Our options from Luang Prabang were 1) to take a bus down to Vientenne via Route 13 which, as recently as February 2003, has been the stage for several ambushes by rebels unloading on buses with automatic machine guns or 2) take a flight down to Vientenne for the night then fly on to Siem Reap (Ankor Wat) the following day on Lao Airlines- only problem being that all the travel books have warnings about Lao Airlines and their dodgy safety records. We chose the bird over the bullets...

Muuhhaahahahaaa
Who's your fasher?
My fan club
Their watching (Ankor Wat)
Chipmonks
Sunset monks
Sunset monkeys
Brett giving the road crew a hand
Our boy Hav who stepped on the MD82 landmine

On our final afternoon in Luang Prabang before our early evening flight, we rented bicycles and took off into the country side. We rode out through rice fields on dirt roads stopping a few times to take pictures and hang out with the school kids. They were just out of school, dressed up in their uniforms with big grins on their faces. We quickly learned their favorite game was to line-up and give us high-5's as we scrammbled by on the bikes then erupt in laughter and ask us to do it again.

We took a few good deep breathes of Lao air as we walked on the hot tarmac to the awaiting "puddle jumper" that was to take us South. Everything seemed right in check with the books description.... it looked like the plane had a flat tire and it was at least 120 degrees in the cabin for the duration of the flight. We made it to Vientenne, the capital of Cambodia, thanked God and had a dinner on the banks of the Mekong River that later came back to haunt me.

Our 6:30 AM flight got us to Siem Reap in Cambodia by 8 AM. Siem Reap is the closest town to the Ankor Temples- one of the modern wonders of the world- huge temples built from stone between the 10th and 13th centuries. We hired a motorcycle driver each (US$8 for a chaffeur all day) to take us to the historic sites on the back of their sweet 100CC motorbikes. All day we saw amazing ruins of the once flourishing settlement. The day ended with a hike up to a temple on top of a big hill to catch the sunset among young monks all dressed in their orange or maroon shrouds. I plugged into my iPod for a little Gladiator soundtrack to add to the experience.

The following morning we once again hopped on the backs of our drivers bikes and heading for the war museum that holds all sorts of memorabilia from the Khamer Rouge slaughtering in the mid 80's. There were tanks that had been blown up by land mines, big howitzer cannons, armored vehicles, helicopters, and all sorts of small arms weaponry. And this was not "disney-a-fied"- we're talkin' hands on baby. Brett and I took full advantage of this and took pictures of eachother holding, Rambo style, 2 big M-16's high in the air.

Our next stop was one of the more sobering places I've been to... the Cambodia Landmine Museum. Just a little hut made of scrap wood and corrugated steel out in the country, the museum started as just a place to put all the landmines that were harvested from the ground to save peoples lives and quickly grew to a healthy collection. The guy that started the museum is a legend around the area and the big supporter of cleaning up Cambodia's landmine problem. It is said that there are anywhere between 60 and 100 million unexploded live landmines still hiding on Cambodia's land.

Many children that are sent by their families into the forest to collect wood or work cutting rice in the paddy's become the unfortunate victims of landmines. The first thing you notice when you walk into the little museum are kids running around everywhere, but when you look closely, they're all missing legs, arms, eyes, etc. About 5 years ago, the owner of the landmine museum began taking in children that had been blown-up by mines. Each of the children have their story in English nailed to a tree in the area. Most of them lost their parents and brothers and sisters to the mine that they somehow survived. If they still have parents, the children may not be wanted anymore because of their new disabilities and left on their own. The museum takes in the children and through volunteers teaches them English and puts them through proper schooling with all the other children.

It was amazing to see how happy these kids can be after all they've been through. You read these stories and begin to think how lucky we are that we don't have mines inour backyards. One kid there was cutting rice with his family. They were on their way back with a full cart of rice and rolled over and anti-tank mine. The cart, weighted down with rice, was heavy enough to detonate the ordinance and blew the entire family apart. The son was being held by his mother and survived the blast as she took all the shrapnel. It took 2 days before someone found him and got him some help. Several surgery's later, he's got no legs and only one eye, but loves going to school everyday with the other kids and hobbling around the dirt floor museum answering your questions in good English.

One kid picked-up an MD-82 mine and said "this is what blew my leg off." The mine killed his mother and his dad re-married. The new wife decided she did not want the child anymore and they told him to leave. After living on his own catching rats in traps and eating them, he was picked-up by the museum and now learns Algebra, English, Geometry and Japenese. This was an amazing place. (www.cambodialandminemuseum.org)

The next day we took a sweaty 5 hour bus ride to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Pen. We were just using this as our jumping spot to enter into Vietnam the next day. We thought about staying after learning about the underground artillery ranges that you can visit. Ex-soldiers have caught on to a lucrative business in letting bold tourists fire a complete array of high powered weapons, grenades, etc. It usually costs about US$1 a bullet.... a grenade will run you US$25... or if you really want to live it up, you can opt for the US$250 RPG (rocket propelled grenade-Taliban style) that comes with its own 2500 pound live water buffalo for you to have your way with.

We scratched the idea and decided to head to Vietnam the following day on the 7 AM bus.

Good Morning... Vietnam!