Trip to Laos Part 1

  

 So we have finally begun to write about our trip to Laos!  The day after Christmas, we all boarded a plane...the 6 of us and mom and dad and we headed to Thailand.  It was a little too pricey to fly all of us directly to Laos, so we had the brilliant idea to fly to Bangkok, which is pretty cheap, then take an overnight train to the Thai/Laos border and then travel to Vientiane by bus or taxi or whatever.  So this is what we did.  We arrived in Bangkok and made our way to the train station.  I had already purchased our tickets on-line but we had no idea 

what  we were getting so we were a little nervous to 

see exactly what we would be spending the night on.  Did we have a bed?  Just a seat?  We had no clue.  So we went to eat at a  mall like thing that was close by.  The girls were thrilled because for the first time in 4 months they got to eat McDonalds!

After our McDonald's adventure we headed back to the train station to wait.  While waiting we decided to go ahead and buy our return train tickets, this time getting first class.  They only let you buy these tickets at the train station.  You can buy 2nd class on-line so that's what we had done, but as we weren't confident in what we were purchasing we had decided to wait to buy the return ticket so we could ensure the 1st class.  Boy what a mistake!  As it was a holiday weekend, everyone in Thailand decided to travel, so there were no seats on the return train.  This made us effectively stuck in Laos!  Thankfully Dad came through and we went to a travel agent (in the train station) and purchased airline tickets back to Thailand.  Dad really didn't mind as he wasn't overly keen on sitting on a bumpy train for 12 hours anyway.  We had decided to take the train originally because I didn't feel like Lao Airlines was particularly safe, but in light of the fact that we didn't have a return train ticket, and the option was to drive, we opted to risk life and limb and fly on Lao Airlines.   I suggested that we take two different flights so that Amy wouldn't lose her entire family in one fell swoop but Dad was confident that we would make it.  Obviously he was right!

So, the train ride to the Laos border (I should say now that you do NOT pronounce the "s" in Laos...it sounds like Low, rhymes with now) was quite the adventure.  We boarded the train at around 6:30 pm and ate our dinner and just talked for a bit.  The train guy then came by and began making everyone's beds. 

Phoebe playing her game on her bed 

Emma and Grandma on the train

So the train guy pulled the seats together to make a bed, then for privacy you pulled the blue curtains closed.  Each adult slept with one kid.

The girls loved being on the top bunk!

The train ride was a lot of fun.  We didn't really get a lot of sleep and most of the time the train was rocking so bad back and forth you felt like it was really going to come off the tracks.  Shawn said at one point he held onto his stomach it was jiggling so bad!  The girls did great though and we found it to be a great way to travel!

After arriving at the train station we took two tuk tuks to the Thai/Laos border.  We had decided to just get our visa's here which turned out to be a good decision.  The people who already had their visas had to wait in the long line at passport control, but because we bought our visa there we just had it stamped behind the counter and someone walked us through to where we had to then get on a bus to take us across the border.  It could have also been because we had the 4 kids that it went fairly smoothly.  We did shamelessly use the kids to further our endeavors throughout the trip. 

As anyone who has ever traveled in Asia knows, there is no such thing as a line.  You do not wait in line anywhere. You simply push your way to the front if you want to do something.  Being nice and polite gets you nowhere.  So, when trying to get onto this bus to drive us across the border we had a strategic plan.  Shawn and Dad were going to get the luggage under the bus, then mom and I with all of the kids were going to muscle our way to get seats.  I have to say mom and I did great.  I did have to physically hold back an 80 year old woman from stepping all over Phoebe, but I was bigger and she was frail (but feisty) and so I managed to hold my arms out and block her and all who dared to get on the bus.  Even the geriatrics held no sway over me!  After safely seeing my children on the bus I did turn around and hoist granny up the stairs which had to redeem me in some small way.  It was then up to Dad and Shawn to actually make it on the bus.  We did have to fight to save them seats though.  Alas, everyone made it on and away we went.

We made it to Laos!  We took a car, plane, taxi, tuk tuk, train, tuk tuk, bus, van, but then we were there.  We finally made it to our wonderful hotel the Day Inn.  Not Days I might add, but Day Inn.  Maybe they forgot the S.

I have decided to post our Laos trip in installments.  It is the one thing I do not like about this site.  I spend forever downloading the stupid pictures, then if I lose a connection and haven't actually put the photos in the body of the blog I lose them.  In fact, I just lost about 30 pictures I had downloaded.  So, I will post in installments so as not to lose anything.

More soon!

