Belinda's boring catch-up

12.10.2003 - 13.11.2003 - it's cold most of the time but the sun is trying hard1

G'day

Well after a couple of weeks of

"TheweatherhasbeensolovelyIalmostforgotIwasabouttoenteranorthernhemispherewinter", we're having a rainy day in Dublin. I'm actually well acclimatized to the cold and a balmy 8 degrees has no longer become something to write home about (which is of course why I'm doing it! hey?). In spite of all one hears about how shocking the weather is here, I think Sydney gets a hell of a lot more rain than Dublin (when we're not having a drought!). But then El Nino has gone a little nuts these days with his ambitious efforts to spread the good weather love all around......

For this email, I've decided to give you the LONG and SHORT versions (a-la-Leighton - Lord of the Castle and close friend of Paz Thakra - Cantrill). I was recently informed my emails are at times, nauseatingly long, hence the attempted succinctness.

SHORT VERSION
Since my arrival back from Croatia.....I have:

*Spent a weekend in Galway and visited the spectacular Cliffs of Moher and the Burren (lots of rocks speckled across the countryside) in County Clare with a tour guide who liked to perseverate (i.e. he had to say everything twice, say everything twice - "Soon we will stop for lunch. We will stop for lunch. You can get chips for €2. Did you hear you can get chips for €2?!". Jill [old uni friend] was on the verge of going "postal" but after those €2 chippies was able to regain some composure.

*Had some old school friends visit - Aimee, Claire, Suz and Zelda (all ex-Avondaleans) - very delighted to see some old mates, even if they did drag me along to the Arlington to watch the Irish dancing!

*Been enjoying the Rugby (nothing like being abroad to reignite the patriotic passions for sport) and spent many an hour at the pub (the Irish equivalent of the beach - without the sun, salt, sea, sand and seedbags in lairy dacks and speedos, and with a lot more pasty yobbos) with the antipodean delegation supporting the Wallabies. Still a little disappointed with the loss - it seemed the whole of Ireland was barracking for the Aussies - not a lot of love between the Poms and Irish even now.

*Moved out of my home and back into the hostel (just til I leave) as Claire and Andrew (Saffas) left today to go to the US. I am yet to rid myself of the mandatory "Hey" that Saffas put at the end of every single sentence (I won't even get started on all the "just now" and "now now" business, let alone the "Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame" and the "Isit").

*Spent a weekend in Edinburgh on a reconnaissance mission (planning to move there next year) with my Aussie mates Anthony and Dean, and a new recruit Alana. It's absolutely gorgeous....(oh and you don't have to stare constantly at the pavement so as to avoid the bubbly globs of saliva that Irish men so like to propel out of their "mouts") we did a Ghouls and Ghosts tour with Spooky Dave, climbed the mountain to Arthur's seat, visited Edinburgh castle and ate some HAGGIS!! miam miam.....

*Finally visited Kilmainham Gaol - originally a gaol for thieving types (i.e. those poor bastards who got shipped out to Australia for stealing a pint of Guinness) - but later used as a prison for political ratbags such as James Connolly, Michael Collins, Padraig Pearse (Easter Rising chaps).

*Survived the knacker (think scary scary Westies to the power of 10) enslaught at the Smithfield ice skating rink - only a few war wounds to prove that I was "skating like I meant it".

That's pretty much it!

As for the next few weeks.......I'm hoping to still make it to the Ring of Kerry but am fast running out of time, I'm off to Paris (yet again) with some fellow antipodeans, and will be leaving Dublin just after Xmas.

As of this week, my itinerary for the next few months post-Xmas is as follows:

- a few days in Munich and surrounds
- Singapore
- a diving course in the Tioman islands (off SE coast of peninsular Malaysia)
- Penang
- KL
- Melbourne for my sister's wedding
- road-trip round Tassie for a week (in search of the famous two-headed Taswegian)
- Sydney for a few weeks
- Laos for a month
- Dublin for a couple months
- Edinburgh

Life's tough hey?

All of the above is liable to change in the next few days/weeks....but will keep you posted!

Will send the long version "just now" (translation - maybe today, maybe next week, or maybe when the Garda National Immigration Bureau start sticking up my picture on telegraph poles around town)...

Ciao

Love Belinda
xoxo

Would you like mayo and ketchup with that?

19 October 2003, Temperature - FREEZING!


Hola

Well I'm actually now back in Dublin....same old same....work
etc.  But here's the remainder of my time in Croatia email...
I last wrote from the beautiful island of Hvar(Pharos in pre
BC Greek).  The locals reckon the weather in this place is so
jolly fine (purported to have more sunshine than anywhere [for
some reason they have French keyboard configurations here,
hence the occasional muddles] else in the Adriatic), that they
used to offer a moneyback guarantee if the weather turned out
bad  ' i.e. dropped below zero....quite unlikelz!  The island
is covered with limestone cliffs tumbling into the ocean,
buff-coloured stone houses with the standard red-terracotta
roof tiles,  bouganvilleas, cacti, pine trees, palms, beautiful
beaches (though thez are shale!) and when there haven't been
fires to burn it all awaz,  the island is usually cloaked in
lavender ' the ladies in the stalls lining the waterfronts in
Hvar town sell it as agressively as they can - though i wonder
if thez imported this season's crop as there is none currentlz
growing anywhere on the island - as far as we saw, anyway!

Whilst on the island of Hvar  we wandered round Hvar town,
walking along the palm and pine fringed coastline to the near
by beaches,  looked at the 17th century arsenal, St Stephen's
cathedral and its Venetian campanile (1 window on first floor,
2 on second etc), Dominican monastery, the Leporini palace,
and wandered up the hillside to the Citadel,  from
where you have magnificent views over the town below,  and
out to the Pakleni Otoci  (Islands of hell) which lie just off
the coast.  We also spent good time soaking up the atmosphere
from the cafes that line the waterfront,  eating burek
(delightfully oily cheese-filled pastries) and pizza, sipping
on kava s mlijeko (espresso with milk),  and watching the
catamarans and yachts float in and out of the harbour.  Most
of the sailors that cruise along the Adriatic dock in Hvar town
for several dazs,  lounging around on their rather nice yachts,
drinking copious amounts of wine, and eating the fresh seafood...
We also caught a bus around to Stari Grad,  the old capital of the
island.  Here we spent our time wandering through the old winding
streets,  admiring the Tvrdalj (summer house and walled garden of
the poet,  Hektorovic),  having a look at the Bianchini palace,
Dominican monastery and the Chapel of St Nicholas,  where the
hermit Lukreciva walled herself in for 35 years and lived off
onlz bread and water...the chick had stamina!

From Hvar we caught a ferrz across to the island of Korcula,
originally settled by the Greeks and dubbed the Black Corfu,
because it is so denselz forested.  We stazed in Korcula town,
on a small peninsula of land jutting out into the Adriatic,
just opposite the mainland's Peljesac peninsula. Korcula is
known for it's Moreška sword dance,  thought to have Spanish
(Moorish) origins and linked with Christian battles with the
Ottoman Turks throughout Dalmatia.  We didn't actuallz get to
see a performance as we were here a little too late in the year
and not on the right night of the week.  In Korcula we wandered
through the walled old town,  visited the Revelin (defensive
tower above the city),  Church of Our Lady (filled with tombs
of Korculan nobles),  the House of Marco Polo (noone is reallz
sure if it was his house or not,  but it is a big tourist
attraction nonetheless.  It is known he was caught in the 13th
century off the coast here by the Genoese,  but whether or not
he shacked up here for a while is anyone's guess),  the Icon
Gallery (I find this stuff surprisingly quite interesting) and
its attached All Saint's Church with an impressive Pieta
altarpiece. In the evening,  not long after we arrived, we
heard what appeared to be a pack of local yobs celebrating
on their way home from the local footy match.  Horns were
honking,  flags were flying all over,  people were shouting,
flares were flying.....quite chaotic...turned out a couple of
locals had tied the knot, and this was just part of the revelry!
I can't see us Aussies getting all patriotic about a wedding?!?!

