Half way through already!?

Luang Prabang - beautiful city. Our house is on the left-hand bank in this pic.

17 January 2019

The journey from Cambodia to Laos was painless but boring. We took a taxi to Phnom Penh along the dreadful Route 3, most of which is being widened to four lanes, which means it’s clogged with construction traffic from end to end. It took us 4 hours! After a night in our usual hotel opposite the airport it was on to Bangkok then Luang Prabang, where our friends Sue, John and Toui met us.

LP feels relatively unchanged since we left in March last year. There’s always a bit of building going on but that’s to be expected. The house next door to our place, which has been empty ever since it was built 3 years ago, now has occupants - an Australian with his Lao wife - and they have cleared the garden and planted veggies so we now have a view down to the river. I’ve never seen the river so high. Water levels are controlled by the two new Nam Khan dams upstream.

http://ariverstail.com/laos/damming-the-nam-khan
Diurnal temperature range also takes a bit of getting used to - morning 20 degrees feels chilly.

Just to complete my thoughts on the contrast between the two countries - Cambodia has a population of 16 million, half of whom are under 22. In general they are forward-looking, wanting a modern society with western style convenience. The economy boomed 10 years ago and it is no longer a “least developed country”. There’s little interest in heritage, tradition and culture. Next door neighbours Laos, by contrast, has a population of just under 7 million and a rich and varied cultural and spiritual heritage, most of which is still highly valued by the Laotians. “Same same but different” as they say!

I’ve just started doing some work to help a new agro-biodiversity project with their English texts. Here’s one of their videos: https://www.phakhaolao.la/en/inspire/14700-reasons-be-proud-laos

We sometimes cross this bridge to get from our house to the centre of town

It gets washed away in the rainy season but the family rebuild it every year - and charge pedestrians 5000kip (about 50p)

 

This is our road

And the terrace at the Greenhouse Studio

We look down on our neighbour's garden

Trevann gave me a tapestry kit for Christmas which I am enjoying. It keeps me out of trouble

This fine fella is at least 5 inches across. He lives in our garden

I love these little shield spiders too

This is the view from the bottom of the garden looking up the Nam Khan

And downstream across to the centre of town

Early 2019

To be honest I’m still confused about Cambodia and its “development”. We love spending time here in Kep. The climate is perfect, our accommodation is wonderful, we have friends here and the local people are really friendly - but I wonder what the future holds for the country. Cambodia graduated from least developed to lower middle income country in 2016 and until recently had one of the highest rates of GDP economic growth in the world. We see evidence of this wealth in terms of the huge increase in the numbers of large white 4x4 on the roads.

Certainly there is little evidence of extreme poverty here in Kep. The children look well nourished, the houses are generally weatherproof and life seems good. It doesn’t feel like a “third world” country. Apparently land prices have gone up astronomically in recent times so a few people are getting very very rich. And the garment factories in Cambodia employ around a million people, providing women with income and status within the family that was previously unattainable.
Life is very different in the rural villages out of range of the tourist dollars no doubt. There are no safety nets in case of illness and accident. Public education and health systems are still patchy.

But what of the future? Aspirations seem to be status and money. I don’t hear much pride in the Khmer heritage and culture - apart from Angkor Wat of course! And there’s little interest in nature. Mountains and forests and fisheries are primarily resources for exploitation. And as for what they’ve allowed in Sihanoukville, which is now a Chinese gambling enclave - well I’m not optimistic!

So we’re now into our last couple of days here. Six weeks has flown by. At the weekend we travel via Phnom Penh and Bangkok up to northern Laos and our beloved Luang Prabang.

 

Nek and Dahlane get creative with our towels!

As always, New Year on the beach was chaotic, colourful, full of good cheer. Happy 2019!

We came back to Bacoma after the fireworks for our sophisticated little glasses of bubbly

This is the centre of "Kep City" with the Independence Monument - a smaller replica of the one in Phnom Penh 

This sculpture celebrates the friendship between Cambodia and Vietnam

I hadn't seen this bird before in the garden at Bacoma. Don't know what it is.

We returned to Rabbit Island this week to attempt the round-island walk. At first the path was well defined and easy...

The beaches and shoreline are beautiful

But oh! The plastics!

Lovely bits of coral

But the path ended in a mangrove swamp and we could find no way round so had to retrace our steps. Mission not accomplished!

Some interesting plants. Rhizophora mucronata, the loop-root mangrove. Some of the roots growing down from the fruits were over a metre long.

Rabbit Island bungalows

The fishermen raft up before setting out in the evening

Spectacular sunsets - again!