10. - 17 AUG: Muang Khong to Pakse

Pakse is really nothing to write home about, but an unavoidable hub to get to Northern Laos. One afternoon Renata and I were walking around looking for an internet café withouth much success, when we walked by the main temple. We went in and see that all is quiet but something is in the making, the young monks and novices are scurrying to and from in the courtyard, and after a few minutes a gong goes off. I ran to the guesthouse, only a few hundred meters away, and I was soon back with my personal photographic arsenal.

By this time all monks were assembled for the evening prayers and as soon as everyone was seated they began their cavernous deep singing of Buddhist mantras. It’s a moving atmosphere...

MAP of Laos

click on the map to view it full size

9. - 16 AUG: Border crossing into Laos, dolphins, Dong Khong

The last leg of the Mekong ride in Cambodia is the most difficult and adventurous. There is no scheduled public service from Stung Treng to the border with Laos, just after Kaoh Nang island. In fact, until very recently this border post was not officially open at all except to Lao and Cambodian nationals, though stories abound that anyone willing to fork out the necessary tips would be let through.

8. - 15 AUG: Sambok monastery, and from Kratie to Stung Treng

Early in the morning we try and visit the Sombok monastery, the main cultural interest in Kratie, but it is about 10 kilometers out of town and in this rainy season it may be risky to get there – the Mekong is near its high-level mark, and the white-board which is updated daily near the gas station does not indicate any improvement for the next day or two. No choice, it's now or never, off we go...

7. - 14 AUG: From Phnom Penh to Sambok, near Kratie

Sailing upstream

Again we are up at the crack of dawn. At the capital’s boat jetty, a few peddlers offer drinks and snacks. One, improbably, has a single copy of the International Herald Tribune for sale, the first international newspaper from any country I see in Cambodia. It comes from their Bangkok printing press and is two days old, but I am hungry for international news and do not hesitate to grab it at once. The presence of the Western printed press in Cambodia vaguely reminds me of the good old Soviet times, when everything was censored but I could, occasionally, buy newspapers from imperialist countries at the newsstands of international hotels in Moscow. The Soviet regime could tolerate that: few of its citizens would ever have a chance to access and read the subversive stuff – they could not even easily walk into the lobby of these hotels – and at least some of the Westerners in the Hotels would believe and go home telling that censorship in the USSR was not that strict after all. Anyway, there was the language barrier that would work as a further filter.

6. - 13 AUG: Phnom Penh prison, killing fields, shooting range, massage at the restaurant and dancing!

I did not expect this to be a day of such intense and contrasting emotions, but here it was. In a few hours I had visited Khmer Rouge torture centers, mass killing fields, had practiced at an army shooting range, had been riding a motorbike recklessly around town, had been sensuously massaged at a restaurant table and had visited a local disco. It is not a normal thing for a capital city to hold a center of torture and an extermination camp cum mass grave at the top of its "must see" list for visitors. Phnom Penh is anything but your "normal" capital city, however. It was, only a quarter century ago, both the scene and the command headquarters of one of the most hard to believe genocidal displays of ruthless, mindless, aimless violence in human history.