Au Cambodge...

Cambodia... Very very different not only from Laos, but also from Thailand. In Laos, our clan could be heard chanting "woop woop" the second woop in a high pitched tone. In Cambodia, although the wooping continued, it just didn't quite feel the same there. The tone felt more sober, probably mostly because of the heavy recent history...

Our first stop was Siem Reap where we quickly discovered that one of the major differences with the other two southeast asian countries is how well Cambodians speak English. They speak well enough to joke around, actually understand sarcasm, and get into fights with tourists. Cambodians are characters. Our first tuk tuk driver attempted to scam us, and when I raised my voice, he raised his back (something I am not used to after Thailand, see my note on saving face). Finally, we just got into another tuk tuk.

We spent 2 days at Angkor Wat, which was incredible. We hired a guide, well worth it, if anything just to speak to a native Cambodian and for him to tell us about his country and its insane history. I don't really know what to say about Angkor Wat, apart from yes it's really impressive and yes if you find yourself in this part of the world, do not miss it!

On my last day in Siem Reap, we went and checked out the Floating Village. I have never seen anything like this place. It is literally a village floating on water. Houses , stores, and even schools are floating on the main lake in Cambodia, Tonle Sap. Cambodia is supposedly huge with fish and they mostly come from this lake.

After 3 days in Siem Reap where I spent some time with my long lost roommate Jen who happened to be there at the same time, I left from Phnom Penh. I temporarily separated from the clan, in order to make sure I would be back in Bangkok in time to meet up with my friends and to get an x-ray... I arrived in Phnom Penh and checked into Happy guesthouse, a very happy place indeed. The rooms were disgusting, but the back deck area made the place worth it. I met a whole new crew of wonderful people, including Darragh from Ireland and Ariane from Montreal. Darragh and I went to the Killing Fields and S21 together the next day... We had only just met, but seeing the vestiges of the tragedy that unfolded in Cambodia together definitely made us fast friends.


I'm not sure I have the energy to delve into the Cambodia's past, but essentially there was a mass genocide in the 70s, orchestrated by the Khmer Rouge regime headed by the tyrannical Pol Pot. Things didn't really get better until well into the 90s.
Anyone who was slightly educated was tortured and brutally killed. S21 is the prison where a lot of this was done. A very difficult day indeed.


A couple days later, my new friends and I went to a dump, where 150 families live, to feed the children. I met a French nurse and I helped her disinfect the numerous wounds the children had. When we arrived on our truck, the children were running towards us, they knew who we were. I mentioned that Cambodians speak beautiful English, even these children at the dump spoke well - arguably better than the Thai English teachers at my school - shocking. The little girls and boys were adorable and smiled the entire time. At one point, I was overwhelmed with emotion, but stopped myself from showing it, who am I to cry when these children live here and are smiling? Leaving was hard... We were there for an hour, but these kids live here indefinitely. I would recommend to anyone who is traveling to Phnom Penh to do this. You know and see your money going to the right place.
This was undoubtedly one of my most memorable experiences perhaps on my entire trip.




I said Cambodia was sobering and now you can understand why. My last stop in Cambodia though was much lighter. I headed down to the coastal town Sihanoukville. The coast was lovely, but skippable. I mostly enjoyed it because I reunited with the family and Ariane on my last few days and just relaxed, that's pretty much all I did.

My venture back to Thailand yesterday was of course not without drama. As my friend Ben wrote to me, I don't know what I have been doing to attract all this bad karma (he suggested I've been flushing puppies down the river every night) !? Ha, no I joke, I know how lucky I am, especially after being in Cambodia, broken hand and all, I wouldn't trade my life with anyone, not for a second...

Anyway, I had been told to enter Cambodia as a French citizen, because of Cambodia's relationship with France. I wanted to come back to Thailand as an American, because of my teaching visa. I was not allowed back in as an American, because I had been stamped out of Cambodia as a French citizen, and Thais were apparently not allowed to let me in on a different passport. It worked with Laos, but Thailand is apparently more serious, ha - who knew? So I found myself dealing with a lovely little fee to extend my visa, nice.

Back in Bangkok, it is seriously pouring! I thought this was the dry season? I went and got my hand x-rayed again today, and much to my dismay, my bone looks pretty broken still. The doctor reassured me "Don't worry!!" Apparently, it's all about the functionality of my hand, and my body is a magic machine, bla bla bla. Anyway, it is what it is , right?

