It has been a busy few days. We started in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with the hustle and bustle of city life and headed to the coast and enjoyed the slow pace of Cambodia country. We took one day to visit Boker National Park, which is a pristine National Forest. Through the forest at the top of the hillsides are the remains of a casino and hotel and church from the pre Kymer Rouge era. They were destroyed during the battle between Kymer Rouge and Vietcong. You could see how splendid it must have been. Who would have thought that on top of a peaceful, beautiful forest, they built a casino… Cambodia is reinvesting over 1 Billion dollars to build another casino. It would be like having a casino in the heart of Yosemite.

At the end of the trek and visit to the ruins, we had a sunset cruise. The river is breathtaking. It is such a change from Nepal. Even the clean rivers and lakes were polluted with people washing their clothes and bodies and a lot of trash.

We met a lot of great people on our day long excursion. Most were young people leaving their jobs for a year to do a world tour. They gave us wonderful ideas for our trip to Laos. We all went out for dinner afterwards. I ordered Octopus to try and see what it was like. Let’s just say I will not order it again.

Next day we spent the whole day traveling to Laos. We had a few hours in Phnom Penh, which we used to get some things fixed. Our very expensive (ha ha) watch was not keeping time and sunglasses lost a screw. The people were so nice and fixed everything (or so we think).

We arrived in Laos and it is even cleaner than Cambodia. I guess I was lucky to visit Nepal first, so I would think everything else was slow pace and clean. We are anxious to see the natural beauty of the country; so far we are in Vietiane, which is the capital and very clean (it has a French flare).

Tomorrow we are going trek in a national forest and the next day is zip lining.. yes, I am very brave.

Namaste