Everyone talks about the Gili’s when you mention Bali and how beautiful they are. Gili Trawangan the party island and the biggest of the three. Gili Meno, the smallest Robinson Crusoe get away and Gili Air – the middle man; a chilled atmosphere, and more of the family island.

My idea of the perfect day on any island in the sun would be to read, sleep on the beach, and snorkel. Repeat. I hadn’t planned to go to Gili T but go there I did and it was not at all what I dreaded it would be. Gili is big enough to have a great night life but also chill enough that you can avoid the night if you want. It only takes 2 1/2 hours to walk around the whole island. No cars or motorcycles only bicycles and horses which fly down the road. Thankfully they wear little bells so you can get out of the way in time.

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We stayed in La Boheme Gili Backpackers. Owned by a French lady; it is adorable, super friendly and situated not too far away from everything but tucked away at the same time. The beds in the dorm rooms look like you have walked into old ships sleeping quarters. The place is built like a tree house with crooked stairs going up to second or third level small common areas which are half floors overlooking the town. There is even a ceiling of umbrellas. Breakfast is pancakes which you make yourself from freshly prepared batter.  It’s a great way to meet people and start the day.

For beach bumming – one day we tried the west side, the next the South East. With sarongs in tow, yes our matching ones from Ubud, we planted ourselves on the beach, reading, swimming, eating goodies from the bakery and taking naps. Golden!

There are two theatres on the island, one is an open air and one is a small shack with wicker seats and free fresh popcorn. As I am a firm believer in popcorn with a movie and wicker seats sounded divine.  I decided on the later. It was also slightly cheaper. I got to watch “Eat, Pray, Love”. Rather fitting as I was in Bali and on my own year of discovery.

As I had said the farther East we went the better the food seemed to get. Three out of the four nights we tickled our tastebuds at the Night Market in the main square. First was Bakso and peanut satay. The other two nights we tried a smorgasbord of different Indonesian foods. You were faced with trays of different dishes and you took as many different samples as you wished. Bamboo curry was my favourite out of all the different things I tried. But if you go, there is a stall with lots of desserts – try the green pancakes stuffed with grated coconut and palm sugar, the green spongy/cake balls rolled in coconut and filled with palm sugar syrup and the Onde Onde. We would buy a tray of desserts to try every night between the two of us to share. I wish I had about three stomachs.

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On our last night we treated to ourselves to Scallywags – a beachside BBQ with pretty lights. For one night I got to pretend I wasn’t a backpacker. Sitting in a beachside restaurant eating fresh fish skewers and octopus we had just chosen to have BBQ’d for us, and enjoying a bottle of cider! It felt pretty special. They also had a fantastic salad bar! For it to have French bread, olive oil, balsamic vinegar with salad of various forms at your fingertips was so exciting! I probably could have just eaten the salad bar and been content with life.

Of course the night life was also sampled. Each of the bars has their nights to shine, on the Saturday night was Sama Sama meaning “Your welcome”  in Indonesian. They had had a reggae night the previous evening and Saturday was a local cover band. The bar was packed to the brim, flowing onto the street and into their beachside area. The local band did great covers and were surprisingly good at mimicking the voices of whomever they were singing and the crowd lapped it up. A rendition of Nirvana’s “Teen Spirit” had people sitting on the floor and then springing to life on the dance floor at the chorus.

One of the main activities around the Gili’s is snorkelling, diving or free driving and whether you rent or do a day trip it is so worthwhile! We decided to try renting the gear first from our hostel and give it a shot. We were told to head to the East side and go North. The current would bring us down and there was more coral and chances to see turtles! We started a little late tide wise so I would suggest to check the tides the day you want to go and hit it at high tide. But we found turtles! I saw two! They are amazingly beautiful, and so “laid back” looking. “Finding Nemo” captures exactly what real turtles look like as they munch on jellyfish or coral or swim through the water. The only thing that ruined the moment was the growing realisation we were slowly being closed in on all sides by millions and millions of jellyfish! Looking out under the water there were swarms of them! Cones of tiny clear jellyfish descending down into the water. My inner Trekkie came out and all I could think of was of Swarms of Borg ships. We ended up taking off our flippers and using them to clear a path.

