Honeymoon 2011!: Cambodia

Hi everyone!

For those of you keeping up, we made it to Cambodia - to Siem Reap. Famous for the Angkor Wat ruins. Anyhow, the last few weeks have been an interesting trip through Laos. One of the highlights was a bike trip around a national park in central Laos. By bike , I mean motorbike. By motorbike, I mean 4 speed moped. Sweet. Nothing kicks harder than 125 cc's humming down the road. We can report more on that later, but I figured that I'll put some pictures on here and you can check it out for yourself. 4 days and a lot of fun. Backcountry Laos!
Our near future involves taking in the sights of ancient or maybe more Middle Ages/Renaissance (for a western comparative) ruins of Angkor Wat. Our friends Bryce and Nikki fly in from Hong Kong on the first so we will do some touring and hanging out here for a few days. We are looking forward to seeing them and checking out the strangled ruins. More photos will ensue from this stop - that is for sure.

Our river boat (the one 2nd from left) that brought us into Luang Prabang in Laos. Our 2 day trip down the Mekong.

River boats with the Mekong flowing swiftly downstream. The Mekong river and delta has dominated our trip for the last 3 weeks.

Our riverboat seats! There are a lot of Toyota vans in Laos with no back seats.

A beautiful day trip from Luang Prabang to some limestone filtered blue lagoons.

Hitting the rope swing at the main pool. Kira nailed the photo shoot!

Moped tour 2011!

Kira was loaded down with the gear while I did the driving. Check out the hot green jeans! Not quite Captain Kangaroo style.

As it turns out, the slash and burn is a big hit in Laos. This was taken right before sunset. Fortunately, the national park we drove around was protecting some of the forested limestone formations. Much of the floodplain area was being burned to accommodate relocation villages from hydro power projects. Big money for the Laos people, as it is imported to Thailand and China (or so we heard).

Some hitchhiker I picked up.

A fish we ate (mostly Peter) stuffed with lemongrass. Delicious!

This was a party we happened into at a guesthouse we stayed at our 1st night on the moped tour. We had already eaten dinner and all of the sudden the hosting family and a bunch of locals started getting ready to celebrate the visit of a friend and his son from Thailand. We almost didn't make it to the village, but were glad we did. It was one of the highlights of the 4 day tour.

The son of the visiting friend. He made out with a bunch of loot. All the string bracelots people tied to his wrist contained a tightly rolled bill of Laos or Thai money. Lucky boy!

Kira chillin' on our 125 cc (that might be a generous cc rating) stallion.

The mouth of a 7 km. cave that we boated/walked through - called Kung Lor. Pretty cool place.

Some stalag action with a few strategically placed lights.

It's what the homey's eat!

My personal favorite SE Asia vehicle. Not sure what it is fully capable of, but I think it has many uses. Somehow involved with logging and farming and general rural life - including transport of people.

At the mouth of the 7 km. cave. Ready for a quick dip in the water beyond.

Some local kids at a small town we drove through. We bought some gas from a 1 liter vodka bottle. Don't try this at home (one of the bottle for sale had several flies floating at the bottom).