This morning I take very reluctant leave of Laos, it really is a special place, peaceful, quiet and serene. I’m also glad I visited when I did – I think it’s about to change. It was only opened up to individual tourists in 1999/2000, before then you had to be part of an approved group. But I think they are slowly realising how much tourism can improve their bottom line, and there is quite a bit of development. There is a lot of work going on in Luang Prabang for instance as local people sell their town houses to foreigners who develop them into, albeit charming and in keeping with the UNESCO status, guest houses and restaurants. They take the loot and build a much bigger house on the outskirts with the profits. There is also a huge resort development just out of the town backed with Singapore money. But I will be back.I arrive in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) with a bump. No, it wasn’t a hard landing on the Vietnam Airlines flight, it was just suddenly I was back in the real world. Thought I wasn’t going to get in at one point. I had been efficient and applied for an eVisa – all a bit odd, every website said they’ve stopped doing these, but my application went through, and I duly printed it off. Looks like the stern immigration officials think they’ve stopped doing them too. I was at the checkpoint for ages (and you know how frustrating that can be when you are stuck behind someone like that….). Other officials were called, my passport taken away. I was questioned and luckily my language skills came yet again to the fore as I was able to confirm that yes, I had applied “onlye”. Great puzzlement all around, but eventually they decided I couldn’t be too much of a risk, they stamped the passport and through I went.
It was bedlam. Taxi touts everywhere, very hot and humid, but being an old hand at this as I was here twice last year, I go straight for a tuk tuk. In the short week I have been in Laos I had forgotten how noisy and dirty Asian cities can be. But it was the noise that startled me, the motorbikes and horns beeping continuously. But I do like Phnom Penh, even though it is hot, noisy and dirty, it has a real charm.
I am only here for two days as the plan is to find a boat to take me further down the Mekong on to Vietnam for a few days before I go to Phu Quoc Island. It’s quite nice coming to a city again, there is no need to run around seeing the sights. So I have booked myself into the Pavilion Hotel, No 1 on Tripadvisor and have spoiled myself with a private pool room. But it is not really spoiling…….. My lovely pool room including breakfast and free wifi (although that isn’t working today…..) is only $80US. And when I booked the rate was 2USD to the pound. It’s a bit more expensive now with the fall of the pound, as is everything, but it’s lovely, and it is only two nights…. And it’s very hot and humid, which is unusual (the humidity that is) so the pool, in its private walled garden is very welcome. It’s rather nice to hear the sounds of the city in the background, but be in my private pool oasis. It’s a decent size too, about three metres by five metres, but a little on the chilly side. Not quite the infinity edge temperature controlled private pool I am used to from the Nam Hai last April, but it will do! There’s something rather decadent about having your own pool in the middle of a city… The hotel is tucked away just behind the Royal Palace complex, so still in the centre of things. The old house itself was built by a Cambodian Princess, and I bet has a few tales to tell from Cambodia’s turbulent history.… The whole hotel is an oasis of calm, as you go through the large wooden gates, guarded by two large white elephants, you enter the courtyard which is full of greenery. The main pool is in the centre and there are lots of little tented cabanas tucked away, with the restaurant on one side. The room itself isn’t luxurious, minimalist is a good description, but a large wooden bed with mosquito nets draped around it, a good size bathroom, and I feel at home, the bedside lamp is an IKEA one the same as I have at home! I think they got the curtains there too – true globalisation. Only downside is, as I came back to my room tonight, there was a rather large rat scampering across the path.
As the internet was down here when I arrived, I wander down the street to find a café – and appearing in front of me as if by magic, was “Rubie’s” Bar – free wifi if you buy a drink. No contest! I order a cube, only to find the password for the wifi was “cubalibre” – spooky! The bar is owned by an English guy apparently. The young barman engaged me in conversation (I was the only customer…..) and instead of catching up on my email and trying to book places to stay in Vietnam, I was waylaid by the “story of his life”. I managed to understand most of it as his English wasn’t too bad – just hope I made the appropriate sympathy noises in the right places. Long and rather convoluted, but it would have made a good episode in a Cambodian soap opera! His mum died five years ago, his father (a policeman) then shacked up with another woman who already had seven kids. He has five siblings and the mum somehow (by visiting the police station apparently…..) managed to leave the kids all the fields which are situated in the south of the country and grow just enough rice to feed the huge extended family all year. They are now lived in by his 79 year old gran (who lived through all the horror’s of the 70’s) and a horde of aunts, uncles and cousins. His father had no contact for the last five years until he contacted them a few weeks ago to say he was getting married again. Reluctantly they attend the wedding, but now he is trying to muscle in on the fields. I was also taken through every detail of his mother’s Buddhist funeral five years ago, interesting rituals, but he was pleased they had given her a good send off. Then he told me about “seeing” her everywhere for two months after the funeral….. it was at this point, feeling like Marje Props, I made my excuses and left!
So tomorrow, I need to go and find out how on earth I get from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc on Tuesday and where I will stay.
Day two in Phnom Penh is unashamedly lazy. I have sorted out my boat for tomorrow, and decide the best course of action is to repair to my private pool and catch up on some reading – bliss.
