Hue, the former Capital

Hue is a pleasant medium sized city of over a million in Central Vietnam, just a bit smaller than Danang, but quite a bit less touristy. It’s the former capital of Vietnam, from 1802 to 1945 during the Nguyen dynasty. It was also a major battleground of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, which was lost to the Vietcong with many civilians being massacred. It’s well located on the Perfume River, which is supposedly named because it carries lots of aromatic plants and flowers during autumn, although I have trouble imaging  this, as boat exhaust seems to the primary smell near the river. Doing a dragonboat ride at sunset down the river is a very popular thing to do.

Getting the dragonboat ready for launch

cruising the Perfume River

quite the mix of boats

Hue is famous for it’s walled Imperial City, which was taken after Beijing’s Forbidden City. But it’s also got a bunch of historical cites, a citadel, a few massive mausoleums of the former rulers, and even an abandoned waterpark. It’s also got some nice countryside and it’s only 30 minutes away from the ocean. I stayed just two nights, but definitely could have done three. I’m not going to write too much for this post though, just provide the photos with some comments. Like usual, I just rented a moto and spent the day cruising around. The first stops are the mausoleums, the big 3, built by emperors Tu Duc, Minh Mang, and Khai Din. Sadly I did not dress in traditional Vietnamese clothes for these places haha.

The grounds of Tu Duc’s Mausoleum.

Fun Fact: Tu Duc was the longest running emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty. He had 104 wives! And that’s not including concubines

Can you tell that dressing up for these places and taking photos is a popular thing to do?!

Minh Mang’s Mausoleum, 2nd emperor. He liked to build stuff and kill people.

Khai Dinh’s Mausoleum. 12th Emperor. His predecessor was exiled by the French in the 1900’s and he was mostly seen a French puppet.

Sweet tomb though.

Part of an abandoned amusement park

Just enough time to hit the beach in the late afternoon

The end of the line

Savannakhet and into Vietnam

After Thakhek I was ready to head into Vietnam, but the border-crossing buses don’t go from Thakhek, you have to backtrack south a few hours to the 2nd largest city in Laos, Savannakhet. After doing some research I found someone who recommended a good one day motorbike loop from Savannakhet, so that was all the convincing I needed to stay two nights in the town. It was a 3 hour minibus trip, with somehow only two people in our bus, plus a mango pit stop at a roadside market that also sold live snakes in a bag, bbq rodents, and dead animals in large glass jars filled with liquid (pictured). Yummy.  The mangos were actually really good though, they like them partially unripe, so they’re a little soft in the middle and crunchy at the edges. The driver gave me a mango and his knife to cut my own on the way. Top notch service!

But seriously what is that thing in the photo?!

Once in town the driver said I could pay an extra $2 to get dropped off directly at my guesthouse instead of the bus station, so sure. I checked into a family run guesthouse and the teenage son showed me to the room, and soon enough I wandered off. All of these Loatian cities kind of have a similar feel, they’re all on the Mekong, they all have some colonial French buildings, they’re all kind of boring, and they all have a night market which is always the most popular place to visit in the evenings. Being the largest of the southern cities, Savannakhet had the most old French buildings and the biggest and most diverse night market, which I suppose makes it the best of these cities! They had a few interesting things like Turkish style kebabs and grilled eggplant, Japanese mochi, and Korean fried chicken and corn dogs. It’s worth noting with the explosion of Kpop in the last few years, everything Korean is very trendy now. American culture is on the decline. And I hate to say it, but Korean corn dogs >>> American corn dogs. The fried chicken is closer. I still have to go with Nashville hot chicken.

My favorite intersection

classic french looking cafe

I rented a bike from my guesthouse, and they gave me a beater. But seeing how Savannakhet gets very few tourists, there’s not many places to rent bikes, so I figured I would make do. The loop was all paved road anyway.  So I set off around 11am, 15 minutes later I’m in the countryside. But this damn bike is running high RPMS at cruising speed. I was shocked at how fast it was using up gas and had to stop at a roadside stall to buy a liter of gasoline. When I tried to start the bike up again, nothing. Agghgh. Tried for 5 minutes, using the kickstart, nothing. Someone came over to help to see if they could get it going, nope. I asked where the mechanic was and fortunately there was one a few minutes down the road. The nice thing about Southeast Asia is that if you’re anywhere near civilization, no matter how small the village, there is always a mechanic nearby. Always.

It was about 10 minutes, sweating my ass off in the sun, and I actually passed a guy who asked me what was up, in unmistakably American English, and he walked with me to the mechanic to help translate. This guy had lived and worked most of his life in California but came back to Laos to retire and build a house in the countryside. Not a bad plan. After failing to get the bike to start again, the mechanic unscrewed the middle plastic housing and began looking around inside. Verdict: Bad air filter and bad spark plug. He brushed the air filter and replaced the spark plug and 15 minutes later I was on my way after paying the invoice, $2. Crazy. Although the bike seemed to be running even rougher than before. But I just started and hell if I’m going to just turn around already.

In this part of Laos the land is very flat and the scenery uninspiring, and there’s nothing overly exciting for tourists to see, but there were a few mildly interesting spots on this loop. My first stop was at a shady forest temple called Wat Phoukor, which was a nice respite from the sun, as most of the countryside doesn’t have many big trees. The temple grounds have many scenes from local folklore, including figurines depicting what happens in Buddhist hell. I didn’t even know there was Buddhist hell! Pretty gruesome!

Going for a relaxing stroll around the temple… oh wait. Yikes

Riding further on, there’s a monkey forest, but all the monkeys seem to just hang out in the parking lot, not in the actual forest. And trail disappears. Hmm. There’s also spot called Taleo old temple, which was designed like a church, but isn’t a church, and was in use as a monastic school until 1969 when it got heavily damaged by American bombing campaigns. It’s still standing today, but in bad shape. The closer you look in Laos, the more you see the scars from the Vietnam war. Apparently the locals know where to find old, unexploded cluster bombs, but people are more educated about them now (ie teaching kids not to play with them) and knowing specific areas to avoid. But still a handful of people die every year from explosions, usually children. Of the 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos, they say 30% never exploded. That’s a pretty insane number, almost 100 MILLION little bombs just sitting around somewhere in the country.

Taleo Old Temple

Even older temple

While I was driving I noticed my gas gauge drop pretty quickly, but I thought there was no friggen way I could have burned through almost a whole tank in an hour. No way. Normally a full tank lasts you all day. I was on a country road, so I’d investigate in the next village. A minute later the needle dropped all the way down and I came sputtering to halt. God damn it. Piece of shit bike. Back to walking it on the side of the road. Very fortunately (again!) a place with gas was only a few minutes away to fill her up and it was only a short delay that could have easily been much worse. Back on the road I was soon at the highlight of the loop, the oldest library in Laos, built on wooden stilts over the river. Very impressive! No tourists around or anything, just a few monks hanging out and some local kids running around.

There was also a turtle pond and crocodile marsh to see, but you had to go a bit out of the way to get there, and with my lack of trust in my bike, I decided against it. Which was good, because the bike was getting worse, and as soon as I made it within the city limits of Savannakhet, the piece of crap died again! Now I’m pretty pissed off. 3rd time the bike has died. Although once again, it was just a few blocks walk to find another mechanic. Same deal, he opened it up, took a look, bad spark plug. He removed it and handed it to me to touch, burning hot! Ow! Thanks for that Mr. Mechanic! So another new spark plug. Another big bill from the auto shop. A bit more expensive this time, $2.25. Big city prices.

I finally got back to the guesthouse well after dark and let them know what I thought of this bike they gave me. Karen mode. I was pretty (very) annoyed they gave me such a shit bike, and I was very very lucky it died in all the right spots. I didn’t have to pay for the bike rental, but I still ended up paying more in gas and mechanics than I would have paid on a normal day of renting a bike + buying a full tank on a bike that isn’t garbage. Although the actual dollar amounts are trivial of course. I guess it’s pretty fitting though, you can’t have a trip to Laos with at least some bike trouble! Well that concludes the brief two week excursion into South/Central Laos. Being that I’m poor-ish this year, I didn’t want to travel too long, my plan was to get over to Danang in Vietnam to play some more poker. Although the bus from Savannahket goes to a city two hours north of Danang called Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. So that’s where I’d go first. Two more nights before the poker restarts.

This was maybe $2.50? Good stuff. Laos steak and eggs.

The next morning I went to a beef and egg place near the bus station before boarding a big ol’ bus from the 70’s or 80’s. I was the only foreigner on the bus. The border crossing was actually surprisingly stressful because the driver doesn’t speak English and nobody tells you anything! There’s a no man’s land that you have to walk across, and then once you get through the Vietnam side, there’s no bus anywhere to be seen. Uhhh. What. I’m trying to ask people and they just point to the exit gate. Okaaayyyy, weird. You almost always wait for your bus in the immigration area.

Lots of old things in Laos. This is from the bus station parking lot

So I walk past the exit gate and guard, and now I’m fully in Vietnam. All the locals waiting on the Vietnam side are trying to get me in a taxi or minvan to the nearest town, Dong Hoi. No, no, no. Thankfully someone actually helpful tells me to go down the road and wait at the gas station for my bus. I ended up waiting there 30 minutes, wondering if my bus and luggage were gone, never to be seen again. But eventually it arrived and it was smooth sailing until Hue. Although we sat in rush our traffic, driving through the whole city, and they wouldn’t let you off the bus in town! You had to wait until the bus station, outside of town on the exact opposite side of the city. And then sit in traffic again taking a taxi back into main part of the city. AGHHGHG. But now we’re in Hue!

Thakhek Loop Pt. 2

A lot of backpackers rush through the loop and only spend one night in Kong Lor just to do the cave, but I was definitely glad I stayed for two nights, and could have stayed longer. It really has that idyllic Laos countryside scenery. And being right on the river at the resort was great. It’s the same river that goes through the Kong Lor cave, so you can actually hire a boat from the resort to go straight to the cave if you want. Although it’s expensive with no one to split costs with. And I had my bike, so that was no go. Here’s some of the views from the river and the countryside nearby…

the main section of the river

the spring water is very cold, creating the mist

The resort restaurant in the background

views from the road

The next morning it was off to the famous Kong Lor Cave. I begrudgingly paid almost double the normal price as solo person, road my scooter to the river parking area, got assigned my boat driver, off we went to our little wooden longtail boat. Only one group ahead of us. In dry season apparently you’re able to pay extra to have them precariously strap your bike to the boat and take it all the way through the cave, where you can keep riding on the other side. Although in rainy season they don’t let you do it because the roads on the other side are muddy and bad drivers (most drivers on the loop) can get themselves stuck or injured. Also this year one of the boats doing this capsized and the boatman died because he didn’t know how to swim (and wasn’t wearing a life vest). So it’s ethically dubious, but it’s kind of the wild wild west out here.

The longtail boat parking at the mouth of the cave

Looking back the other way

We’re off to a bad start on my boat. We approach a bunch of longtail boats parked at the mouth of the cave, and his is the one that is completely flooded with water. WTF. How does that even happen? So I sit there watching him throw buckets and buckets of water out of the boat before we can begin. The floor, where I want to put my backpack is still under an inch of water. Great. So we set off into the all encompassing darkness, my torch and his torch are the only sources of light we have. It’s a pretty trippy experience taking a boat through a pitch black cave with just two headlamps. Along the way there’s some small rocks and rapids to dodge, marked with little colorful buoys.

