Travels

Good job, I told myself. Way to plan. Spend the dry season in Hanoi and start traveling when the monsoon season starts. Stellar.

It was the end of a Saturday on Ocheteaul Beach, and YuppieNomad and I sat on beach chairs next to low table, waiting for the sun to set. Vendors with grilled squid, salted prawns and fresh durian cried out for last calls.

YuppieNomad gave me a leaflet to read yesterday on the bus ride from Siem Reap to Pnom Penh.  She got it from the Landmine Museum set up by Aki Ra, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, ex-Vietnamese conscript, and an ex-UN worker. You can read his full story here,

Tour groups makes traveling boring, lazy, and sterile.  Tour guides can be informative, but they often follow a script and rarely do they know spontaneous information.

We also found a driver to take us around the temple complexes over three days.  We like him – he still has his baby fat and he's chill enough so that we negotiated down the price with little consequence.

Pleasant surprises are the norm in Laos, and maybe it's due to lowered expectations.