We caught a boat across to Orebic from Korcula (finding all the
relevent keys finally!) late in the afternoon where we climbed
up the mountain side to the Franciscan monastery, and were
afforded divine views out over the waterfront to Korcula,  and
along the Pelješac peninsula.

From Korcula here we caught a bus down the coast to Dubrovnik.
Dubrovnik was an independent state for many centuries (formerly
the Ragusan Republic),  and at one stage had one of the largest
merchant fleets in the world.  Nowdays it is a huge tourist
destination in the Adriatic,  and the city seems to predominantly
subsist on its tourist trade.  It was quite a shock to come here
from elsewhere in Croatia as it was jam- packed with tour groups
(many cruise ships dock here) and a surplus of German tourists!!!
(No offence to Arne and Anja,  but they are in swarms!!). In fact,
there are so many of them in Dubrovnik,  that I was constantly spoken
to in German!!!  Thank goodness my German is better than my Croatian -
at the moment my vocabulary consists of the Croatian words for "Hi"
(Bog!!  Can't bring myself to say it though), "please", "thank you",
"Good morning",  Good afternoon" ,  "Good evening",  "see ya",  a
stack of menu items (e.g. "coffee with milk", "sour cherry/apple/cheese
strudel", open, closed, hot/cold, the numbers 1-10.  Pretty basic,  but
it's amazing what a difference it makes :)

Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the 1991-92 siege of Dubrovnik,
but the government has done a great job in restoration. While some
buildings remain as rubble,  many have been fully restored,  the
evidence existing only in the slightly mismatched roof-tiling or
darker grey mortar on the stone walls of houses. As before, all
the stone buildings have forest green shutters across the windows,
perhaps to help dampen the cacophony of the cathedral bells in the
early morning!

Upon arrival in Dubrovnik we walked in a loop around the 2km long
city walls,  that fortress off the city from the ocean and surrounding
suburbs.  Parts of the original walls were built in the 10th century,
with additions in the 12th, 13th and 15th century (fears of Ottoman
encroachment),  rebuilding in the 17th century following a whopper
of an earthquake,  and large-scale restoration in the 90s, following
the Siege of Dubrovnik.

We then roamed through the old city streets - down the main street
(Stradun),  which is rather shinily buffed from the constant trudging
of pedestrians up and down it (kiddies find this makes a great place
to run and slide on) and through the many seemingly identical
alleyways which criss-cross the old walled town,  ducking into all
the shoe, clothing and jewellery shops we could find,  in between being
enchanted by Dubrovnik's charming architecture!

Upon entering the walled town through the Pile Gate, we were faced with
Onofrio's Large Fountain, a monstrous dome-topped fountain with water
spurting from the heads (sculpted of course) of various human and animal
figures.  It was here that the visitors to the city,  used to have to wash
themselves to protect the city from the threat of the plague,  back in
medieval times (Of course,  living in Dublin,  and going anywhere near the
Liffey,  would put one at risk of that!).

The many Jewish families,  who had fled to the Balkans to escape persecution
in Western Europe, were forced to use a separate fountain at the other end of
town - and Dubrovnik liked to think of itself as quite tolerant!

Just across the street from the fountain,  we visited the Franciscan monastery,
with its Romanesque cloister,  and home to what is purported to be the oldest
pharmacy in Europe. Amongst the relics in the monastery is a silver-plated
receptcle for St Ursula's (Can't say Ursula and I are on familiar terms) head
- charming!!!

We spent the next few days,  visiting the Sponza Palace (formerly the custom
house and mint), St  Blaise's Church,  Orlando's Column (where naughty locals
were punished for their wrong-doings; the length of Orlando's right arm was at
one stage used as the standard measure of the old Republic),  the Rector's
Palace (essentially an old prison,  but now used as the city museum - its
atrium being the host to many evening concerts), Dubrovnik Cathedral , and
the city aquarium - home to a stack of miserable oversized guppy lookalikes,
colourful sea anemones and starfish,  and strange displays such as shrimps in
symbiosis with sea anemones (Kinda like the clown fish and anemones in Finding
Nemo!).

Dubrovnik town is at the foot of Mt Srd,  which,  until the 90s, was a favourite
vantage point for the Yugoslavs.  Cable-cars used to ferry people up to its summit
on the weekends to picnic wander in the woods, and take in the spectacular view
across the old town, and Elaphiti islands,  lying just off the coast.  Napoleon's
army had built a fort here in 1808, which in the 80s was used as a discotheque.
The Serbian army attacked the fortress heavily in 1991,  pretty much blowing it to
smithereens,  and destroying the cable-car.  So,  we had a long, windy walk up the
mountain road (decided not to bush-bash vertically, just in case there were a few
stray mines/UXO laying about),  in the most miserable of weather.....but hey the
view was spectacular,  and it was fascinating to wander through the old ruins of
the fort (trying to avoid having hanging bits of roof fall on our heads).

From Dubrovnik,  we took a trip over to Mostar,  in the Hercegovnian part of
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The whole town was largely destroyed during the (let's take
a punt and say the 1456th) Balkan war, and even now the town is largely in ruins.
There are European community efforts to restore the damaged buildings but there's
such incredible,  widespread damage that it really is a ginormous task.  Whole
buildings lie in ruin,  and there are pock-marks from bullets, shelling etc.
everywhere you look.  The Ottoman-influenced town still has its charms,  in a
ghost-town kinda way.

There are a lot of people around,  an blend of Croatians and Bosnian Moslems, but
it's very sombre and desolate in spite of this.  We visited one of the mosques that
has been recently rebuilt (quite a beautiful,  though very colourful building),  a
traditional Turkish house, and saw the old Turkish bridge from the 16th century which
was blown up by the Serbs in 1995 (or maybe 96), and then spent our time meandering
through the cobbled-stoned laneways,  across the beautiful Neretva river (lush
turquoise waters),  and tried to imagine what the town must have looked like less
than a decade ago.  Before the (most recent largescale) war,  Mostar had 120 000
people,  now only 60 000 people live there.

I don't know how much of this attrition was due to being killed in the war,
migration to elsewhere in the Balkans/Europe etc.....but the area is hardly
liveable.  Much of the surrounding areas,  which would have once been important
agricultural areas are now minefields.  The city has a ridiculous 60 percent
unemployment,  and the average monthly wage is €140 (AUD$233ish).

Our Bosnian guide (who was quite offensive and offered little insight into anything
whatsoever) offered the following comments :


- Holbrook (can't say I know Holbrook,  but I presume he's someone I should avoid)
"was a cute little bastard".

The Dayton Accords were a  "load of crap".

The salaries of people who work for the UN are "ridiculous".

The locals are "collecting funds for the next war" (she seemed pretty chuffed bout
this one).

When numerous Celt and Saxon miners came to work in the Balkans the locals were
terrified of all the "blue-eyed carrots moving around".

The Serbs built all their houses along the roads so they could "guard the Croats and
the Moslems"  - this,  is because "all Serbs are guardians".


She also claimed that many Christians in the region of present day Bosnia-
Hercegovina, got pissed off being taxed heavily by the Turks (because of their
Christianity),  and decided it would be cheaper and easier for them if they just
became Moslems - many, perhaps even most of the Moslems in Mostar were fair haired
and skinned - I think this was actually true! Amazing!

We had pizza (again) for lunch - this time with a twist.  We had the option of
Margherita or Cappricciosa,  so went for the vego option,  and were bemused to
have our pizza served up with large plates of mayonnaise and ketchup!! Pizza,
Bosnian-style!  Very bizzarre,  but we thought,  it must be the standard way to go,
so gave it a go.  Surprisingly quite delicious!! Though I think I will stick to the
olive oil and parmesan for my future pizza meals.

