Phnom Penn

I took the bus back to

Phnom Penn and stayed at Number 9 Guest house on a lake in the city.

Traffic was crazy and so was the pollution from the motor cycles. I saw the Killing fields and S-21. Both were made famous by Pol Pot. In te tree years he was in power, managed to kill 25 percent of his own people. When accused of the crime his response was --he did not sign any death warrents. Good lawyer.

The capacity to use motorycles for large projects is remarkable. Here a man is hauling live ducks.

From Angkor Wat to Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I took several buses and boats to get to Sihanoukville. The first boat was a small one to take us out to Tonle Sap lake were the larger and faster boat took us via lake and river to Pnom Phenn. The embarkation point is a sewage system with a village around it.

The fast boat was pretty amazing. We went by floating villages. Lots of houseboats.

On the Banks of the Tonle Sap river, the food is produced from farming, which employs pumps to irrigate the field in the dry season and fishing which was everywhere on the river.

The long boats are propelled by gas engines that swivel to direct the propeller to all orientations. To drag a net, the long boats extend a net from extensions on the front and back and propel the boat laterally

I took the first bus to Sihanoukville. The bus had two waitresses. A four hour ride, air conditioned, for $6 including snacks. Go figure.

Sihanoukville is a remarkable place. It has, of course white sandy beaches and hundreds of beach side shacks providing the usual for the usual suspects. Victims of land mines walk by asking for money. Blind men are led around by beautiful children doing the same. An elderly lady brought an very old man by. Hard to say no....

When the currents are right, lots of trash washes up on the shore. At first they tried to bury it in the sand. Several of us pointed out that the plastic would not decay if buried and would soon be exposed. So we all got in the water and helped collect the trash. Wonder where it comes from.




I spent four days in Sihanoukville. Mostly sitting in one of the beach-side shacks thinking about thermodynamics, sterling engines, sail boats and Cambodia.

Assuming the folks here are so inclined, I believe it is relatively easy to develop indigenous technologies to decrease dependence on foreign oil and foreign capital. Cambodia is a sunny place that has relatively low energy demands. Solar powered Sterling engines could easily supply all non-mobile energy needs. There are very simple sterling engine driven water pumps. On the beach they are blessed with plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind. Their energy needs are low: there is very little AC and refrigeration. A couple square meters of solar collectors and a 1 meter windmill on each shack could supply the bulk of the electric power needs. Due to the enormous amount of available solar and wind energy, these engines could be simple (sacrificing efficiency for cost) and made locally as opposed to buying a much more efficient and powerful solution abroad.

The boats in the rivers, lakes and oceans are not used continuously. While sitting idle, the sunshine and wind might charge simple batteries to supply the power needed for electric propulsion. This would reduce the need to buy gas and potentially the need to buy electricity.

Sterling engines and small wind generators are simple technologies relative to the ubiquitous motor cycle, cell phones and Internet. Since everyone knows how to operate and maintain them, there should be only a small learning curve to adopt these new technologies. I think getting people to switch to these new technologies would be quite challenging because it would be offered by an outsider, who naturally is not familiar with precise needs, politics, hidden costs, corruption and other pre-occupations.

I am off to Phnom Penh today and then to Brussels tomorrow.

Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), Cambodia

Angkor Wat is in a forest. The trees grow all over the buildings.

It is hot here. Hot like DC in July. Add lots of dust and lots of diesel and noise. Some people wear surgical masks to keep out the dust and fumes. The worst is being on the back of a motor bike stuck in congested traffic, behind a bus. You end up breathing exhaust in addition to dust.

The main strip is loaded with big hotels. It has the look of Atlantic City. Five star places next to lots of run down places.

There are lots of Korean groups here. They travel in groups through the temples and out to dinner. Buses take the whole group from place to place. Many more 5 star hotels are being built in Siem Reap. However there are a finite supply of temples to see, so expect in the next few years all the temples will be a circus. Maybe casinos are next...

One place, frequented by locals, has three TVs on a wall. Each playing a different show. About a hundred chairs are placed so people can come in a watch them.

Shade trees are in short supply. Despite the heat and lack of AC, many folks go out of their way to kill trees on the side of the road. I guess they are getting in the way of something.

Then there is the curse of the common. The streets are loaded with trash and dust, though the houses are clean.

Poverty is expressed much more conspicuously here than Laos. Walking around Angkor, everyone including Buddhist monks have a tried and true means to get money from tourists. Cute children try to sell postcards. Buddhist try to get their future education paid for. For a dollar a day I could send a monk to university. I doubt it is a scam because they are monks and it does make sense to ask tourists for a little payback on 2,600 years of amazing architecture.

