Sipadan Island. "Discovered" by Jacques Cousteau, Pulau Sipadan is an oceanic island that rises straight up from the seabed in the middle of the Celebs sea. If you were to walk five metres off the beach on the north end you would drop 670 metres straight down. And this makes for amazing diving.

The first dive I did was at one of the 2 most famous sites, South Point. Dropping off the shallow reef into deep water saw me land straight in a wonderland. Brightly coloured fish were just everywhere, some turtles glided by, some white-tip reef sharks cruised below, and a fantastic leopard shark passed within 5 yards of me. Wow! Swimming along the wall revealed many more turtles and beautiful fishes, and then at the southern most point numerous sharks were gathered, just resting on the reef or cruising the drop-off. Coming back up onto the reef and the world changes completely again. The brightest corals and fishes I've ever seen were everywhere, making it impossible to know where to look, and yet more turtles were resting in amongst it all, allowing me to swim right up to them. They are just so beautiful.

After that dive at South Point I firmly believed no dive could ever match it, but Barracuda Point (Sipadan's most famous site, and often voted the best in the world) was next up. Again the dive was along the sheer wall with turtles and reef sharks everywhere, but this time, at the northernmost point, I saw the barracuda that make this dive so famous. There were thousands of them. They shoal together in a mass that at times blocks out the sun. Hanging onto the reef to fight the current we were able to just sit and watch this amazing shoal of fish idling in the current and then swirling together in a massive vortex. The fisherman in me was doing his nut! And in amongst the barracuda were also huge kingfish and grouper the size of my old VW citi golf. I've run out of superlatives to describe it all.

After those two dives the 3rd never really stood a chance. To think that a dive into the massive Turtle Tomb underwater cave, with its huge shoals of jackfish could ever be described as second rate would have been unimaginable 3 days ago!

It's off for yet another underwater adventure...

Coming up from Barracuda point off Pulau Sipadan.

I don't have an underwater camera (yet...), but you don't need one when the locals at Sipadan pop up to say hello.

Yesterday I got to go out and do it all again. Whilst the initial wonder of the previous day wasn't quite there, the experience was naturally awesome again. And this time my dive group was made up of more experienced divers, all with Advanced licenses, so we could dive deeper, seeing bigger sharks and turtles and a wider range of fish. I can't begin to describe the feeling of swimming along the wall with dark blue below to over 600m and turtles swimming above silhouetted against the sky. I spent most of my dive time swimming on my back just staring at them. And in every little hollow in the wall yet another turtle stares out from its resting place, gliding out within a whisker of you when disturbed.

Now that I've made a mess of trying to describe the wonders of this place I must now get on a flight tonight back to KL. From there I was planning to explore peninsular Malaysia before meeting my sister for 3 weeks in Bali in September, but the diving gurus here have given me so many ideas of places in Indonesia to explore instead. They range from Wakatobi off Sulawesi to a tiny island near East Timor called La Petit Kepa. But I think I'm going to head to Pulau Weh off the north end of Sumatra and then try to get to Lubuanbajo on Flores to explore the area around the Komodo islands. So if you're not sure where I am in the next few weeks its likely I don't know either...

The Borneo odyssey continues...

Wow! Its been such a mad rush around these past few days. Its hard to think how I've packed it all in.

When I last posted I was about to head out to the Turtle Islands for a night. That was very cool in that we did get to see a Green turtle come ashore to lay her eggs and we also got the pleasure of seeing a bunch of hatchlings being released out onto the beach to start their life in the sea. It wasn't a "wild" experience as the islands are used as hatcheries and the eggs are collected after laying and hatched under supervision. Though I did see one little turtle making his way down the beach on the one afternoon, they obviously missed his one egg whilst collecting. Unfortunately, typically of Borneo everything is done on package tours so I felt like us independent travellers were treated a bit like second rate citizens as other vistors had their own guides who enabled them to flout the strict rules about wandering the beaches at night and using flash photography. But that was the only blemish on an otherwise lovely adventure.

A youngster makes his break into the wide open Celebs sea.