We caught up to one other boat

the largest part of the cave

At one point you can see some lights in the distance, the largest chamber of the cave is illuminated, which is one of two stops where you stop and get out of the boat. Pretty impressive! But the real novelty is the ecosystem that it’s located in, attached to this underground river system. We made our other stop a few minutes up the river, nothing extraordinary as far as caves go, and then it was back on the boat for some relaxing river cave cruising to get to the exit.

tough to get any type of decent photo!

Then THWACK! And crunching noises. We’re almost throw from the boat! We hit something. And the boat lurched off to the side. We’re sitting on something, a rock, kinda sideways. It took a second to figure out what happened. The boat is partially out of the water, tilted dangerously at 45 degree angle, resting on a submerged rock. WTF. So much for a relaxing river cruise. After the initial shock, my first reaction is relief, because we were soooo close to flipping, and if we did, there goes my phone, passport, camera, lenses, laptop. Everything. And who knows if this guy knows how to swim. Yikes

If you want to visualize it, here’s my best attempt. Our boat is stuck on a submerged two pronged rock (red dots) with one prong right below the surface and the other prong a bit deeper. This is not our cave of course, as ours doesn’t have any lights. It’s pitch black except for where we shine our headlamps.

Ok, so the boat is stable, we’re just stuck in the middle of the river in a pitch black cave with no one around. Could be worse! The boatman is very animated now, yelling and presumably swearing and saying all sorts of stuff I can’t understand. This isn’t just your average Tuesday I guess. He’s able to get out and stand on part of the rock that is only a few inches below the surface, and he we wants me to join him there. Ok, chill out buddy. I take all the stuff out of my pockets, take my camera, and stash it into my backpack. There’s not enough room for both of us on this little rocky perch. And this isn’t a smooth river stone, it’s sharp jaggedy limestone. It can easily cut your feet. The bottom of the boat is probably torn up pretty good from it.

I’m trying to stand there with him, but there’s no room and it’s painful. I point that I’m going in the water, which he is emphatically shaking his head no, but there’s literally nowhere for me to go. It’s fine, I can swim. I hop in, and tread water and shine my headlamp on the boat. He relaxes a bit. He is definitely more stressed out than I am, seeing how it’s his lack of attention that got his boat stuck on a rock and his client swimming, and his job is possibly on the line. Not a great look for the guy who drives boats for a living. You’d think these guys would know this river like the back of their hand, they drive it every day. Guess not. Anyway…

He starts shaking the boat as hard as he can. It’s not moving. I try and lift as well, but I’m pretty useless being in the water. He’s yelling and grunting, but it’s really wedged in there good. These wooden boats are heavy! And this limestone is very grippy. We’re getting nowhere. He starts making whistles for help, but c’mon bro, that’s not doing anything. So we end up just having to sit there and wait for someone to come by. I swim a bit and find a shallow sandy spot to stand. But I’m really not worried at all. I’m actually feeling kinda giddy, because if we had capsized, we would have been fucked. Really fucked. The boat driver more than me presumably. Forget the electronics, if we were in the water with both our lights out, complete darkness, that’s nightmare material. And if the boat driver doesn’t know how to swim, does he drown? Do I try to help him? Can I even do anything if I can’t see anything? Wild to think about. But now, the boat is intact, nobody is hurt, everything is fine!! This is the biggest tourist attraction in central Laos, who knows when the next boat is coming, but there’s going to be boats coming!

Maybe 10 minutes later we see the lights from a boat coming up the river the opposite way we came – which is odd because we were one of the first morning boats to depart. But yay! It’s a boat with 4 guys in some sort of khaki uniforms, maybe government workers of some kind. This is basically the best case scenario, a boat full of strapping young lads! They pulled up next to us and were able to rock and lift our boat enough to get it freed from it’s rocky holding cell. Mission accomplished! We thanked them and the one guy who spoke English said “Don’t worry, no problem” before they sped off into the darkness.

Time to fire up the motor and get moving! Revvv, revvvv, click. Click. Ughghhgh. Nothing. God damn it. More swear words from the captain. He’s whacking the motor like that crazy Russian cosmonaut with the crowbar at the end of Armageddon, “This is how we fix things in Russian Space Station!!” Except it didn’t magically work, he gave up and defeatedly took out his big wooden paddle and we drifted over to the nearby sandbar to park. He got out his toolkit and started working on the engine, clanging away, doing who knows what. It’s gonna be a really long day if we have to paddle out! At this point I’m really getting a good feel for what these cave walls look like in this section of Kong Lor.

After 10-15 minutes of engine stuff, revvvv, revvvvv, bbrrRRRRRR!! We’re back! Out to the other side, into the glowing daylight and eventually the village to have a little rest and dry off in the sun. The village is mostly stands to sell stuff to tourists, but whatever. My iced coffee tasted great. It’s really pretty on this side, I can see why people want to take their bikes through the cave and keep going in this direction. After 30 minutes break time was over and it was a rather uneventful ride back through the cave to the entrance. I thought about mentioning this mishap to the office, but decided against it, even if he was a shitty boatman, I didn’t really want to try and get him fired. So we parted ways like nothing had happened. No tip though. Definitely no tip for THAT. I did send the office an email a day later about the submerged rock, although I’m guessing the odds of that doing anything were approaching zero.

very peaceful on the other side

From here I had the option to take it slow, and spend a night somewhere else on the loop before driving back to Thakhek the next day, or just spend the rest of the day going straight there. I felt like I had enough excitement for the trip, so back to Thakhek it was. 60km in the countryside, and then the last 100km of the trip were all on the highway – the new, and not-potholed highway, which is a real treat when you’re in Laos, but not exactly very exciting to write about or to take photos. So that was about all for the Thakhek loop. I was back in my hotel bed by late afternoon. With time to spare to go find some sunset photos, yay. So overall, a pretty successful trip! No injuries, no illness, no bike damage, no extra incurred expenses, just one 45 minute river delay. And here’s some photos of my last evening in Thakhek, err just outside of Thakhek.

Got the sunset this time! But those powerlines, grrr!

Thakhek Loop Pt. 1

Onto the 4th largest city in Laos (90,000 people), the city of Thakhek. After getting dropped off in the town center, I walked into the first hotel I saw, $22 for a room with a balcony, perfect. $1 cheaper than booking online too, oh yeah. But there was no time to waste lounging in the room, it was getting late in the afternoon and I wanted some sunset photos among the karst formations nearby. I picked up a scooter rental down the street and I was outta town.

The main drag

my hotel

Now this is where we’re starting to get into that quintessential Laos scenery! A few minutes later you could see the karsts in the distance, those big green humps that look like they could be part of a Mario world. It’s basically guaranteed to be a lovely  ride among the karsts. Although I did get kinda skunked finding a good sunset photo. Sometimes you can never find just the right spot, the right angle with the sun, a clear view, an interesting foreground, etc. Alas.  

20 minutes outside of town

perfect

Couldn’t get a sunset shot. But still very nice

As for Thakhek, I liked it more than Pakse, it’s smaller, quainter, the downtown is right on the river, there’s a proper night market, with live music even! I met a British girl in the hotel lobby to eat with, who just finished the loop so she gave me the rundown on the highlights and good places to stop. There’s lots of caves to choose from, too many actually, and not all that much information online. I learned many of the caves are flooded out during rainy season, and that some aren’t even marked on google maps! What? In 2025?! Crazy.

So the next day I was off on the bike, cloudy in the morning like usual. The first part of the loop is some of the best scenery on the whole trip, driving through the karsts. Although there is a lot of truck traffic going to/from Vietnam, with a lot of big potholes, so the actual riding can be a bit unpleasant at times. The big trucks have no regard for bikes, you’d better get to the shoulder of the road! And then you go through a potholed section and pass them up, only for them to come roaring back on your ass again.

I stopped in two different caves, although one was flooded and you couldn’t get anywhere close to the mouth of it. The other was very commercialized, with garish colored lighting. You could take a boat up the river through it for a bit, which I was going to do, but they wanted double the posted price because I was one person. Oh fuck off. Of course I regretted this a few moments later. It’s an extra $7.50 lol. But I was in the mood to be on the open road, there would be many more caves.

The next hour was more pretty landscapes and small villages before turning north and getting off the road with all the trucks. From here the land flattened out a bit, the sun came out, the road was good, no traffic, just easy riding. It was hot though! I stopped at a small waterfall to cool off, which is a swimming hole in dry season, but the water level and current were too high in rainy season for swimming. Hmmph.

A few hours and brief stops later I was at Saibadee guesthouse, where almost everyone stays on this relatively desolate part of the loop. I’ve gotta give props to whoever built this place, I’m guessing they predicted the rise in popularity of the Thakhek loop pretty well, and then monopolized it in this section. It’s got single rooms, dorms, camping, a huge outdoor common area, bbq area, bag toss, volleyball etc. Every day they do a massive all you can eat BBQ that everybody goes to. So it’s a good spot to hang out and meet other people on the loop, and it’s guauranteed you will run into some of these people again further on the loop. It’s a very young crowd however, like most of southeast asia.

These weird lakes with dead trees are from the excess water from the big dam/hydro-electric project in the region

The next day was more caves, a scenic swimming hole to take a break in the early afternoon, and then finishing in the village of Kong Lor. The Kong Lor Cave is the main attraction on the loop, a massive cave with a river running through it for 7km. But first I’d take one day to explore the sights around Kong Lor. I stayed in a new resort along the river. They have gorgeous river view rooms for $80/night, but they also have these smalled raised bungalows connected by cute wooden walkways for only $15/night with an online deal. I’ll take one of those please, haha. The property was really well done, with a  restaurant, lounge area, firepit, and river access with kayaks. Although this was not the place for socializing, being low season, and weekday, there was basically nobody there (just one French couple) as it’s not a backpackery type place. Whatever, I’ll take the whole place to myself!

View from the road driving in

jungle walkways at the resort

These guys are loud

The next day I scootered down the road for 10km to another cave. You pay $2, they give you a headlamp, and you’re on your own. In dry season you can apparently go over 20kms into this cave! That’s such a cool thing about Laos. A massive cave system, and it’s almost completely untouched, hardly any tourists, and you just go. Just don’t hurt yourself and expect any help!  Although being wet season, I quickly learned you could not be exploring very far into this cave without swimming.

From inside looking back out

But you know what, why not go cave swimming? I ditched all my stuff and went off with just my swimsuit and headlamp. It’s not like it was all swimming, some parts were dry sand, sometimes it was knee deep water, and only some parts you actually had to paddle. This was quite exhilarating. Swimming solo into the deep darkness of a huge cave with only a torch gets your heart beating a bit! Although for most of the time I could see the small speck of light behind me  from the mouth of the cave. Once I lost that and it was completely dark on all sides it got pretty creepy.  Not like fun creepy, but scary creepy. And I’m not a total idiot, if something happened to my torch or it fell in the water it would be really bad, so I didn’t go too much further after I couldn’t see the entrance. But that was really fun! And it really is pretty wild that you can even do something like that as a random tourist. Laos is great.

That afternoon it was back to the resort to enjoy some overpriced smoothies overlooking the river and take their kayak out for a bit. There’s a natural spring that empties into the main river that you can paddle up to for a mile or two. Great. It made me wonder what other kayak spots are out there in Laos, undiscovered. Same with rock climbing spots. When I got back to the resort, it looked like I wouldn’t have it to myself tonight. Chinese tour group! Aghghh. The last thing you want to see if you’re hoping for chill vibes, peace and quiet – or  any food left at the breakfast buffet. They were fine actually, I just made sure to time my dinner at a separate time from them.

