Tout Laos

Yope Bros, un ptit verre de Lao Lao ?

Le Lao Lao, c'est l'équivalent de notre café le matin au Laos; frais, 45° d'alcool à 5h du mat' (bah oui, sans électricité, on se couche à 21h là-bas). Mais le café du Laos est également excellent !

Je suis passé par la Chine avant, le Yunnan mais après, direction l'un des pays les plus pauvres au monde (loin de la New-Zealand...):

Bon, la Chine, vite fait avec la forêt de Pierre de Shilin, pitons rocheux karstiques de 30m et une bergère chinoise...
Ensuite aux environs de Dali et de Lijiang, touristique mais kikil. D'anciennes villes bouddhistes dissidentes de la Chine sur la route de Shangri La, le paradis perdu chinois. Le Yunnan a encore des traits musulmans anciennement dûs à sa position dans les échanges commerciaux...

Mais le trek dans les Tiger Leaping Gorges, génial !!! Et paysages sublimes pour les gorges les plus profondes de Chine:


Puis quelques pas dans le Xishuangbanna, zone tropicale au sud de la Chine connue pour son pu'er tea, ses multiples ethnies vivant dans les montagnes ou sur les bords du Mékong, sa culture Thai et sa fameuse cuisine !!!

Puis les beaux visages du Laos aux alentours de Luang Prabang. Même si le pays est pauvre, le fait de vivre en quasi-autarcie dans les villages rend la vie moins dure que la misère de Manila ou de Bobigny par exemple... Sauf qu'à Bobigny, ya l'electricité pour éclairer les halls le soir, t'as vu.

Le Laos, c'est plein de petits villages en bois. Peu d'électricité malgré la quantité énorme de ressources hydrauliques (utilisées par la Thailande). Un vrai pays du Tiers-Monde ! Même la capitale, Vientiane...

Spiritualité au bord du Mékong

And The End in Bangkok, une night session entière avec mon guide du 75020 - DaMs - just go there!!!
ZEBI !

Manila Maaaaaaaaaaaanila...

Yop, what's cracking bros?

Third World style in The Philippines. You may have seen some TV reports about the streets of Manila, children sniffing UHU glue (not the acid-free ones), dirty walls and pavements. This is all true!

Children begging in the main river - acid too - fabulous drag queens, absolute pollution (air, water, noise). BUT, Manila is a sensible city, full of contradictions. A nice historical center with churches, destroyed fortifications and a nice-looking business center. Nothing to compare to Central HK, of course but for such a country... A kind of Hispanic-Cuban atmosphere, pretty relaxing!
And The Philippines is full of Filipinos, nice guys, basket-ball lovers (due to a long american presence after WW2), boxe lovers but not sure they like Maupassant or Balzac. They speak a perfect english (US call centers are moving from India to the Philippines), laugh a lot and are just cool. Problem is that there is not a real culture there. Not a strong personnality I mean. Like Belgium. Or Corsica.

The Philippines are also pretty green. They have volcanos, rice-terraces, rice-terraces, rice-terraces. And sun!
And they have funny cars, I cant describe that, it is just too cool. Public transport with ganja-men-looking drivers in ganja-men-looking Jeepney (US heritage?). Filipinos are just like that, apart.

Hope you want to join me in Asia!

Bisous

Southeast Asia Style

Hi everybody!

That time, I do it in English. Well, I am always so proud of France (Cock-a-doodle-do! as would say the English) but Bab-El-Oued is international now. I am back in HK after having visited a few countries in the south. Have a look!

Just for you to have an idea of the poverty in that countries look at the rate of the population living under the poverty level (under 2 US$ per day):

- Romania: 22%
- Vietnam: 52%
- Laos: 46%
- Cambodia: 36%

Anyway, more than a month in Southeast Asia eating rice, smelling rice, and shitting rice but thanks to the French colonization, bread is everywhere! Real sandwich (without camembert, can we say “real”?), real breakfast with ham and butter, real souvenirs from Paris... What else thanks to the French colonization? War, destruction and architecture. Let’s start by Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City if you are a member of the Red Evil.

“Motorbikes, motorbikes?” Colorful city full of life, I loved it! European style, ex-capital of the French colony of Cochinchina until 1954, it became HCMC in 1975 at the end of the war and during the reunification of that beautiful communist country…

Moving so much, this is how I describe HCMC. A fast-moving city full of colors.

Wassup all around? Basically, the Cu Chi Tunnels, a tunnel network used by the Viet Cong to control Saigon and to kill American soldiers by using booby traps and the Mekong Delta full of floating markets, exotic fruits and gentle people.

War and Peace

An Israeli, a Bulgarian and a French are in a boat in the Mekong Delta.

Business is business in the floating markets…

What about going north? Dunes, beaches and relaxing swimming in the China Sea?

Smilling children so surprised to see white people on motorbikes.

Muine with Boyan and Sandra.

I am moving to Dalat alone now. My roommate prefers Canada! I am gonna loose myself deep into the jungle to forget that treason.

Just before the storm! I had to join the village in the background…

Charming Hoi An

The Cham Ruins of My Son. But please, wait for Angkor Wat!!!

SO tourist in the rice-field, am I not? Blue sky, yellow sun and green fields.



Boring Hué, political capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945

After a long train trip in the mountains (40 km/h on average), welcome to Sapat, a lovely and romantic village with rice-fields; poor tribes and beautiful treks.

Local caterpillar-tractor. Think about it when you’ll eat rice next time.

A poor child in a village. No running water, no electricity, just like 200 years ago.

Time to move to Laos! It was just to cross the border to go to Cambodia but what an exiting country!

Nude village. Nude children. What else can I say? On the right picture, it was supposed to be a school. How can you manage to teach anything without pens or paper?

Local taxi and local transport I used to enter Cambodia. Lonely French guy! Can you see my blue backpack? It was also my seat…

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In 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and started one of the biggest genocide of the world’s History. 2 million of Cambodian died in only 4 years.

Destruction, construction and reconstruction, this is how it works here.










Hopefully, the Kingdom of Cambodia is full of resources, notably the famous Temples of Angkor, some of the most incredible monuments built by human. Angkor was the capital of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer empire between the 9th and the 13th centuries.

Here is the Bayon Temple with 216 faces of Avalokiteshvara watching at you while you try to understand the incredible bas-reliefs of vivid scenes.

Cockfighting, kick boxing, cocking, going to war, making friends, these are the bas-reliefs.

Preah Khan Temple is an amazing atmospheric temple with dark corridors and deep jungle I got lost in…

Did you see the movie “Tomb Raider”? Some scenes have been filmed right there! This is a veritable “Indiana Jones” atmosphere in Ta Prohm Temple.

To finish my trip, I spent a few days in Bangkok. Buddhist Wats, no-ending nights and sexual tourists are the main attributes of that decadent city.















And now, ladies and gentlemen, here is the picture of the business area in HK. “Hong Kong, live it, love it.”

ZEBI!!!