These two posts have taken me forever to write with one and a half hands and I will likely not be doing this for a while again. I am heading to the islands for 3 weeks of straight beach bumming, jealous? Dominique arrives tonight (yay!) and tomorrow we leave. I'm so excited. So many people are meeting up including Mariel, Kirsten, Alicia, Marianne, Claudia, the list goes on and on...

I will be uploading my pics to facebook soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

PS: Tomorrow is April 1st, meaning my last month in Asia, meaning I get to see many of you again soon, I can't wait!!!!!

Laos Laos - more adventures....

So it's taken me forever to update this thing, and most of you know why... Well yes I am lazy, this is definitely true, but I have a real excuse (!) - in fact it's going to take me twice as long to write all of this because of it... For those of you who did not know this already, I have broken my hand. It's now been 4 weeks since the unfortunate incident, and I can report that my hand is still broken - more about that later.

I left Chiang Rai on Sunday March 1st when Marianne arrived from her little town. I met her at the bus station and minutes later, we were on our way to Chiang Khong, the border town with Laos. That 3 hour bus ride was pretty much the only time she and I truly spent together, because that very night, we met the kids who would become our traveling family. Daddy Calvin (ironically the youngest of the clan) from Toronto, Mommy Matt (definitely not a woman, but our apparent mother nonetheless) from Bristol, and Zoe and Claudia two more English girls who already knew each other from "uni." Needless to say, after 4 weeks of traveling with Brits, I now speak with the British accent. Ha, no that would be pretty ridiculous if that were true. But I have to say those English expressions are catchy. I've even caught myself saying things like "loo roll" or "spag bol." Spag bol means Spaghetti bolognese by the way, I'm not sure why the English found the need to abbreviate and uglify one of the most delicious dishes ever, but so it is. I digress.

We woke up bright and early the next day to cross over to Laos. Let me preface this post with this: March was anything but drama-free. I'd been looking forward to a relaxing last couple months before heading back to the stress of reality. Apparently though, that was not in the cards, literally! The moment I arrived in Laos, the drama began. Within seconds, the Laos officials managed to LOSE my French passport. Not quite sure how that happened, but they wound up finding it a few hours later. I tried to ask what had happened, but you learn to just be happy with the moment. They had found my passport and that was all that mattered. But I guess it was an omen or something...

We took the slow boat down to Luang Prabang, which I recommend to anyone. It was the PERFECT introduction to Laos. As the name specifies, the boat trip is slow and that's what you need in Laos. I thought Thailand was a slow country, but Laos makes Thailand look efficient - crazy. I fell in love with the lethargic atmosphere though, it's impossible not to let yourself slow down to the pace of the Mekong, as per the Laotian way of life. We met so many interesting people on the boat including an awesome French family who decided to take the year off and travel around the world with their two children. This made me realize I want to be like them when I grow up! I also met Heather and Jason, the coolest couple from Seattle, and Patrick from Bristol, sort of.

We arrived in Luang Prabang two days later after spending a night in Pak Ben, a little village essentially populated with overnight travelers like us. Now the previous day I had told my new friends about my meeting with a Tarot card reader in Chiang Mai. One of the more notable things this tarot card reader told me was to not get onto a motorbike during my travels, because I would get into an accident. What did Juliet decide to do when she arrived in Luang Prabang, day 3 of traveling? Get on a motorbike! To be fair, we decided that if I wasn't actually driving the motorbike, it would be ok. So when Heather and Jason said they were heading to the famous Luang Prabang waterfalls by motorbike, Patrick offered to take me along. There was something eerie in the air that day... Moments before leaving, a mosquito bit my left arm and I sta

rted bleeding. a lot! Anyway, I got onto that motorbike and just knew.... 5 minutes later, Patrick lost his concentration for less than a second and we veered off and tipped over. I put my hand out to break my fall, but broke my hand instead! My hand swelled up immediately making it impossible for me to take my rings off. Not realizing that my hand was BROKEN, we decided to carry on (after sitting for 45 minutes) and go to the waterfall. Well, I'm glad I still went because it was by far the prettiest waterfall I've seen in Southeast Asia. There were pools of turquoise water where we were able to swim in... The picture here was taken at the waterfall with Patrick, little did we know that my hand was broken, but upon looking at that hand, I can see how swollen it was!!