Bolaven Plateau Mini Loop

So as I mentioned earlier, I already did the full 5 day, 350 km loop over a decade ago, but this time it’ll be only a two day, one night mini loop, a different route which is the more popular one these days. 200km in total, so nothing too crazy. It was raining in the morning, so I waited a bit to head off. Most of first day isn’t particularly exciting, the hotspots are some coffee farms to stop by and have a fresh local brew, and perhaps do a coffee tour if you’re so inclined. I’ve been on enough of those. My way of keeping things interesting was taking a detour off the main highway on the side roads. Doing this in Vietnam for example, was most likely to be worth it because the side roads are usually good and paved. Laos, not so much!

not so bad when it’s dry

Not much to take photos of. Here’s a house

This part of the Laos countryside was pretty unexciting, dirt roads, lots of rocks, lots of potholes, very slow going! Which is fine, I don’t mind a bit of a slow bumpy ride, as long as there’s something to see. But honestly there wasn’t much of anything to look at, mostly flat scrubby land, some dirt fields, a few houses here and there. And then the drizzling started, making that top layer of dirt a claylike mud. Which was okay at first, and got progressively worse as the drizzle kept up.

Still okay, but getting worse. This is where I put my camera away

These red dirt roads feel a little different than just riding through normal dirt/mud, where the whole ground is permeated with water. It’s like a firm hardpack where the underlying earth doesn’t absorb the water, leaving the slick mud mixture to form a layer sitting on top. Kind of like how driving on an all gravel road feels pretty stable, but if it’s a layer of gravel sitting on top of asphalt, it’s much more slippery and dangerous. But I had made it just fine, very cautiously, almost slipping out a few times, but not. I thought I was in the clear, just two miles from the highway, when the road got really really bad, basically just one huge mudslick.  

It’s exhausting riding! You need super precise throttle control to keep your momentum going, but just barely, not too fast. And you have to have a 100% straight line, because if you turn the wheel at all you’re sliding out. And even then you might still slide out. It’s easy to drop the bike, because your feet have no traction when you put them down to stabilize yourself. I’m not exactly a mud riding pro though, so I’m sure the locals would make this look a lot easier. Many of them also have dirtbikes. Although I did watch some big trucks come by, and even these huge heavy trucks could not properly grip this road. I mean they were moving forward, but you could see them slip sliding, side to side, kinda like a tailfin. Yikes. At some spots I got a bit stuck and tried to walk the bike, but you literally couldn’t move because you can’t get any traction with normal gym shoes. Zero. It’s like ice. If the incline was more than 2% you’d just slide right back down. No choice but to get back on the bike and grind it out.

Eventually I did make it back to the highway, relieved, exhausted, but hey I made it and didn’t drop the bike at all. Of course my shoes, socks, legs were covered in mud, plus random splatters everywhere else. So that detour was definitely in the ‘not worth it’ department. Oh well. Even though it was still drizzling, it was like a dream being back on the pavement. Soon enough the rain stopped and I made it to the first major stop of the tour, the Tad Lo waterfall. Pretty impressive during rainy season! A lot of people like to spend the night here to enjoy the small village and the falls, but my way to enjoy the falls is by swimming in them, and with the weather being cool, misty, and cloudy, I decided to just stop for lunch and then keep moving on.

These tractors are everywhere

Leaving Tad Lo village, outta the way!!

I ended up further down the road in a bigger village that has a few spots for foreigners to sleep at. I somewhat randomly chose a homestay, which had maybe 4 very basic rooms. There were two couples staying there, a French/Brazilian couple, and a French couple. Seriously like 80% of white tourists in Laos are French. They seem to have an affinity for former French colonies. Although most of them seem disappointed that none of the locals can speak any French and they have to use English haha.

Road to the homestay

It was run by a pretty interesting guy, a former farmer (basically everyone in the village is a farmer) and recently converted Christian (almost half the village is Christian now) who not only owns this homestay, but a farm as well, so he was certainly reasonably well-off compared to most villagers. But his hosting graces were not exactly polished because he kept bitching about how much he spent building the rooms and the western toilet/bathroom and leveling out the road, and how Covid screwed him, and he wasn’t getting enough tourists to recover the building costs. And how lucky us tourists were that we could just drive around wherever we liked, spending cheap Laos currency. Which is true of course, and it is nice! But having your host basically bitching at you right from the start, while you just kind of sit there and nod your head, isn’t exactly the type of hospitality most tourists are hoping for! The coffee was good though.

Fancy pants family with a tractor AND a truck

From the homestay we stopped by his brother’s place next door where he was cooking, cow brain among other things. Not bad. Soft tofu-like texture. Very spicy! Then he took me on a 30 minute walk around the village, which was pretty fun, because it was mostly him pointing at houses, and saying either good things or bad things about the families that lived there, if they were lazy or hard workers, and pointing out if they used shoddy building materials or not, or if they could afford a truck or tractor. Apparently the popular thing in the last few years is people using these big tobacco bongs, and getting hooked on them, bringing them out to field to work, making people lazy etc. Nobody wants to work anymore! Well except the good Christian families.

New fancy pants house

Not fancy pants. Or any pants.

For religion, most of the village still had their traditional animist beliefs, and many of the local traditions and celebrations sounded quite fascinating dealing with all the ghosts and spirits to keep happy, or to keep away. But he was saying the problem was that if anything good happens to someone, it’s because they’ve been blessed by the spirits, but if something bad happens to someone, it’s because they’ve been cursed by them. So it doesn’t have to do with hard work or personal responsibility. And then if you have issues you don’t work on it yourself, you go to the local Shaman who figures out a course of action to drive away these bad spirits or bring the good spirits back to fix your problem or bad luck or whatever.

Of course the action often involves some sort of animal sacrifice, chickens for small problems, pigs for bigger problems, water buffalo for the biggest problems. If you have developed a serious health condition, do you go to the hospital an hour away? Nope! Sacrifice a water buffalo! The water buffalos cost about $1,000, which is around half (or more) of a farmers yearly salary. So people end up spending all their money on these silly Shamans who don’t actually do anything. He said he knew a guy who was a heavy drinker that had stomach swelling, feet swelling, couldn’t walk  etc (presumably cirrhosis) and spent his whole life savings sacrificing buffalo (and not stopping drinking) and obviously it didn’t fix anything and now he has to beg for painkillers. So yeah, I could see how this traditional belief system could be a real problem. Growing up around modern medicine, you can take it for granted, I learned this especially in Africa, but witch doctors are still alive and well in many parts of the developing world!

driving around the area

The weather cleared up in the late afternoon and I took the scooter out to explore my surroundings for sunset. It was a good one! So far in rainy season it seems like most days the sun just sets quietly behind a layer of clouds at the horizon. But tonight it was finally clear on the horizon and there were some nice pinks and purples in the sky afterwards.

Interesting house!

I got back for the big group dinner, some good home-cooking, with most things involving two of Laos’s favorite ingredients, chili peppers and basil, accompanied by sticky rice of course. So that was nice. And we got the whole run down of why the animists are all dum-dums and everyone needs to start believing in the Lord Our Savior!

This wasn’t our dinner, but this was the brother cooking a cow brain dish (somewhat of a delicacy). Tasted alright!

The next morning we had a nice pancake, bananas, and nutella breakfast and I was off on my way. I did another little detour loop to get some views from higher up, with paved roads and all, which was worth it this time! Nice winding roads with the fog rising up from the valley floor, and then snaking back down to the highway. On the way towards Pakse there are a bunch of waterfalls to check out, although the fog eventually turned into another midday drizzle, which was a bit of a bummer. I waited it out in various coffee plantation cafes along the way. Here’s some photos of the most popular waterfalls, they’re quite similar, both being dual falls. I remembered them now from 14 years ago, and the weather was the exact same, cloudy and misty!

Cute coffee resort/plantation

Later on the afternoon the clouds cleared eventually and I did finally get my chance to have a somewhat sunny, swim-able waterfall. It was in a pretty weird location, at an abandoned resort hotel. I wouldn’t have known to go around the locked front gates if I didn’t read it online. This waterfall only had a handful of google reviews. Some old man materializes out of nowhere to collect 50 cents to park your bike and points out the concrete walkway to get down to the water. I almost had the place to myself, just one instagram couple there doing their quick little photoshoot and leaving. This is what is so cool about southern Laos, you’ve got this objectively stunning waterfall, and it’s mostly untouched by people! It was the weekend too! I liked this one much more than the two previously posted waterfalls where all the tourists stop. This was a good way to finish up the mini loop and start heading back to Pakse. Tomorrow morning would be off to Thakhek to do the increasingly popular Thakhek loop!

For how few tourists come here, it’s a pretty damn impressive waterfall!

Into Laos: Pakse and Vat Phou

Next stop: Sleepy little Laos. From Kratie it’s about 3 hours to the border, (visa on arrival) and then another three to Pakse, the 3rd largest city in Laos - clocking in at only 115,000 people! The south is the more densely populated part of Laos, compared the more mountainous north. For how big the country is, it’s almost hard to fathom how few people live in Laos. The whole country is only 7 million people! That’s way less than the Chicago metropolitan area. Meanwhile next door, Vietnam has over 100 million people. It really is pretty wild to think about, just how underpopulated and isolated the country is.

Nobody goes to Pakse to see Pakse, and like almost all “big cities” in Laos there’s very little of interest for a tourist to do. There’s maybe a few old french building to look at, a pagoda, you can wander around the local market, there’s a small night market that’s better for snacking than eating a real meal. You can roll the dice getting a massage, but there’s at least a 50/50 chance it’s going to be a very weak, untrained, body rub. I don’t think I took a single photo in the actual city, heh. That’s how you know that I think it’s a boring place!

A pretty crucial bridge, built by the Japanese in 2000

different perspective

Laos temples are a bit more ornate than Cambodian ones

The best thing to do in Pakse is get out of Pakse! Even just across the river there’s a mountain with a pagoda at the top that offers sweeping views of the whole city, which is quite nice at sunset. Driving around on a scooter it doesn’t take long before you’re in the countryside, which is by far my favorite part of Laos. The roads might suck, but rural Laos scenery is always rustic, quaint, and gorgeous. Here’s what you get driving 20 minutes outside of town…

My first full day in Laos I wanted to check out the Khmer temple (and unesco heritage site) Vat Phou, which is about an hour south of Pakse. It was built (well built up much further) at the height of the Khmer empire in the 11th century, when the Khmer kingdom covered most of southern Laos, eastern Thailand and southern Vietnam.  It was originally built with the Hindu vision of the relationship between the gods and humanity, with Shiva being the primary god being worshipped. Hinduism had a massive influence in Cambodian culture, with Angkor Wat itself being dedicated to Vishnu. But over the course of many centuries the Hindu gods were slowly phased out by Buddhism. Eventually Buddhism became the state religion in Cambodia in the 13th century with Laos following suit.

By the 1300’s the Khmer Empire was in a state of decline, while Laos and it’s leader Fa Ngum rose to power and recovered the lands in the south (including Vat Phou) and established the Lan Xang empire, which would last until 1707. The end of the Angkor Kingdom is listed officially as 1431 with the fall of Angkor Thom to the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand. The Ayutthaya would eventually sack the Cambodia capital in the late 1500’s, which is considered the beginning of their ‘dark age’, getting conquered by Thailand while slowing losing their Mekong delta region to Vietnam. Anyway, so the Cambodian temple is in current day Laos.

The first thing you’ll notice about the site of Vat Phou itself is how few people are there! I rolled up on my scooter around mid-morning, and didn’t see any other tourists around. I bought the ticket and then they give you a lift in a shuttle bus for about 5 minutes to the base of the ‘mountain’ where Vat Phou is located. It was a cloudy morning and at the temple, and there were maybe 7 or 8 people wandering the whole complex. It’s pretty cool to have such a place mostly to yourself! Definitely a worthwhile spot for the few visitors who spend much time in southern Laos.