I spent two days seeing all the temples I could. We went on a 100 Km trek to a temple that few bother to go see because it is too far and not as big as Angkor Wat. The far out temple I saw was notably occupied by the Khmer Rouge and then by Hollywood, to film a movie, like Tomb Raiders.

After a while some children joined me and pointed out which way to go in the deserted temple. In one place bats flew out as I walked in...

The motor bike ride was just as interesting as the temple. I got to see loads of villages on the way and see the amazing use of bicycles, trucks and motor bikes.

Gas is sold in Johnnie Walker bottles by road side stands. They have gas stations. Maybe not enough though.

Trucks are often heavily loaded, well beyond any manufacturers rating. So are motor bikes.

My motor bike driver for two days was Mr Vireak (vireak02@yahoo.com) his cell phone is (855) 12 86 30 16. He drove my around for about 200 Km and I got to see a lot more of the off-the-beaten-path stuff. For this, I am very grateful to Mr Vireak. I recommend him to any one visiting the temples in Siem Reap. The back of a motor bike is probably less safe than a bus and not as comfortable, but I got to see a lot of stuff in Cambodia up close.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

CM is a relatively big, hot town with gobs of Tuk-Tuk, mopeds, cars and food stalls. I am staying in the northwest corner of the old walled city. They have Starbucks, 7-eleven and ATMs. Obviously the Thai are flooring it towards modernity.

I am in a typical tourist ghetto: everyone sells planes tickets, bus rides, massages, treks, rafting, elephant rides, beer, smokes, laundry, rent anything and places to stay. Stream-of-consciousness travel is the norm. I stay at places until I get excited about someplace else. I am leaving for Angkor Wat tomorrow. I just went into some places, handed over $250 and came back a day later. No receipt. Why bother, especially if you have no cash registers.

The Thai appear genuinely pleased to offer assistance whenever I ask. I appear genuinely thankful.

The Thai would like to be whiter. They buy cream to look whiter and many of the TV personalities and persons in advertisement are lighter skinned. Conversely many of the northern Europeans want to tan.

Organization of large groups appears effortlessly as, no doubt, the Thais have been serving tourist the same way for quite some time. When I went to my cooking class this morning, the tuk tuk driver just showed up to pick me up and then meander through the maze of alleys to pick up. Clockwork, I tell you.

It is perfectly normal now to pack 10 people into a car the size of my pick up truck (can only carry 3 people in the US...). Remarkable. In traffic, a dog was simply sitting on the back seat of moped as the owner maneuvered through traffic.

I stopped by a used book store and got two books for Cambodia. I'll fly there tomorrow. One is a academic biography of Pol Pot and the other was The Rape of Nanking by the Japanese in WWII. My alternative choice was TVs most Hilarious Bleeps, Bloops and Blunders Volume 17.

The cooking course was a blast. Exceptionally well run too. We all met up in a large covered back yard with about 20 burners and 20 woks. After coffee we went to the market (via tuk-tuk of course) and learned all about ingredients. We cooked about 8 dishes and ate all of them. I go a cook book to . Typically the cont ruction of the facility was, unplanned shoddy but highly functional. Dogs where running around the whole time. Great course I am psyched to have people over. Several of my fellow cooking students were engineers. We started talking about solar powered air conditioners and solar heaters and the environment. Did you know Melbourne is going to run out water in 3 years? Kriykey!

Afterwards, the Dutchman remarked that it will take a long way to get where your going if you are walking in the wrong direction. He was talking about getting back to the guest house through the maze of streets. I thought he was talking about Bush. Zing!


Last night we we went to see a Muay Thai boxing match entirely produced for the sake of tourist. I think the fights were real though. Our waitress was formerly a guy. I think, alternative sexual orientation is much more normal in Thailand. Anyway we drank a bunch and stumbled home.

I meet people on the fly all the time. After thirty seconds after I said goodbye to Nancy and Fredo, I met a Swiss girl (don't worry Kris) who I have been travelling with for three days. She came here via the trans-Siberian railway through Mongolia China and Laos. My 6 week itinerary is relatively lightweight, most people I meet travel for 3 to 6 months. OK off to the night market and street vendor food.

From Luang Nam Tha, Laos to Chiang Mai, Thailand

I am in Chiang Mai Thailand. It took two days to get here from Luang Nam Tha. From Luang Nam Tha to Huay Xai on the Thai border, the bus broke down 4 times. It kept getting flats because the road was mostly dirt and the bus was overloaded as are most public conveyances.

The Lao are not proactive about maintenance. Apparently they wait for failure to occur and are well prepared to make fixes in the field.

The road is have paved and is scraped through the mountains.