On our long journey back to Dubrovnik,  we stopped in the Neum corridor for some
"bargain-shopping" i.e. where our tour company can make shit-loads of commission!
The Neum corridor is a 9km strip along the Adriatic coast which was given (maybe
returned? nabbed? I'm not sure what is the appropriate term) to Bosnia after the
second world war,  so the Bosnians would have access to the sea. It effectively
splits Dalmatia from the Dubrovnik province of Croatia,  and it seems to nowdays
have little purpose other than to allow the travellers through here to purchase cheap cigarettes and alcohol,  as nothing else seems worth buying.
Not much to see here aside from the spectacular coastline that is typical of the
entire Adriatic coast south of Split.  Probably a few good pizza places but once
you've been to all the pizzerias what's a gal to do?

On our last morning in Dubrovnik, Denise and I had one last wander round the old
town of Dubrovnik,  perusing a few more shops,  having one last pizza,  and visiting
the small aquarium,  which occupies the site of what once was St John's fortress and
has a good collection of Mediterranean sea creatures including very scary looking
half-sized sharky creatures that don't do much more than swim in circles around
their cosy pond.  Denise had to fly back home today so we sadly had to part ways.
Only another 3 months til i'm back in Oz though - for who knows how long!? Latest
plan is to head continental for Xmas, and then fly home via 3 weeks in Borneo,  but
that's liable to change - of course!

Denise flew out of Dubrovnik,  while I headed back to Split on a long ride by bus
from Dubrovnik....well it wasn't so bad,  though with the "klima" (air-con) not
functioning, and the afternoon's penetrative sunshine streaming through the bus' windows (which you
couldn't open),  it was a little uncomfortable.  There were some great Aussies on
the bus so that kinda made the ride a little more enjoyable.  I thought I'd try out
the newly opened youth hostel in town,  and arrived there to find i was the only one
staying there!!! Bummer!

I spent my last day in Split having a burek and coffee,  down by the waterfront,
before discovering a place a few cafes down that did Aztec style chocolate fondue...
mmmmmmm....... all anisey flavoured.  Then I headed out to the Ivan Mestrovic
(Croatia's best-known scultpor's) gallery,  before relaxing with a book in the
afternoon in the Peristyle (formerly the courtyard of Diocletian's Palace) where I was amused to hear a delightful clash of musical talents -
Lenny Kravitz from the funky Luxor cafe opposite my perch,  and then a little Liszt
playing in the cathedral behind me,  for a wedding!

Anyway,  not much new to report.  They let me back in the country,  and I'm back
slogging away at work.

I'm hoping to head off to the Ring of Kerry next weekend,  but aside from that,
big for 3weeks,  when I head to Edinburgh for the weekend - I'm hoping to move there
next year so am sussing it out.

Gotta go

Ciao
Belinda

xoxo

Bog! Bog! Bog!

03.10.2003 25 °C

Dobar dan!

Well I've finally made it to Croatia....I say finally because a) I'd wanted to come here for 3 or 4 years now, and b) when I went to check-in at Dublin airport, I wasn't sure I would even make it here! At check-in, they did the standard pass-port/ baggage check etc. and then asked if I had a visa for Czech Republic, as I had to fly via Prague. No.....of course i didn't as I was only transitting and my final destination doesn't have visa requirements!!! They said that it could be a problem as many Aussies had been deported from Czech recently because of visa problems.... and then phoned through to some immigration official in Prague to check with him/her. Finally I got the OK and went on to the boarding gate, where they called my name over the loud speaker and went through exactly the same rigmarole....so I was very grateful when I finally got on the plane in Prague for Split, on the Central coast of Dalmatia in Croatia.

As far as I understand, there is actually no significant Dalmatian population on the central-south coast of Croatia, the name rather derives from the Illyrian word for brave and strong man...or something like that! Still, you can buy postcards with the mandatory adorable spotty dog from all the suvenijri shops.

I was delighted to finally arrive in Split (about 8 hours after leaving Dublin) and after clearing customs in about 5 seconds (I think Australia is actually the only country that cares about that sorta stuff), I headed into town courtesy of a German tourist bus full of 80 year old retirees.....it was either that or wait for 2 hours til midnight! I had planned to head straight to the hotel, but couldn't find the jolly place (the old town of Split is quite a beautiful maze of alley ways) so had a late night roam about the marble-paved remnants of Diocletian's palace, admiring the ancient alley-ways, columns, arches and campaniles. Under the streetlights, the marble glistens brightly, as though it's just been polished...charming...

After staying in a characterless squat of a hotel, I found a private room to stay in the next day (literally a room in someone's house they offer for travellers to stay in), with a marvellous view of the cathedral, eastern city gate and campanile (the bells of which awoke me each morning at a ridiculous 6am!!!!). Aside from the spectacular view, it was a great location as it was actually within the walls of the former palace of Diocletian (Roman Emperor 245-312AD). The old town is now the central tourist area of Split, full of quaint cafes, chic boutiques and splendid ruins....some are actual built into the remains of the palace, but over the centuries more buildings have been added so the city has an interesting blend of architecture from different eras.

I spent Sunday doing a walk around the Marjan peninsula to the west of Split city. The peninsula is the location of Split city's beachside villages, charming little stone villages and churches, and local sculptor, Mestrovic's wooden life-of Christ reliefs, inside a little castle (the Kastelet). The peninsula is also a favourite place for the Splicani (locals) to ride their bikes, roller-blade or scoot around, and then stop in the little rocky coves for a swim in the crystal blue waters of the Adriatic.

Denise (mum) flew in from Australia on Monday so it was great to finally see her after 4 months of being away from home! I met her at Split airport, and after a long lunch and a mandatory gelato (truly divine stuff!), we did a quick wander about Diocletian's palace, visiting the Peristyle (central courtyard of the old palace), vestibule (where subjects used to wait before meeting Diocletian), cryptoporticus (great gallery where the dude used to go strolling up and down), and Cathedral of St Domnius (Domnius was actually martyred by Diocletian, who used to make a sport of persecuting the Christians of the time). The Cathedral was originally the mausoleum of Diocletian, but after his body disappered from here in the 18th century, it became a place of worship (and more recently, tourism).

On Tuesday wa took a bus out to the ruins of Salona, just to the north west of Split. Salona was once the capital of Dalmatia and the likely birthplace of Diocletian. It was home to more than 60 000 people and n important centre of Christianity for the time. Here you can see stretches of a large aqueduct, a necropolis, basilica, and amphitheatre. From here we took a bus out to the ancient Greek city of Trogir (300c BC) where we wandered through the marble paved streets and visited the Romanesque cathedral, Cipiko Palace (a gothic mansion which is now home to the tourist bureau), the town loggia (with a pretty clock tower and classical columns), Pinakoteka (church of John the Baptist with the mandatory Madonna and child iconic painting), Kamerlengo fortress, Marmont's Gloriette and St Mark's Tower.

On Wednesday we took a boat out to the island of Brac, the third largest in the Adriatic. The island is famous for its marble which was used for the building of the Reichstag in Berlin, the US White House and Diocletian's palace. All over the island you see fields of olive vines, orange trees and marble clumps which have been stacked up high to clear space for agriculture. We took a bus across to the town of Bol, a lovely beach resort famed for it's Zlatni rat (golden cape), a shingle beach jutting out into the ocean on a small sliver of pine covered land. It's meant to rate in the top 10 beaches in the world (according to Lonely Planet) and it is undeniably beautiful - the water is a transluscent azure - but i dunno about lying around on pebbles!! From there we took the bus back to the port of Supetar, (home to a village of stone houses that curve around the waterfront), where we wandered about the village before taking the ferry back to Split.

We spent Thursday morning looking at the archaeological museum of Split, with a good mix of Roman, Greek and Illyrian artefacts (urns, jewellery, columns, reliefs, busts etc), and admiring more of the old town (in between shopping) before taking an afternoon ferry across to the island of Hvar, where we are now....