Not very difficult to get a shot with nobody in it

cool looking path connecting the front promenade with the upper temple

The Nagas, mythical serpent creatures

Guard dog

This was the original Shiva temple

 So that was a nice way to kill a couple hours. I still had plenty of time to ride around the area for a bit, which is kind of neat because the area nearby, Champasak, was the seat of the very small, independent Champasak kingdom (1713-1904). There’s really not a lot to see, but it has some nice houses.

Larb for lunch, Laos’ national dish

So while Vat Phou is cool, it is not the main attraction of the region. For the backpackers the most popular thing to do is the Bolavan Plateau Loop, which is a 3-5 day moto loop, and waterfall-hopping around the region’s primary geographical feature, the Bolavan Plateau. Which I happened to have already done, 14 years ago! My most striking memory from that trip wasn’t the scenery though, it was the two girls I was with falling off their moto in construction area, straight into a mud puddle, and being covered literally head to toe in mud haha. They were fine, they just needed a good hosing off!

But nowadays more people opt to do the Thakek Loop instead, which is another 6 hours north, where the scenery has the classic limestone karst formations. Or instead of doing the full Bolavan Plateau Loop, they do a 2-3 day mini loop. Which is what I’d be doing! Saving my energy for the Thakek loop. So the following day I had my small backpack pack and was off to do the mini-loop! Coffee and waterfalls!

Kratie Province

Time for some more blog posts. After 5.5 months of poker with no real breaks, I decided to take a few weeks off and head to southern and central Laos, where I haven’t been to in - lets see, 14 years. I’ve always liked Laos, it was one of my favorite parts of my Southeast Asia trip when I was 25, and I was looking forward to going back. On my way there I decided to take a pit stop in the town of Kratie, in Cambodia, where you can see the Irrawaddy dolphins. There’s only about 100 of them left, which is actually a decent improvement in the last decade, as there’s been a campaign to not let them go extinct in the Mekong. There’s also three other populations of them in Southeast Asia – in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar (the Irrawaddy River is in Myanmar), all with less than 100. But fortunately in Bangladesh, their numbers are over 6,000. In all these places there has been an effort to make seeing the dolphins an eco-tourism money maker, to varying degrees of success.

In this part of the Mekong the dolphins live in basically 150km stretch of the river up to the Laos border, where there is a set of waterfalls/big rapids. The fact that this section of waterway is unnavigable by boat is good for the dolphins. Although economically speaking, this set of rapids is a real killer, especially for Laos, cutting them off from commercial river shipping.

River emptying into the mekong, the water is moving pretty good in rainy season

This guy should be on a promo-poster for boatmen everywhere, god damn.

I hopped off the minibus in the town of Kratie and then hopped in a tuk-tuk to a smaller guesthouse just outside of town along the Mekong. Normally I don’t like staying outside of town, but this place rents scooters, and with a scooter you can stay basically anywhere, no problem. It’s interesting that even though the street I was on runs right next to the river, almost all the houses were set up to face the street, with basically no effort made to give themselves a back-facing living space or extra river views. I do understand that these are small, basic, wooden houses and people don’t have much money, but I suppose I expected that there would be some wooden balconies built in the back to look out over the river, or something like that, but nope.

Anyway, I got situated in my room and waited for someone to grab me a scooter. The place was run by a friendly local woman, who has a foreigner husband, although he wasn’t in town and it sounds like he spends most of the time out of the country. The guest house is known in town because they have a big pizza kiln, and while I rarely eat western food in Cambodia, I might have to make an exception here. Actually what I meant is I almost never eat western food for dinner, I do eat western breakfast, and sometimes salads/sandwiches for lunch. Cambodia doesn’t really do breakfast food, well they do but it’s mostly just small variations of the same noodle/rice dishes that they’d have for lunch or dinner.

Soon enough I got my ride, and I was off north of the city to the boat launch where you can get to the dolphins. It was 4pm and I had until 5pm before they closed up shop.  I found it alright, I was the only person around, I paid the $10 ticket and ended up getting my own personal boat + driver. Nice. I had my long telephoto lens ready to go in hopes of getting some good photos of these guys. It wasn’t long before the driver pointed some out in the distance. You can see them, but they only come up for a few seconds at time. They’re quite loud though, you can easily hear them expelling air from their blowhole even if you don’t see them. And they are friggen hard to take photos of! You see one come up and then try to extrapolate where exactly it will pop up about 30-45 seconds later.  And the only way to get a good shot of their head is right when it resurfaces (and if you have a good angle and are close enough). It’s very tricky.

We had an hour on the boat, and after 30 minutes of trying to get even a halfway decent photo of these things, I decided it was futile and just decided to mostly sit back and enjoy being on the mighty Mekong in the presence of such a critically endangered animal. Although if I had to do it all over again I probably would have signed up for the kayaking trips they do to see the dolphins. They don’t like boat motor noises. It was a nice afternoon on the river though, and I did get a few shots of some dark, schlong-like objects partially out of the water!

Put this one in National Geo

What I liked even better than the dolphins was just simply riding around the countryside at sunset. Cambodia is known for the their classic wooden houses in rural areas, and the mekong region especially has a lot of them. And they seem to be pretty unique to just Cambodia, I don’t recall seeing anything with this styling in Thailand, Laos, or Vietnam. So I spend that evening, as well as a good chunk of the next day driving around and marveling at the houses.

downtown Kratie at night

It’s very hot during the day, so a lot of people shop at night

In the next town over there’s some very old French colonial buildings  (almost 100 years old) that are right in the middle of the market area, which is kind of cool to see. Word on the street is that they’re going to get knocked down for being unsafe though, rather than restored, which is a bummer. You’d think in 2025 there’d more of an effort to preserve these old heritage buildings, but maybe there’s no money for it or it’s not worth the effort. I don’t really know. But I appreciated the buildings.

I’m a big fan of Cambodian market fashion

It’d be a shame if they knocked this down

And that’s about all for my quick stop in Kratie. Here’s a bunch of houses I liked : )

Songkran Festival

Every year April brings one of Cambodia’s biggest holidays, Songkran, aka the water splashing festival, which marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the new (solar) year on the Buddhist and Hindu calendar. It’s a three day official holiday in Cambodia and most businesses shut down and many people go back to the provinces to celebrate. In years past the water splashing part has been pretty lowkey, especially compared to countries like Thailand, who go all out for Songkran, where it’s essentially a country-wide water fight. In Phnom Penh if you weren’t up north by Wat Phnom where they hold the festivities, you might notice some kids walking around with squirt guns and that’s about it. But in the last few years, perhaps a bit jealous of the notoriety the festival has gotten in Thailand, the government has decided to promote and expand the festival a bit more with streets roped off for pedestrians and food vendors, official parties, DJ sets, etc.

I decided to stay in a hotel up closer to where all the action is at this year. Suddenly every corner shop now has a wide selection of water guns out front. And baby powder - also part of the tradition, a less desirable one, where people slap your cheek with a handful of it. People from other parts of town started showing up in the streets in the late afternoon equipped with their arsenal of water guns. Tons of pickup trucks with a full load of people in the bed ply the streets looking for targets. I didn’t realize there were so many nice pick-up trucks in Phnom Penh! Store owners set up tables on their storefronts to hang out, drink beer, and spray people with hoses and their heavy duty spray guns - the type where the gun is connected by a hose to a large tub of water. If they feel like being particularly “playful” they fill the tubs of with bags of ice.

So the first afternoon was pretty fun, I bought a $5 gun and went around getting spraying and getting sprayed, no phone no camera etc, as it’s basically expected you’re gonna get soaked. It’s definitely a holiday for the young, teens and early twenties people everywhere. But really there’s only so much spraying and spraying back that I can partake in before the fun starts to wear off. And I will say that the Cambodians do particularly enjoy targeting the Barangs (Barang literally means French person, as they were the original colonizers, but now it just means any white person) as perhaps a form of socio-economic class revenge, as everyone is an equally fair target in Songkran. And what other time of year will you have to spray one of these absurdly rich, spoiled foreigners in the face with a water gun?! Which is all perfectly fine with me, but of course some teenage boys like to be particularly obnoxious with the direct face shots from 3 feet away. And then you’ve got the baby powder, most people will ask if they can slap some on your cheeks in a friendly playful manner, others (teenage boys) will not.

Anyway I still had a nice time going out for a bit in the afternoons. Sometimes I’d grab the camera for a bit and take some photos, which of course is always a bit risky, but most people were pretty nice about it and only gave me small squirts seeing that I had a big camera in tow. Going out for a jog was also pretty fun, the sprays were welcome, and you can be sure you’re not going to overheat!

Now what I did not realize is that the street I was staying on would be completely gridlocked with traffic every evening. All those pickup trucks completely clog up the whole area, so there’s no way for a ride-share to come pick you up to go anywhere, like a casino. Now I don’t mind getting soaked in the very hot afternoons, as I’m used to getting soaked (in sweat) basically every late afternoon at the gym or going for a run! But once I change clothes and need to get ‘to work’ that’s a different story. There was basically no way for me to get out of my hotel without walking a few blocks through the party zone. I’d put on my rainjacket and try to slink my way out through the crowds without being a target.

Proper etiquette is that if you’re a normally dressed person with no water gun, you’re not supposed to get sprayed, and they do give this respect to older Cambodians, but not so much for barangs! Which is to say, I almost never made it out without getting wet. There’s always some teenage boy out there who sees a no-fun foreigner trying not to get wet and has to take it upon themselves to remedy that situation. After multiple days of this, and showing up to the (already cold) casino wet, I’m not gonna lie, I was ready to beat someone’s ass. And it takes quite a bit to get me to that point!

So lesson learned, I will not be staying anywhere up by Wat Phnom during Songkran again. Better to walk or take a tuk tuk to where the action is at than be permanently stuck in the middle of it! Anwyway, here’s a few pics from the few blocks around my hotel.

gridlock

Cambodia Photo Dump

Just a collection of photos from places I’ve been in the last few months. Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Koh Kong, Koh Rong Samloem.

From the New Years Parade in Phnom Penh

Sunset at the rooftop pool

the old market after a storm

Doing a visa run and spending the night in Koh Kong

Not much to do but relax and enjoy the sunset

my bungalow for the night

Editing photos of Koh Kong on the island of Koh Rong Samloem

The sunset spot in Mpai Bay, Koh Rong Samloem

Mpai Bay

photos look better during the day

Back to Sihanoukville, Independence Beach

Near the port in Sihanoukville

Green and red seems to be the traditional Cambodian boat coloring scheme

Traditional boat building

Another look at the deep sea port from further out

pier doggie

The building never stops

Not much to say here, just a collection of the many construction projects that are currently ongoing. It’s not all abandoned building! These aren’t little kiddy projects either.

Sihanoukville at Night

If you want creepy, you got it!

<3 <3 <3

Sihanoukville, Post Apocalyptic Hellhole

So as I’ve written before, Sihanoukville has lots, LOTS of unfinished and abandoned buildings that blight the place, giving it a rather creepy feel. It’s also still a poor, developing country, with many people struggling to get by. And while wages and the standard of living has gone up with all the development in Sihanoukville, it has been quite messy process. These photos are attempting to capture some of the harsher realities of that “progress” and how residents continue live in their ever changing environment.