We were rescued on one occasion by a pick-up truck carrying 16 people and their luggage on the same 200 KM trip. This truck is nearly identical to my Toyota Tacoma.

This morning I said goodbye to Fredo and Nancy from Quebec. I travelled with them for a week. Great folks.

So far, Thailand is very modern and as sophisticated as the west. The cities are clean except for the air which is polluted by the ubiquitous diesel engines and dust. But my place tonight is still$6/night and includes a pool.

The Thai love their king as proclaimed in many large posters on the highway. Coincidentally it is illegal to say bad things about the king or to step on money (which has the Kings face on it). I like the king too.

Tomorrow, I'll see Chiang Mai and figure out how I am going to get to Cambodia.

Travels around Luang Namtha, Laos

For the second day I rented a motorbike. In the morning I took highway 3 west towards Huay Xai. Great road as it had no traffic, was well paved and surrounded by mountains. The only thing I had to worry abut were pigs and chickens crossing the road. Why? The highway abruptly turns to dust 15 Km. This is where the contruction continues another 100 km to Huay Xai. I travelled on it for a bit, but the dust was too much.

I took some side roads which were always unpaved. I drove through several black thai villages. The motorbike is the best way to get around. It cost $5/day and gas is only $3/gallon.

Tomorrow I am off to Huay Xai and Thailand.

Motor Bike trip From Luang Namtha to Muang Sing

Went on a great motor bike trip today. I'll stay in Luang Namtha another day. More later...

Trekking for three days near Luang Namtha, Laos

I went on a three day trek in the hills to the west of Luang Namtha. We (nine of us) started of with a tour of a local village on the road to Muang Sing (the start of the golden triangle).

The little huts on stilts are for storing rice. From there we hiked along a stream into old growth jungle.

Later we hiked into a bamboo forest. We stopped at a series of huts for the evening. Nearby was a cave that we explored.

For dinner we had sticky rice, water buffalo and sticky rice. The group was French, French-Canadian, Swiss and Israeli. Banana leaves are used as table cloths. We ate with our hands. The French were sick with food poisoning from eating raw fish from the Mekong. What were they thinking.

On the second night we stayed in a ghost town. The Akha village was resettled outside the national park and closer to the road were the younger people in the village wanted to be. The village was serene and relatively clean. Usually the ground is bare and the covered with animal droppings...

For firewood we cannibalized the abandoned buildings. The Akha came from Tibet about 300 years ago. They do not have a written language. There town can be best described as a dump or as bacteria haven.

I suspect the rapid urbanization and growth in Laos has naturally led to the transfer of the relatively unhygienic habits endemic of village life to the towns. In the rural area, just dumping all the waste at the edge of town may be sustainable and tolerable, but as the density goes up, this habit is multiplied and is conspicuously nasty. While the Lao people and the government intend to become more modern, there are many areas that they are leaving unattended until the future. It is not stupidity or sloth, just the inability to see the consequence of bad habits in a sustainable rural environment transferred to an unplannedurban environment that won't sustain it. From what I have heard of travellers in China, the pollution in Beijing is the full expression of going too fast in consumption and ignoring the consequences of environmental neglect. Beijing plans to build an aquaduct from one of its major rivers to Beijing. Unfortunately the rivers are heavily polluted. So anyone overly concerned with the rapid growth of China should consider that China, for the sake of its future growth, is going to have to spend heavily to upgrade its habits a to avoid living in a country that will become a giant cesspool.

The farm machinery and mopeds are exceptionally inefficient at burning fuel. For the individual this pollution is small, but when multiplied, busy city streets become choked with unburned gas, which added to the dust and heat makes some of the towns a real hell.

Deforestation is happening rapidly. The trees are a very valuable source of cash and the cleared land can be used for farming.

I am having dinner tonight with the French Canadians. Tomorrow we will rent mopeds and ride to Muang Sing. After that I'll head east to Chiang Mai in Thailand, then south to Cambodia.

Luang Namtha is a frontier town. Old Chinese tractors drive main street, kicking up loads of dust and belching smoke. There is a massive amount of contruction, apparantly funded by the Chinese. The owner of Green Discovery disappeared a month ago on his way to the airport. The night before his house was lit on fire with gas. I guess he made some enemies...

Luang Namtha near China

I took a nine hour bus today from Luang Prabang to Laung Namtha. We stopped at two bus stations on the way fro lunch and a snack. The first one long ago sank too deep to be called a dive. The road was mostly paved. Saw lots of deforestation and lots of rice paddies. Suprisingly little traffic.