Straight after getting back to Sandakan I headed out to the Sepilok Orangutan Reserve. There are only 3 such places in the world and seeing Orangs in their natural habitat is an undeniably wonderful experience. The Orangs are tempted out of the jungle by some food in the mornings and this gave us tourists the chance of seeing them up close and personal, instead of in a far away tree somewhere.

Such a poser! I think they're more interested in watching us than we are them...

From Sepilok I joined my group for a famous Uncle Tan's jungle tour. We headed out into the Borneon jungle about an hour and a half from Sandakan by car, and then an hour down river into the pristine jungle. Uncle Tan's is a very basic lodge with bucket showers etc. but I really enjoyed it. We did many wildlife spotting boat trips and hikes. Some of my group were lucky enough to see Orangs in the wild, but I didn't get that lucky. I did get to see the amazing Proboscis monkeys though with their huge red noses and fat stomachs. But even just chilling around the camp was great with many visits from bearded pigs, huge hornbills, monitor lizards, a reticulated python, and giant squirrels, just to name a few.

Sunset wildlife watching by boat in the jungles of Borneo with Uncle Tan's.

The male proboscis monkey. The Malay word for them means "Dutchman", in reference to the similarites with colonists back in the day! (Sorry, but I had to cheat and poach a photo from the internet here as I don't have the lens for such a shot...)

Macaques silhouetted at dusk.

I'm now in the town of Semporna on Sabah's east coast, near the border with Indonesia's Kalimantan province. I'm here for the supposedly amazing scuba diving sites, the most famous being Palau Sipadan, often rated as one of the best dive sites in the world. It should be an awesome 3 days.

Conquering Kinabalu!

We made it! Russell and I summitted Mt Kinabalu here in Borneo in the early hours of Sunday morning. Now I can barely walk...

Timmy celebrates on top of Mt Kinabalu!

I flew from KL on Thursday night and after a massive delay from a forced stop in Brunei, due to a combination of typhoon winds and a bird strike to one of the engine, landed in Kota Kinabalu at around 2.20am Friday morning. I met up with Russell and Tanith the next morning and we spent the day exploring the town and the surrounding islands. Russell and I were disappointed to found our booking to climb the mountain had fallen through so we thought we wouldn't be able to climb as planned. But we headed out to the mountain on Saturday morning anyway and through a little use of "African Economics" we secured a booking at one of the lodges for later that night.

My Kinabalu rises to around 4100m, not that high, but you are starting from close to sea level. The first day's climb wasn't too strenuous, though the change in altitude was still felt quite heavily. That night we rose again at 2.30am to attack the summit in time for sunrise. It was bitterly cold! I was totally unprepared, with only a long sleeve Heli and a cheap hooded tracksuit top. I have never been so cold. Despite that though, we made it up just in time to watch the sun appear over Borneo. It was gorgeous. We were very lucky as the weather had stopped people summitting for the previous 3 nights in a row.

Russell and I at the summit marker.

Russell in front of one of the most recognisable of Mt Kinabalu's granite peaks, with Borneo stretched out behind.

After staying up there just long enough to snap a few photos we dashed down the mountain search of warmth. And I'm not joking about the dashing. After only allowing me ten minutes at the lodge to defrost, Russell then had me run down the entire mountain along very steep rocky paths. We were the first people back to park headquarters by a few hours! And that's why I still can't walk up a flight of stairs without nearly crying. That afternoon we visited the Hot Springs and got a chance to see the rare Raffleasia flower.

Tanith shows her dislike of the fly attracting properties of the Raffleasia, the world's biggest flower.

We're now in Sandakan on the east coast of Borneo. Tomorrow morning we head out to the Turtle Islands for a night to see some hatchings. After that we'll visit the Orangutan reserve at Sepilok. Then its off to the jungle for me for a few days before I meet up with Tanith and Russell again in Semporna where I'll get the chance to dive the famous sites of Palau Sipadan.

Feeding the pig

I'm now sitting in Kuala Lampur International Airport waiting for my flight out to Kota Kinabalu in Borneo. It shows what a mad rush the last few days have been that this is the first decent stretch of free time I've had to post my news.

