In Siem Reap with mad hair

Bloody hell, I'm in Cambodia! As the plane came in to land (an hour late) crusing over the fields and houses (and the sense that somewhere down there are amazing ancient temples) I finally found the excitement for this trip that was so lacking in the days leading up to it. I disembarked and walked across the tramac (I LOVE doing that!) and sailed through immigration. Props to me for getting my visa in Australia as the lines for the visa on arrival we pretty long. Found my driver and headed along Airport Road. Fields and shantys gave way to massive hotels and then the town proper. My first response it that it is very much like India - the dust, the smell and the small shops selling everything from phone cards to bike parts. ( This feeling has not changed a day later having explored further.) In the street outside my hotel (left: view from the balcony) a young woman on a bike with a platform attached was selling eggs and advertising her wares via a small, tinny tannoy attached to the handlebars. My hotel is more basic than I anticipated but perfectly fine. I showered away 15 hours of travel and hit the streets. Constantly declining tuk tuks and motos I headed into tourist central - Pub Street where I sat for a while with an Angkor beer and spring rolls. I will be more culinarily adventurous soon, I'm pacing myself! I was surprised Siem Reap is not what I thought it would be but guidebooks and maps can be deceiving. It would be quite a culture shock if I'd not been to India.

Today I started early and after breakfast wandered in the direction of the Angkor National Museum (which opens at 8.30am - imagine that my museum friends!). On the way I walked around the gardens in front of the Royal Residence which are lovely. It is at this end of the town that you see what is left of the grand city that existed before the destruction. The museum is quite new and well designed. I won't bore you with a review but a couple of highlights were the Gallery of 1000 Buddas and one small but amazing object a boundry marker with hundreds of images of Vishnu carved into all four sides. (Multimedia guys - there was an interesting use of a peppers ghost layed over a plasma screen (!) projecting khmer script and images over a documentary.) So, leaving the museum around 10am (!!!!) I went on one of my patented "lets just wander" walks. Well, I did have a destination but it was quite a walk. Turning towards the river from the museum I happened upon a bustling local market, the kind that isn't in the guidebook ( I went to that one - Old Market- and it is full of tourist tat from Thailand). Towards the end of my walk I stumbled across a temple complex (I think it was Wat Damnak) - it was beautiful and peaceful with pagodas, stupas and a central temple. Then a rest at a cafe with a fruit shake and to call mum and dad on my mobile now that I have bought a sim card. I'm really enjoying my time here so far - I will get to the Angkor temples soon enough, I like getting a sense of the place (as well as my bearings). Left: a random sight from my wanderings.

Oh, and the mad hair - well, between not having a power converter for the hairdryer and what humidity does to hair wax I'm looking, well, unkempt in the hair department.

The Plan

Ok - so here's the plan. 3 months, 3 countries, and a very loose itinerary. I fly into Siem Reap, Cambodia at the end of December - I've got my first six nights accommodation booked. The only other commitment I have is two weeks in Vietnam with a friend in mid February. We're hanging out in Hoi An for Tet (Vietnamese New Year) and then off too Phu Quoc island for sun, sand and little drinks with umbrellas in them consumed while lying prone in a hammock. Other than that, its all up to me.

Obviously starting in Siem Reap I will be spending some time at the Angkor temples. But having time on my side I'm determined to spend the first day or so wandering around the town itself and getting into the swing of things. My mantra is "take it slow and calm" - lets see how long that lasts! So after nearly a week in SR I'll head anti-clockwise around Tonle Sap the large (make that bloody huge) lake in the middle of the country to Battambang, around to Phnom Penh, down to the coast (Sihanoukville, Kep, Kampot) and back up to Phnom Penh. I'll then head up to to Laos border via Kratie to the 4000 islands. After that its Paske/Champasak to see the Angkorian era ruins. Then to Savannaket for the dinosaur museum (seriously! http://www.culturalprofiles.net/Laos/Units/519.html). After that I will cross over into Vietnam for Tet. After my friend leaves at the end if Feb I still have a month. This is where the plan gets a bit hazy. As I will be in HCMC at this point I do want to see a bit of the Mekong Delta. Then I'm thinking of heading up through the central highlands. But I do want to get back and see the north of Laos (Vientiene, Luang Prabang).

