Coffee Farms, a Pig, Ancient Temples and an Emergency Room - Travels in Southern Laos and Cambodia

"Hello, where you from? Canada? Capital Ottawa, 32 million people. 10 postcards, only a dollar. One loonie for you!" You get 20 - a twoonie!"

This is the impeccable sales technique of just one of the little girls in Angkor Wat. Man, those girls are good!

We are getting ahead of ourselves. We have not only seen the wonders of Angkor Wat but since last entry we have travelled from Hong Kong to Bangkok to Laos, back to Bangkok and then over to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Can you keep up??


We randomly ran into Kyla on the street in Ko Samui (small world moment). She worked at our yoga studio in Vancouver. We managed to meet up again almost two months later in Bangkok. Here we are with her friend Elena (equally lovely) for a night of dinner and drinks near Koh San Road.

The Emerald Buddha (it's actually made of jade) on the grounds of the Grand Palace
Me in my rent-a-skirt at the Grand Palace (dress code in effect).
Our shiny new computer in one of the flashest hostels we've ever stayed in. Part of the new trend of flashpacking. (thanks jenny and mike for the tip)
And then (drum roll please) coffee farm adventure extraordinaire! Chris and I had a spectacular adventure just outside of Pakse, Laos in a little town called Paksong where coffee growing is their life blood. We signed up for this great one day coffee workshop with a Dutch expat named Koffie (the name is no coincidence). He is married to a Laos woman named Won who is heavily entrenched in the Bolvean Plateau's world of coffee. I think all of her family is in the coffee business!

Here, one of her cousins who we came to adore name Thao is taking us on a tour of his coffee farm (young Arabica coffee tree in the foreground).
Here I am listening intently. Can I absorb everything Thao is saying? I can try.
Look, coffee tastes good but it is pretty too!
Thao and I picking coffee cherries. Only pick the red ones, Emily!
Below is a picture of the fruit that is fallen from the trees above the coffee farm. It is used for feeding coffee pickers during harvest season as well as providing shade for the coffee trees.
Thao not only grows coffee, he grows tea too! This is the first time I have ever seen a tea garden.
Part of the workshop (which at this point we have managed to extend to two days thanks to Koffie's home-stay hospitality) is wok roasting coffee in small batches. This is the example round. Koffie is showing us how it is done.
Here is his wife Won cooling the fresh roasted coffee. I tried this and failed miserably, however Chris with his pan flipping experience was impressive with his efforts.
Check out Chris wok roasting up a storm. The fresh papaya to his left wasn't half bad either.
This is a cool picture that Chris took of coffee in different stages, from berry to green to the roasted bean we all know and love so well.
The main reason we wanted to come back to Laos was to check out the Fair Trade Coffee that we had tried in a cafe in Vientiane on our previous trip to Laos. The Jhai Coffee Cooperative is the only Fair Trade coffee in Laos. We were determined to find the co-op and with a little help from our new friend Thao we managed to find one of the villages involved in the co-operative. Here is where we met the village leader who told us all about Jhai Coffee and even his trip to the cafe we went to in Vientiane. The village leader is on the left, Thao is translating for us.
On our second night staying at Koffie's house we cooked to thank them for their hospitality. It was so nice to make our own food!
The next morning we went to an incredible ceremony at the village we found the day before. It turns out we just happened to stumble across the first day of coffee picking which included a ceremony that only happens once a year. Can you imagine our luck?? The next several pictures are from the ceremony.
Part of the ceremony included the sacrificial slaughter of this unlucky piggy

do do
do
doo

doo


(picture missing)

doo
do
doo





....and the aftermath (we thought we'd save you the anguish that we had watching it all first hand).
But the ceremony wasn't all brutality. In fact, most of it was pretty darn fun. The ceremony also included a communal drink off of home made alcohol. First off the village elders take a sip as without them, the ceremony can not begin.



Next, guests are required to drink. Here is Chris and Thao drinking out of a communal bamboo straw with a nice morning alcoholic beverage. Oddly enough a couple hours later Chris became extremely ill for the next few days....hmmmm I wonder if the two are connected????

And here I am, my usual tough self, gagging on the booze.
This was a really cool part of the ceremony. The villagers gathered in a circle singing and touching the shoulders of the person in front of them. The women in the middle throw rice. This is (like the killing of the pig) to get the attentions of the gods in order to have a good picking season.

The little wooden structure is where the whole ceremony took place. Beautiful. If you look closely you can see the smoke from the pig roast.