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Because of that little adventure I decided to book a day snorkelling trip for the next day which went around the three islands,stopping off at three different areas and hopefully be farther out than the jellyfish. We left around 11 on a glass bottom boat. This cost a bit more and in retrospect it isn’t worth it because you can’t see out of the bottom when the boat is moving quickly and when it stops, well, you jump in. The day was great though. My first time seeing coral which was alive and filled with fish. So many different varieties of fish, my particular favourite was the parrot fish. All the colours of the rainbow glittering in the sunlight. At one stop by Air they gave us white bread to feed the fish as we snorkelled. The brave ones would come up and tug at your fingers. I remember seeing one fish with massive teeth and deciding not to give him any bread close up. As my first real foray into snorkelling it was definitely worth it and it made me even more excited to go to Flores as the snorkelling there was supposed to be even better!

Overall I think I would island hop a little bit if I did it again so I could experience life on the other islands but Gili Trawangan kind of has the best of both worlds and was a great little place to forget about the outside world for a few days. Not to mention the sunsets are incredible! I almost forgot that point!

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Chiang Mai is a city for excursions and the only one I had booked was the Thai Farm Cooking School. A full day course for 1100Bht on a farm outside of the city which includes a trip to a local market and learning to make five different dishes plus  time for a wee nap in between. My previous cooking class in Siem Riep was good but this one blew it out of the water.

I got picked up at my guest house, Awana House, by my teacher for the day Benny. An amazingly enthusiastic Thai lady. People think I am happy but next to the women who worked with us that day I look clinically depressed. There were 8 of us in total from all different countries, Chinese, American, South African, German and me. We were bundled into the back of a pick up and taken to the local market where they explained local ingredients and gave us time to wander around. Benny introduced us to fresh coconut ice cream. A good starter and they even put salted peanuts on top!

Food market in Chaing Mai, Thailand

From there it was off to the farm. The other two groups shared a chalet but we were lucky and had our own deck and cooking area. Benny fitted us out with bright red aprons and straw sombrero’s, as you do while in Thailand, for the tour of the vegetable patch. Basil, tomatoes, coriander, turmeric, chillies of various sizes, pineapples ( I had never seen them grown before. It’s odd that they don’t come from a tree), bananas, beans – everything we would be using in our cooking would be coming from the organic farm. Everything was pointed out with a shout of exclamation as if that was the first pineapple or chilli Benny had ever seen.

Given our own work stations and all standing in bare feet so as to better feel the cold tiles on your feet, we began by making chilli paste. I was making yellow curry. Using a mortar is really hard work when you’ve never used one before, especially in the heat but it was so satisfying to see the paste come together. We were asked if we wanted tourist hot or Thai hot for our dishes and told how to adjust each. I went for tourist spicy. One of the girls went for Thai for her curry and wow it was spicy. I am the first one to admit I am a wimp with spice.. The first course was a soup. I made Thom Yum Soup with shrimp. There wasn’t a lot to it but it was maybe my favourite dish of the day. We all sat outside finishing our soups questioning how we were ever going to manage another four courses,

Curry followed by stir fry, I made chicken and cashew stir fry. Both dishes, not patting myself on the back too much, were delicious but by the end of them we all wanted to curl up in the corner and sleep/ explode or both. Our wishes were granted and we had twenty minutes to lie on the benches in the shade and study the inside of our eyelids.

For the last hour we prepared our desserts, mine was sticky rice and mango. My absolute favourite Thai dish. The sauce was surprisingly straightforward – coconut cream boiled with, well at home you would have to use a vanilla pod I suppose, but normally palm sugar is added to it. You can find palm sugar in most grocery stores I have learned.  The sauce thickens as it cools. I could have drank it straight without waiting for the mango and rice. Then the Phad Thai which I took home as left overs. I wanted the tiny bit of space left in my stomach for dessert.

