Laos, 23 Dec 2006 --

So I’m finding that getting behind in burning my pictures to DVD and uploading them is definitely not the way to go, as that just leaves me buried under four or five CF cards to burn and upload at once.

Fortunately, Cara and I found ourselves with several hours to kill in Pakse while waiting for our ‘VIP’ night bus to Vientiane to arrive, so I uploaded some pictures.  VIP treatment, by the way, nets you a blanket , a bottle of water, dinner in a styrofoam tray, and a ‘freshy towel’ on arrival…that and all the kareoke you care to listen to (or not) blared at top volume.  Fortunately, though, they turned off the music and the lights, and we managed some fitful sleep during the 9 hour ride.

At any rate, here are some miscelaneous pictures from Cambodia:

…pictures from my dirtbiking trip with Chai:

…and a few from Don Det (possibly the most relaxing place on the planet) in the 4000 Islands of southern Laos:

Pakse, by the way, was a surprisingly fun place to be.  Most people we’d met described it as pretty much a transit town, and Lonely Planet gives it all of half a page.  We decided to rent a motorbike and improvise a 3 day loop through the Bolaven Plateau, an agricultural area 1500 meters above the level of the Mekong similar to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia.

Southern Laos is already far removed from the tourist boom in the north, and the Bolaven Plateau is one step further still.  We found a jungle waterfall lagoon 1.5 km off the main road completely unoccupied (though there were ample signs and a rickety bamboo ladder to guide us to the falls), where I went for a swim.  We drove 20 km down a dirt road to the Dao coffee plantation where the owner’s daughter (who’d gone to school in Napa Valley) englightened us on the finer points of coffee growing over a fresh brewed cup of their Arabica.

Possibly most entertaining, though, was our experience trying to communicate with pretty much the entire population of a Lao mountain village to ask about the condition of the road ahead.  We’d just walked the bike down about 10 km of dirt roads much too steep to drive, and we were trying to figure out how far it was to the paved road and whether we could handle it on the bike or not.

The breakthrough moment came when the headman of the village started drawing on the ground with a lump of charcoal (the kids seemed to really find this funny).  Based on point to where we came from and draw a bunch of hills and point to where we were going and draw a flat line we decided to press on, and were glad to find ourselves rolling down a broad paved road only 10 km later.

We rode another 30 km and arrived in the friendly town of Sekong with half an hour of daylight to spare, and were happy to find a guesthouse with a friendly owner.  He even tuned our TV to ‘The Fashion Network,’ the only English channel on his satellite.

If we don’t post again before Christmas:  Merry Christmas from Vientiane, Laos!  Laos is most definitely not Christian, but I saw a gaudy fake Christmas tree in Pakse and we’re trying to track down more information on a possible turkey dinner special at a local restaurant.  Yay!

Cambodia, 13 Dec 2006 --

People like Chai are the key to the future of Cambodia.  Chai runs his own business, is an advisor to a tiny Swiss NGO that runs a free English school, started a program to teach sports to poor Cambodian children on his own initiative, and has sworn off lying completely (something he says comes as second nature to Cambodian men) since it almost cost him his Swiss girlfriend a few years ago.

I should back up, though.  When I first met Chai, I thought he was just a dirtbike driver.  I was looking for a way to reach the remote Preah Vihear temple on Cambodia’s northern border with Thailand.  The options I had found at the time were either too expensive:  The very pricy Hidden Cambodia company wanted to take three dirtbikes just to transport me to the temple; or were too unsafe:  Some backpackers make the 600+ km journey on dirt roads ravaged by the rainy season with local moped drivers who may speak little English and don’t have the tools to fix the bike (or their passengers) in case of emergency.