Yesterday I was back in Bangkok again. It was a seriously long day. That morning I was in northern Laos, took a boat across the Mekong to Chiang Khong in Thailand, a local bus to Chiang Rai, and then a mad rush in a taxi to just make my flight to Bangkok. En route I was trying to backup my Laos photos to my ipod and it crashed. I couldn't resuscitate it so took it to an Apple store in the city last night and they pronounced it dead. All my music, photos, movies... gone. But I did make backups of my photos to DVD when I was in China and then Meegs has copies of my Thailand photos. And in another stroke of luck, I bumped into Larisa outside MBK in Siam Square and I gave her copies of my Cambodia photos when we were there so I copied those back. So, in the end it looks like only Vietnam is lost. I can get over that. But my music collection was really starting to take shape. Oh well... shit happens.

But, back to the business of explaining where the hell Timmy has been since my last post. I left Luang Namtha for Huoay Xai on Saturday and joined my Gibbon Experience group there on Sunday morning. Paul and Yvonne even managed to join us through a late cancellation. The Gibbon Experience is part of a project aimed at protecting the environment of the rare species of Gibbon (monkey like animal) that only lives in that particular part of Laos and was until recently thought to be extinct. Whilst the project does all sorts of work in the area, the Gibbon Experience is more a means to raise awareness and funds. They have built a series of Treehouses throughout a portion of the Bokeo National Park and these are linked by an amazing arrangement of zip lines strung high above the canopy. If you're scared of heights this wouldn't be your cup of tea. I've done some zip lines back home but those were a kids jungle gym in comparison. This is the adult version. I still have a grin on my face!

Yet, before you even begin to think that I've spent the last few days swinging around in trees in the sunshine, let me elaborate. It stopped raining for about 4 hours the entire time we were out there. That meant the drive out to the nearest village on Sunday involved more pushing of than actual sitting in the car. The hike up to our treehouse was a massive ordeal too, through thick mud up steep slopes. In the end we arrived at our treehouse at 6pm having started out at 7.30am! But the zip lines we did get to ride on the way out were incredible, and to stay in a treehouse 50m above the jungle floor is an experience I'll never forget.

The team: Nicola, Jenny, Me, Paul, Fritte, Yvonne, Max, Lisa and Mike.

Not exactly an easy ride out on day one. That's my ass on the far left (but of course all my young female readers would have spotted that already....)

Our treehouse 50m above the jungle.

It may be a squatter but that's still a loo with a view!

The treehouses are used on a rotational basis and luck would have it ours was the furthest into the jungle. That mean we weren't able to play around on much of the zip line network on our second day, but we did get to experience more of the jungle than others would have. And experience it we did. On our morning hike through the jungle we were introduced to the lovable local leeches for the first time. There were thousands of them. They lie in wait on the paths and from the surrounding foliage waiting for something warm-blooded to pass by. They get everywhere and are nigh impossible to get rid of. It seems only burning them with a cigarette seems to work, or scraping them off with a sharp knife. Or you simply wait till they've gorged enough so they fall off bloated on your blood. Avoiding them was impossible. They latch on as you pass often enough, but if you stop for a second you can see hundreds of them crawling straight for you. And they move surprisingly quickly. Youch! But again, that was an experience, and that's what this year is all about.

Just after removing one of my first leeches. For some reason the anticoagulant in their saliva affected me more than others. Each bite would bleed for hours.

Fritte had some serious trouble with the leeches. His long pants meant they got everywhere... and I mean everywhere!

After a mad morning of playing with the local wildlife we mostly just spent the afternoon chilling in the treehouse and playing around on the zip lines that ran in and out of it. On that note I must mention that the guides and other staff stay in a small camp on the hill nearby, food is delivered by a grinning local zipping through the canopy. Very cool.

Fritte on one of the lines into our treehouse. The photos just don't seem to do it all justice, but I did take lots of videos too and those do show the speeds and heights we reached. Amazing.

Nicola comes in to land on one of the longer lines on the last day.

Max sets out from the treehouse in search of some hot coffee...

On our final evening the heavens really opened up. The massive downpour continued into the next day so our hike out to the village was made even more exhausting as we had to trudge through very deep and slippery mud. We did get to do some more of the longer zip lines though, and no amount of rain could dampen that fun. After a heavy 5 hour slog to the village it was confirmed that the vehicle that had dropped us there on the way in couldn't make it due to flooding so we had to hike all the way out to the main road. That was another exhausting 5 hours over very steep terrain. In all that meant 10 hours of some of the most tiring hiking I've done, in mostly pouring rain. I slept well that night.