Conversely I could head to Vietnam from Cambodia into the Mekong Delta, then up the coast and inland a bit for Dalat and then up to Hoi An to meet David. After we part in HCMC I could head up through the highlands and across to Pakse in Laos and do south to north ending up in Luang Prabang. Then fly to Hanoi and do Halong Bay, Sapa, Ninh Binh and whatever else I have time for.

Then at the end of March I fly home. Then Easter with family and friends. Then its back to work mid April. I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

While in SEA I'll be participating long distance with my book group - hi girls! We're deciding on our first book of the year soon so I will have fun finding whatever it is in Cambodia. So I warn you there will be a book report or two posted here - hell, I may even review what I'm reading along the way just to bore you all senseless!

Stay tuned.

On the subject of backpacks

Ah, backpacks. Like guidebooks they spell freedom, the open road, the search for the perfect one…

My first backpack was some purple and blue monstrosity. I didn't take it on my first trip (to Europe) so why I bought it I don't know - probably just in case that first long dreamed of trip miraculously materialised. It was as least 60 litres and had a detachable day pack. It hung around for years mouldering up the place. Because I'd been obsessed by travel and the mechanics of travel (backpacks, guide books, packing lists) for years by my first trip I was determined to travel light. (Just an aside, I distinctly remember sitting in the library at high school pouring over Lonely Planet India - I would be a few trips and many years before I got there but eventually I did.) To this day my determination to travel light is in direct opposition with my normal life where I carry everything but the kitchen sink for a trip to the supermarket.

I received sage advice from the most intrepid traveller I know, my friend Rachel. The list of where she hasn't been is shorter than that of where she has (hi Rachel!). The advice was something to the effect of travel light and take a lot of zip lock bags. Zip lock bags are vital - the biggest ones can keep smelly clothes from clean, the smallest can keep that open packet of washing powder you bought at some general store in the back blocks of India from ending up in every crevice of your pack. (I also carry gaffer tape and cable ties but tend to get strange looks from people when I tell them.)

So, on my first big trip - nearly 4 months of constant travel around Europe with stopovers in the US (hi Anthony!) - I vowed to "pack light". I wish I had a list of what I took on that trip, it would be fascinating to see what I then thought indispensable. What I do know is it was all packed in a Berghaus Freeflow 35 + 8 top loader. I loved that pack - you could stuff it to bursting and it was still comfortable to carry. 4 months, 43 litres - hells bells! That is not to say I didn't come back with a crapload more than when I started - who doesn't? I do remember strapping another backpack full of paper (mainly museum floor plans and brochures) to to front. The other beauty of this pack was it didn't have a zip off daypack which I've always felt makes you look like a day glo turtle when attached to the main pack. In that I prefer satchels to backpacks generally the zip off pack is a bit redundant. My Berghuas lasted a good 6 years - it also did me for 6 weeks in India in 2006. I still have it but bits of it are broken - it sits in my cupboard as a reminder of trips past.

So with a new trip in the planning the search was on for a new pack. While I loved my top loader they do become a bit tedious after a while, no matter how smart you pack invariably what you want is at the bottom. Also, they're not very streamlined with straps and holders hanging everywhere with no way of hiding the straps away. So what I wanted was a hybrid travel pack with a single zipped compartment with zip away straps and no day pack. However my choices in this are were quite limited as there isn't much (in Australia) between a 35lt day pack and 60+lt packs with zip of day packs that convert into a yurt etc. But I found one made by an Australian company - One Planet. Their Mini Freddy is perfect for me, 45 litres, single compartment and zip away straps. Its an odd shape, slightly bulbous at the bottom but I figure its better for weight distribution with most of it resting on your hips (and my child bearing hips can take quite a bit!). Its red and blue - I don't know why packs are such garish colours, really there is no way to disguise the fact you are carrying everything you own in one bag. The locals have seen backpackers before be you in Phuket or Tajikistan, you're not fooling anyone. So, new pack, the usual obsessive packing list, passport, tickets, money - I'm ready to go!