With prospects for my trip to Preah Vihear looking grim, I was lucky to see a sticker for “Chai offroad trip” on a Siam Reap telephone pole.  The fact that Chai has stickers, a website, and even large color advertisements on the back of ten of Siam Reap’s 3000+ tuk-tuks is impressive to say the least.  I later learned that Chai is president, administrator, graphic designer, and webmaster for “Chai offroad trip.” He taught himself FrontPage, Photoshop, and even Flash (something I have yet to master) to create his website.

So, one broken cell phone call and one brief meeting later, I found myself sitting on the back of a 250cc Baja XR dirtbike at 9 in the morning speeding northwards out of Siam Reap and wondering if heading into the Cambodian countryside with a local guy I just met was such a great idea.  Fortunately, though, after four days and three nights of exploring remote temples and experiencing true local culture, I found that Chai had become my new best friend in Cambodia.

Sitting behind Chai and clinging to the luggage rack of the dirtbike, I quickly came to greatly appreciate the fact that Chai is a very safe driver.  Chai has a helmet for himself _and_ his passenger, slows down for children, farm animals, and rocks, carries a first aid kit, and even turns on his lights when a passing truck kicks up enough dust to make us invisible to oncoming traffic.  While these may all seem like common sense safety precautions, the rarity of safe drivers in Cambodia is something that has to be seen to be believed.

The best thing about Chai, though, is that he’s really in this business to help Cambodians and to make friends.  After each bumpy day, Chai and I would sit and drink many, many cans of cheap Crown beer and discuss everything from the Khmer Rouge to relationship troubles.  From these conversations, I learned that Chai took his first trip through the region with his girlfriend a few years ago.

The same trip that now takes 5 days took them two weeks, because each time the bike broke down Chai and his girlfriend spent a few days in tiny villages waiting for spare parts to arrive.  It was during these long waits that Chai met the families we eat and sleep with on our trip, and as a result Chai has a strong commitment to only take tourists to Cambodian run businesses that he knows will really benefit from the income. I should note that the bike only broke down once on the trip, and Chai was able to fix the problem within minutes using the tools he carries.  Chai now has a contract with a local bike shop that guarantees they will bring a new bike by truck to anywhere Chai has a problem that he can’t fix on the road.

Chai also gives 3% of his income from the tours he leads to the Salariin Kampuchea (Schools in Cambodia) organization he works for, which is laudable in a country where most people either just want to get rich off the tourist boom, or are too poor to think about others.  It is through working with this free English school where Chai got the idea to start a sports and fitness program for the kids.  Once a week he runs, cycles, or plays basketball with the children as time and equipment availability allows.

Every week, Chai tells the kids to show up at a certain time, and every week they arrive half an hour early begging him to start even earlier.  Often, children of poor Cambodian families seem so starved for something to do that when we would pull up on the dirtbike we would find an ever growing group of children who just wanted to see what the crazy foreigner on the big bike was going to do next (granted, we probably looked like astronauts with the motorcycle helmets, but still…).

I realize I haven’t provided many details of the trip itself, which was nothing sort of perfect.  Chai showed me broad vistas at Anlung Veng and the spectacular Preah Vihear: an ancient Angkor temple at the top of a 600m cliff overlooking the Cambodian plains with an access road so steep and fractured that we had to ride specialy customized motor bikes to the top.  He took me to a variety of oddly non-judgmental monuments to the architects of the Khmer Rouge government in the 70s:  Pol Pot’s grave, Pol Pot’s house, Ta Mok’s grave, Ta Mok’s house and so on.  We sang kareoke songs in Khmer at the top of our lungs in villages where I have no doubt I was the only westerner for miles.  Chai and I spent several long lunches sitting with Cambodian families in their small shack houses at the side of dirt roads eating deliciously simple Khmer food and talking Cambodian politics as the chickens and cows meandered idly by.

Still, though, the real story here was Chai.  He was the best part of my month in Cambodia, and I consider myself lucky to count him as a friend.  As I said, people like Chai are the future of Cambodia…I just hope there are enough of them to go around.

You can plan your Cambodian dirtbike adventure with Chai at http://www.chaioffroadtrips.com