Luang Prabang, Laos

Oh yeah, I am sooooooooooooo coming back here. By far my favorite place on the trip. This village in northern Laos is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is sleepy and laid back and absolutely perfect. I’ll let the pictures do the talking….

Siem Reap Cambodia - Angkor Wat

So we picked up a new “boy” in Siem Reap. Sam is Tan’s business partner in the Kingdomof Cambodia and will be joining us on the rest of our trip. Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat…and all I can say is…wow. I used to say, “you’ve seen one wat, you’ve seen them all”…not so much with this one. We only had the chance to spend the afternoon, but really - could easily have spent a few days around the grounds. Pretty impressive.

After going on two weeks of “the boys” watching over me - clucking like a bunch of hens, I was feeling pretty restless. So when the boys asked me if I wanted to go “have tea with the King” (translates to go drink with their buddies), I kindly passed to take a dip in the pool and yes, get another massage. Those darn knots in my shoulders - I can’t seem to get rid of them!

When they came to pick me up for dinner, I again begged off to go walk around the night market in Siem Reap. Tan started clucking, and Sam came to my rescue “Tan, she has traveled a lot. She will be fine. I think she is like the lion that wants to escape from the zoo for awhile”. EXACTLY!! So, after supporting the local economy a bit, I took a tuk-tuk back and all is well!

I think I’ll need to check myself into rehab when I get home to kick myself of my lemongrass tea habit. It’s going to be tough going cold turkey if I can’t find it at home.

"Cambodia smells better than Vietnam"...

"Tan, perhaps that's because you're standing under a giant Jasmine tree"....ah yes, we reached Cambodia today!

We left "the boys" at the border - they're driving the van back to Hanoi, so Tan and I left this morning and took a speedboat up the Mekong to Phnom Penh. It's a 5 hour trip - probably about 45 minutes of which were a couple of stops for immigration. But hey, take your sweet ol' time with my passport buddy, I'll just sit here in the nice breeze and smell the jasmine tree.

Taking a boat of the Mekong struck me kind of like a train going from Italy to Switzerland - when you got on in Italy, it was late and dirty and somehow, magically, when you crossed the border it was clean and on time. Same goes for the banks of the Mekong - Vietnam side was full of houses/shacks/etc - the minute we crossed over to Cambodia the banks were full of beautiful green fields and agriculture...

We spent the afternoon touring the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda and a few other sites around the city, after which I got dropped at "Lucky Foot Massage" while Tan went and did business things. Now, for those of you that are already in the gutter on the "Lucky" part of Foot Massage - after all, we are in Cambodia - it wasn't lucky, but it was fabulous and a whopping $7 for an hour. Tan is going to hook me up for an even better deal when we reach Siem Reap tomorrow - home of the Angkor Wat.

Hope all's well at home....xoxo dmt