Angkor Wat

So as you can see we finally made it up to Siem Reap where Angkor Wat and some other really amazing temples are located.  The drive up there was fascinating as usual.  I really think we should make a book of all the things that people cart around on the back of motos and trucks.  We of course saw the appropriate number of pigs, chickens, fish, people (the max we've seen to date is 6 + dog), but we had never seen any vehicle with so much wicker in our lives.

If you look closely there is a second man under the wicker...is he actually holding something up?  At least if it all falls on his head it won't be too heavy! 

After arriving in Siem Reap we decided to go to the main street and have some dinner and walk around.  They close off one road so it's quite nice walking around.  Our main event after dinner was having fish eat the dead skin off our feet.  Yes, you did read me correctly.  It was actually quite a bizarre experience and it really tickles.  It was quite humiliating for me though because with the exception of Dad, my feet were the most disgusting so the fish flocked to me.  Do fish flock?  Anyway, Shawn of course thought this was hilarious and took a million pictures of how many fish my feet had compared to the rest of the people who had their feet in the tank.  Since I am writing most of this blog I have chosen not to further humiliate myself and I have left most of these photos out. 

As you can see in this photo Dad has way more fish than me!

I will say that after sitting there for 30 minutes my feet did get really really clean!

These are Dad's feet.

So, after our feet cleaning, we headed back to the hotel to get some rest for our big trip to Angkor Wat.

Here is a photo of everyone in front of some of the ruins that are in the jungle.  This is where they filmed "Laura Croft  - Tomb Raider."  The pictures really don't do it justice. 

The girls!

Here are a few more pictures that were just cute.

We like to punk our kids out sometimes.









The next day we spent the morning at the Cultural Village in town.  We went to see a show where the actors performed traditional Khmer dances.  Greta really enjoyed this.  The performers kept laughing at her.  I think she was the star of the show.

They also had a small wax museum that represented Hell.  It was really quite fascinating and pretty scary.  This creepy guy skulked behind you and jumped out at you at various times.  We made the very foolish mistake of thinking the girls wouldn't be completely terrified and had to sprint through the last of the exhibition as all four of them were screaming bloody murder.  Shawn had to yell at the creepy dude to get him to go away.  Dad and I went back inside to really read the punishments for certain crimes.  I'm glad I never tried to breast feed in any temples!  Even knowing creepy guy would be coming, I still jumped and yelled quite a few times.  He grabbed my legs! 

Anyway, after that we had to make a quick potty break.  This is the sign we found in the toilet.

Ok, we get the no smoking and  I certainly will not take a shower. The third thing I don't really understand...don't clean your feet??  And the 2nd rule, well, Roger That!

After a wonderful trip to Siem Reap we headed home to Phnom Penh.  As fast food joints do not exist here, we had to make due with what they had as far as buying food on the road.  We bought of  few of these bamboo sticks filled with sticky rice and beans.  They weren't too bad, but mom didn't really like them.  She said they needed Soy Sauce!

We will write more about our trip to Laos in the next few days.

 We also just received notice that they put an article about Shawn as the cover story in The Tennessee Bar Association Journal.  It's a great article and we are really proud of him.  If you would like to read it just click on the link.  We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas season and a Happy New Year.
Tennessee Bar Journal Article

Greta's Birthday

Hello to everyone!
Things are going well here.  We haven't written in a while, but we're going to try to update this blog.  First of all, mom and dad have arrived and been with us for about 3 weeks now.  They arrived just in time for Greta's first birthday.  She is doing wonderful!  She walks and talks...a little in Khmer...and still doesn't sleep...at least not alone.  She does the cutest Khmer greeting where you put your hands together and bow.  Her first birthday went well.  We couldn't find any white cake mix so we got a strawberry one and mom put frozen strawberries on top...in the shape of a G.  We did manage to locate a candle so Greta still got to blow out her candle on her birthday!

She does look a little befuddled in this photo. 

She really loves to bounce on this thing.  We still have so much to share with everyone, so check back tomorrow for more photos and a few stories about our trip to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) and our 10 day trip to Laos. 

Happy Birthday Grandma

Happy Birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birrrttthhhdaay dear Grandma
Happy birthday to you

cha cha cha

we know we're one day early but we're not trusting the internet connection.

Birthdays, Motos and More

Hello to everyone,

We haven't written in a while as things have been pretty steady, but we have had a few important functions.  First of all, Mattie and Shawn had their birthdays.  Mattie turned 7 and she had not one but two birthday parties.  There is a movie theater of sorts here so we decided to invite all the girls from her class from school, plus a few others.  All of the kids had a good time and Mattie was very excited.
 As you can see it's not a real movie theater but a DVD player that projects onto a big wall.  There are big cushion on the lower levels, then there are padded wicker benches as you move up.  They are quite quite comfortable and it's sort of like watching a movie in your house.  The owners don't mind if you destroy it with popcorn as they just send their dog in there to clean up.  Not sure what that does for the poor animal but he doesn't seem to mind.