An example of the "paths" we had to hike on. And that's only on the second day before the downpour!

And now I have a days rest in Borneo before starting the possibly even more arduous climb of Mt Kinabalu. I might even start getting a little fit by the end of my trip.

Muang Sing-ing in the rain

I've discovered why they call it the rainy season right now - its always flippin' pouring. Go figure.

I'm in a tiny town called Luang Namtha in far northwestern Laos. I arrived here on Tuesday after yet another rigorous 10 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang. I'm getting good at those now. I met up with a nice bunch of British couples and we planned to do some trekking through the surrounding forests and hill tribe villages together. No tours were going out on Wednesday so we all hired mountain bikes and explored the surrounding areas, we even had some sunshine that day.

Rice paddies in the Luang Namtha area.

Another shot over the rice fields. Spot the local version of the tractor.

Later on Wednesday when we went to book onto a 2 day trek for the next day we heard that a gunman was ranging in the forests, had killed a villager, and had fired upon some tourists. Trekking didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. I only need to be in Houay Xai tomorrow afternoon so still had 2 days to kill. One other couple, Paul and Yvonne, were in the same boat so whilst the others moved on, the 3 of us hired motorbikes yesterday and headed out to the town of Muang Sing, about 70km away, for a night. The ride out there was really great. I'm growing very fond of motorbikes as you don't feel like you're looking at the world through the picture frame of a window.

"Resplendent" is the only word for it, and the buffalo looks good too... Hey now Lao cow.

Muang Sing is the historical centre of the infamous Golden Triangle of Opium growing and trade. Today there is not a whole lot there. Boo. But its situation right near the borders with Burma (Myanmar) and China, together with the large numbers of hill tribe people in town to trade, made it an interesting side trip. We even found a great lodge about 6km outside of town with awesome views over the rice paddies and drank a few beers and bottles of wine. This after Paul and I were forcefully evicted from our attempts to fish in a nearby dam by an irate, machete wielding, Lao farmer.

Some ladies from the local Akha tribe try to sell some trinkets to Yvonne in Muang Sing.

The view from our the little lodge we stayed in last night over towards the Burmese border.

As I mentioned, tomorrow I head south to Houay Xai, on the border with Thailand, to join the Gibbon Experience. This looks like it will be an awesome couple of days spent zip lining through the forests from one tree house to the next. Watch this space for reviews. I'm hoping the dirt road from Luang Namtha to Houay Xai will dry out a bit over night so I can get there in a day. I also hope to get out from the forest in time for my trip back to Bangkok and subsequent flight to Borneo. The trip is supposed to have me back in Houay Xai on the afternoon of the 31st so I booked a flight to Bangkok from Chiang Rai in Thailand for the afternoon of the 1st of August. But now I'm told the roads are all submerged so I may not get out of the forest in time. Oh well, its all an adventure! Here goes nothing!

A map showing the route I follow tomorrow down to Houay Xai and then up to the tree houses at GibbonX.

Lovely Luang Prabang

This must rate as one of the most beautiful towns in the world. Its right up there with Antigua in Guatemala in my book, but also with a little something extra.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Luang Prabang is a world heritage site, meaning the old buildings are protected and the lovely small streets are still lined with the original old French style buildings. Scattered around town are also numerous beautiful Buddhist Wats, or temples. These Wats are all still in use and bright orange robed monks wander the streets by the hundred. Right now I can here the bells ringing from on of the temples across the street.

And this wonderful little town is also set in a spectacular location right on the banks of the mighty Mekong river, surrounded by dark green hills. There are some supposedly beautiful waterfalls and caves in the surrounding areas too. I have to say supposedly since I haven't had the chance to see them. I'd set aside today for that part of my explorations but have been knocked-out with food poisoning. Yip, I finally succumbed to the temptations of all the wonderful French restaurants in town, and obviously chose the wrong one (I thoroughly enjoyed my steak the first time around but our subsequent encounters have been less so...). Its a pity not to have been able to enjoy myself here to the full but I'll still leave the place with fond memories.