Somehow I managed to fit it in but I am sure that the the truck was closer to the ground on the way back after the day of indulgence. It was a brilliant day and I walked away actually feeling like I learnt loads and knew substitutes for things that maybe hard to find at home. Although I am under no illusion that any replication I make from my day at the farm will never quite match how good it tasted the first time with home grown ingredients, sunshine and sitting on a balcony in the midst of the Thai countryside.

My favourite day so far outside of the temples. The day began with a strawberry, coconut water frappe and a morning of exploring the town of Kampot. Obviously with that kind of start it was hardly going to be a bad day and of course we got a little turned around, but there is no better way to see a city. Through our wanders we ended up at the local “everything” market. The one for the locals. There were seamstress’s sewing on beads and sequence on intricate dresses or lines of cloth, local DIY’s and a food market where all I wanted to do was ask questions. Palm sugar, vegetables, sweets, meat of all variations including some live ducks, chickens and fish. The neatest part was the jewellers section where one could buy recently made silver or gold jewellery and see them melt, shape and carve the metals! Pretty impressive.

Our afternoon continued with the local vibe being taken out to see the salt fields which is all harvested by hand. Hard and long work. I can only imagine how dry their feet must get as they do it all in bare feet. Our last stop on the tour was a visit to the “The Palm Sugar Family”. A family who make palm sugar for a living who were kind enough to let us watch the process and sit and talk with them. The mother of 7 or grandmother of 12 was lovely. Gabbing away to us in Khmer, me trying my hardest to magically understand and her doing the same with me. Thankfully, Chase, was able to do most of the translating. We tasted the juice that they had collected from their 20 trees that morning, then they set to boiling it over an open brick fireplace. While we waited they offered us sticky rice, which they had got from a wedding earlier that day, and we bounced questions back and forth – families, lives, are you not scared to travel? My nose was admired and of course the subject of the Pol Pot regime came up. The mother of the family, our host, was 54 and her family had all been moved from their land to outside the city. From a family of 8, she was the only one not killed and had come back reclaiming her fathers land. One in four people in Cambodia were killed.

Soon enough, the syrup was ready to be churned and we got to test it at various stages. First a caramel consistency, then toffee then the palm sugar which resembles maple sugar. By the end I was sweetened out but it was delicious. Hard to beat warm freshly made palm sugar. The kids all stood around hoping for a taste before it was put into containers to be sold. I wish there was a way I could send them a bottle of maple of syrup for the day as a thank you and to share a piece of my culture with them. When I asked our driver for the day though he said there was no way to send it to them as he didn’t know their address – I would have had to write the Palm Sugar Family on the package and hope for the best. I hope they realized how much of a special experience and gift that day was.

A lime ice tea from a little cafe I believe called “Espresso”

Kampot is described as a small riverside town. In my head I pictured Luneburg Nova Scotia, or Galway, Ireland. I was told 40000 people, my first impression was this is a big, busy, riverside city but as you walk around, sit in a cafe reading, the city vibe disappears. It is more relaxed, the pace slower and people even more friendly. I didn’t have a place to stay so had looked up places on the web and came across the Kampot Pie and Ice Cream Palace, co owned by a Canadian and supposedly the best Lemon Meringue Pie around. Which I can now attest to. I thought all that together, and especially the name it was fate so off I went, my first night was in a shot off house and it was a bit clinical but quiet and clean and I had one of the best sleeps I have had since arriving here. The next night I shared a room with a girl I had met the day before to cut costs so it worked out well.

Temples, caves & the sea

Our Tuk Tuk driver/tour guide, Chase, took us around for the two days we spent in Kampot and while our destinations were interesting it was the roads and people we met along the way that made the tours. Our first stop was Phnom Chhork temple cave. A forty minute drive into the countryside of Kampot down roads which I wouldn’t constitute as roads. They were more back road trails, at one point being asked to get out of the tuk tuk and walk up the hill. He would meet us at the top ; this would be more comfortable for us. Passing a cow as we walked we joked that we could end up riding the cow back to Kampot.

