The best of Southeast Asia, so far.

We are mere weeks away from having been here for 2.5 years. This quarter decade anniversary has prompted to me look back and think about all the amazing things we've seen, done - and eaten since our arrival here. This list is perhaps a bit pre-mature, we've seen but a tiny sliver of what this part of the world has to offer - and we haven't even been to Vietnam or Sri Lanka yet - and we've barely scratched the surface of huge countries like Indonesia (although we are adding another drop in that bucket in about two weeks time).

So, I'm going to look back at some of the best stuff we've done over the last 2.5 years.  I am excluding India from this exercise partly because India is not technically part of Southeast Asia - but mostly because India just overwhelms everything - it is a category unto itself.  Obviously these opinions are my own, but I'd love to hear alternative suggestions and thoughts from those who have done similar and different excursions in the region. Here's a few of the 'best of's' I've decided to look at:

• Best food
• Best beer
• Best beaches
• Best scenery
• Best temples
• Best wildlife
• Best city
• Best markets
• Best museum

I'm going to start with a couple of the easier ones in the hope that maybe we'll have completed our next Indonesian adventure before I pass judgement on a few things!

Anyway, let's get started:

Best beer: Beer Lao - no doubt about it. This beer, with good reason, is the pride and joy of Laos.  It lacks the high sugar content (as well as accompanying hangover associated with other Asian beers - I'm thinking Tiger and Kingfisher) and is reminiscent of a quality Eastern European pilsner - which isn't surprising considering Beer Lao started out as a joint-venture between the government of Laos and Czech brewers. Beer Lao isn't nearly as available outside of Laos as it should be (although I've now spotted it in Thailand and Myanmar) but if it does pop up at your local liquor store make sure you try it.

Best food: This is extremely difficult - and easy.  Cambodia and Myanmar both did their level best to kill me, they are not in the running.  Despite a genuine love for Javanese bakso and tempe goreng, Indonesia barely ranks.  I had a genuinely delicious $7 steak in Laos, but again, not enough to earn to the top spot. Perhaps rather predictably, this is a dead heat between Thailand and Malaysia.  In the end I'm going to swing to Malaysia just for the sheer diversity of the food available here.  The Malay/Chinese/Indian combo is pretty much unbeatable and I've developed a deep, deep love for the Chinese-style seafood that you get here (and yam baskets).

If I was going to narrow it down to a single place, I'd probably even bypass Penang and go for Kuching - the area is home to dozens of family-run seafood restaurants which aren't much to look at but they have some the freshest and tastiest seafood I've ever encountered (this is coming from someone who spent four years in Scotland guzzling the world's finest oysters - I love my seafood.)  More sophisticated options are also in abundance, if you ever happen by there an evening spent at Bla, bla, bla is totally worth it.

More favorites in the next installment.

Back to Indochina: Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is quite possibly the backpacker capital of the world - and in my opinion it is rather unfortunate that such a spectacularly beautiful place has been hi-jacked by rowdy bands of 18 year olds. Not that I'm against a bit of fun, but the drawbacks of that being the main tourist demographic has some nasty consequences.

The backpackers turn up in droves to go tubing down the Na Song. This is not our photo, it seemed foolish in the extreme to bring our camera kit on a six hour booze cruise.

Yes, that is a giant slide, and yes people have died on it. We did go tubing one afternoon and certainly had a bit of fun. Once was enough.

The idea is that you get a tube and float down the river stopping off at various bars along the way and risking your life on various rope swings, slides and zip wires. So what was once a beautiful stretch of pristine river and wilderness is now besotted with ear-splittingly loud music and litter. I repeatedly saw kids putting out cigarettes and dispensing beer bottles into the river - which quite frankly I find unforgivable. Make no mistake these are, without exception, middle-class Western kids who are all on a gap year or their winter break. They know better and I suspect the vast majority of them would never do that at home.

Unfortunately the bad behaviour is not confined to the river.  Dress in Laos is generally conservative, the locals do not particularly appreciate girls in skimpy bikinis and shirtless 'bros' strolling around town.

The lack of confidence in their own cuisine, coupled with the catering to 18 year-old white kids leads to a pretty dire food scene. Every restaurant tries to do every cuisine and they don't do any of it well. We did manage to get our hands on some nice bbq river fish and find some decent soup stalls - but I was overwhelmingly underwhelmed. At least cold beer was readily available.

My last gripe before I get to the good stuff - the TV bars. The town is packed with bars showing infinite re-runs of Family Guy and Friends. It's depressing. I mean who travels halfway around the world to watch re-runs of Friends? Hungover teenagers apparently.