A view over Luang Prabang and the Mekong river just before sunset.

A street in Luang Prabang, with a gilded temple on the hill overlooking a street complete with French architecture and an ubiquitous tuk-tuk.

Some young monks wander the streets. I wish I could take better photos of them but its seen as pretty rude. Early tomorrow morning I plan to watch them receiving alms from the locals outside the Wats.

Tomorrow I get on yet another all day bus. This time its to a town called Luang Namtha in the far northwest, near the border with Myanmar. Its way off the beaten track but there is supposed to be some good trekking in the nearby national park, and this is appealingly different to the usual trekking people doing in northern Thailand. I must confess that I need to do the trekking in order to get prepared for my fast approaching climb of Mt Kinabalu in Borneo with Russell.

From Luang Namtha I have to get down to the border with Thailand at Houyxai, where I join my Gibbon Experience trip. Its all going to be a bit of a rush over the next week so I hope it all fits together.

A jarring experience

I've just arrived in Luang Prabang in northern Laos. This city is a UNESCO World Heritage site so is supposed to be gorgeous. I haven't had a chance to explore yet as, surprise surprise, its pissing with rain again...

I left Vang Vieng on Thursday morning for the highland town of Phonsavanh. The bus ride was yet another nightmare. I hate winding roads at the best of times, but crammed into a crappy bus on those roads for over 6 hours really sucked! But in the end it was worth it. I found a very cool guesthouse, very run down, but hosted by the hilarious Mr Kong, and I joined the guesthouse tour of the Plain of Jars sites on Friday. No-one knows why these massive jars were built, and there are hundreds of them scattered around the Phonsavan area. Only a few sites are open to the public as there is a lot of UXO (unexploded ordinance) about in that part of Laos, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Some of the bigger jars at Site 1. Some say these were made as funeral urns, others think they were big vats for making Laos whisky (Lao Lao) to celebrate a great victory.

Some more jars at Site 3. To get to these sites one has to religiously follow the paths staked out by the mine sweeping teams.

Mr Kong demonstrates how to drink Laos wine through a bamboo straw. I won a nights' drinking from him in a game of golf around the guesthouse grounds. I should have thrown the game - my head still hurts!

Seeing the jars was very interesting, but as always I found the contemporary history more interesting. The eastern highlands of Laos were bombed on a massive scale in the 70s by the Americans in what was termed the "Secret War", as no-one knew it was going on. A lot of the bombing was validated as attempts to halt the flow of Vietcong arms from northern Vietnam into the south on the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail. But that trail only entered Laos much further south. The Phonsavan area was bombed as part of a campaign against the Laos communists, or Pathet Laos, in contravention of the Geneva accord which banned intervention in Laos. Apparently US bombers were told they were bombing sites in Vietnam.

During this campaign a massive 2 million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos. That's more than the US dropped in all spheres of WW2 put together! That's also 2 tons of bombs for every person living in that part of Laos! The most used type of ordinance was the infamous cluster bomb. This bomb contains hundreds of smaller bombs that each contain thousands of ball bearings, thus designed to kill people not tanks etc. The problem today is that millions of these small bombs, called "Bombies" by the locals, are still scattered throughout the area. They're about the size of a tennis ball and kill hundreds of people every year when they're hit by people working in the fields or when children find them and play with them, unwittingly arming them.

Some old bombs I saw lying around in a scrapyard in Phonsavanh town.

It was thus mildly amusing to hear some American tourists in a coffee shop a while ago complaining that people here are so unfriendly to them when they find out they're Americans...

I plan to stay in LP for a couple of days to explore all the temples, surrounding waterfalls, and wonderful old French restaurants. I'll then head even further north to see some more remote places, then across towards Myanmar for some trekking, then I've booked 2 days on the Gibbon Experience (treehouses in the jungles to live with the gibbons) before crossing to Thailand.

Some friendly Loas ladies convince me to buy the local version of litchis in the Phonsavanh town market.

Tubing, Friends re-runs, and way too much lao lao!

This is one strange town. Vang Vieng is now firmly on the backpacker map and its pretty hard to figure out how the hell the place ended up like this!