The temple is one of the oldest in Cambodia and lies at the mouth of a rather deep cave. Our tour guides for this adventure were three local children, looking for the extra money, and soaking up our English along the way. One little girl and two little boys. They were witty, funny and extremely proficient at English, enjoying copying our exclamations at the sights – wow, ahhh, oh my gosh and sharing others they had learned from other tourists. They and the route they took us through the back of the cave was the highlight. Nothing like a little cave scrambling in the dark with some bats thrown in. The bats kindly stayed on or near the ceiling but the smell of guano was super strong.

From there we headed to the sea! One of my favourite things. We stopped for dinner at the Kep crab market. Fresh fish, sting ray, crabs grilled to perfection, obviously I had to try the local fare and tucked not that daintily into two crabs after being shown how to attack. After our fill we headed to the beach, past the giant crab, to put our toes into the sea.

When I read the book In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratna I knew I wanted to go to Cambodia – partly to understand or learn more about the Khymer Rouge but also to see the land and the Mekong that Raami, the seven yr little girl narrates in the story.

The buildings that once stood on the Choeung Ek killing fields are no longer there, in their place are signs with short explanations to what once stood there or numbers to follow on your self guided tour. As you enter the memorial centre, straight ahead of you is the memorial Stupa. A nine storey monument housing over 4000 bones and skulls which had been removed from the mass graves which dot the area. You’re given an audio set on arrival and for the next two hours you’re guided from the prisoners arrival to their end at the mass graves with stories from survivors of that time to fill out the explanations. The sun was shining, the rooster was crowing and butterflies danced in the air but the atmosphere was somber as people walked in silence listening to the horrific truths of what was done between ’75 and ’79. Glass boxes held clothes or bone fragments that rose to the surface after the rainy season and if you keep your eyes on the ground, you can see pieces of bones lying there. It is hard to listen to but even harder when you find out that Pol Pot lived in exile till the ripe age of 82.

The killing Tree – aptly named as it was used to kill the babies at the fields.

From there we headed off to Tuol Sleng – S21, originally a high school in Phnom Penh it was turned into one of the main security offices of the Khmer Rouge and was used for detention, interrogation, torture and execution after the person confessed. It is estimated that 20000 people including children went through those doors and only six came out. It is now a genocide museum and hands down one of the hardest places I have ever had to go through. We went through without a guide but it is not hard to tell what went on each of the places. Make shift cells of wood or brick broke up floors of class rooms with chiseled doors between main rooms, walls and walls of photographs of each person who was taken there. The Khmer Rouge were meticulous at record keeping. It was heart breaking looking at the images, imagining their thoughts as their photo was taken, some even were smiling, others confused, worried, terrified, defiant, angry. They were all there. I won’t explain more but the images below may capture the sense of the place although I don’t think they do it justice.

I did Ankor Watt National Park over two days but I could have happily spent a week or more there exploring temples, soaking up the atmosphere and taking in the views. The sheer size and grandeur of the temples is breath taking. The masonry, architecture, symmetry, and artwork are impressive on their own and more so when you think of the time period that they were built in but pull all that together, then add in their holiness, what they were used for and imagination of what they would have looked like when they were functional and it’s almost incomprehensible. From Banteay Prei – the lady temple, which is said could only have been built by women due to the intricacy of the carvings, to Bayons faces of stone looking out over every corner of the temple, Ta Prohm, the tomb raider temple ,where nature has taken over,  to Pr. Prenup, the crematorium or the elephant statues at Phnom Bok I couldn’t tell you which one was my favourite. It changed every time we arrived at another temple. And then there is Angkor Watt itself! Humbling. The one that I loved the most in each of them temples though were the doorways. Oversized picture frames that when you walked through them made you feel as if you were going to enter into you into a completely different world and time. Through the looking glass.

Intricate carvings at the Lady Temple

Anyone who knows me, knows that my track record with biking isn’t promising – from flying down a hill with no brakes and going head over handlebars into a ditch or navigating Amsterdam with no shoes in the rain, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with bikes as a mode of transport. Despite my abilities on a bike, truly one of the best ways to see Angkor Watt park, and the cheapest, is by bike. You can rent a bike for 1 or 2 USD for a day! So on my second day I headed out bright and early on my newly rented pink bike, that I named Rosa,  with my new found friend, a Austrian girl from the hostel that had decided we should explore Angkor Watt together. 