Some things I've learnt about Croatia since I've been here.....when someone greets you with "Bog", they are actually saying hello, not telling you to find the nearest public toilet. The word for pig is "svinjska" (just like swine!) and very useful if you don't eat piggy. No-one seems to ever eat here.....you can go from cafe to cafe to cafe, and people are just drinking....pivo (beer), kava mijelko (like a macchiato and very very potent), or caj (tea), which is why the locals are so damn skinny!! When they do actually eat, it's always very healthfully cooked fish or pizza (delicate base, no oil, plenty of veges).

What else, the young men are much better looking than the lads in Ireland, though i think all the men over 50 have names like Sergio, Damir and Stavros (just the open shirt, hairy chest, bejewelled fingers look - reminiscent of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast). The best mode of transport is the Vespa.....And everyone is obsessed with soccer!!!! I think a dislike of soccer here would be a ticket to social ostracision....you'd be a complete leper.

Anyway, Hvar town is a lovely Adriatic resort town full of international sailing boats, German tourists (everyone presumes we're German!!) with overly sun-tanned skin and dowdy 1980s swimsuits, waterfront cafes and pizzerias, and stalls selling lavender.......

Will finish this up later....

need to go grab some lunch (pizza and icecream) before heading out on the afternoon ferry to Korcula island...

Ciao!

Belinda

Pommies, Parisiens and Belfasters

20.09.2003 15 °C

Hola

Since last writing I've done three trips abroad! The first was a weekend in London at the beginning of August, 3 weeks ago I finally made it to Belfast, and then last weekend I zipped over to Paris!

I'd spent a week in London nearly 6 years ago, and had considered it my LEAST favourite city.....I thought perhaps a few years (on both London and my parts) would maybe change my perceptions of the city. My memories were of a ginormous, filthy, bleak metropolis, where it rained constantly, everything was overpriced, people were boxed into the tube like battery chickens and where service with a smile was a foreign concept.

So maybe it's not that bad.....for starters, I had a weekend of brilliant sunshine. I arrived in London on the tail end of one of the hottest fortnights on record. People were flailing about in the 39 celcius heat, turning into lobsters as they laid out to roast in Hyde, St James' and Regent's Parks (Hyde Park looking a little lunar with all the grass having shrivelled up and died), and the tube was like an underground sauna complex. And aside from the grime, crowds (I almost took up claustrophobia) and frowns.....oh and did I mention exorbitant prices (£12 for a B-grade movie in Leicester Square!!!), I did have a grand time.

As I had spent my time in London back in 1997, racing about to see all the main sights, I didn't have a full agenda of sightseeing to do. So I went and checked out the places I had missed last time) such as Lord's Cricket Ground, Abbey Road recording studios, Covent Garden Markets, Milennium Bridge, London Eye and Tate Modern Gallery.

I started off heading up to Lord's cricket ground (I'm not even going to try and explain cricket to the Yanks, and Europeans on his list!) where I took a 2hr tour of the grounds, under the guidance of a South African, who had the charisma of Mr Bean's forlorn teddy! Anyway, it was quite cool to go into the members stands, wander round the grounds, and check out the museum - got to see the Ashes too!!! They gave Bradman a good rap (well deserved), and provided us with a good overview of the history of cricket in England and across the globe, before taking us off to the Real (Royal) Tennis courts and letting us watch professional Real players strut their stuff on the courts.

In case you ever wondered, the reason they say "Love" when the score is zero, well an egg is about the same shape as a zero, the French word for egg is "l'oeuf", and with an anglicized twang on the word, makes it sound rather like "love". And why on earth do they count up 0-15-30-40??? Well again, in French, you would count "l'oeuf, quinze (15) , trente (30), quarante-cinq (45)". The Poms thought the 45 was too difficult to pronounce so decided to use quarante (40) instead - lazy!! Anyway, it was interesting, but it just wasn't cricket!!

After Lords, I wandered up the road to the nearby Abbey Rd recording studios. I'm not hugely up on my Beatles trivia, but I think this is where they cut their first LP - i could be completely wrong so apologies to Beatophiles......There is a whole big graffiti wall there where people from all over the world pay kudos to the Beatles. Of course i did the Beatles walking across the road thing along with all the other tourists.

From their I made a quick dash to Euston station to catch up with Leighton for a brief lunch before he knicked off to Manchester for the weekend. And then set off again for an afternoon of sightseeing, stopping for a quick look around Covent Garden Market (a stack of high fashion shops, art and craft stalls, restaurants, cafes etc), St Paul's Cathedral (built 1710 by Christopher Wren, wedding place of Charles and Di, I THINK it's the 2nd biggest in the world), and then crossed the Milennium Bridge (recently reopened after reconstruction to stop in shaking about in the wind) over the algae-coated Thames to the Tate Modern gallery. The gallery is housed in what used to be a large power station. It has a grand collection of works by artists such as Gilbert and George (after whom my green tree frogs mascots were named), Dali, Picasso, Warhol, Matisse and Kandinsky. Really teriffic collection and it's free!!!!! A lot of cool stuff in London is free thankfully, which makes up for the ridiculous amounts you have to pay on food, accommodation etc etc.

I then met up with some friends from Oz, Susan and Lynelda, at Victoria, and we grabbed some delicious Italian food.

I spent Saturday morning and afternoon doing a quick whiz around town admiring the sights of Buckingham Palace (didn't see old Lizzy or those wretched corgies this time - last time, by pure chance, we saw her twice on consecutive days!!), strolling along the stinky Thames between the Tower of London/Tower Bridge, and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, had a picnic lunch in the park with Suz, Zelda and her man (2 thumbs up!), had a look at Kensington Palace and Royal Albert Hall, went for a stroll down Oxford St for some serious WINDOW shopping, and sauntered through the enormous Hyde Park and watched the Poms at play on the paddle-boats on the Serpentine (big snake-like lake). Dinner in Leicester Square - couldn't really fork out the money for the theatre which was a bummer, but nice Italian food (again) never hurts!

Back to London on the Sunday and I moved in with some South Africans I met at the hostel. Really great people, though they have very peculiar accents and reckon their rugby/cricket teams are better than ours....Ya right!

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago I made it up to Belfast. Once I eventually got there (train broke down and they shunted us on to buses which arrived 2 hours later than expected!!! I headed out for a wander around town.

I wandered down to the impressive City Hall at Donegal Square, then checked out St Anne's Pro-cathedral with its impressive Gertrude Stein mosaics, and ginormous British flags hanging from the ceiling. I was amused to learn that St Anne's patron saints and two little teddy bears called Patrick and Anne, and that the church has a tradition of collecting donations using Black Santas. The tradition started in 1926, when the then Dean, got a wooden barrel and sat out on the cathedral steps collecting donations whilst wearing his black clerical cloak (his long fluffy beard scored him the nicname of Santa.

Aside from that and a little shopping (naturally), I spent my time looking around the Catholic and Protestant parts of town. I'd kinda got a taste for how crazy the Catholic/Protestant deal was, when we drove around the North at the beginning of August. Not only are the Catholic and Protestant areas clearly demarcated by a huge wall (about 20ft or so high, made from corrugated-iron and covered in graffiti, but there are also gates that lock the areas off from each other. I think the need for this "peace wall" is taking Frosts' notion of "good fences mak(ing) good neighbours" to the extreme. The Protestant areas are plastered with Pommie flags, red, white and blue striped curbs, murals with images of William of Orange (the dude that lead to the defeat of the Catholic King in the Battle of the Boyne), The Apprentice Boys (the younguns who shut off the gates of Derry to keep out the Catholics in the 1689 siege), the Scottish Flag etc. I went for a walk through the Protestant area on the Saturday afternoon (apparently not always a good idea) and then back on the Black Taxi Tour the next day. The Catholic areas are a little more subdued, far fewer flags, and the murals have orange and green colours, the word "Saiorse" (Gaelic for Freedom)images of the British Bulldog, and pictures of the phoenix, a symbol of a united Ireland. The black taxi tour I did through teh Catholic and Protestant areas on Sunday was pretty cool - a convoy of about 5 cabs zoomed about 20 of us around town, stopping to look at all the murals, the peace line, memorials to various people who had died in the conflict etc....great commentary too, though the whole bollocks that has gone on up there is really beyond comprehension... ...people are still getting shot/assaulted, the hatred and criminality is rife.....really crazy stuff. The Bloody Sunday (Jan 1972) inquiry was reopened last year and is now into its 368th day!!