It would be easy to think that this was all there was to do in Vang Vieng and that there is no escape from the hordes of teenagers, but respite is remarkably easy to come by. In fact, all you have to do is go across the bridge.

The other side is like stepping back in time, there are small villages and rice paddy fields tucked in amongst the stunning limestone karsts. We rented a small motorbike and spent perhaps the best day of our entire trip winding down dirt tracks taking in the scenery, checking out a few caves and even stopping for a swim at the blue lagoon. The further out you get the fewer the people, in fact we shared the road more often with large (slightly intimidating) herds of water buffalo than people.

Even returning in the evening, it's fairly easy to escape the crowds. Vang Vieng is so saturated with food and accommodation outlets that it would virtually be impossible for every place to be busy at any given time. So after a solid day of exploring (and with remarkably sore posteriors from bouncing up and down on a cheap Chinese motorbike all day) a cold beer in a quiet bar as you watch the sunset over the Nam Song makes for a pretty good ending.

All in all, it was a pleasant few days, very well spent that more than justified the 4+ hours bus journey to go the 96 miles from Vientiane. This is by the way, the best road in the entire country and aside from only being two lanes the entire way and winding through the mountains, I would estimate that - at best - only 2/3rds are paved.

Travel sickness medication highly advised.

Back to Indochina: Vientiane

Anyone who has read the Great Railway Bazaar (or for that matter browsed the most recent edition of the Lonely Planet) will be familiar with the way in which Paul Theroux once famously described Vientiane: 'the brothels are cleaner than the hotels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco and opium easier to find than a cold class of beer.' The cleanliness of the hotels is still up for debate but the heady days of post-colonial Vientiane in the 1970s is very much a thing of the past.

That isn't to say that Vientiane now lacks charm, but like Phnom Penh, the tourists have arrived and happy days are (economically anyway) here again. I had high hopes for Vientiane, visions of it having all of the charm of Phnom Penh but with fewer tourists. I was dead wrong. Vientiane, and for that matter Laos, is firmly on the Southeast Asia backpacking route. Fortunately - and in spite of the explosion of posh coffee shops, bars and cafes; the locals seem utterly unperturbed - even a bit aloof. Vientiane is so laid back and utterly unpretentious that at first it was quite inconceivable to me that this was a capital city of an entire country.

We set our sights on one of the few actual sites to see in Vientiane, Pha That Luang.

Pha That Luang is the most prominent national monument in Laos. The building seen today only dates from a French reconstruction in the 1930s, but there has supposedly been some form of temple present on the site from the 3rd century. Unfortunately, Laos has been invaded - a lot - so stuff gets destroyed - a lot.

Our first day was happily spent wandering Vientiane on foot and taking in the sites, mainly temples (interspersed with frequent Beer Lao beverage stops.)

We spent day two exploring some of the local markets a bit further afield and were richly rewarded. Not only did we return home with bundles of lovely Lao coffee and fresh green peppercorns, but the markets are almost completely devoid of tourists. All the usual South Asian fare was available: bananas, mangoes, rice, chillies of all shapes and sizes and a few oddities as well, courtesy of the French I suspect.

Vientiane has large ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese minorities, so Chinese New Year celebrations were in full swing. Some friendly 20-something Vietnamese - who either didn't speak a lick of English or were far too intoxicated to remember how to do so, stopped us on our market crawl and force-fed us beer and coconut sweets. I'm sure they would have had us all evening, but we were on a motorcycle and had to make a gracious escape. We also encountered some young kids doing a Lion Dance through the market.

One of the very best things about market shopping in Laos is that while there is indeed all the usual junk - Laos has an absolute abundance of really lovely (not made in China) textiles. The amount of silk is astounding and I resisted the urge to buy some absurdly exotic silk wall-hanging (a lesson learned the hard way some years ago in Morocco when I came back with two silk rugs for the home I still don't have.)

My only real complaint - and this is coming from someone who enjoyed a truly delicious steak (for a whopping $7) at a nice little Belgian bistro - is the food. Or more specifically, the lack of proper Lao food. Burgers, pizza, pasta, sushi are all available to no end - but, except for the odd noodle-soup stand, good local food is far too difficult to come by. There are a handful of street bbqs and a few upscale Lao-fusion restaurants, but on the whole the selection is rather disappointing. We did try a sausage from one of the street food stalls, it was delicious, but we both paid for it a few hours later.

Back to Indochina: Laos

A bit of background

Before returning to the back-catalogue of tales from India, our week in Laos has gone all too quickly and here we are home once again. Needless to say we had an amazing trip and Laos is possibly the most laid-back country on the planet. As anticipated it is very much like Cambodia, but without the hassle (backpackers excluded!)

