Hayden's Adventures in South East Asia!

One of the things that people often do when they are in Sen Monorom is go trekking into the jungle. I  signed up for an overnight jungle trek the second night I got there with some people from the restaurant near the centre of town. The next morning 4 of us climbed into an SUV and the owner drove us out to one of the surrounding villages to get our guide. Below is the house that " Mr. Hong" lives in. We went in there and met his family then went with him to a house a little ways down to buy some rice whiskey for dinner. Then many hours of hiking though the jungle. We stopped for a rest at some vines which we swung around a bit on This is where we had lunch and an afternoon swim. When we came out of the water one of our guides lit a tree on fire. We discovered later that many of the trees in the area had similar holes in them that the local people used to collect the sap which can also be used as a fire starter. Some more hiking we traversed un...

Sen Monorom is a little town, population 7000, in Mondulkiri Province in the east of Cambodia about 800m above sea level. I basically decided to go there solely because it was the last place in the Cambodia section of my Lonely Planet. And I'm really glad I did. I met some really great people and did some really awesome things while I was there. While I was there I did an overnight Jungle trek and volunteered at The Elephant Valley Project. More on those in the next couple posts though this one will be just about the town. I actually spend much time in the town for the 5 nights I was there except for the last day when I did a day tour with some friends. One of the girls had already arranged for one of the guys at "The Green House" to show her around town and me and another guy just tagged along on motorbikes. First we stopped at the school where our Guide/waiter/cook/teacher/great guy teaches every morning and we sat in for one of his lessons. they were working o...

I decided that my next stop after Phnom Penh would be Kampong Cham, A city about 6 hours away. Cant remember why I decided to stop there but I ended up spending two nights at the Mekong Hotel right along the riverside. Most of the city is by the riverside actually because its not that big. From Phnom Penh there seemed like there was a bunch of things to do in and around the city but I got done all that I wanted to do in less than a day. I rented a motor bike from a cafe down the street and the lady there taught me how to ride a manual one. Every other one that I had ridden before had been automatic but it turned out to be not that much harder. First I went to Wat Nokor which was an Angkor like temple about 8 km outside of town. Not sure how much I was expecting but I wasn't to impressed. There aren't very many tourist in the town to begin with but the place was dead. I was the only one there so I walked around, snapped a couple pictures and got back on my bike and le...

There are no open buses or tour buses like in Vietnam which were mainly filled with westerners. So I ended up taking a local bus from Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham. Luckily there is one main local bus company that goes everywhere around Cambodia. I booked from my hostel and they said a mini van would come pick me up at 12:15 and then the bus would leave at 12:45. I was expecting all this to be later like all the schedules in South East Asia. The mini van came to pick me up at 11:45 so I had to scramble to get all of my stuff. Never in my wildest dreams did i imagine that a bus would come early. I then got dropped off at the bus station and it was utter chaos. There was only 1 bay and about 10 different buses were trying to load and unload passengers. They announced what I thought was my bus and the guy checked my ticket and I climbed on board. I went and got in my seat and overheard the people in front of me talking about what they were going to do in Kampot. That was when I dis...

Another one of those posts where I'm not going to describe much in detail because I would'nt be able to do it justice. Pretty much the only thing I wanted to do in Phnom Penh was go to the Killing Fields. I met up with a girl who I was travelling with in Thailand for a bit and another girl and we got a tuk-tuk out to the site. For those who dont know t he  Killing Fields  are a number of sites in Cambodia  where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge  regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, right after the Cambodian Civil War. The way that the had the Killing Fields was really nicely laid out. You pay $5 to get in and that gets you an audio guide and a map. The audio guide was great, much better than a regular guide would be because you could go at your own pace and listen to things again if you liked. Listening to it while you walk around and observe the sites is a very interesting experience because ...

Some of you may have been wondering how I was able to take a bunch of photos after my camera got water damage in Halong Bay.  I just found out that I completely forgot to say that I bought a new camera in Hanoi. I figured that I wasn't going to be anywhere long enough to get my camera fixed and even if I did I wouldn't trust the waterproof on it any more. Not that I would now any ways. So now i have a Sony Cyber-shot Exmor or something. It works super well and takes better photos than my old camera.  Also it can take much better panorama photos so you may notice that there are a lot more in the albums after Hanoi

After Saigon I wanted to see the Mekong Delta but I didnt have enough time to do it on my own so I decided to do it with a tour. It cost me $50 and i had everything covered from Ho Chi Minh city to Phnom Penh which was great. I probably would have spent more trying to do it on my own so it just made sense. Most of it consisted of the usual tour stuff where they take you to places that make traditional things like clothing and foods and then give you a opportunity to buy them First we got on a boat and went to a floating market which seemed to me to be more of a floating costco. All the boats only sold one thing and had a huge pile of whatever they were selling. We went through there pretty quick because it was later in the day and most of the boats were gone. We went though lots of little areas that had a bunch of houses and people fishing and what not. Most of the local people would run out and wave as you past by. we stopped at the place where th...

So it seemed like my whole Vietnam journey was leading up to Saigon which was supposed to be crazy and different from everything else everywhere. I was only there 1 night and I kinda actually enjoyed it. The thing that I had heard most was that the traffic there would be super crazy. When I arrived I discovered that there was a lot of motorbikes and some cars but it wasnt that crazy. The hundreds of thousands of people seemed to know exactly what they were doing all the time. The traffic just flowed like water through the streets and I didnt feel flustered at all. Compared to other places in South East Asia where everyone seems to be dodging and weaving between everyone else Saigon was quite relaxing. Well to me at least. The streets were laid out nicely for the most part. So I was able to walk around and figure out where I was all the time. In the early morning and just as the sun goes down people of all ages gather to exercise at the park that was across the street from...