Before we left we had a sort of "meeting" with what we gathered to be the leaders of the village.
As alluded to earlier, chris was severely ill for a few days after the ceremony. As we were a little suspect of the standard of health care in Laos we finally decided to board a plane and head back to Bangkok to seek medical attention. Luckily we went in time as Chris was severely dehydrated. After a quick refueling stop of IV fluid and antibiotics and a couple x-rays to boot, we were back on track again and heading to Cambodia, but the night before we left (Chris' birthday) he was healthy enough to snap this photo of the setting sun over the top of Bangkok's skyline.
Next up, Cambodia and the adventures of Angkor Wat. I'm going to let Chris take over the writing from here (see ya! - love Em).

After crossing the border from Thailand to Cambodia it is immediately apparent how much poorer Cambodia is. It's hard to imagine the reason for this discrepancy between these neighbours. They both have ample fertile land and access to sea for trade and enough sights to keep tourists flowing in. The obvious justification is the tumultuous recent history of Cambodia. It is unfortunate that the people of Cambodia have suffered so much including one of the world's most maddening genocides where a quarter of the population was killed in under a few years. Some were killed to for being enemies of the khmer rouge, some were killed just for having prescription glasses, it all defies logic. But after adjusting to levels of poverty, Emily and I quickly realized how friendly the cambodian people are. Everyone was very welcoming and were always asking what we were doing or where we were going (we later found out this is a sign of respect as the cambodians like to keep track of where their friends and family are at all times).


Many things have changed in Cambodia over the last 25 or so years, but one thing has always remained the same, the beauty and magnetic pull of the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat.

Here I am on our first approach to Angkor Wat.

These intricate carvings line almost every available surface of the main temple.
Emily taking in the beauty.

Emily acting silly in the never ending corridors.

View of the grounds as seen from the main temple. This area in the foreground was likely inhabited by the khmer peasants in wooden homes.

The temples is huge...much r&r is required!!!

Even the dogs need a little r&r (at least i hope he's sleeping)

oooohhhh aaaaahhhh

Horse rides, only a $1

Although Angkor wat is the shinning star, there are many many other temples close by. We spent three days exploring them all. Here are some pictures from our exploration.

Cute little monkey, this is one of my favourite shots from the trip so far. (The moat surrounding Angkor Wat is in the background)

The trees are taking over!!!!!!!!!!!



greeeeen water, yuck.

With so many temples, it is difficult to restore them all.




All three days were spent exploring by bike, on the third day we road about 26 kms!!! (most tourists take the easy way out and rent tuk-tuks)




Ok so maybe we weren't the only camera happy tourists there.

Angkor Wat from a nearby mountain temple.

Angkor Wat at night....so cool!!!!

Our friends Christi and Dave who we've now traveled with in Chaing Mai, Bangkok and now Siem Reap (the town close to Angkor Wat).


Christi swears she has ice cream in her teeth but we think she's good

This shot made waking up at 4am on the third day worth it!!! Sunrise at Angkor Wat:

The temples of Angkor Wat are still used for buddhist prayer (when it was first constructed it was a hindu temple).

Em in the morning


More monkeys.

Dave, Christi and Em descending the stairs of the main temple.

Em on her bike cycling through the rice paddies

One of the many khmer children living in the areas surrounding Angkor Wat

These three girls were our favourite hawkers. It's hard not to buy, but it was still a lot of fun to converse with them.

These boys were more interested in fishing than selling crap to tourists.

The golden hours of Angkor Wat...on our last visit to the temple (we went back twice)

On our forth day in Cambodia we just hung out in Siem Reap. These alligators were kept in the backyard of our guesthouse as a warning to guests to pay up in a timely manner. Actually they were owned by the neighbour of our guesthouse and were likely raised for meat and fancy shoes.

Every home owns one of these little mini-temples so that individual families can perform buddhist rituals from home.

One day on our ride out to Angkor Wat we noticed a sign for an SOS children's village. An SOS children's village is a large village to house abandoned or orphaned children. There are similar villages all over the world (click here to learn more). We were interested in learning about this village as our friends Heather and Greg are in the early stages of building a similar community based on the SOS model in Guatemala (click here to learn about Project Somos). At this particular village there are 14 identical homes that house 10 children each and a 'mother' who lives with them permanently.

Here's a picture (of a picture) of a family that occupies 1 of the 14 homes.

We're now back in Bangkok catchin up on emails and collecting our visas for onward travel. This concludes the first leg of our world journey as on Wednesday morning we fly to New Delhi for two months of adventures in Incredible India!!!!

But before we leave you, here's one last photo from our travels in South East Asia:

The khmers know how to have a good time. Here are some locals flipping in to the moat surrounding Angkor Wat

bye for now, love, Em & Chris