Both Cambodia and Laos are categorized by the UN with 'Least Developed Country' status. They share similar infant mortality rates (between 55-60 deaths per 1000 births - the ratio in the US is 6:1000). The average life expectancy for both countries weighs in around 60. They have similar literacy rates at just over 72% and most children attend school for 9-10 years. Both countries rank appallingly in the world-wide corruption index (Laos comes in at 154 of 183, Cambodia at 164). Both were French colonies, and it shows, baguettes and cafe culture abound.

On the ground Cambodia appears to be the more developed of the two. In general there is better infrastructure, better roads (not good roads, just better roads), a small, but noticeable middle-class (as well as a small outrageously wealthy elite) and the greatest test of all in Asian development - the presence of Kentucky Fried Chicken. However, that is where Cambodia's edge ends (if you can count KFC as having an edge).

Most strikingly of all, Laos does not appear to be suffering from any of the child protection issues that are the scourge of Cambodia. I could count on one hand the number of begging children encountered in Laos (in Cambodia there were hundreds). There is no evidence of rampant padeophilia (by Westerners), child neglect or abandonment.

In fact, homelessness across the board appeared to be virtually nonexistent as was any evidence of starvation. There is also virtually no harassment and pestering. You are allowed to wander the market without items being shoved in your face, tuk-tuk drivers don't accost you relentlessly and restauranteurs don't stand on the sidewalk trying to lure you in.

Say what you will, but I suspect this culture has something to do with the fact that Laos is a Communist state and the government despite many, many serious flaws (not least that it is a one-party dictatorship in which all other political parties are banned) does manage to provide a very rudimentary social safety net. Laos also has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, a meager 2.5%  - ranking it 21 out of 199 putting it way ahead of Switzerland, Germany and the USA.

The Lao government also began encouraging private enterprise in 1986 and since then (with a brief blip from the Asia economic crisis in the late 90s) the Lao economy has grown by more than 6% each year. It is Laos' goal to graduate from Least Developed Country Status by 2020 and they appear to be on track to do so. The Chinese, as in Cambodia, are also on the scene - they are currently spending a whopping $7 billion (USD) to kit out Laos with a high-speed rail linking Vientiane with the Chinese border.

Onto the journey

Well, I'm not going to lie, our journey didn't get off to the greatest start. As if I don't hate flying enough, getting up at 3:00am for 7:45am flight is even worse. Add to that trying to get Ian up and it's like lining cats up for a parade. Anyway, we made it to the airport in plenty of time, had a smooth 2.5 hour flight and were on the ground by 9:30am Vientiane time.

Things did not immediately improve. The Lao government has put a flat rate of $7 for the taxi ride into town. This is by all means an exorbitant sum for this part of the world, but $7 isn't exactly going to break the bank and sometimes you just roll with it. I was ready to roll, Ian was gearing up for a fight. In the end we got the taxi - needless to say, it would have been a lengthy walk into town and a tuk-tuk would have saved us no more than about $2. This did not prevent me hearing about our squandered $7 for the rest of the morning. Pointing out that we really only frittered away a couple of bucks as a tuk-tuk still would have cost money apparently did not help the situation.

We arrived at our accommodation. Now, I'm a pretty hardened traveler and have survived many nights in inferior accommodation, but this was pretty sub-par. As always my first exploration of our new digs took me straight to the bathroom. I was instantly swarmed by mosquitoes (we were to discover that even in the dry season, mosquitoes were still a pretty serious problem) and as I victoriously crushed the life out of one unfortunate skeeter against the bathroom wall, I noticed that a large portion on the bathroom wall was indeed smeared with mosquito guts and blood from previous guests whom had fought the same losing battle. Charming.

The bathroom also had that delightful scent of raw sewage that accompanies one virtually everywhere in Asia and the shower curtain was positively streaked with slimy black mold. Too tired and dirty to care, I hopped in the shower while Ian plugged up gaps in the windows and fans with plastic bags to keep the infestation down and we set off in search of food.

Still bristling from our massive over-expenditure on our taxi fare, we made several aborted attempts to get some food, no way was Ian going to let breakfast set us back another $7! We (I) did eventually locate a small noodle shop, crammed with locals and commanded we stop. We ordered two steaming bowls of Pho and were richly rewarded. We topped up our soups with a dazzling array of condiments: fish sauce, limes, sugar, soy, pickled chillies and no less than two kinds of amazing (super hot) chilli paste. Washed, fed and on the ground holiday could officially begin.