Pimp My Guide

Obsessed as I am by guidebooks generally, this trip has seen me acquire more than usual. In the planning stages, which me being me, has been at least a year (its not all planning, more like travel dreaming leading to a commitment to do it leading to obsessive planning). I bought books for every country I planned to visit. For a while the Rough Guides
have been my guide of choice, I find the cultural/sights info to be more detailed and erudite. I took one to India but as I was on a tour it didn't get a full workout. When I went to London to visit a friend I took the Blue Guide London as I had accommodation and was there to focus on sights in the capital. Now, my first trip to Europe and the States, my memory is a bit hazy here. I'm pretty sure I didn't take any sort of guide for the US leg. Europe well, I think it was the behemoth that is Lonely Planet's Western Europe on a Shoestring. But herein lies the difference with me and guidebooks. Not for me are they venerated bibles, an oracle to be kept in pristine condition. No, for me they are something to mould into a shape specific to me. Some people pimp their ride, I pimp my guidebook.

Exhibit 1: That long ago Western Europe on a Shoestring. I butchered it, taking it apart at the seams. Discarding the countries I wasn't going to (Portugal, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Andorra) - they got binned. I stapled together the victors and put them in a zip lock bag (a constant travel companion!). This victory would be short lived as those surviving the first cut got tossed as borders got crossed. Even then, on my first ever trip I was travelling light.

Exhibit 2: Rough Guide to India. Now this one is a bit scary. I cringe slightly as I reveal this particular pimp. To offer some justification for my obsessiveness, I tend to leave large gaps of time between holidays so by the time I start planning I realise how much I need one which by this time is usually still 6 months away. And the obsessive planning takes over. Infrequent holidays can do that to a girl, but here I am 3 years since my last trip - microplanning. But back to India. This trip I would be on a tour, 30+ days that toured the southern tip of the country and Rajasthan in the north. (Fab trip by the way, Intrepid Travel's India South & North, I highly recommend it.) In that all accommodation and travel would be organised for me I

figured at least I can get the lowdown on the sights. Using the trip notes I cut out of the guide the places I would be going. For such a big country and guide the resulting stapled and zip locked pages were quite slim volumes. But this is where it gets a bit wrong. Not satisfied with having the bits I needed I felt I should get more specific. So apart from adding covers, I used post it flags not just to mark the places we would visit but which days of the trip they were. Not 100% sure what was going on with me there but I did have a wonderful trip and bought the stapled pages home as a souvenir (and possibly an indication of occasional OCD).

Exhibit 3: The next big trip - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. As I mentioned earlier I'd been using Rough Guides to each country in the planning stages. However, a couple of months ago I picked up the most recent edition of Lonely Planet Vietnam. What I liked about the Rough Guides was the list of destinations and estimated travel times at the end of each region. Slowly however Lonely Planet started to win me over. The thing I hear most about LP is how practical it is, and while it gets bashed for keeping backpackers on the banana pancake trail (http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/09-07/thailand’s-banana-pancake-trail-and-5-insider-tips-for-escaping-it.html) I can't deny its practicality (in theory at least!). I'm not saying it will be my only source of information. Online resources like Travel Fish (http://www.travelfish.org/) and the LP Thorntree Forum (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/index.jspa) are brilliant sources of up to date information. What really won me over to LP was their Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & the Great Mekong guide. As in Cambodia and Laos I will undeniably we on the road

most travelled, the infrmation in the book will suit me fine and can supplement with online and local knowledge. I will probably still take the LP Vietnam guide (butchered slightly) for the Mekong Delta and Highlands. The guide also features a section on the Yunnan province in China, a place I am not going to. But rather than cut out the pages as I normally would I've created a new pimp! I've pasted tissue paper over the pages so I can use it as a notebook. I'll get back to you on how it goes.

Pimp my guide. A mad idea sure, but it works for me!