Back to Dublin....a fortnight ago, I headed over to the Chester Beatty Library - it won European Museum of the year in 2002. The museum is housed in the old clock tower of Dublin castle, and is the ginormous art collection of Beatty, a Canadian mining millionaire. It mostly contains Islamic and Far Eastern manuscripts and includes such exhibits as clay tablets from 2700BC Babylon, Japanese wood-block prints, Chinese books covered in Jade cases, and paintings from the Ottoman and Persian empires. It also has 250 Koranic manuscripts. Quite an interesting collection.

I had a quick trip to Paris last weekend with some Dublin-based Aussie friends. Did the usual sightseeing things like Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur and Monmartre etc, and also visited Les Egouts de Paris (Paris' sewer museum - fascinating little place. A tad stinky though!), Catacombs (more than 6 million people buried here from overflowing Parisian cemetaries), Cimetiere due Pere Lachaise (resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Chopin etc), the Latin Quarter (where we dined on Escargots, Raclette [essentially melted cheese poured on top of spuds] and Creme Brulee!), Marais quarter (gay and Jewish centres of Paris, also brilliant shops/cafes - ever tried a chili chocolate!?! Not bad!), Centre Pompidou, Jardin des Tuileries, Hotel des Invalides (Napoleon's resting place) etc.....Very quick trip and insanely busy but very enjoyable. Paris is such an unreal city - great sights, people, food and general ambience. Thinking about coming and living here for a while...... improving my French, imbibing the atmosphere long term. Who knows though.....Many places to see, things to do.

I've also managed to meet up with some folks from back home - Aimee and Emily, who were in town for the weekend after doing a tour round Ireland - and Leighton and Sara, who were Ireland for about 5 days the other week.

So for this week it's boring old work for me, and then i'm heading off to Croatia next Saturday for 2 weeks!! Can't wait. My mum is flying over to meet me so it'll be great to catch up with her and spend some time travelling down the Adriatic coast....

Ciao

Belinda

xoxo

Dublin and Da North

07.08.2003 16 °C

Tres apologetique for the laxness with the email updates of late. Aside from the trip from a fortnight ago, there hasn't been all that much going on aside from work.

The job is going quite well and i'm enjoying the challenges of managing a small caseload of kiddies, and hanging out drinking coffee with the girls and guys at work. Ok, so I don't want to make it sound too cruisy, because it certainly is not. However, the amount of time the Irish spend on 'breaks' proportionate to the amount of time they spend actually working is insane! No wonder the economy is sliding back down after the Celtic boom of more recent years. My working day runs from 9 to 5, with an official 15min coffee break and 1hr15mins for lunch!! crazy.....they are also very flexible with the hours. Still, I'm flat out all day seeing clients, doing admin etc. I'm certain the stress levels in this country are about half that of Oz.

Things are generally chilled out here...plodding even...You see the plodding effect when you hit the shops or a restaurant. If you want to go clothes shopping, you will spend 10mins waiting to be served, even if there is only one person in queue in front of you! And this is after you've already queued for 10 mins to get into the change room!

I'm still living at the youth hostel in town, but may be moving out with some South Africans (Saffas) I met at the hostel next week. It's a little less central than where I am now but a good deal cheaper. For the most part, the hostel is a lot of fun as you're always meeting new people and there's always something to do. Though it can get expensive and tiring as you end up going out at least 5 nights a week and getting an average of 6hrs sleep a night. And until last week I had to share a room with a girl with foot odour problem. My goodness, you'd think the poor lass' mother would have told her. I'd walk in at night, and walk back out again it was so bad. She actually manages to clear the whole TV room with her smelly feet. Seriously gross stuff. I've moved rooms now thank goodness!

A couple of weekends ago, I went with a group of a half dozen Aussies to see the peculiar Gaelic sport of hurling - not of the technicolour yawning kind either!! Hurling was an early version and blend of hockey and lacrosse. You have 2 fifteen-a side teams, and the sport is played on a rectangular field. The objective of the game is to try and hit a baseball sized ball with the 'caman' (hurley stick), over the crossbar (goalposts) or into the net below. Players can whack the ball along the ground, hit it it through the air or balance it on the broad mit of the stick. They also seem to be quite fond of giving each other a good belt. It's a fast and furious game, and we had a great time. We actually got tix for the quarter finals so the level of play was pretty awesome even though it's kinda hard to follow what's going on all the time cause it's sooooooo fast.

I spent last weekend driving round Northern Ireland with two Aussies I met at the hostel. We had planned to catch a train up to Belfast for the weekend and spend the whole time there but at the last minute decided the flexibility of having a car would be much better so wound up hiring a VW Golf for the weekend and not actually making it to Belfast, aside from the skirting around the edge of the city we did on our way to the North coast.

On the way to the north, we stopped to have a look at Newgrange, home to one of the most significant Stone Age sites in Europe. Unfortunately the place was crawling with package tourists, and us travellers were told we couldn't possible do the 'tour' for another 3-4 hours!! Grrr, disappointed, we kept driving north til we spotted the ruins of a castle tower in someone's paddock beside the motorway. So of course we snuck in to have a look, first running and jumping on the huge rolled up hay bales scattered across the field, and then climbing the tower for a nice view over the countryside, and of course the rest of the property in case the farmer came a-running with his pitchfork!

We had the impression that the border crossing would involve some sort of police check, and there'd be some scary looking military dudes with their AK-47s, so we strategically poised the camera to film any shenanigans that would arise. Sadly, we didn't even realize when he had crossed the border as there's not even a sign to let you know!! The only way of really knowing is by looking at the roadsigns which are no longer printed bilingually in Gaelic and English.

As you get a few k's into N Ireland, it becomes a little more obvious you're in another country due to the vast number of flags and painted road-curbs proclaiming individual's loyalties to the Union (Brits) or the Republic. You drive through one town, to see it plastered with the Union Jack, flag of England, and red, white and blue stripes on the curbs. And then the next town has the Orange, green and white of the Irish Republic flag. Other towns have a good mixture, but typically the territories are clearly demarcated.

Upon hitting the north coast we hiked along the cliffs of Fair Head, from where you can see across to bonny Scotland. Along the cliffs here which in some points drop straight into the sea, are cahrming wildflower meadows, and paddocks of sheep, cows and the odd bull. After the long walk out to the headland we decided it would be easier to cut through the fields, and had fun rounding up the sheep in the paddock, and running away from the bulls when they got a little grumpy (don't think they like purple coats so much!). We then drove around to Ballycastle, at the mouth of the glens of Glenshesk and Geltaisie, and stopped for a while at Ballintoy harbour, where a lot of artists hang out to paint the "dark rock-strewn strand" which contrasts peculiarly with the pale-stone breakwater. We finished off the evening with a hearty meal of fish 'n' "chippies" (as they insist on calling them regardless of age/sex/status). We wound up camping somewhere along the coast for free because we checked in too late to register, and drove off in the wee hours of the morning so we could make the most of our day

We hit Carrick-a-rede (meaning "rock in the road") the next morning where you get to walk across an 80ft above-the-sea rope plank bridge. The bridge connects the mainland with a small island which used to be home to a salmon fishery. The views from here were really lovely, and the bridge, potentially scary when the wind picks up a bit. On the day we were there, however, the water was glassy enough for water skiing so the fear factor was a little absent. Still, nice place.