The town is set very picturesquely on the banks of a river surrounded by beautiful limestone cliffs, and is well placed about halfway between Vientiane, the capital, and Luang Phabang, the most popular tourist destination in Laos. But that hardly seems the reason why the place is packed with young travellers. The reason seems firmly centered around the tubing phenomenon. You can hire a tube here for a day and float down river stopping off at one little bamboo pub after the next. Each bar serves cheap beer and free lao lao (the local rice spirit) shots, and also all have an array of zip lines and crazily high swings over the river. I would love to add some photos from the 3 days of tubing I've done here but I haven't been mad enough to even contemplate taking a camera along!

Another really strange phenomenon is the Friends bars. Every second restaurant/bar in this town shows 24/7 re-runs of Friends episodes. Don't get me wrong, I love watching Friends, but its still really strange!

Tomorrow I'm heading northeast to Phonsavan in order to see the Plain of Jars, and to try to get away from the masses of British students on summer holidays. They've been fun but enough is enough...

I promise to add photos in my next post.

Valiant on Valium

I'm stuck for a few hours in a town called Pakxe in southern Laos before I bus tonight to Vientiane, the capital. I'm sick of crappy bus journeys so I've taken advantage of being able to buy over the counter Valium here and will hopefully be out like a light for the journey. Sorry mum, but there's only so many fat ladies and chickens you can endure on your lap...

The trip up here was actually way less eventful than I expected. Getting across Cambodia from Siem Reap to the border involved a number of long journeys; one being in the back of a rusty minibus, with no seats, piled high with fish traps, on the seriously muddy backroads between Kampong Cham and Kratie. In Kratie, however, I found a small tour agency that offered combined tickets to the border and across to the 4000 islands area in Laos. That saved a massive amount of hassle, and at least 2 days of travel time. That means I'm now ahead of my little schedule for this leg, but by the sounds of things I may be stuck in some other areas in Laos for longer than planned as they sound like a really good jol.

I spent 2 nights on the little island of Don Det in the 4000 islands area. This very southerly part of Laos is where the massive Mekong river splits into a web of smaller channels, not unlike the Okavango Delta in appearance. It was very beautiful and all but a little too chilled for my liking... not a whole lot of conversation going on when all and sundry are stoned out of their skulls!

Rice paddies on Don Det. Its not a great shot but I want to show just how green they are here.

A local on Don Det brushes his teeth in the Mekong below my balcony.

Zoom zoom zoom

Sunset over the Mekong River. I may just have a had a cheeky beer while watching it...

From Vientiane I plan to head straight on to Vian Vieng, famed for its riotous tubing trips. From there I think I'll head to Luang Phabang, with a possible stop to see the famous Plain of Jars.

Angkor revisited. And they still won't let me add any more cheesy titles...

I have found a marginally better internet connection so am trying to upload a few more photos from Angkor. Its running at about one upload every half hour so it won't be very many. Sorry.

Today was awesome. I hired a bicycle for a whopping $1 a day and headed out as early as my severe oversleeping allowed. There were a few temples I wanted to see and didn't get to yesterday, but also some that needed revisiting at a more sedate pace. My favourite today was definitely Ta Prohm, a temple that has been left in the state it would have been in when Angkor was rediscovered in the 19th century. Huge trees have grown all over the moss covered stones making it very atmospheric. Its also the site where Tomb Raider was filmed. Besides that, today was really cool in that it gave me a better chance to appreciate the scale of the place. And to see a little more of rural Cambodian life.

Tomb raiding in Ta Prohm.

The funky Bayon temple in Angkor Thom with some of its 216 huge faces of Avalokiteshvara (whoever that is!)

Young monks take painting lessons at the Bayon.

A shot from the east side of Angkor Wat.

After a day of riding around in the sun I was pretty exhausted so headed back to Siem Reap in the late afternoon. I then found the coolest massage place ever! Seeing Hands is a project that trains blind Cambodians in the arts of Thai and Japanese massage. This gives them employment and a way to support themselves, a gives me a very nice way to recover. Oh, and a whole hour costs $4 (R28)...

Tomorrow morning sees the start of my mission to the north. And chatting to some people it seems I won't be too far out of touch. Sorry, but you might be hearing from me again sooner than you hoped...