LN is a dusty town abuth 30 miles south of China. A lot of goods from China come in from here. Everythme a truck drives by dust blows into the internet cafe. I am staying at a guest house for $6 a night. Had dinner with two just-graduated high school students who have been travelling for several months. I think I convinced them to go hiking in Nepal.

Last night I got a tour of Luang Prabang vie Harley Davidson motorbike. we went to tow "discos" were the well off in LP go to dance.

Tomorrow I will go on a three day trek in the national park with Green Discovery. It will be all trekking.

Biking, hiking and kayaking between Ban Sieu and Pak Xeng

About 15 miles north of Luang Prabang and about 30 miles west of Pak Xeng we started biking on the dirt road that runs parallel to the river. We passed many small villages located between the road and the river.

In the first village we visited was a black smith making knives for use in the jungle. The bellows used to make the fire very hot was made of a large bamboo tube.

We rode along the road for about 20 miles before stopping for the evening. After setting our bags down we went to the river for a cool dip.

When I came back, two of the girls in our group were playing cards with a few of the men (not for money, though). A big group of folks gathered around to watch and a good time was had by all. The Lao were talking up a storm and having great fun at our expense. They think our pointy noses are funny...

We sat down for dinner of sticky rice and duck and went to sleep by 8.

In the morning after a big breakfast and Nescafe, we crossed the river and started a long steep climb into the jungle. It seems they prefer the direct route in Laos. While it got hot quickly at least it wasn't wet, which would make the trails impossible. Sarah came down with heat stroke about half way to our destination in the mountains and eventually threw-up. But she kept going perhaps because there was not much of an alternative.

We hiked through forests of bamboo and teak. In the hills they grow dry rice (unlike near the river where much more productive paddies are used to grow wet rice. The farmers have begun burning the fields to clear them and kill-off the pests. In this heat and at the steep inclines there is no practical alternative. The dry rice fields are let fallow for several years as the land won't produce after the first year.

The villagers make there own gun powder for the small caliber flint lock guns they use to shoot birds. I saw them bounding charcoal in a mortice and then adding sulfur. Urea was in plentiful supply...

In many the villages the waste water and garbage run out of town in a mini-swamp thoroughly picked over by ducks, chickens, pigs and dogs (but not cats). Before the arrival of plastic bags this running compost heap would have looked natural, but it looks like a real dump know. I suspect the sight has become completely normalized. There are no latrines and no showers.

The villages are essentially barnyards that people live in. Dogs, chickens and ducks wander in and out of the houses looking for floor scraps. So the ground is picked clean by their combined work. They are not fed directly and they are not kept as pets though the dogs are sometimes used for hunting.

Not need to worry about ornery dogs or other animals, I think they were bred to keep their cool and thus avoid being next in line for dinner.

Lots and lots of children. They were all healthy and as far as I could tell, spent the whole day playing and laughing.

We had lunch in a hut in a Hmong village. FYI: they believe in spirits and are not Bhuddist as they are in LP and the rest of Laos.

When we showed up for our second evening in a village way up in the hills I was immediately invited in for drinks with several gentlemen who were traveling teachers for the local villages. The oldest, 61, a Mr Bouvien, spoke French so I could converse with him. We spoke in English, French and Lao. They wanted to know if I was married, how much teachers make in the US, (they made between $300 and $600/year). However they did point out they had a house and all I had was an apartment. They did not understand the possibility of snow or a frozen river. After 7 shots of Lao Lao I called it quits and joined the others for dinner. Sticky rice, duck meat, cooked vegetables, chili paste and broth.

For entertainment we played riddles with a set of candles (example: moving only two candles get the ball to be outside of the box). With nothing else to occupy us we had a great time. Without a doubt the Lao spend a lot of time laughing and joking around.
They are subsistence farmers. When Laos turned communist in 1975, the government tried collectivizing farms but gave up in three years after they concluded it would not work. They let the existing means of production revert back to the ways that had been in practice since god knows when.

However, the Lao government is moving the less accessible villages down to the river from the hills, presumably to allow greater access to education, goods and the rapidly modernizing economy. When they pave the dirt road, the traffic will increase substantially and among other things make playing in the road a lot less safe. Right now all that goes by are local traffic by small truck and a few mopeds

Today we hiked out and down to the river to complete the third leg of our trip: Kayaking. I swam across the river to cool off from the brutal hike down. The river was low, so lots of class 1 stuff of now consequences. We stopped a beach for a swim. There were water buffalo crossing the river, fishermen running nets across the river.

When we walked from the river to the truck, several villagers were slaughtering a pig in common wash basin.

On the way back to LP we stopped to drop of the kayaks at the owners house. Next door there were about forty people having a barbeques and gambling on cock fights. Nice neighbors...