The next day, my hand was still swollen, and I started to think this was more than a little sprain... I headed to the pharmacy and when the pharmacist saw my hand, she sent me immediately to the hospital. The Luang Prabang hospital was eerie! There was no one there, so strange. In fact, thank god for my tuk tuk driver who helped me find a doctor to take care of me. When I found out my hand was broken, I nearly broke down, but the nurses told me "Bo pen yang!" Bo pen yang is not only Northern Thai but also Laos for no worries, a motto that is now forever ingrained in me. With that, I decided that I should just accept my fate, and continue on with my travels. Yes, traveling with a broken has been no easy task... I couldn't get my hair up in a ponytail or open water bottles for weeks! After learning to be self-sufficient for 4 months, I had to be completely dependent.

Another notable thing to mention about Luang Prabang... Umm ok, I'm not sure how some of you are going to take this, but please don't hate me. I ate dog and snake soup. Our guest house offered it to us. I only had a little piece of dog, which essentially tasted like crispy pork, but the snake soup was DELICIOUS. I LOATHE snakes, but I will certainly eat them!

Another member of our family Chris from Australia joined us in LP. From Luang Prabang, we headed to Vang Vieng. After a beautiful 6 hour drive through the lush Laos mountains, we arrived in VV exhausted and crashe

d in the first guesthouse who would take us all. I've never done the whole Cancun Spring Break thing, but if I had, I would guess Vang Vieng is not that different. VV is famous for its "tubing." And by "tubing" I mean drinking bucket after bucket (buckets= buckets of mixed drinks typically vodka redbull), getting absolutely smashed, swimming in the river from one bar to the next, and let us not forget, dancing in the mud. Imagine doing this with a broken hand. Right. I guess this was fun for about 2 days, but when the others wanted to go a 3rd day, I opted out. I guess I'm getting old! I decided to chill by the river closer to town, which was absolutely beautiful, as you can see in the picture to the right.

After Vang Vieng, we headed to the capital Vientiane which I had been told to spend as little time there as possible. I ended up staying there for a day, but I thought the place was cute - definitely a French influence there... I thought the picture to the left could give you an idea...

We overnighted it to Southern Laos and ended up on the glorious island of Dondet in the 4000 islands. The 4000 islands are where the Mekong widens into a large delta before crossing into Cambodia. Life in Dondet is so slow, you really move at the pace of the Mekong there. This place was completely underdeveloped, the only power was between 6 and 10PM. This was a challenging place for my hand, but well worth the trouble. Perhaps the most active thing I did there was with Patrick. He had forgotten our friend Zoe's painting back on the mainland, so we decided to go on a canoeing adventure and fetch it. Once I got into that canoe, I thought, oh God, why did I get myself into another risky situation with the same person who broke my hand!? It ended up being a blast, poor Patrick did all the work, with my broken hand, I wasn't much help. After braving all the currents, and getting some help from some locals, we found our way back to the mainland and found Zoe's painting! We rewarded ourselves with a nice bottle of red wine, yessss.

We ended up staying in Dondet for 5 whole days we loved it so much. A huge portion of the time was spent relaxing in hammocks while Patrick played the guitar - sweet life...

(Actually, the night this picture was taken moments before my falling down the narrow wooden stairs and rehitting my broken hand - nice one - and badly bruising my foot leading to an internally infected bruise about a week later - Laos was a painful place!)

No account of Dondet would be complete without a little mention of the phenomenal Australian baker who resides there - he is in the pic below, hard at work, yummy. He makes the best chocolate banana donoughts ever! One day was revolved around picking up our caramel slices, which were seriously out of this world.

All in all, Laos was one of the most relaxed countries I have ever been to. The people there are simple and kind. They barely speak any English, but my less than nidnoy (little) Thai worked a few times. Some of the older generation speak a bit of French, but the French influence there is mostly limited to the baguette sandwiches that can be found everywhere. Unlike Thailand, baguettes were cheap and good. However, when in a restaurant, be prepared to wait an hour for the food to come out. seriously.

We finally tore ourselves away from Laos early on March 16th and headed onwards to Cambodia....