Tick Tock Tick Tock

The days are numbered and the plans have been made. We are taking this time now to tell everyone that we are not coming home. We have booked a flight to Australia and are going to spend some time making some money so we can keep traveling. After Australia we are going to India for several months and then we might think about returning to Canada. Oh hum, wishful thinking I might say. I know we can do whatever we want, but traveling has installed somethings into us that we feel like we need in Canada, like a home to call our own. A place for all our possessions and our own piece of mind. Plus we moved, so it'll feel like we are still traveling. Can't wait to hit the distant travelling road again, its just this road stops three weeks from now. Now I know that your thinking three weeks is still a long time, but let me tell you, it feels like we could wake up tomorrow and be heading home. Time disappears when your traveling, days and numbers just vanish away into the hot sunny days and cool air conditioned nights. Well anyways, time to get you up to date on our travels.

Laos, we spent about two and a half weeks in Laos. Absolutely loved it. We last posted from the stupid highly avoidable party town of Vang Veing. From there we back tracked and headed back north to Phonsovon, a town that was bombed to pieces during U.S secret war. It was there we had our first experience with begging. I went out for some snacks and had 4 kids follow me, pulling my shirt and trying to ask me to buy them food. We had travelled for two months and that was the first time. (Just a tid bit of a mental note for all you travel avoiding junkies, its really been easy and very safe) Anyways, we walked the town and found nothing of interest. I did however get a haircut in some wooden shack, it cost me one whole dollar or about 10 000 kip. We believe that I was the first white persons hair he had ever cut. He was very excited and did a great job. When my hair hit the floor it blended in with all the other black hair on the floor like I was just another regular customer. So we took a day trip the next day and went to see three sights of the Plain of Jars, no one knows how old they are or what they may have been used for. They were pretty cool and the area around them had seen some intense battles when the Americans dropped of 3 million pounds of bombs in the one provence and something in the trillions through out the entire eastern boarder between Laos and Vietnam. One third of all bombs did not detonate upon impact leaving the country highly unmanageable and village kids digging the live bombs up for money from the scrap metal on the black market. At the first sight of the plain of jars there were large bomb craters and many trench holes dug out for the battles. The grass has grown in and over, but you can still see the sights and if you put your ear to the wind you can still hear the sounds of the bombs going off, or maybe that was my stomach has it had been a long day so far :) So three sights in all and one "Russian Tiger Tank", (well the frame off it) and that was our day. Oh ya, "whiskey village" we stopped in a village home and were witness to Lao Lao being made. Our strongest yet.

We left Phonsovon the next day and then were off to capital city Vientiane. The bus ride was long (13hrs) and very uncomfortable with no fans or a/c, just Kelly drugged out on gravol and others being sick in plastic bags. The bus was so full, people were sitting on plastic chairs in the isle. We got off the bus and flukly ran into our new/old friend, Kelly and my adopted son/single traveller friend Greg, whom we had met on the slow boat ages ago. Any who, he was staying at some dive and the capital was expensive, so we spent a day and visited some sites and then booked a night bus to a place called 4000 islands, southern Laos.

It was love at first sight. About fours years ago the islands only had 9000 visitors a year and now just a little over 200 000 a year. Laying in a hammock and bicycling around the island was how we spent our days, mainly the hammocks. We decided one day to cycle out to where you can catch a boat to see some near extinct river dolphins. What a great time it was, maybe if we had left at 9 in the morning and not three in the afternoon it would have been a different day. The signs said only three kilometers, but somehow I think the measuring tape was a little off, maybe a whole heck of a lot off. We rented a boat when we got there and with only two hours of sun light left we spent one of them out on the boat waiting to see dolphins. We were rewarded by seeing them several times, we considered that lucky cause quite often nobody sees them. When we got back to shore it was a Lance Armstrong dash back across two islands to get back home. We got about a half hour down the path before the sun went down, we would have gotten a lot further but Greg's bike was a large P.O.S and he was struggling and very close to giving up. With Kelly's motherly encouraging and my fatherly anger we manged to push forward into the darkness until it was too dark, or until Kelly rod her bike right into a water buffalo that was crossing the path thus causing a chain reaction of me hitting the breaks and Greg falling into the ditch, tre funny. Either way, it was time to walk. With lightening lighting up the path we somehow thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And when the rain came and hard it was, we found shelter in some empty farmers hut that I was able to spot only due to the lightning. We stayed for about twenty mins and then said screw it and got drenched for our next hour and a half walk back home. I forgot to mention that our island only had power from 6-9pm in some areas, only powered by a generators. Its very dark at night when the moon was behind clouds. We stayed about four days and then disembarked to Cambodia. We wish that we could have stayed longer, as it has been in the top three so far on this trip. Laos has been our favorite place, the people were very friendly and always smiling. We regret not having more time to spend there.


Cambodia has slowly grown on us, it started off bad, smelling of burning garbage everywhere and had a feel of maybe India. Cambodia's past has made this place a very interesting history lesson. With the genocide only thirty years ago and a entire generation lost things are different here. Yesterday we taxied it out to Angkor Wat, it cost 20 U.S dollars a person/per day to go into the park. We met a tour guide at the front door of Angkor Wat and the next three hours were spent in awe of the magical temple. Angkor Wat is about 2 sq. kms with a large moat built around the entire place. It was built back in the 11 hundreds as a place of worship and a tomb for the King. It was stunning and the area around has several other sites that can be visited and climbed on :) We spent the whole day and watched the sunset upon a hill top temple. It was awesome. We even took a tethered hot air balloon high into the air to get birds eye view of it all. Well I'm getting eaten alive and my patients for typing on a keyboard with no lettering and sticky keys has run out. Time to relax some more :) such a tough life!

On a side note, Kelly wants to inform that Cambodia's bathrooms, sorry toilets have been very clean and she is very happy about that.
We would love to post pictures, but have already lost three hundred pictures due to getting viruses when we upload. Can't risk it anymore. We'll do it all when we get home.