Hoi An

Hoi An's old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but that isn't really why people come to visit. They come for one reason and one reason only. That's the shopping. Everywhere you look, it's all clothing shops, tailors, shoe stores, and more. We went out to buy a loaf of bread and came back empty handed because literally every store is geared toward selling clothes to tourists. There's nothing else around. But there are good deals to be had in a place like this. Everything is custom made just for you. You can pick out any fabric or style you wish or you can even create your own design. They will replicate clothes you bring to them, make something from a picture, or even a sketch. It is truly every shopping lover's dream.

Usually, this is the sort of place we would avoid at all costs, but at this stage of the trip we're starting to think about returning home. We don't have many material things waiting for us, so it's a good chance to pick up some custom clothes at cheap prices before we make the trip.

We spent two overwhelming and exhausting days shopping. I picked up two suits, two ties, one pair of casual shoes, one pair of dress shoes, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shorts, and four pairs of boxers, most custom made, all for $170 (haggling was required). A custom fit really does make a difference too. The moment I tried on one of my new suits I realized that for my entire life I've been wearing clothes that don't really fit me. It was a big realization and an odd feeling, but that doesn't mean I'll be buying everything custom made from here on out. It did give me a new perspective on clothes though.

The people of Hoi An have had tourists coming here and buying clothes for a long time. The sad part of that is that everyone knows the drill. The locals put up with their town being overrun by foreigners and they make us what we want. We bring the money, buy lots of clothes, and pay the hotel bills. But the smiles are few. We aren't guests, we're customers. In a place like this, you have friends only as long as you keep shelling out the American dollars.

The fundamental truth we've found in all our travels is that people who stand to make money off you usually are not interested in being your friend. Sometimes they're not even interested in being friendly. They look at you and they don't see you, they see dollars. When they talk to you, they don't care about getting to know you, they only want to find out how they can squeeze another dollar out of you. Sometimes it really gets us down.

The good news is that there are exceptions and there are also many people who don't make their money off tourists. These people will treat you like a person. Many tourists spend their whole trip without talking to locals like this, but they're out there. We're lucky to have made some friends on our trip. We exchange e-mails regularly with a monk in Nepal, we have a letter waiting for us at home from a friend we made in India, and we will never forget the family we stayed with in Sri Lanka. The people we've met like this are really the ones who have made this trip worthwhile, much more so than what we've seen or done. For them, we are grateful.

Hue

We knew coming in that Vietnam would be more like Thailand and Malaysia than Cambodia and Laos. More touristed, more amenities, and more expensive. We crossed the border in our preferred manner. We took the local bus to the border, walked a few kilometers across the border, then negotiated with the same tourist bus that left from Savannahket for a lower price to take us the rest of the way. We were asked "How did you get here?" by a SE Asian traveler. Most tourists travel on the tourist buses even if they don't come from so far away, people often don't even know how to get around any other way.

Often the truth is neither do we, but between our past experience mixed with a significant amount of guesswork we're able to predict pretty well that we'll be able to get from here to there. Or more accurately, from here to somewhere else to I don't know where to how did we end up here, to there. But we get there. We each saved 20,000 kip by traveling our way. That's about $2.50 to you and a dinner in a nice restaurant to us.

It took the whole day to make the trip and we arrived in Hue in the evening. It was about what we expected. Higher standards than Laos and Cambodia for restaurants, hotels, and everything. Not just for us, but also for the Vietnamese. Everything is much greener now that we're on the coast and there are conical hats everywhere. We saw a few in other places, but it really is a Vietnamese thing.

So we got acquainted with the new types of food (fried rice and noodles are still the staple), did some walking around and sightseeing, some little shopping, and settled into the last major country of the trip.

Savannakhet

The day we traveled to Savannakhet was the last day of the Laotian New Year. So, in the continued spirit of the last few days, in every town or village we passed through we endured buckets of water being thrown on the bus. It got in through the windows and got us pretty wet, but we didn't have it nearly as bad as the bus driver. In parts of the world like this, bus drivers often drive with the door open for increased ventilation. This works pretty well most of the time, but on this day it meant the people with the buckets had a clear shot at him and they took advantage of it. Sometimes he'd be going along slowly and whoooosh! a big splash comes in and drenches him. Oh well, we all kept cool.

Savannakhet is a small town, smaller than Pakse, but bigger than Champassak. But you wouldn't be able to tell the size of the town if you saw the size of the party happening on the main street. Traffic was bumper to bumper and completely stopped. The street was full of trucks loaded with people, tailgates down. They were so stuffed that more than once we watched people falling out the back of the trucks. And of course, everyone had water. The people in the streets, the people in the trucks. At our last stops there were distinct groups of people celebrating and throwing water, here one group just blended into the next. There was music blaring and it was madness! We enjoyed the fun a little, but we were mostly partied out by this point. We went to our guest house and got some much needed rest.

