Hidden treasures in Cambodia

In Cambodia we encountered another highlight of the trip. One of the world wonders, Angkor Wat, is located in a mysterious and captivating setting and does not fail to impress. True, there are massive hordes of tourists arriving every day to take in the impressive sights and not without reason. However, the grounds and the temples are so plentiful that it didn't really feel jam-packed. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that scenes for Tomb Raider were filmed here in the past. Touched by moss, rain and time, one can't help imagining what magnificent structures once stood there centuries before.

Everyone's looking for Angelina Jolie... even monks.

"The wonder, the world wonder!"

At night, Cambodia revealed its true colors. The many tourists flocked towards busy nightmarkets, restaurants and nightclubs. Not exactly the lonely traveler feeling we experienced in parts of Lao but we can't exactly claim we didn't enjoy ourselves. This also thanks to Anne, the adventurous Dutch girl we met up north. Despite the fact that we tested her patience daily with our "special" personalities, she was still traveling along with us and secretly we were all happy about that. Not in the least because we proved an excellent late night dancing crew. Besides, she happily offered to carry some souvenirs back to Europe for us. Little did she know she would end up with four bags, including a Colombian machete. True story.

Great fun with Anne! We miss her already.

Our visit to the capital Phnom Penh was marked by the atrocities of the 'Khmer Rouge' regime of the mid seventies. We don't want to ruin anybody's appetite by going into the details but the stories we heard and the mass graves we witnessed, were proof of a darker side of humanity. A side that we haven't encountered much in our travels so far.

 Seriously Anne? Seriously???

After Cambodia we headed towards Bangkok in a horrible 20 hour bus ride with non-reclining seats and severely limited legroom. We enjoyed our first day walking around as zombies and taking in some of the peculiarities of this amazing city. Busy markets with heaps of street vendors, mixed with sketchy side streets intended for shady sex tourism. The end verdict: incredible palaces, imposing temples and great nightclubs. The city has it all.

Simply beautiful: Laos

When we crossed the Thai-Lao border a few weeks ago, we stepped into something truely magical and beautiful.

We discovered a country that is blessed with its nature, with a population that is ever-smiling and it gives you a true sense of happiness when you travel through. With only clear blue skies in sight, pouring rain will surprise you almost once every day, but it's no obstacle to enjoy Lao. If it's not a rainbow spanning between the mountain hills and the fluo-green rice fields, it might just be another smile from a Lao kid cruising through by scooter. After those daily showers, playful butterflies show up again and you'll dry up before you'll stumble upon yet another guesthouse on the itinerary.

 Having fun with the Lao kids

As we were ziplining in North Laos from mountain hill to insane tree houses and vice-versa, we spotted gibbon monkeys playing below us. We also met another gibbon, Rolf, a hilarious Dutch man who popped out shots and beers from his wallet as if it was rain from the Lao sky. Regularly, we lost ourselves in a late-night bowling game, while none of us could still throw a well-aimed ball.

Ziplining the "Gibbon Experience" adventure 

If we weren't playing bowling, we were dancing in Lao-theques, a kind of night club where the music is awfully loud and the people are staring at the group of tourists dancing Michael Jackson around another meter of beer - ordered by Rolf, of course. Or having a Lao-bbq. Or motorbiking around, looking for temples, even more temples, caves and waterfalls, sweating, joking around, swearing it was the last Lao beer of the week. Luckily there was Anne, an adventurous Dutch girl (happy birthday again Anne!), who tried to keep us calm at first, but after a while joined in the madness, meanwhile extended with insane Germans. If it all sounds a little bit chaos, you should have seen the two-lane bowling games. It was a bigger mess than the big bang itself.

Cruising through Laos with Rolf & Anne

Moving further South, we got ourselves some scooters again and joined in the slow paced traffic over bumpy brown roads and that seemed the perfect way to be waved at by Lao people. Even though most of the time there is no way whatsoever to communicate with them - they mostly don't even understand the words 'water', 'rice' or 'internet' - you'll still end up with them sitting around a TV showing some very bad karaoke, with a free Big Lao beer in your hand and a few smiling people on the other side of the table. Try to imitate a carrot while ordering your dish, randomly pop out the word 'lady boy' in a by definition lost conversation or order your breakfast singing, and you'll find yourself surrounded with smiles bigger than the huge mountain of sticky rice next to your inevitable noodle soup.

It's simply beautiful. It's Laos!

Thailand

As we had been enjoying lots of sun and beaches during the last weeks, our souls were longing for some intellectual action. We headed up north to dig into Thailand's past in Ayuthaya and Sukhothai.

The first city hosted several "oh my big Buddha"-statues and temples scattered around and on its island city center, so we opted for some biking and boating.

Temple madness!

While we got into Sukhotai, we bumped into Hanna and Magy, two geschnitzelde vegetarian German teachers. We gently invited them on the back of our rented scooters and took off.
Literally riding through a Unesco World Heritage site, watching gravity warped columns and high-fiving our friend Buddha, girls on the back, camera in the right hand, melting ice cream in the left hand.... - a typical day, I'd say. The day ended with an evening which started with one tequila shot, followed by 'a few' cocktails which soon exceeded our daily budget by a factor ten.

German madness!

Things changed quickly in Chiang Mang when we agreed to get active again. We pushed our limits and decided to examine the secrets of Thai cuisine. We both got certified and look forward to impress you all when we get back in Belgium...