Next we made our pilgrimage to the Giant's Causeway, where the three of us blew £20 on a top-notch breakfast at a posh hotel (hey we got free parking out of it!). The causeway is pretty impressive and definitely worth the efforts to get up there if you're ever over in Ireland. If you haven't seen pics before in national geographic or on the discovery channel, it's has quite a lunar feel to it, and as W Thackeray said, 'When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit over - a remnant of chaos.'. It is thought that the causeway was formed over time through volcanic eruptions, and the subsequent cooling of the lava into basalt hexagonal stepping stones which cascade down into the ocean. There are estimated to be some 40,000 of these stone columns stackd in together. According to ancient Gaelic legends, the causeway was obviously built by the giants, under the guidance of Finn McCool (they named a Maccas burger after him!!), the warrior and commander of the king of Ireland's armies. "Finn could pick thorns out of his heels while running and was capable of amazing feats of strength. Once, during a fight with a Scottish giant, he scooped up a huge clod of earth and flung it at his fleeing rival. The clod fell into the sea and turned into the Isle of Man".

After the causeway we cruised along the scenic coast to the surfing beaches of Portstewart and Portrush - a little too cold for a dip though. Nice place to sleep for a bit though as the sun was shining briliiantly that afternoon. Must have hit 24! The locals were going nuts, sweating like pigs and wiping their brows etc..... Then we continued along to the beaches and cliffs at Benone beach, from where you have spectacular views out to the Inishowen peninsula of county Donegal (part of the republic), and where you can drive your car for 12km along the beach! Good fun though we almost took the car swimming at one point - male drivers, i dunno!!

From there we stopped at the 18th century estate of Downhill, where we visited the Mussenden Temple (sitting directly at the edge of a cliff overlooking a beach - stunning views), and ruins of the Downhill palace. Really really nice joint they used to have there and incredible scenery.

We stopped in Derry (or if you're a Pom, Londonderry) for the night. The drive into town was kinda fun. As we hit the town periphery, we saw the usual flag propaganda, but to add to that, the military were doing a police check, oversized guns and all. They were clearing out some cars looking for dodgy people and weapons etc..... Anthony (one of my Aussie mates) took the Steve Irwin approach by putting on his most ocker Queensland accent and "G'day"-ing them. Worked a treat as they just waved us on through.

Apparently things are pretty calm now in Derry, although all the guidebooks warn firmly about parking your car in the wrong place, perchance some Brit-mad local notices your licence plates and decides to do in your windows with a golfstick. No probs though - car was in good nick when we went to drive off the next day.

We spent the morning walking about the 17th century old walls and touring the "Bloody Sunday" sites. Derry is the only remaining completely walled off city in Ireland and has provided the barricade to numerous sieges over the years between the Irish and the Brits. More than thirty years after the Bloody Sunday massacre (30 Jan 1972), the guys responsible for the deaths of the 17 victims (most of them very young with no previous major political associations) have not been brought to justice. Tony Blair reopened the inquiry into the massacre a few years ago, so it is hoped that the families of the victims will be delivered some sort of justice, but why exactly it still hasn't happened is unfathomable. There are several interesting murals painted on the walls around town exemplifying the brutalities and injustices of the massacre, and flags flying all over town proclaiming allegiances. Not far from the massacre site, there are even Palestinian flags flying high above the buildings, indicative of their empathy for the Palestinian cause. In other parts of town, the allegiance to the British empire is obvious with red white and blue stripes on the street curbs, flags flying etc.

After the main sightseeing, we decided to do some shopping (as you do) and found that you could buy BB guns (i think that's their name, anyway the rubber bullet ones?) in several shops around town. we went in and checked some of the places out;. apparently it is considered perfectly normal to sell them to 7 year olds wearing dog collars and with blue mohawks on the tops of their heads. We even got some footage of em running about town shooting at each other with these bullets. Crazy crazy stuff going on in this world! noone else seemed to bat and eyelid though!

Ok, so i never finished this off last week.....update.....

Spent all this last week at the hostel. Same old same, hanging out with the foreign legion etc. Have decided to move into the Saffas as they have promised to cook me braii every night (a Saffa BBQ) Was also spurred on by a break-in to my room at the hostel the other night. Some jerk jumped in through the skylight and did a little damage to the room. As far as i know, nothing of mine was touched but he stole one of the girls' video cameras. Ill probably discover 2mths down the track that something or other is gone..... All my friends are getting motivated and moving out too so the social side of things isn't the same anymore.

I flew into London this evening for the weekend. Have planned for tomorrow to check out Wimbledon and Lords, have lunch with Leighton (friend from Sydney), visit the Tate gallery in the arvo, and meet up with Suz and Zelda for dinner. Hoping to see some more friends on Sat but need to do some organizing between now and then.

Anyway, hope you're all in good shape, enjoying life (wherever you are) and keeping out of trouble - especially you pink ladies at the San!! hehe

Ciao

Love Belinda

P.S. I finally have an address for mailing. Any belated birthday presents can be sent there.

Arrival in Eire

29.06.2003 20 °C

Hello from Sunny Dublin (and yeah that is borderline oxymoronic -but true).

Out of the 5 days I've been in town, about 3 have been moderately sunny so it was a pleasant welcome to this rainy city. Though the presence of the sunshine doesn't exactly equate to warmth. Summer began here just over a week ago and the locals are lapping it up. When I arrived on Wednesday, the thermometer must have hit about 20. So everyone seems to be cruising round in shorts and t-shirts like it's 40 degrees! Meanwhile, Belinda is shivering away in a jumper and jeans. Having come from a month in Asia, the weather was a bit of a shock - especially when you have in mind that it is SUMMER!

Dublin is really a very attractive city, and contrary to popular notions that it is packed with drunken yobbos, I haven't found it all that bad - so far. But then I've been going to bed pretty early. Well as early as humanly possible considering it is still light outside at 10.30 at night!!! And then the sun peeks its way out at around 4am. It's very disconcerting. I have no concept of what the time is here - aside from what my tummy tells me. Considering how expensive the food is here, my tummy tries not to tell me too much at all at the moment, but hey you gotta eat! If you use the McEconomic scale, Dublin is on par with the whole of Switzerland and London. One large Big Mac meal will set you back EUR5.90!!! Basically that's the same for everything here. Same price as in Aussie dollars but it's Euro. So a cup of coffee is EUR2.50, and a sandwich is at least €3 etc. The only cheap thing I've found so far is internet access at 60c an hour if you go early enough!

Something peculiar to Dublin is the overly peroxided ladies that hang about on the street corners of the inner city suburbs selling fruit from prams! I would never have thought to set up shop from the back of a pram, but it's not such a bad idea. Considering the number of young ladies with babies here, I guess it makes sense. Whereas the chicky babes at home with small babies would tend to be in their early 30s, there are many girls who can't be more than early 20s carting their bubs around in prams. Must be the long cold winters!

So what have I been up to......not a lot. Aside from orienting myself (I have a shocking sense of direction as some of you will know - I get lost walking back to my hotel in the middle of the night in pretty much every place I go to), and finding all the good places to eat and shop (got a new
handbag, now need some new shoes), I've been searching for a place to live. At the moment I'm staying with Jill, a friend from uni in town, but will need to find something permanent before I start work, hopefully next week if everything goes to plans. I still have some paperwork to do that I wasn't told about before I left home so it may be 2 weeks before I start working to teach these Irish folk how to speak properly!!!

I've heard people go on and on about the Irish accent and had expected to have far more difficulties but so far haven 't had too many problems. But then, I'm in the centre of town. I suspect that when I start working, I'll have an interesting time. Where I'll be working is meant to have a pretty thick accent...so we'll see how it goes.