Our main intent stopping in Savannakhet was to get our Vietnamese visas (last visas of the trip!), so the next morning we did that with surprisingly little difficulty. Our Laos visa took several days, our Vietnamese visa 10 minutes. I guess it all averages out. We spet the next few days seeing some of the minor sights like a dinosaur museum (many fossils have been found in the province) and various temples.

We also spent a great deal of time at the local bazaar. We're nearing the end of the trip and don't have so many material things waiting for us back home. So we're taking advantage of the good prices and buying clothes and things we'll need when we return to our old lifestyles. The only thing is that it's much more difficult for us to buy clothes than we expected. In the United States, I fit well into a medium sized shirt. In Laos I am an extra large and no one has extra large sized shirts. I feel like a giant whenever I try to shop. Female travelers be warned, unless you have iron clad self-esteem, don't go clothes shopping in Asia.

Pakse & Pakxong

We stopped in Pakse for a day with the intention of making a day trip up to the Bolaven Plateau to see the coffee plantations. The only thing is that the Lao New Year celebrations were still going on, except now we were in a much larger city. In Champassak we ran across four or five groups of people trying to throw buckets of water on us, in Pakse there were dozens.

Just trying to find a place to stay was challenging because we didn't want to get our stuff wet. So Heather stayed put with the things and I went searching. We couldn't find any really cheap places to stay so I ended up walking into a fairly nice hotel dripping wet from the buckets asking if the receptionist could show me a room. I took her slight smile as an indication she wasn't upset with me for dripping in her hotel.

So, we got settled, rented another motorbike, and put all the important things we had with us in plastic bags. At least this time we were prepared. So we headed out of town and on to Pakxong. We passed lots of bucket gangs on the way out, some we dodged, others soaked us, but that's how it goes.

The problem we had when we reached the plateau is that the higher elevation meant it was much cooler. So cool, that we really didn't want to get splashed with any more buckets. Even though Pakxong is a pretty small place, there were lots of people "celebrating." We got splashed and we were very cold. It's always best to try to embrace the culture, but this is the point that it really stopped being fun for us. We did make it to the plantation and we had a very nice cup of coffee before heading home.

We were so happy to descend into the warmer climate again. After we returned our bike, there wasn't much to do except join the party. So we made friends with some locals who were more than happy to share their splash buckets with us in exchange for us allowing them to dump water on us periodically. It was warm, so we didn't mind.

So we had fun splashing people who came by, but the protocol confused us a little bit. Apparently, you aren't supposed to splash just anyone. We discovered this after Heather emptied her bucket on two middle aged women coming by on their motorbike. She got them really good and they looked rather upset. We felt bad because sometimes people had gotten us when we really didn't want to be splashed, but we were just trying to do what the Lao people do. Oh well, we still had good fun.

Champassak

It doesn't matter where you're going to when you depart from Don Det, all boats leave at 10:30 (or perhaps 11:15). This meant we got to hang out and chat with some fellow travelers that were all heading to different places. We mentioned to one American guy that our next stop was Champassak. He told us that there really wasn't much to do there except visit the temple. It was only after a few more minutes of conversation and him giving us advice about the town that it came out he hadn't actually been there.

He met a girl who stopped there for a day and wasn't impressed. And, of course, the Lonely Planet didn't have much to say about it. This new information only strengthened our resolve to go there. Sure enough, the town didn't have a wealth of major attractions, but it had a natural, authentic, Laos feel that you don't get in places which have rave reviews in the Lonely Planet. It's true, there's not that much there except Lao people living the Lao lifestyle. But isn't that why we came to Laos in the first place?

So we walked the one road town back and forth and enjoyed the river views. The next day we rented a motorbike again so that we could go and see the temple which was a little way outside of town. We weren't expecting what happened next.

We knew that it was the start of the Lao New Year, but we didn't know the specifics of how this holiday is celebrated. Sure, there are parties, and eating, and drinking, and music, and dancing, and all the things you would expect. In addition to these things is the 'cleansing' aspect of the holiday.

So we're riding out to the temple (the second day in my life I've ever ridden a motorbike) and I see a group of kids standing by the side of the road. As I get closer they start walking out into the road and I naturally respond by slowing down. As I approach I notice that they have water guns and one girl has a large bucket of water. In the few seconds that pass between the time I notice them and meet them on the road, I begin to piece together in my mind what is about to follow. I figure it out just as the girl throws the water from the bucket into my path and it hits me in the chest like a sack of bricks. I was totally soaked.