At one point I had to break up a food fight!

It's hard to tell but Mattie is holding Phoebe.

 She has worn the t-shirt that Sophia (one of her best friends from St. Edward)sent to her for her birthday about 10 times already.  It's her favorite.

We also had a movie party for Mattie the next day.  We invited all the children from Shawn's work to come.  We played Kung Fu Panda and everyone loved it.  Some adults even came without kids!  All in all I think she had a wonderful birthday.

We've been thinking about writing a book about all the things that one sees on the back of the motos.  Just the other day we saw 6 people and a dog.  I think that's our record.  I haven't heard of a 7 person sighting, but who knows, maybe it's out there.  Unfortunately I missed the photo op.  I got a little flustered as Shawn is screaming "get your camera...hurry...what are you doing...hurry....you missed it."   Anyway, it went like this...small child, driver, small child, adult with small dog, small child, adult holding a baby.  It was amazing as the small dog had his paws on the shoulders of small child #2 and was quite simply enjoying the ride.  Here are a few other things we've seen. 

We couldn't quite tell from a distance what this was, but upon closer inspection we realized.

                                                                          FISH


Then we finally got the photo that we have been trying to get since we arrived.  It is of the "chicken guy,"  although I should clarify that there are many "chicken guys."  We have learned that it is better for the chicken to be at the top of the pile as that way their beaks doesn't drag the ground as some people have seen.  I have never witnessed this.  All the chickens I have seen tied to the back of a moto, upside down, have been humanely treated.  Sort of.

Then, as we were returning from the Post Office...Yae all our packages arrived.  Thank you to Sophia and Sabrina and Grandma and Hilhu, we finally ran across the elephant.  I had the driver slow down and we got some great photos.

Look, they even put little shoes on his feet.  Or her feet, I didn't get that good of a look.

I almost forgot that we also passed this guy on his way home from what I'm assuming was the hospital since he is carrying his oxygen tank.  Let's hope they don't get in an accident.

The following pictures are of the girls and our helpers after we opened the box we received from Sabrina Farley-Allen.  She was very concerned that we would not be able to find Christmas decorations and Christmas things here in Cambodia so she petitioned her mom to send us a box.  Of course Liza came through and we received a box full of goodies.  The girls had a field day.  It was rather interesting to see Kim Sroy (on the left...she is the cook and cleaner) and Sopheap (nanny...name pronounced so-pee-up) put on raindeer antlers and hop around the apartment.  Kinda funny because they have never seen a reindeer, or snow, or Santa and are Buddhists.

 The girls did have a wonderful time putting on all of the things from the box.

Phoebe walked around like this for about 2 hours.

Greta walked around like this for about 10 minutes.











The picture below is the living room/maybe dining room area of our future house.  It's filthy now but they hopefully will get it clean before we move in.  They've been doing some work in it. 

The picture below is of the upper terrace.  It's huge and I really can't wait to plant some stuff up there.  I took some other pictures but you couldn't really tell anything as it was an empty room with a bed or just an open area.  We're supposed to move in in a week and we can't wait.

 

We hope all of you are doing well and we'll write more soon.  CIAO

Trip to Kep...The Beach

This past week the girls were out of school and Shawn was on vacation.  It was Water Festival here which  commemorates a tribal naval battle on the Mekong River several hundred years ago. The festival includes wooden boat races of 400 boats and 20,000 rowers.  The population of Phnom Penh doubles during this time so we decided to leave!

This picture is actually of a frigate boat (non-racing kind) decorated with scaffolding for the festival.




We headed to Kep.  The ride down there was quite the adventure.  It was a traumatic event just getting out of the city as we had to dodge motos and cars and people and tuk tuks and bicycles and dogs and children and cows and I could go on but I won't.  These are some of the things we passed on the road.

Yes that is a pig on the back of the moto.  From the back it looked like there was only one on the bike, but once we pulled along side and passed the guy, this is what we saw:

Yup, two pigs, nestled in to have a perfect fit on the back of the moto.  We traveled on a fairly decent road for a while.  By decent I mean paved with the occasional pothole.  We still only averaged about 30 miles an hour though.  Then we hit dirt.  Red dirt to be specific.  We were on this road for what seemed like forever.  In fact it was around 2 hours, give or take.   It was very hard to see at times, but the local people every now and then would water the road to cut back on the dust.  We heard they were working on the road to widen it and pave it eventually.