Thai food madness!

The two days after we had to trek into the jungle to get rid of the palm-oil-fat layers we gained. An elephant ride through rivers, sweating, trekking, rafting, campfire animation, playing football with the local Messi's and Ronaldo's...; we did all the obligatory things for a tourist in Thailand.

Jungle madness!

The group spirit was more than awesome and we met Yafa and Ines, two ever-smiling Tunesian girls who perform jungle treks in pyjamas. We decided to meet up after the trek and went out for disco-bowling. Time flies while throwing strikes, so we ended up in a closed Sin-City like shopping center.

Since it was raining outside, we started up the luna park around midnight and laughed the night away until we finally were 'friendly escorted out' by three security guys who couldn't even find a key to actually kick us out.
A tuk-tuk ride later, we were snoozing our last night in Thailand. This touristy country looked same same but was different thanks to many surprises, great moments and new friendships.

Forza Italia in Thailand

The trip in southeast Asia continues. We left Malaysia accompanied by fellow travellers Steven and Kim from Belgium (http://stevenenkim.blogspot.com/) and literally walked into Thailand. Travelling here is a mix between the struggle to find transport, the hassle to negotiate the price (you can bet we fight for every Baht!) and the adventure to explain the final destination. Luckily it's not always that difficult. We travelled quite a lot through Singapore, Malaysia and now Thailand by train. Not only are the air-conditioned wagons extremely comfortable, it supplies us some great panoramas and it is a great opportunity to meet people. (We remark that walking through the train is not advised as the doors are a swinging-open invitation to fall out).

Travelling by train: as beautiful as it is

This time we met three crazy Italian beauties, who were 'as a coincidence' travelling in the same direction. We decided to bundle our forces and share as many túk-túks as possible. We checked out their physical capacities (don't get us wrong) by taking them to the Tiger Temple neer Krabi, where they had to step up more than 1300 steps under burning sun rays. They succeeded the test and so we invited them to join us to the Ko Phi Phi island.

Traditional pose (?)

Now, Ko Phi Phi is something different. Let's say it's an island where palmtrees were waving on steep rocks, where coral-blue waves were flirting with blissful white beaches and where a guy named Leonardo Di Caprio came to smoke some big pot in the movie "The Beach". The latter automatically transformed the island in a mekka for tourists, so things changed. Palmtrees are waving next to plastic bags, coral-blue waves are filled up with empty bottles and tourists are flirting during huge parties on the beaches.

 LTR: Fran, Tiger, PIMP and Vermicelli

 The Leo effect

However, Forza Italia-Belgium booked a boat and we drifted around the nearby islands, looking for footprints of Leo. As Simona (aka miss Vermicelli), Laura (aka miss Tiger) and Fran (aka miss Heart) were responsible for some bikini action on the front of the boat, we snorkled around and gifted ourselves with another layer of tan.  [no pictures available]

Officially we didn't party, we didn't sweat and we didn't even learn new Italian bad words.
Up to you to believe us or not. Ciao!

Malaysia - even hotter than it sounds

Unfortunately the heat and humidity are not more forgiving in Malaysia than they are in Singapore. Upon arrival by aircon'd train in Kuala Lumpur however, we were kindly welcomed by Uncle Nathan and Auntie Maureen and their family. They took mercy on our souls and hosted us for a while, showing us around and letting us cool down in their pool. We were pleasantly surprised when Uncle Nathan took us to a Belgian beer bar where he showed us that also Malaysians know how to appreciate a great beer. In the meantime Auntie Maureen dared us to add diverse spices to some of the delicious meals. While Dimitri made some worthy and respectable attempts, Auntie was not ready to declare us full Malaysians just yet.

We visited some of the impressive mosques and Hindu temples and wandered through the busy market streets. One of the highlights were the amazing views from the top of the Petronas towers, the highest twin towers in the world. We had a great time, but eventually it was time to move on and we said our goodbyes to Uncle and Auntie, thanking them for the wonderful stay we had.

We made our way to Melaka, a Unesco heritage site - it soon became clear why. It boasts a rich history of colonialism and has one of the most peaceful riverbanks we have seen.

Some might consider it foolish to attempt a trek through a jungle in this strangling heat and humidity but that's exactly what we did at our next stop, the Taman Negara, or National Park of Malaysia. It's filled with deadly animals such as green vipers, panthers, tigers and... Germans. We met Michael and Linuz, two hilarious and adventurous fellows who soon became travel companions. Somewhat disorganized, they made our bus and boat wait while they overslept and realized they still needed an ATM...

Nobody keeps track of time in the jungle however and we were soon hiking through the treacherous environment, carrying along a massive amount of water. We came out of the jungle exhausted, with our clothes soaking in sweat. Despite the horrible stench, the hostel let us back in and we celebrated our trip with some well earned Tiger beers.

The Germans joined us east to the tropical Perhentian Islands, one of the most chilled out places we have been so far. Gorgeous backdrops with palm trees next to mesmerizing beaches. Dimitri dived around a shipwreck while the rest was out snorkeling and soon we had forgotten all about the harsh jungle conditions. We enjoyed milk shakes during all times of the day and invented questionable dance moves at night. Removed from all the problems of the world, but still connected to the results of the Olympics, life was mercifully easy...