Full steam ahead

Bring whatever you can carry

You’re going to need it

The real Sihanoukville doesn’t shine until after the sun sets

Your skin starts to prickle

Some things only come out at night…

Life in Sihanoukville

I wrote this up last year and it was sitting on my computer so I figured I’d post it now. A year later it still sums up the place pretty well, a lot of development, but also a lot of unfinished buildings. A lot of casinos doing well in the prime locations, but also a lot of casinos that hardly anyone seems to go to. Poker continues to get slightly worse. All the pictures are from this year.

The not-so-nice part of town. Interesting skyline though

It’s certainly changed A LOT since before Covid hit. The city itself is much more complete. Most of the big projects that managed to get funded through the pandemic, like the high rise condos, have finished. At the same time there are many many that got scrapped, leaving huge concrete skeletons dotted around the city, giving it a kind of creepy vibe. So much money wasted on starting some of these building projects! That’s Chinese development for ya. But really it’s hard to grasp how quickly things change here being from the US or western countries. The photo below would have been mostly red dirt and scrubland and maybe some shacks not long ago.

Some of the completed building projects

So yeah, you’ve got your very new and very nice casinos and high rise apartments, and plenty of nice modern, indoor shops. And despite all the unfinished buildings just sitting there, there’s also a bunch of completely new projects going on. The city is always building something. Driving along the major arteries, most of the shops on those roads are now behind glass doors with air conditioning. It used to be that almost all the restaurants and shops were open air set ups with fans blowing everywhere. Not anymore! Nowadays there are also familiar chains like Starbucks, KFC, and Dairy Queen, among other Chinese chains. There’s even two indoor shopping malls now. So this is development! Although many of these places are not particularly busy, they’re designed for the Chinese, not so much the Cambodians. The philosophy seems to be, Build it and they will come!

Fancy hair salon

The new U Mall. The apartment complex I stayed in is on the right.

Always a favorite in China

very popular Korean store

All of the main roads are now nicely paved with sidewalks, which is definitely a massive improvement from a few years ago. One of the big things they did was carving out a new road to connect all of the coastline. There used to be a wooded hilly section with a few western guesthouses, with only walking trails and a trail down to the waterfront. All of that got demolished to build a road with a large promenade, and the area behind the road will become a giant housing development.

Although the promenade area is just completely open with no trees, no shade, it’s hot as hell during the day, nothing to do or see, and nowhere to sit except for the sidewall. Like that’s the best you guys could come up with?? Add something to make it look nice! It doesn’t come alive until the sun sets, the food vendors set up shop, the tents gets set up for night market, and there’s a makeshift outdoor concert area as well. But it seems like an opportunity missed, because it’s just a really plain and kinda ugly space. Nice public spaces are just not Cambodia’s strong suit. All of the country is like this. In the parks department especially, it’s awful, beyond pathetic. In Sihanoukville there might be one tiny city park with grass in the entire town. The best public places to hang out are usually the pagodas and Sihanoukville has shockingly few of those.

None of this was here 5-6 years ago! The slightly cyberpunk lights are a nice touch

Night market tents in the background

You’re not supposed to drive scooters on the promenade! :0

Concert stage setup

Durian fruit stand

the massive development going on the background

lovely view hahaha

Here’s what it looks like after the night market all weekend and the street cleaners apparently had the day off

the one and only park!

They did a pretty nice job with it though, having grass and all

The road getting to the out of town beaches was also totally redone. It used to be that you had to go inland to get to the out of town beaches, on rough dirt roads with potholes everywhere. Now it’s just one nice big wide paved road running along the coast, plied by trucks and SUVs with lots places to park. The annoying thing is they knocked down all the little guesthouses and restaurants that used to be right on Otres beach. This was where lots of foreign tourists would hang out, and they had some pretty cool creative restaurants, cocktail bars, nice lounge chairs facing the ocean, occasional live music - It was a nice scene, but now all of that is completely gone.

This is what the coastline looks like for a few miles. The boardwalk is nice for a jog though!

If you want to be at the beach you have to bring all your own supplies, towels, blankets, food, drinks, umbrella etc. I suppose this is better for Cambodians, because that’s how they do the beach, family style with big groups and setting up camp basically. But currently I don’t have much reason to get out to the far beaches anymore. All the beaches are pretty same samey now.

Here’s getting wayyy out of town at Ream National Park

Also worth noting the scale of development, that way outside of town near the airport they’re just starting to build an entire lifestyle community (or whatever) for the rich people called Bay of Lights, and it’s going to have a Greg Norman golf course! Damn. And a lot of the coastal land really far outside of town inside Ream National Park is also all bought out by Chinese developers. Pretty sad. It’s a NATIONAL PARK. But I really don’t know where they’re gonna get all these rich people to move in from to buy this upscale community housing kinda in the middle of nowhere.

New building near Otres beach. No idea what it is. Feels like some giant corporate headquarters of a company owned by a supervillain. I don’t like it.

This one looks pretty good

 I’m currently staying in one of the high rise apartments. It’s one of three towers, all are 35 stories high, it’s got a gym but no pool, and the residents are 98% percent Chinese if I had to guess. Once again, the Chinese don’t care for pools and sunshine and swimming. It’s been a really wild transition in Sihanoukville from not having  hardly any building over a few stories high to having tons of buildings 35-40 stories high! That’s how China rolls. So the housing situation has definitely eased up. For  $25/night I’ve got a basic studio with a balcony, decent view, washing machine, small kitchen with a fridge, microwave, and two burners, blasting AC, and a tiny (but nice) bathroom. The thing that makes me laugh is the bathroom door opens into the bathroom, and doing so blocks off the counter with the sink, and there is so little room that the only way to close the door once you’re inside the bathroom is to step into the shower (or be seated on the toilet). If they just made it so the door opened outwards they wouldn’t have this problem!

Anyway, it’s in a nice busy location, two of the best casinos for poker are walking distance, the brand new mall is right across the street, street food carts are everywhere, as well as a few Chinese restaurants and Indonesian restaurants (apparently the Indonesians are the new players in the real time online gambling market), there’s massage places, there’s also a beach within walking distance, but it’s a private beach owned by a resort (it used to be public a few years ago, which is annoying).  Of course being a white guy I can basically just walk right in, no questions asked, and go to the beach, and have it all to myself. Like I said before, the Chinese will not touch an unshaded beach during the day with a 50 foot pole.

Although I’d rather go a mile down the road to the Novotel beach club, which has beachfront but also a really nice big pool with lounge chairs and umbrellas. I get my $4 smoothie mango passion fruit smoothie and swim and read for a bit. There will sometimes be Russians here swimming and using the lounge chairs, that’s about it.

Reading my book at Amazon Coffee on the beach

Aqua pool/beach club

pretty nice set up

things could always be worse

The lobby and coffeeshop of the Novotel

So a normal (or more than normal) day looks something like: wake up, do some stretching, grab my laptop and either go to the beach or the pool club, read, swim, get a bit of sun, go to a coffeeshop to screw around on the laptop, do some photo editing, hit the gym, try and catch the sunset somewhere - either relaxing at the beach or driving around on the scooter looking for interesting photos. Come back to the apartment, shower, get something to eat - usually casual Chinese or Indonesian food (I love the Indonesian buffets) and then hit the poker tables from 8pm onwards. If the games are good I’ll play until 3-4am, if not I’ll leave early. I leave early quite a bit these days. Here’s some of my usual sunset spots:

Hawaii Beach

My favorite local hangout

Fishermen always coming and going

View from the bridge you could see in the above photos

Looks like a pretty good view, just don’t zoom in too much to see how many concrete shells there are!

view from under the bridge

Another good spot, Independence Beach

Nice little pier to watch the sunset

Occheutal Beach, the main beach just outside of town

Every place is photogenic when you’ve got the sunset colors coming out

As for poker, unfortunately the mid-stakes games are nowhere near as good as they used to be, which seems to be the trend just about everywhere. The big $2/5 game I was playing in last year has been changed to 2/3, and plays nowhere near as crazy. The Chinese who run the games are also less willing to let foreigners sit in the good games as they used to be. A lot of times if there is a good game there’s no seats of course, and none will open up for hours until the fish gets busted. And there’s just way more pros around town, it used to be all the Asians were Chinese, but now you’ve got a bunch of Japanese and Korean pros in town too. Sihanoukville has been ‘discovered’ I guess you could say.

There was a famous French poker player Vlogger guy who recently did a bankroll challenge in Snooky where he supposedly ran up his $1,000 to $100,000 or something, it most likely didn’t happen like that and was just made for clicks, but now there’s these friggen groups of young French guys flocking here to run it up, all inspired by that damn vlogger guy.

The game most barangs (white people) play, is a $1/1 game with a max buy in of a lowly $300, is run by a French and English guy. I know a few players who I used to play with in bigger games from a few years ago and now they’re grinding out this game. Ugh. There are still some juicy high stakes games, but they’re very swingy, and the rake here is just crazy high.

DV Casino, which has most of the poker action

It’s so incredibly common to walk around and see players holding 10k brick of cash at the baccarat tables

 So anyway, the poker is very mediocre now, still beatable of course, but nothing like the before-times. Anyway, I guess if poker isn’t going all that great, I’d much rather be in Cambodia where my standard of living is can still be really high for making a very mediocre amount of money. I can drown my tears at the Novotel beach club, full body massages, and tropical sunsets.

Now the photos that I put in this post are mostly to show some of the positive developments in Sihanoukville. And the nicer parts also happen to be places that I personally spend most of my time at, so it’s a bit biased naturally. My next post is going to be doing the exact opposite, going specifically for shots that make Sihanoukville look like some sort of dystopian hell hole. And boy oh boy does it have a lot spots that really fit that vibe!

New Hampshire

Like many things in the region, New Hampshire was named after a place in England, the county of Hampshire. The first European settlement was a group of English fishermen near Portsmouth, three years after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. It was kind of a tricky place to live as the frontier between the British and French colonies, plus Algonquin Indian claims in the central and north, and then throw in a bunch of border disputes with Massachusetts in the south. It also had a thriving slave trade, as it did not impose a tariff on slaves, just as nowadays it does not impose a sales tax. Or a capital gains tax!

New Hampshire isn’t the most interesting state, but it does have the White Mountain National Forest, as well as the tallest mountain in New England, Mount Washington. And while it’s not the tallest mountain east of  the Mississippi, it’s the most geographically prominent. It would be too late in the season for me to hike it, it’s not supposed to be overly difficult, but it has the most deaths out of any mountain in the US! Which is pretty crazy, part of it is the sheer number of people that do it, and I guess it can get quite dangerous if the weather turns, and most people come pretty unprepared, thinking it’s just an easy walk up. So anyway, the White Mountains was on my to-do list.

photo stolen from wikipedia

I stayed in the largest city in New Hampshire, Manchester, which has a population a bit over 100,000 people. It’s got a small casino and card room there, as well as a bigger room 20 miles down the highway. The reason the other room is bigger is because it’s closer to the greater Boston area. Manchester also gets a lot of presidential candidates, as New Hampshire is the first in a series of presidential primaries. It’s more important for the amount of media it receives, not the actual primary itself. A few towns, like Dixville Notch open voting up at midnight, which is always covered by news crews and reporters.

The morning I would wake up early and drive to the White Mountains I stopped at the Red Arrow diner, which is a famous spot for candidates to stop in for a photo shoot. Every single seat has a little placard with famous politicians that sat there. Considering I was up at 6am and nobody else was there, I took Joe Biden’s spot, which was also Vivek Ramaswamy’s haha. Nothing like some eggs and hashbrowns smothered in cheese and chili with a cuppa Jo to start a long day.