The road eventually got better and we made it to Kep, which is a small town by the beach.  Our hotel was beautiful.  It had a big pool, a great view and they let us bring Vesta with us!  The first night we got there was Halloween.  So because trick or treating was obviously out, we decided to have our own mini version of trick

or treating. 

The girls dressed up and asked a few of the workers for candy...we attempted to explain this ahead of time to the workers and children, then we hid candy around the grounds and they went in search.  The people there must have thought we were crazy when Princess Leia, Batgirl and Supergirl came running up to them.  Greta was a skeleton.  We did the best we could and the girls got candy which they were happy about. It goes without saying that the Buddhist do not celebrate All Souls Day and therefore did not develop the accompanying holiday Halloween.

Good times for all.

The next day we got up and went to the beach at Kep.  The sand and water was comparable to Galveston, which is not that great, and we were more of a tourist attraction than the real attractions.  There were no other foreigners on this beach so we really stood out.  At one point I looked up at the sea wall and there were about 30 people just staring at us.  They were not being rude, just curious, and they really love the kids.   Phoebe had to pose a couple of times for some people who wanted her picture.    Needless to say we only stayed at the beach for about 30 minutes then went back to the pool. 

The next day we hired a guide and headed to some caves, a pepper plantation and took a drive to the Vietnamese border.  The plantation was really neat as we had never seen how they grow pepper...on a vine like grapes. 

We also played a fun game of hide and seek here.   After the plantation we headed to the caves to a place called Wat Kirisan.  This Wat is a Buddhist temple built at the foot of a mountain that is riddled with over 100 caverns and passageways.  You walk in an underground passageway, check out the bats along the way and come out in this vine-draped hidden valley.  There is a reclining Buddha here, and various rock formations resemble various animals...turtle, dragon, eagle etc.  We didn't get to go all through the caves because many of them were flooded as we are at the tail end of the rainy season.  We also got to feed a some wild monkeys that lived on/in the mountain too. The kids liked the mama monkey and her babies.

 

After the caves we decided to drive to the Vietnam/Cambodia border.  Why we thought this would be a cool thing to do we have no idea, but we did it anyway.  It was only reported to be about 10 miles from where we were, but when you are traveling 4 miles an hour it takes a while.  The road was so bumpy that you really couldn't drive any faster.  Bumpy really isn't the word...gaping holes and/or craters that we had to manuever around would be more appropriate.  The drive itself was beautiful as we passed little villages with all the houses on stilts, some salt flats, water buffaloes, rice fields and beautiful palm trees. 

This section of the road wasn't too bad, and it was really beautiful.  The guide said that they wanted to expand the road which would mean they would have to cut down all of these palm trees.  I hope they don't do it.

Here we are at the border.  The bamboo pole painted red and white and a single guard was our gate that led to "no man's land" for about twenty feet then Vietnam. The Cambodian in the picture was our guide and a really nice guy, his Cambodian name was Rot but Emma kept calling him "that cool guy".

The Cambodians don't need a visa to go back and forth to Vietnam so the people were loaded down with items to sell.  We marveled over the fact that some of these vehicles could still run!

You have to look closely for the truck underneath all the stuff.

We also passed a rural gas station.  We learned that one of the drums had the better quality of gas.  We're not sure which one though!

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to which gas is better? Yellow or greenish? Now that we know these contain gasoline, we have seen about every color under the rainbow including green, red and brown. Our guide told us that the locals put some water in the gas to make a little extra money. He said its not a big deal as the engines just seem to miss/sputter a second or two and then get going again when some of the good stuff comes through the engine.














The next day we took out to Rabbit Island.  This place was full of islanders and foreigners and we had a wonderful time.  The girls did NOT like the boat ride out there and hung on to us for dear life.  It wasn't rough at all and they had on life jackets but they were concerned about sharks.  I don't really know why, but they were.  The beach was beautiful and the water clear and we had a wonderful day. The inner tubes were just like we were at Johnson's Creek.

The next day we went home.  It seems that no matter where we go or what we do we see neat stuff.  Here are a few things we saw on the drive back to Phnom Penh.

Not even sure what to say here but it looked like a converted tiller engine attached to a tractor of sorts. Whatever it takes, right? 

This was a dentist's office that we passed.  That was it.  Clearly no waiting room.  It was the best that they could do under the circumstances and we were amazed they managed to get the real chair and all!  I guess dentists the world over have a thing for blue chairs.


...Open....(I wondered about the swish/rinse/spit since no running water at this one).






So we made it back to PP without killing anyone and we had a wonderful time.  We're not sure where we'll head next, but we will write more soon.  We move into our house in a few weeks so I'm going to take pictures of it soon. We ventured back into the Russian Market which is really neat and you will want to see for yourselves when you all arrive. Thanks for reading and have a great day!