I spent yesterday in Kilkenny, purported to be the most beautiful medieval town in Ireland. It is definately a lovely place to spend a day, and I enjoyed visiting the Kilkenny Castle (nice but "same same" as all the other jolly ones I've been to!), St Canice's Cathedral and tower, Domincan Black Abbey, Rothe House etc etc.....but best of all, found a delightful creperie, which has divine bruschetta and the ONLY Spanish Hot Chocolate in Ireland!!! Apparently the locals aren't big fans but it really is divine. I'm definitely going back to Kilkenny just to eat at this place! Any of you folks who make it over here.....we'll do lunch here. Really top stuff.

My last few days in Thailand were really great - though a tad on the lazy side. I met up with the American-Israeli guys I met snorkelling on Ko Phi Phi and spent the time with them - eating, shopping, eating (hey last chance for good banana smoothies), and more shopping - oh and running away from persistent tuk-tuk drivers and food vendors ("I'll get fat" seems to work). Phuket wasn't such a bad place either. I'd never seen myself going there because of its rep as a glitzy getaway for honeymooners and fat German tourists (not to forget those grotesque middle-aged men salivating over 14 yr old local girls). All of that is there...but being the off-season and with people staying at home because of SARs/terrorism, it was a little on the quiet side. Instead of having the beach chocker-block with portly half-naked people sunning themselves on deckchairs, you had a beach of half-empty deckchairs - and not so many half-naked people. Plenty of beach vendors were still in force however trying to sell sarongs, ice-creams, drinks, fruit etc etc. Burying your face in whatever book you are reading when you see them coming seems to work though - even if you are very obvious about it!!

Not much planned for the next few days. I need to do the house-hunting thing, and might even squeeze in a bit of sightseeing too - considering i'm in a rather groovy city and all that....When going out for dinner the other night, I walked kinda straight past Trinity College without even batting an eyelid - hey I was tired after flying and waiting for nearly 24hrs!! Shame shame....

Anyway, it is very nice to be in a big city again with hot water (forgotten how nice a hot shower was), flushing toilets and a relatively organised public transport system...at least I hope so! Though I will definitely miss the steamy Asian weather, beautiful beaches, cheap tasty food, hassle and groovy people I met along the way.

Gotta go - more house hunting to do.

Ciao

Love Belinda

Battambong, Bangers and Beaches

21.06.2003 29 °C

I had dreaded the day when I had to make a journey on a pick-up truck.... I'd seen the locals cram together in the back of a ute - up to 20 of them sitting on top of sacks, buckets, boxes etc. and riding along dusty, pot-holed red tracks, holding on for their life should they happen to go over an extra big bump and be thrown violently to the ground below. All the time, swallowing the dust from the vehicles in front of them.

So when I asked the guesthouse manager how I could get to the docks to get the speedboat to Battambong, he said, maybe minibus, maybe pick-up - it depended on the condition of the road. Travelling in the monsoon season has many benefits - one being the extreme lushness of the jungle and the full-to-the-brim moats around Angkor Wat; another being the relatively low crowds. After a few nights with heavy rains, it turned out the ride to the dock was gonna be a long, bumpy one along the dusty red trails.

If you've never ridden on the back of a pick-up truck, Cambodia probably isn't the best place to start. It's uncomfortable, dusty and a tad dangerous. And riding on the roof (holding on to a bar) is certainly not recommended. You do get a great view of the branches hanging down from the trees though - and a few scratches that come complimentarily. It was pretty fun though and you definitely don't suffocate when you're bouncing around on the roof, though you do inhale a lot of dirt!

Anyway, so when we arrived at the docks, they bundled those of us going to Battambong onto one boat, and those going to Phnom Penh onto another. Then there was the ubiquitous baggage handling charge - i.e. $1 for passing the bag from the ground to the boat one metre away - cheeky monkeys! And then.....we sat on the boat for about 10 minutes before being told to get off, hop back on the pick-up truck and drive another 10 minutes down the road to the other docks!

The boat we boarded turned out to be the size of a rubber dinghy and 7 of us crammed in for the four and a bit hour trip - a very hairy ride through narrow canals, in shallow waters, and sometimes through fields of lilies which would tangle in the boat. Really not a very comfortable trip and with no safety measures whatsoever, really probably not the safest way to
go...but it was really fun!! And much more interesting than taking a bus! To add to the experience was the 10 minute pit-stop mid-way at a local shop in a floating village. To get to the toilet, you had to walk across a long 3-inch wide plank, then over a caged enclosure of baby crocodiles!! True.....all that was separating you from the crocs was a chicken wire enclosure....one step off the narrow beam and you'd fall into a cage full of crocs!! Don't know how the feel about swimming around in the toilet water either...but what can you do in the middle of the Tonle Sap in a floating village!

Upon approaching Battambong, the boat slowed to a trickle and we got to pass the riverside villages and wave to all the local kids who were swimming/bathing in the muddy river. Some of them ran along the bank following the boat, staring at us, then breaking into cheesy grins when we waved over to them. All it takes is a hearty Jom Reap Suor or Suor sdei and a little smile for them to go hysterical with excitement.

Battambong, was quite a change after Siem Reap. Whilst Siem Reap was swarming with hoardes of tourists, even in the low season, Battambong, was relatively chilled out, with hardly any tourists in sight. It´s perhaps not the most interesting of places, but I enjoyed moto trips about the nearby countryside, and hiking up to a Buddhist temple with the local monks. It was ridiculously hot here though, and I came down a little ill, perhaps from dehydration and was bed-ridden for 24 hours. Fanta to the rescue!! It was in Battambong that I did my first trip side-saddling a motorbike! I had often seen Cambodian women doing it, and was a little daunted by the prospect of it. But if you´re wearing a long skirt, well, it´s the only way to go! Pretty fun, I have to say, but damn, when they go over all the pot-holes...it can be a little dicey...

After 9 hours travel from Battambong via share taxi, tuk-tuk, bus and tuk-tuk, I arrived back in Bangkok to a cooler, rainy afternoon. A nice change from the scorching temps in Cambodia over the past few weeks.

On Wednesday morning I visited the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute and Snake farm. Hadn't seen any snakes since my brief encounter with one at the Roulous group of temples at Angkor. It was interesting enough initially with them telling you a little bit about the types found in Thailand, but they were a little mean to them - setting the cobras, 3 or 4 at a time, down on the ground and poking them and taunting them so they flare up their necks and start striking at the air, their legs, shoes etc.....crazy guys...but i guess they handle these snakes everyday and know what their limits are. Still, it can't be much fun for the snakes.

After this I strolled through Lumphini park, the most popular park in Bangkok. Not the most rivetting place though......Then I hit the World Trade Centre and very 'inappropriately' named Zen department store - mostly for a bit of air-con! Finished up the afternoon at Siam Square, where there are even more shops!!!

After talking to numerous backpackers whilst in Bangkok and in Cambodia, I decided a week on the Andaman coast of Southern Thailand might be a nice change from the seering heat of
Cambodia. So, I jumped on a bus for the 16hour, 1000km trip down to Krabi. I'd sworn off long overnight bus trips after the last one I took in Europe with a busload of smelly, men en route to Paris....but it was "cheap cheap", so I went for it.

Finally, I arrived in Krabi, from where I took a boat across to Rai-leh beach. I stayed in a beach hut at a budget resort and didn't do much aside from snorkel, swim and relax on the beach. Hat Tham Phra Nang is perhaps one of the loveliest beaches in the world - simply sublime! At one end is a large cave known as the "Princess Cave". The locals believe it is home to a mythical sea princess and the local fishermen place carved wooden 'phalli' in the cave as offerings to the Holy Princess - part of a fertility ritual.

On Saturday morning I took a boat from Rai-leh East to Ko Phi Phi Island, the second most touristed island on the isthmus (after Phuket). Nice boat trip through transluscent azure waters and past the limestone islets. In the afternoon I took a boat across to Had Yao, where I spent a few hours snorkelling with some Israelis, Eyal and Ofa. This is the nicest place to snorkel around Ko Phi Phi Don (there is also 'Leh') though so much of the reef has been destroyed. Still some cool fish though, and colourful sea anemones, the odd bit of blue coral etc....Tomorrow I'm taking a trip out to Ko Phi Phi Leh, around Monkey Island, Bamboo island, Shark Point and to Viking Cave, where they collect birds' nests for the Chinese delicacy of birds´nest soup.