So before this trip started I was thinking the White Mountains would be some of the best fall foliage on the trip, as it’s the most famous for leaf peeping. But I did not realize that this far north, and at higher elevations, I was wayyyy past peak. Oops. So I’d have to temper my expectations for getting any nice photos. But still it’d be a nice day of hiking and waterfalls. As I got further into the mountains it was apparent there was a good bit of snowfall last night, the first one of the season. Excellent! Instead of oranges and reds, I’d get white in the white mountains.

First stop was the Flume River Gorge, a hugely popular spot during peak foliage, with tickets and a time slotted reservation system at all. But I wouldn’t need a ticket this late in the season. I got there right around 9am when it opened, and much to my chagrin, a big sign saying closed for the season! Weak! Literally one day too late, aghh. But there would be lots more places on the list to stop by with only one full day in the park. I drove like ten more minutes and found some different trails to hike. Everything was looking very peaceful and hardly any other people around. A very nice morning to be doing some of the short waterfall hikes, albeit a bit slippery.

Kind of nice having these places all to myself

The smaller waterfalls were actually nicer to photograph

Once I got over to the eastern side of the park in the afternoon, it was like teleporting from winter back to autumn. All the traces of snow were gone, the trees still had leaves, there was still a bit of fall color around, so basically back to what it was like for the 98% of this trip. In this part of the park there’s more towns nearby and there’s a few covered bridges around, which are always a crowd pleaser. Actually my first covered bridges of the trip! Woo hoo. I get why people like them, they’re old, usually historically significant, kind of romantic, brings you back to a more quaint, simple time, etc. Personally I’m not going to go out of my way to see them, but if they’re right off the highway, sure!

Covered Bridge! I wish it was covered in snow though

The old railway line. Some guy’s unleashed St. Bernard came charging out of the grass, barking it’s head off, I honestly thought it was going to attack. Scary as hell. Leash your friggen dog if it’s gonna act like that to people walking by. And then of course he does the whole, ohh he’s so friendly, wouldn’t hurt a fly bit. GTFO.

This one is a functional, in-use, covered bridge, even more exciting!

One of the better waterfalls stops along the popular Kancamagus Highway.

The mountains don’t look especially pretty when the trees are all dead and there’s no snow on them, heh

So that was one big loop driving around the White Mountain Nat’l Forest. After that I headed over closer to the coast in Newburyport MA, which is right on the border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, at the entrance of the Merrimac river. I also spent a few hours in Portsmouth NH, pictured here…

Bridge into Maine. I’m kind of annoyed I didn’t make enough time to get up to Portland, ME. Oh well, next time.

Downtown Portsmouth

And that was about all for the sightseeing on this trip. Poker ended up being pretty meh. I played in two crazy games in Manchester, where people were drinking and splashing money around, lots of all-in’s, people running up big stacks, and wouldn’t you know who ended up losing in those games? This guy. There goes all the profit for the trip. Extremely frustrating. Then the very last night I played a bigger 5/10 game in Springfield MA and lost $2,000, including the biggest pot of the trip, maybe $3,500 where I flopped a straight, and the guy goes all in with just a naked flush draw, gets there on the river, of course. Fun way to end the trip.

So in three weeks I lost $2,000 plus the maybe $4,000+ of expenses. So yeah, pretty massive failure of a poker road trip. I came back to Illinois the day of the election to cast my vote, I shoulda just stayed in Springfield. Of course just to add insult to injury I cashed out some BTC to bet on Kamala, because I really did not want to believe that this country could really elect this guy twice, but obviously banking on Americans to do the right thing is a complete suckers bet. Lol me.

Finishing with some Halloween photos from Salem.

I can’t wait for 2025.

Massachusetts

I really didn’t spend many nights in Massachusetts, as I was skipping Boston this time around, those hotel prices are steep! It’s a pretty expensive state in general, which makes sense as it has the highest income per capita of any state (although quite a bit behind Washington DC). I wouldn’t have guessed New Jersey was #2 though! Driving along the coasts where all the rich people have their houses, you can definitely feel the old money. Although more like ‘normal’ 1% wealthy, not oil baron wealthy like Newport!

I managed to pull myself out of bed early and start driving from Providence over to the southern part of the Cape. I didn’t have much of a plan, I figured I’d stop at the usual NE stuff, lighthouses, beaches, windmills. The first windmill I stopped at you had to drive a bit through a neighborhood to get there, and man these small coastal towns are just very idyllic, large all-white houses, perfectly manicured yards, lovely old trees overhanging the newly paved road, the sun poking its way through the branches, the smell of freshly fallen leaves. Like out of a movie. Very nice, I tell myself the people are probably massholes though. I mean it’s not fair to live in a place like this and not have some irredeeming qualities to balance it out. Spellcheck is telling me irredeeming is not a word, which I’m just going to ignore.

Windmill #1 !

So anyway, I pulled in the tiny parking lot for the windmill, which is also has its own tiny sliver of beach. On both sides of that beach are “Private Beach” “No Trespassing” signs, which are a pretty common sight around these parts. Not much to see here, I took a photo and was on my way to the far southeast part of the cape, Chatham and the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s a weird spot. I guess the the beach trail got swept away by erosion and now you’ve got to go through private property to get to the part with the trails. There is a road that goes through, but you can’t take it because rich people say no, so you’ve got to walk, and they’re very adamant about not going off the pathway. And there’s a ‘visitors center’ tent called Friends of Monomoy, which I’m not sure if it’s primary purpose is to give information or for the old retired people with too time on their hands to keep watch on the tourist visitors. I didn’t spend much time here. I stopped for some chowda in the cute small town of Chatham.

Chatham Lighthouse

Chatham coastline

The rest of the afternoon I’d be driving along the Cape Cod National Seashore, which stretches all along the eastern side of the Cape, although you can’t actually drive along it as most of it is dunes and marshes and grasslands, so you have to keep going inland to the main road and then back out to the coast again at various points. It’s very raw and pretty! And another perk of being in the off-season, non of these places charge entrance fees like they do in the summer, where a full day of beach hopping would get quite costly! During the drive the clouds moved in and the wind picked up giving it that moody type of vibe.

The whole far northeast part of the cape was very pleasant driving, as it seems to be mostly public land, not many houses and subdivisions around. Lots of different beaches, although they all start to look pretty similar at this point. The road through the Cape finally finishes at Provincetown, pop 3,709. That’s the year round population, the summer population swells to 60,000 according to wikipedia. It’s kind of an interesting town, it was known as an artists colony in the early 1900’s, and now has a reputation for being a very pro LGBTQ type of place. It’s also expensive as hell, I looked at room rates, as it’s a good 2+ hours to get back to Providence, but the hotel prices are crazy. I didn’t really have any time to do anything in Providencetown besides catch the sunset and eat some fish and chips, but it looked like a nice spot!

So that was a very jam packed day! Cape Cod is a pretty big place! Later on in the trip I stayed up north in a town called Newburyport, which has a nice downtown and is conveniently located a few train stops away from Salem, which is jammed basically all of October, but especially a madhouse on Halloween of course, when I’d be going. Here’s some photos from the northern part of the state…

Rhode Island

Time to get in a full day of driving. Rhode Island is tiny, but it packs a punch! First stop was a very New England thing, visiting a lighthouse, the Point Judith Lighthouse specifically, built in 1816. Big changes happened in the mid 1800’s when the horn was switched to a whistle. Driving north from here you get to Narragansett, founded in the mid 1600’s and named for the tribe that eventually displaced by the colonists. It gained popularity as a beach resort in the 1800’s, which has remained until today. Although it wasn’t exactly beach weather in October, but there were still a few intrepid surfers out there in wetsuits.

Narragansett

looks like a better spot to read than to surf

Next up, Jamestown, which is on an island (Conanicut), not to be confused with the Jamestown VA. This one isn’t all that exciting, it seems to have a lot of grazing land for cows, but also the killer 1-2 punch of a lighthouse AND a windmill. AND a cute old-timey looking fire station. Not a bad place to drive through.

Seriously, everywhere you stop in the fall is just kind of low key gorgeous

First windmill of the trip, very exciting!

Jamestown marina

Probably like $500/night to stay in that hotel, prices around here are whack.

Awww just look at those old timey fire trucks

Bridge to Newport

From there you cross the bridge into the main tourist attraction of Rhode Island, Newport. Now we’re talking classic New England old money! This place has it in droves. In the 1700’s Newport was known as a place with freedom of worship, which drew in a more international, enterprising type crowd, including a large population of Portuguese Jews. Shipping and trade flourished. One of the Portuguese Jews, Jacob Rodrigues Rivera developed the manufacture of sperm oil, which kept the young men in town very busy, out in the ocean hunting sperm whales. Newport basically had a monopoly on candles and oil in the colonies. And because there wasn’t enough money to go around, Newport was also a major port in the slave trade!

You know you’re getting into Newport when…

The Revolutionary War sucked for Newport, but in the 1800’s the Old China Trade with the Qing dynasty was going well, and lots of wealthy families decided Newport would be their summer residence. By the turn of the century it was the place to be for the rich, with many of the wealthiest families like the Vanderbilts, Astors, Wideners building huge ass mansions and spending their summers there. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had their summer residences in Newport as well. So it’s a hoighty toighty type of place, full of rich people stuff like country club golf and tennis and it’s called the sailing capital of the world.

I just had enough time time to catch the sunset downtown, where there’s a bunch of big piers with shops and restaurants and stuff. I decided the splurge a little bit and went to the most popular lobster roll place, $30 for a little lobster roll, ha! And that’s from a casual, counter service place. It was damn good though. But still, friggen Newport.

Apparently this place is a zoo in the summer. Not so much on a weekday in Oct, fortunately

Nice clouds for a sunset

After that I made the hour drive up to Providence, dumped my stuff at the hotel and hit the casino. It’s a bit smaller in scale than than the Indian casinos in Connecticut, not much to look at. It also has that dimly lit backroom gambling hall vibe that I don’t really like. The poker room is tucked away upstairs, and honestly not all that much action, being midweek and all, not surprising. I’d have 3 nights here. Which would leave me one day to take a trip out to Cape Cod and one more day to see a bit more of Rhode Island. The overwhelming feeling from those road trips, it’s nice to be rich!

Looks like somewhere in England

Everywhere you look

Connecticut

I’ll start this part of the trip with some poor decision making. At first I thought I’d cross through Manhattan and stop somewhere downtown on the way up to Connecticut, but it seemed like too much of a PITA, so instead I thought I’d bypass almost all of Manhattan, and then cross over through the Bronx via the George Washington Bridge. Terrible choice! Traffic looked okay when I checked out at 11am, but by the time I got there it was basically gridlock on all roads leading to the bridge. It did feel very New York though, shit traffic, people cutting each other off, laying on the horns etc. Fun.

 I wanted to stop on Arthur Ave, in the Bronx, which is a street full of old school Italian places. It took a few laps of driving around to find a parking spot, and then I popped in a more casual pizza place for that Classic New York Slice and some garlic bread knuckles. Pretty tasty! Worth the effort? Probably not. I also thought about stopping at the botanical garden, but $36? Come on. I ended up walking around the massive Pelham Bay park in the late afternoon and then continued on after sunset. I was kinda kicking myself for not ending up somewhere with a city view at sunset though. Alas.

Mohegan Sun

So Connecticut has two large Indian casinos, both with poker rooms, the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, and they’re 15 minutes apart. I picked a hotel down the road from the Mohegan Sun, as I’d read Foxwoods has been more dead as of late. I don’t have a lot to report, as this part of Connecticut isn’t overly interesting, lots private property, big houses on the coasts etc. I did go to the beach, as the weather was great, 70’s, but still too cold for swimming.