All I can say is that at least after the first time it wasn't a surprise anymore. It seems a little dangerous to me, but people celebrate the holiday by throwing water on each other, on cars, and especially on passing motorbikes which is how most people get around. Some people speed up to try and escape, others accept their fate and continue as normal, and others still slow down or come to a stop and allow buckets of water to be dumped onto their heads.

We tried each of these strategies at different times. It did cool us down, which was refreshing after we had removed sensitive objects from our pockets. The ancient temple was pretty cool, but nothing compares to Angkor. We returned home to get splashed again by all the people that got us the first time. It was really lots of fun once we accepted our role in the festivities.

Don Det

By the time we made it to our first stop in Laos we were really, really tired. We were badly in need of some rest and relaxation. Lucky for us Don Det is the perfect place for that sort of thing, in fact, you'll have a hard time doing anything else there. It is one of the 4,000 islands in the Mekong river near Cambodia. We walked around the island, spent some time swimming in the river, and relaxed in our hammocks and read books. We must have spent almost a week on the island.

Other than that the only notable thing we did was to take a day trip to neighboring island Don Khon to try to catch a glimpse of the river dolphin. We didn't see any dolphins from the beach or the hammocks where we spent the afternoon, but neither did the people that spent the cash to hire boats to take them where the dolphins can sometimes be found. We were happy enough that we got to spend the day on our own private beach and lounging in hammocks by the beauty of the river that it didn't matter whether there were dolphins or not. This was definitely one of the most relaxing stops on the trip so far.

Ban Lung

For our last stop in Cambodia we decided to go someplace smaller and less touristy. Ban Lung was a good choice. Although we did see a few western tourists here, most of the tourists were Cambodian. Like us, they came to swim in Yeak Laom volcanic lake. The volcano is no longer active, but is now a popular swimming spot for locals. People were happy and smiling and the kids wanted to talk to us and swim with us.

We love being in places like this where people are happy, genuine, and excited. At many of the tourist destinations locals can get pretty jaded and don't smile at us much, don't care that where around, or worse, they look at us and only see American dollars. Not so in Ban Lung. I dove into the water from the docks and swam with the kids. They lauged about how pale my skin is and asked us questions about ourselves and where we're from. We had a great time, but were tired from all the walking and biking we'd done in the past week so we called it an early night.

The next day we rented a motorbike from our guesthouse for $5. A good deal, but still a bit of a splurge for us. I think the proprietor was a little nervous after I got on because it was quickly apparent that I had never ridden a motorbike before in my life. It was a manual, so tricky at first, but I quickly got the hang of it and we sped off into the distance before she could change her mind. We headed for some waterfalls where we spent the better part of the afternoon. It was pretty quiet, there were only a handful of children there swimming in the pools beneath the waterfalls.

I got some good practice riding on dirt roads and small paths when we rode out to a surprising large garden. It must have been several acres and we only ran into one or two other groups of people. The admission fees can only pay for a portion of the upkeep. This is a garden that is maintained out of love for nature and not to rake in the big bucks.

We returned to our guest house tired again after a great day to the great relief of the owner who rented us the bike.

Siem Reap

After Phnom Penh we headed north to Siem Reap. The main attraction here are the temples of Angkor. We gave ourselves three days to see the temples which are many. We could have easily spent more time there, but there is only so much you can absorb at one time. Many of the temples are huge and all together they include over 400 years of history. Honestly, they are worthy of at least a weeklong trip all by themselves.

Since we're on a tight budget we decided to rent bicycles to get to and around the temples instead of hiring a tuk tuk. This was a challenge because the temples are about 12k from Siem Reap. When you factor in round trip, the oppresive heat, and the distance between the temples (they are pretty spread out) we were pretty tired by the end of the day. We're in pretty good shape at this point in the trip, but by the end of the second day we realized we were physically incapable of biking another day and we committed to shelling out the cash for the tuk tuk the next day.

We didn't regret it. Angkor is one of the highlights of a trip that's been pretty incredible every step of the way. For the first time we arrived at the temples fresh and ready to explore (except for our badly aching butts). The sheer size and beauty of them was magnificent. Some were overgrown with trees, their roots sprawled out over walls and rocks which only added to the ancient mystery of the ruins.

At it's peak Angkor included dozens of active temples and was close in size to modern day Los Angeles. As many as one million people lived in this area. To support this population they created an extensive system of irrigation that was unmatched in its time.

Cambodians are very proud of Angkor which is apparent in their modern day culture. There is a picture of Angkor Wat on the countries flag, Cambodians drink Angkor beer, there are Angkor restaurants and guest houses, etc. It is everywhere and if you ever make it to Angkor you will understand why.