By 8am it already felt like we were walking into a hot yoga studio every time we got off the bike. By lunch I longed for the bike rides more than the temples even though it was still hot on the bikes. We did the small route – easily still over 20km and with a few hours cat nap/break in a window of a small temple we finished by sunset. On the way home, to finish off an accident free day, l managed to fall off my bike, loose my sandle in the middle of rush hour traffic, therefore stopping traffic to get it back with the help of a lovely local policeman who was very worried that I had been hit. Nope, just clumsy. The day was an adventure and a half that I will never forget, the temples were unlike anything I had ever seen, the bikes let us see more and after all the sitting in planes and cars over past few days it felt great to move.

On our second day we did the big route as we wanted to see the Lady temple. The route is just over 35km and in the heat and after the previous day we decided to be a little lazy and luxurious and take a tuk tuk from temple to temple. It was a treat, doing it again, I think I would do it by bike just to give you more freedom to feel like you can stop whenever you wish to take photos but it still took us all day on a tuk tuk so on a bike we would have had less time at the temples. Therefore, tuk tuk was the right choice. 

They may not be the neatest spring rolls, but they were tasty.

The finished product

My first morning in Siem Riep, as I was still jet legged, I decided to try out a cooking class at Le Tigre de Papier’s. I made my way down to the restaurant where we were given a menu and asked to choose a starter and a main to cook, I chose fresh spring rolls and Samlor Kteas. There were seven of us in total and we were soon marched by our instructor to the market to be taught about the ingredients we would be working with – for me snake beans, carrots, pineapple, cucumber, turmeric, the right type of rice to use etc.

First everything was prepped, starting with our first course, then second which also included the curry paste we would be using in the main. Mine had garlic, shallot, lemon grass, turmeric, ginger, a little hit of chilli and kafir leaves. Making the paste was the most tiring part of the class, chopping the roots and everything else into minute pieces and then smashing them to oblivion until it makes a paste. Great way to get out anger. And rolling the rice paper tightly and neatly for me was the most challenging. So sticky! Then the cooking began, each of us in turns over individual burners trying to watch everyone so you could see what they were doing.

Plated, decorated with carrot flowers (not as easy as it looks to make) and after three hours of intense heat – I do feel bad for the person who had to wash our hats – we got to sit down together to enjoy our creations. I was slightly over heated so couldn’t eat it but got a doggy bag and I must admit my cold Samlor and Spring Rolls made a delicious dinner.

 

Arriving at 11:30 at night, tired, nervous and feeling like Alice in Wonderland, I splurged a little and organised to stay at the Regent Suvarnabhumi Hotel next to the airport. Their chauffeur waiting for me at the airport when I got there. It was a treat but so worth it.

It had, air conditioning, shower and a giant bed – everything you could want after 15 hours of travelling. They also shuttled me back to the airport in the morning so I could figure out how to find the bus to Aranyakas Prathet for the Cambodian Border.

My first lesson of the trip – be careful who you ask for help or for directions as they possibly expect payment for helping you. He was a very smily old security gaurd though and I did make it to the bus station and got my ticket all on time so it was welcomed help.  I had imagined a coach akin to a greyhound bus, instead it was an 11 seater mini bus. It did have AC thankfully.

The trip to the border is 4hours through the Thailand countryside on a rather bouncy road.  I loved it, the little girl inside me who devoured National Geographic sat wide eyed taking everything in. Every article I had ready about Thailand was staring at me in the face. It was familiar and different all at once.

Crossing the border, we got slightly conned into having a gentleman get the visas for us, but we in turn got a good deal for a taxi into Siem Riep so it levelled out in the end. Also as I still felt like Alice, it took a bit of that unease away. It was two more hours into Siem Riep from the border and I got to experience my first of many tuk tuk rides.

The next thing I learned was that when it comes to driving and walking anything goes. You want to get somewhere than move. Somehow magically it all seems to work and everyone moves amongst organized chaos on the roads.

Pub St in Central Siem Riep