Just stopping at whatever places that catch my eye from the road

Start of the hiking trail

I thought this thing was abandoned, nope!

I also did some poking around on google maps and there was a place on the coast not far away called the Seaside Sanatarium, which is just one of things that catches your attention. Upon some googling it was built as a center for heliotropic (light therapy) treatment for children with tuberculosis in the 30’s, when they thought a lot of fresh and sunshine could actually cure tuberculosis. Eventually that therapy technique became obsolete as drugs were developed and eventually the building was acquired by the state’s Dept of Mental Retardation in 1961. It didn’t have stellar track record, with lots of reports of mistreatment and abuse. It was eventually abandoned in the 80’s. Pretty creepy!

It’s kind of a weird spot, a nice waterfront where people go to walk their dogs, and sitting right there are two big abandoned building that are all fenced off. As I was milling around taking some photos I noticed some teenagers approach it, duck down near a big bush outside of the chainlink fence and re-appear on the other side and walk into the building. Well, if they can do it, so can I! So I squatted down by the bush and there was a nice triangle section of cut fence, and in I went.

Nothing like exploring an abandoned sanatarium in late October for some extra spooky Halloween vibes. The upper floors weren’t too scary, because there was a lot of natural light that came in from the cracks and holes in the boarded up windows. But the basement, now that was extra creepy, and I didn’t have proper light with just my cell phone. I didn’t linger there too long.

It’s got some nice beachfront

not overly creepy with some natural light

getting creepier

Once I got out, I was sitting on one of the benches, and the two teens came over to say Hi. I guess there were the local urban explorers and they come here all the time. I guess every once in a while the cops stop by when there’s a complaint and they have to make a swift exit. Fortunately that was not this evening. Apparently there are loads of places like this in New England, and an abandoned mental hospital 20 minutes away that they suggested I check out. They were interested to see if I’ve ever done any urban exploring in Gary Indiana, as I guess there are lots of abandoned buildings there to investigate. I’ll look into it haha. All in all, a pretty interesting evening!

Another nice spot in the area is the coastal town of Mystic Connecticut, home of the 1988 Julia Roberts RomCom, Mystic Pizza, and that pizza place does still exist! The town is pretty tiny, but it’s got a nice museum, some art galleries, and nice bougie restaurants. I found an oyster bar with $1.50 oysters and half off chowder for happy hour, excellent. If you sit at the bar, they shuck the oysters right in front of you. I’m not a huge oyster fan, but when you’re in New England and they’re being shucked in front of you, and the guy is talking about how they’re harvested and the subtle taste differences between the varieties, it’s definitely gets you in the oyster type of mood. The chowder was delicious too, not the usual thick white chowder, but a thin clear broth, where there is extra importance placed on the quality of the seafood. Mmm.

Another good stop is the submarine museum, that features one of the first American submarines, Bushnell’s Turtle, used to attack a British warship in the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t very effective, it was used go up to the warship at night, manually attach an explosive to it, and float away without being detected. It was a bold idea, but never actually worked as planned unfortunately. Fun story though. The main attraction is a walkthrough of the USS Nautilus, the US’s first nuclear powered submarine, it made the first submerged trip across the north pole, decommissioned in 1980 and made into part of the museum. And the whole museum is free!

As for the poker, it was okay, the games weren’t particularly exciting, I probably finished up $500 or 600 for the 3 nights I was there, so basically just paying the bills. But no complaints. A new state checked off the list. Well, one complaint, I really don’t like places that have lighting that feels like you’re down in a dungeon, which is what the Mohegan SUN ironically felt like. Fortunately there was plenty of sun outside the casino for late October in New England. It would be onto the next state, Rhode Island, and the Bally’s Twin River casino, somewhere outside of Providence.

East Coast Poker Road Trip

I haven’t played much poker out on the east coast with the exception of a few days in Philadelphia and a week in Boston, but there’s a whole bunch of smaller rooms in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire that I thought would be interesting to check out. In fact I’ve never stepped foot outside of a big city (Philly, NYC, Boston) in that whole upper east coast region, so it was a bit exciting to me to still have essentially an entire region of the US that I’ve never really seen or explored. Well that’s not totally true, we went up to Maine on a family trip 25+ years ago, but the memory is a bit hazy.

As someone who is not a planner, I made almost zero plans for this trip. I booked my first two nights in Pittsburgh and started driving. I-80 from Chicago to Pittsburgh is not the most exciting stretch of highway, so I made no stops until late afternoon once I crossed the border from Ohio into Pennsylvania. Although I do kind of regret not stopping in Cuyahoga Valley National Park outside of Cleveland (which I’d never even heard of) but all the colors of the trees looked great when driving past it, and the reviews I read after driving past it were very positive!

I stopped at some small state park maybe 15 minutes off the highway, northwest of Pittsburgh, to get in a quick hike and admire the fall colors. It wasn’t anything overly memorable, and my hike had no real views of anything, but you can’t ask for too much when you just start googling “State Parks Near Me” when you’re on the highway. It was fine though, always nice to get off the highway for a bit, and basically everywhere looks some degree of ‘nice’ when it’s mid October in Pennsylvania.

The room I booked was a bit odd, it was through a private host on Booking.com, it’s labeled as a hotel, but it’s actually a big old house where the owner rents out the rooms individually and the common room, kitchen, and bathroom are all shared. So basically the same as an Airbnb shared house.  It was in a quiet neighborhood, big trees everywhere, plenty of room to park on the street, the house was definitely showing it’s age a bit, but with a certain about of rustic charm. And the best part was I was the only person there, so I had it all to myself for less than half of what a hotel would have cost. The owner let me in, showed me around, gave me some food recs, gave me the room key, and I was on my way to the casino. But first stop was the famous Primanti Bros for a sandwich. I got the capicola (aka the gabagool) with egg, which was a tasty, pretty unique sandwich with the french fries and coleslaw, BUT the meat to coleslaw ratio was just too slaw-y, so I can’t give 5 stars.

The poker action was at the Rivers Casino, same company that owns the one in Chicago and a few other places. It’s not nearly as crowded as Chicago (well almost nowhere is) and the highest stake game is $1/3 blinds with a $500 max buy in. Around midnight some guys who had been drinking sat down and the table got really good, people running up $2,000+ stacks, the type of game you can’t leave. And I didn’t. I played till 6am, finished down a few hundred dollars, couldn’t hit any  hands in any big spots. Story of my year. Screwed up my daytime tourist plans to boot. Yay.

The next day I woke up for late lunch at a nearby neighborhood café, and then had to choose between the botanical gardens or the Warhol museum, the Warhol museum is more unique to Pittsburgh, so that was the winner. I liked the museum, there was definitely a lot more to Andy’s career than the soup cans, like decades more, haha. That closed at 5, which gave a me a bit of time to walk across the bridge, see the downtown, and get to The Point for sunset. A nice little afternoon. I certainly wouldn’t have minded a bit more time in Pittsburgh. As for the poker I got stuck a bunch of money and then grinded my way to get back even.  So not the greatest start. Onto Philadelphia.

I figured I’d get off the highway for most of this one and see some of the central Pennsylvania hill country, less affectionately known to some as ‘Pennsyltucky.’ I picked a turnoff that would take me to a section of the Ghost Town Trail, which is called that because I guess there’s some abandoned mining towns along the trail, although whatever sectioned I picked didn’t seem to have any, hmm. I really should do a bit better research beforehand. The colors were nice of course.

I also drove around some of the small towns, and if you’re trying to get the vibe of small town America leading up to the election, jeeez-us, these places are insane. It’s like each house is trying to out-do each other with how big of a Trump sign they can put in their yard, or on the side of their house, garage, whatever. A giant cardboard effigy, sure, why not. It’s legitimately scary how much these people love Trump. The locals are friendly though, or chatty at least. I stopped in a sub shop and in the time it took to make a hot roast beef I learned all about the owner’s employee, who is fresh out of prison, for apparently killing a pedophile, and now he’s like 20 years behind on modern technology and hates texting. Alrighty then. Back on the road for most of the afternoon with a sunset stop in a state park somewhere a bit outside of Philadelphia. This was a worthwhile stop.

I booked some motel for two nights near the Parx casino, which is in Bethlehem PA, maybe 40 minutes east of downtown. Like most US casinos, its not located in the most exciting of places. But Parx is the largest poker room in the northeast, if you’re not counting DC, and a damn good place to play. I’d also have one afternoon to bum around Philly, which is pleasant enough. My museum of choice was called the Mütter Museum, which has a bunch old medical equipment, wax models, but the main thing is the well preserved anatomical specimens, skeletons and organs and stuff stored in liquid in jars, most of which were from rare conditions resulting in morbidity of the patient. Definitely a creepy place!

From there I mostly just wandered around the city, making sure to get to the old parts of town where there’s narrow cobblestone alleys and nicely restored buildings and homes that probably cost a gajillion dollars even though they’re really small. And a Philly cheesesteak for dinner of course. Although I didn’t make it down to south Philly, which I guess is where the old school, famous cheesecake places are at. Next time. Next state up: Connecticut.

A quick trip through Greece

Like Italy, I was mostly going to be passing through Greece and not really getting the full Greek experience, but I still had six night before flying out. The first evening was in Ionnina, which seemed to me like a very nice city! It’s right on a lake, you can take boat trips, there’s restaurants and coffeeshops overlooking the lake, all of which seemed to be pretty popular, there’s a castle, a very old mosque,  a museum, etc. So definitely a nice spot to spend the night.

Fortunately in between Ionnina and Athens is a place I really wanted to see, Meteora, where all these monasteries are built high up on towering rock columns.  Although unfortunately the one bus that goes there didn’t leave until late afternoon, so I’d have to do two nights there instead of one, which I know is just terrible to have to spend an extra night at one of the more interesting places on earth.

The views from afar when you’re in the bus are pretty wild, there’s a big wide central valley, and these huge gray bulbous rock forms basically go straight upward from the flat plain, seemingly out of nowhere, towards the heavens if you will. I can see why religious folk found such a special calling to the place. To me it looks like one of the worlds in Super Mario Bros. Once you get dropped off in town, the rocks really do tower right over everything.

It was late enough that all the monasteries would be closed, but the sun doesn’t go down until 8pm, so I still had time to catch the sunset. I found a scooter rental place, I think I was supposed to have an IDP (International Drivers Permit) but they let me rent it after I explained I’ve put thousands of kilometers on rental scooters and knew how to drive one. Excellent. I guess they get a lot of first timers. The main section of Meteora with all the monasteries is just a few miles long, which you can do it as part of a 10 mile loop from in town. But you’ve got to go straight uphill, so having the scooter was perfect.

There’s two viewpoints that everyone goes to, so they’re not exactly hard to find. These places are crowded! There’s even tour buses that drive 5 hours from Athens to see Meteora for a few hours and then drive 5 hours back. But it really is an absolutely amazing place to catch a good sunset. Although this time of year is dry season and there’s no clouds in the sky, so as a photographer you’re not really going to get any epic shots, you’re mostly just waiting for that 30 second window right when the sun starts dipping below the mountains in the background. But killer photo or not, it’s an undeniably magical place. It’s not every day you get such a killer mix of such deeply religious sites and raw nature. 

As for the monasteries, apparently a monastic community was formed sometime in the 1100’s and eventually became a popular place for ascetics. In the mid 1300’s the Monastery of Great Meteoron was founded on Broad Rock, which was perfect for monks, as the only was to access it was a huge ladder, which could be drawn up anytime, and they were free to live their life separate from the political upheavals at the time. In the 1400’s as the Ottoman Empire threatened Greece, more and more monks came to meteora and many monasteries were built up on the rocks, about 20.  There’s 6 left today. In many of these monasteries everything was hauled up by rope and nets, which were only replaced “When the Lord let them break”. Fun times back then. Nowadays there’s just a small handful of monks that inhabit the monasteries.

The next day I’d have all day to explore the monasteries with the scooter. Although I made one big mistake, sleeping in! I figured I’d have all afternoon to see them, but what I didn’t take into account was that’s when all the tour buses arrive. The first monastery I arrived around noon, and there was just a small line. Once I left around 1:30, the line was all the way down the steep zig-zaggedy staircase and wrapped around the rock column. Maybe the ladder system wasn’t such a bad idea. It looked like the other monasteries were like this as well.

The next one I went to (pictured below) was probably a 40 minute wait, baking in the hot sun, sandwiched between two different groups of school field trips. Not for me! Don’t get me wrong, the monasteries are really cool, but once you’re inside it’s mostly just the same type of Eastern Orthodox iconography that I’d seen so much of across the Balkans. After that very claustrophobic experience I was happy to ride my scooter around the countryside a bit and admire the views from afar and read some more of the history on my phone.

the roads are perfect

I had a late lunch of moussaka and dolma at a restaurant up in the hills, stopped at a smaller monastery, and then hung out around town for a bit before riding back up again for another sunset photo. And that was about it for Meteora. The next morning I walked over to the bus station to buy my ticket to Delphi, where the oracle lived, it was the only bus of the day, and it was sold out! Agghhh you idiot. I suck at buying things in advance. So that was a pretty big bummer because now my only options were to stay another night in Meteora and only have 2 nights for Athens, or skip Delphi and go straight to Athens. I really had done all I wanted to do in Meteora. So Athens it is, Delphi will have to wait for another time, sigh.

It was 5 hours to Athens, and they dumped us off at a bus station that really is in the middle of nowhere. The bad part of town if you will. I walked the 30 minutes to my airbnb, and this part of town certainly was pretty dumpy. But really it’s just a poor part of town where all the immigrants live, it’s not like its scary. Some parts felt like I could have been in Syria for all I knew. My airbnb was on the border of the nice parts of town and the ‘bad’ parts of town. Ok more of the bad part of town. It was a sweet place though, new, well decorated, corner room with huge windows and blackout curtains. After the sun went down I could walk down the street and have shawarma or kebabs and smoke shisha for next to nothing. If I wanted to smoke some shisha in the tourist part of town it’d cost 25-30e. Here it’s 5. Love it.

So, I had two full days to check out Athens. To be honest two full days was more than enough, you could easily knock out all the main touristy things in one day if you wanted to. And honestly, most of it is just not that impressive! Most things are so old and in such states of ruin that it really takes a strong imagination to picture these places in their glory days. Especially after coming from Rome on this trip where so many things are in such great shape. Of course those buildings aren’t over 2,000 years old either. But still. And the temple of Zeus was completely covered by scaffolding. The Parthenon, I mean it’s nice, but you can’t go in it or under it or near it, there’s a jillion people around, it just doesn’t do it for me. I enjoyed the ancient Greek history museum more.

My favorite part of town was actually a neighborhood called Exarcheia, which is the very leftist, anarchist neighborhood where all the government protests end up happening.  I thought the tourist areas were kind of lame. On many of the blocks here literally everything is covered in graffiti. Businesses, apartment buildings, street signs, everything. It’s wild. It’s like the entire neighborhood is just one big piece of street art. There’s a large police presence, but the neighborhood has been cleaned up and gentrified quite a bit from what it used to be, and now there’s lots of hipster type shops, guitar stores, record stores, V60 pour over coffeeshops, trendy food options, and plenty of bars and live music at night. Really cool place. Athens reminded me a bit of Belgrade, a bit run down, lots of graffiti, not a ton of stuff for tourists to do, but it seems like a fun spot to live. It just has an energy to it.

Anyway, I spent my last evening with big plate of souvlaki, tzatzkiki, pita, and a greek salad, had a drink on a rooftop bar overlooking the Parthenon, smoked my 5e shisha, and called it a night. 1pm flight to New York, an overnight in the airport (ugh) and then a redeye to Chicago. Lousy itinerary, but international flight prices are not what they used to be. They suck you in with super cheap getting out to Europe and then get ya on the way back!

But Rome to Athens overland was complete! And a success! No major setbacks, no injuries, no major sickness, no big transportation delays, nothing stolen, etc. Although I always have to lose something on a big trip, I did lose my $100 pair of headphones. And my inflatable travel pillow. And a bunch of socks. I’m never sure where they all disappear to. But not too bad all things considered. I averaged 20,000 steps for the whole trip, which seems pretty good when you factor in how many travel days there were. I set my record for single day steps at 61,000, so we’ll see if I can ever top that one. The budget came out to about $90/day, which was pretty decent with the first month being in Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia, although it was certainly more hostel time than I would have liked.

Goodbye Greece

As for the downsides, a lot of places were a bit more touristy than I would have liked, which I knew going in, and Europe in general just doesn’t hit that hard on the exoticism and excitement factor for me. While it’s and undoubtedly a nice place to travel with the mountains, beaches, old towns, mix of religions and cultures, ultimately I do like to travel in places that feel a bit more adventurous, with cultures much more different than my own. It sounds crazy to most people, but I don’t think I would care for an extended Western Europe trip all that much. Instead East Africa and/or the Middle East I think might be next up on my list… Almost a full decade since I’ve been to Africa!

And to finish here’s a few shots from JFK’s TWA Hotel

Albania - Sarande and Gjirokaster

Next up, the city of Sarande. Felipe and I waited by the side of the road (in the rain) and eventually caught a minibus to take us there, a few hours south. Albania really needs to get more big buses with actual bus stations, their whole minibus system kinda sucks and is not handling the recent influx of tourists very well. Some people waiting at stops further down couldn’t even get on the bus because it was so crowded and would have to wait another hour and hope there would be room on the next one. Good luck I guess.

While Himare was more a small town, Sarande is definitely more a real city, perched on the hills overlooking a large bay. It has a beach, but I wouldn’t go here for just the beach as there are so many other nicer ones in Albania. But you can rent scooters here and there’s lots of cool places to explore that are nearby. Although Felipe had no desire to rent one, so I’d be off on my own during the day.

For good sunset viewpoints, just find the unfinished buildings, always a winner

I’m still not totally sure why there are so many unfinished buildings, but it sounds like there’s very little regulations and you can just start building and then leave it as long as you want and not get taxed or anything. I guess a lot of people also don’t realize how much the whole finished project is actually going to cost.

So this is what I’d been missing on this trip! A cheap, extremely efficient way to get around independently, aka a scooter. It makes life so much easier. First stop was Ksamil, a bit more of a resort, beach club town where almost almost all of the beaches are private. Although you can still find a few spots you don’t have to pay for. At the most popular (and prettiest) bar/restaurant/private beach, the chairs were 30 Euros, and they were mostly full, which is always kind of surprising to me, but people do indeed pay the 30E to have their own sun chair and umbrella. It wasn’t even sunny out! However I was happy to chill at the rooftop bar for a bit and get the best view in the house.

Next up was the archeological site of Butrint, which was originally a colony city in Ancient Greece, but reached it’s height in the Roman period when it was designated as a city for war veterans by Caesar in 44BC. It was then expanded by Augustus after that. After many centuries it fell into a state of disrepair surrounded by malarial swamps and was awarded to Albania after it became an independent country in 1912, which was hotly contested by Greece. It became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1992. The whole site is big enough that once you get away from the entrance you can have certain sections of it all to yourself, which is a neat feeling when you’re walking through a place that has almost 3,000 years of recorded history.

From there I took a weird little barge/ferry thing that is attached to some cables across the river and spent the rest of the afternoon riding around the countryside. It was extremely pleasant riding, pastoral scenery, mountains in the background, nice roads, few cars, just perfect. The last spot on my list for the day was the blue hole, pretty similar to the one up north in Theth and popular tourist attraction. All the other tourists have to park and then walk 2km up the road or pay to take the trolley, but if you’ve got your own bike they let you ride up there yourself, for a small fee of course. Excellent.

After having spent time in central Florida and seeing all the natural springs there, these ones in Albania don’t exactly do it for me. I took a few photos and left. But by far the most amusing part of the experience was that some of the locals were wading into the water near the spring head, while there are multiple No Swimming signs posted. There were some older German ladies who were very unhappy with such blantant rule-breaking and they were yelling at the men to get out of the water. The guys were mostly just laughing it off and ignoring it, and then one of them walked around the edge and dove right into the middle of  the spring head to spite the old women, which was met with a chorus of yelling or applauding, depending on which camp you were in. Oh those Germans, telling people off in their own country is just never gonna work.

There it is! The infamous blue hole

After being thoroughly underwhelmed by the blue hole I returned back to Sarande to catch the sunset. There was a carousel on the boardwalk that was nice for photos, and I got some nice post sunset colors as a bonus. Then it was off to meet Felipe for one last Albanian meat-fest dinner, which was just alright. Pork loin was overcooked, one of our dishes was liver, and man, liver is just not my favorite. I think Albania does better meat dishes when it’s in kebab/meatball form, or in soups and stews and casseroles. Or stuffed into peppers or eggplant.

This is what I’m talking about, Tave kosi

And you might be thinking that since Albania is a muslim country that they wouldn’t eat pork, but that is not the case for most Albanians. The muslim countries in the Balkans are very non-religious in general, but Albania is probably the least religious of them all. During Enver Hoxha‘s rule, he even banned all organized religion in 1976, making it an atheist state.

Carousel on the boardwalk in Sarande

The next day I’d take the minibus to the old town of Gjirokaster, which popped up in the Byzantine Empire in the 1300’s and is famous for it’s big ole fortress which dominates the skyline. Although once you’ve seen the fortress, which is huge, that’s about all there is to do in town besides eat, but it was a nice way to spend my last night in Albania nonetheless.

 Although I had to finally have one bus mishap before leaving the country! I read that there was one bus to Greece that left at 6:30am, so I got up nice and early, walked straight down the huge hill and went to where I was told it was supposed to leave from, the big traffic circle. Well there was nothing there and nobody I asked knew what I was talking about. After 30 minutes of walking around I called it quits and had to walk back up the huge friggen hill with all my stuff and went back to bed.

These Albanian buses with no actual bus stations and no information posted in English are very frustrating! Eventually I ended up taking a taxi to the border, where I was told a bus comes once you’re on the Greek side. And thankfully that was good information because it would have really sucked to been stuck at the Greek border! The bus dropped me off in the lake town of Ioannina (Yannina). And to finish, here are my photos from Gjirokastër…

very impressive

It’s got an American spy plane up there too, sure why not

American and Albanian accounts differ as to how it was forced to land in Albania.

The clocktower with a pretty nice backdrop

randomly cool door somewhere outside the fort

the really old part of town

Overall I really liked Albania, it hasn’t been overrun with tourists… yet, but it’s definitely getting there, especially the Theth-Valbona part. I felt like it had the best combination of everything in one country, the mountains in the north, the beaches in the south, it’s got lakes as well, there’s the old towns of Gjirokaster and Berat (I didn’t go to Berat though), the nightlife in Tirana, fascinating history, it’s good value for money, etc. They also generally like Americans, which is always a bonus. It really rolls up all the usual things you can expect in the Balkans into one tidy little package!