From there, I´m heading to (the dreaded)Phuket to hang out with my Eyal and Ofa for the day, before jetting off to Ireland, where I´ll be for the next 6 months or so.

Cheers

Belinda x

Angkor WHAT?!?

Looking across the moat of Angkor Wat

13.06.2003 37 °C

My last night in Phnom Penh was spent having dinner with Leila (a Canadian I've been travelling with since Kampot) and our moto drivers, Ya Ya and Banha - who we had thought to be pretty decent motos. Neither of us are big fans of Khmer food as it's a little too 'raw' - for example, if you get chicken, you get it with meat, skin, cartilage, blood vessels and bones. But we thought it might be a fun experience nonetheless. We wound up in a Khmer beer hall in the suburbs of Phnom Penh...and as soon as we sat down, we had 8 or so "beer girls" surround our table - a little strange... I'd heard of the beer girls from friends who had travelled through Thailand but never really seen them in action. I think YaYa selected the girl he thought was the hottest (the Becks girl) and she was our waitress for the evening - funnily enough, plowing him with Khmer wine, rather than copious amounts of Becks. And yes...YaYa was supposed to be one of our drivers!!!!

Amazingly, our stomachs survived the food, our whole bodies, the ride home in the Phnom Penh madness and our tempers, the 'sting' at the end of the night when our drivers, who had pigged-out (to put it mildly) expected us to pay for their gorging. It was one of those awkward situations - we knew vaguely where we were staying, but were a fair way away from that point right now; we didn't know where we were, as we were somewhere in the burbs, and yes, perhaps both YaYa and Banha had had a little too much to drink....in retrospect, it could have been a really bad situation, and we maybe should have made a plan earlier, but sometimes when you travel, you are very much at the liberty of others....anyway....

The following morning, at the crack of dawn, we jumped on the boat to Siem Reap. I'd been told that the boat ride up to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh was the way to go and thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the roof (with sarong wrapped around head, sunnies and sunscreen lathered on my legs) for the 4-5hr journey. The boat cruises up the Tonle Sap river (a rather unique river as during the wet season the flow of the river changes direction) and for the initial stages of the journey, you pass by quaint little villages, large, floating villages, and then finally hit a vast expanse of water. It was an expensive trip for Cambodia at US$25 but very comfortable up on the roof!

The spoiler was upon arrival at the docks, about 10km from Siem Reap. As the water was shallow, we had to jump on to smaller sampans (canoe type boats) to go in to shore. And on those sampans were about 20-30 touts from different guesthouses, vying for our monetary affection. If you've never had the pleasure of being touted before.....here is not a good place to start. I'd been told they were a little pushy but these guys were totally relentless!! Leila and I had about 10 of them standing around us at once telling us that their guesthouse was the best, and that all the other one's were bad, dirty, unfriendly, expensive (blah blah) and that we would get free moto there - even if "we no stay". hmmm maybe not....anyway, it was a little hectic...

In the end, we found some moto drivers who seemed pretty decent blokes and told them exactly which guesthouse we wanted to go to.....and they were like "Yeah, fine, we take you there, we no try and sell you business". For one dollar for the both of us...we should have known better but anyway.....the first 5-10 mins were fine, and then they started on the hard sell. Telling us our guesthouse was "crappy", that it was very far from town, their guesthouse was better..... grrrrrr.......I'd tried to explain to my driver in the nicest possible way that touting is not a great way to win over most travellers - that all it does is make them upset and frustrated... but I dunno.....it didn't seem to click.

Our guesthouse turned out to be superb though. Sure, it was on the edge of town but for US$3 a night each in a really nice room (with clean towels and sheets daily, big window and private bathroom with toilet paper!!!!! of course it was pink). And they threw in a ginormous breakfast as well as free moto around town too! The place is new so they are not getting so much business...but word of mouth spreads quickly so they'll certainly be drumming it up pretty quickly.

After lunch and a sluggish afternoon, we hot-footed it out to the temples of Angkor. We first cruised down the leafy boulevardes leading up to the Angkor complex, and then we swung round the corner and caught our first glimpse of Angkor Wat......

Wow.....the sun was starting to sink by this time so the fading sunlight on the front of Angkor Wat, mixed with the smoky haze that lingered in the air made for an awesome sight. We didn't hit the inside until the next day.....as the place to be, according to our drivers, was Phnom Bakheng, the first of the templed mountains built around Angkor. As far as sunsets go, it wasn't too high up on the richter-scale, but was still a pretty cool place to watch the sun fade away....

So a little about Angkor Wat (yes, I have a guidebook on me - I'm not quite the oracle)......it's the largest and most renowned Angkorian temple; it was thought to have been built as a funerary temple for one of the Kings to honour Vishnu, the deity with whom the King best identified; it may have also functioned as a general temple for the King Suryavarman II; it is surrounded by a 200m wide moat, where kiddies go for a dip on a hot day (i.e. every day); the bas-reliefs stretch for 800m around the walls of the central temple complex and tell stories of the history of the Khmer empire. Also, Angkor Wat is just one specific temple in a complex of dozens, and Siem Reap is one of several places where ruins from the Khmer empire lay - there are some other pretty sweet ones in Central Vietnam and Southern Laos.

At about 4.45 the next morning, we arose so we could make it for sunrise at Angkor Wat - quite spectacular as we viewed it overlooking one of the pools (barays) that lies at the front of the main temple...We then wandered through the temple for a couple of hours - doing all the tricky stair climbs in the early hours before the heat became too overpowering and the package tour hordes arrived after an evening of copious insobriety at overpriced restaurants.

After a quick breakfast back in town, I hit the temples again for another 7 hours (crazy!!!!!) and lingered about the temples of Angkor Thom (the remains of a huge fortified city which was built by the greatest Angkorian king, Jayavarman VII). Angkor Thom contains some of the most interesting monuments of Angkor - the Bayon, where 200 enigmatic, gargantuan faces peer down at you from above and you can see over a km of bas reliefs; the Baphuon (currently under reconstruction ), which is purported to represent Mt Meru, the dwelling place of Shiva; The Royal Enclosure and Phimeanakas, fronted by the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King (fingers missing on one hand only!), The Kleangs (formerly homes to lingas and statues); Banteay Kdei (rather groovy Buddhist temple with some nifty garudas fronting the gates); Sras Srang (an ablution pool opposite Banteay Kdei) and finally Ta Prohm.

Ta Prohm seems to be everyone's favourite as it's been left to be swallowed up by the jungle that surrounds it. The temple complex is shrouded by huge trees, and over time, the roots of the trees have intertwined with the temples so that the trees in many cases are actually growing from beneath the temples. When I went that afternoon, the monks within the complex had lit some fires and the smoke that meandered through the old corridors, crumbling doorways and lichen-coated bas-reliefs made it really photogenic.

I was back at Angkor Wat with Leila, Sheila (another Canadian) and David (Pommie) for sunset. This time I actually took some time to look properly at the bas-reliefs that ring the outer temple walls - astonishing stuff, really! After dinner and a few drinks at the Angkor What? bar, we headed home, in Pissing down rain...like nothing I´ve ever seen before. We had arranged for our drivers to pick us up from there at 10pm. When it started lashing down...we weren't entirely sure what to do. We didn't have the phone number for the guesthouse to call them to tell them to come a little later, and given the extremity of the sudden deluge, didn't fancy walking back in the rain. But sure enough, come 10pm, they came to pick us up. There they were, smiling happily as we greeted them at the entrance to the bar! No problem for them, so no problem for us either! So we jumped on board, and drove back to the guesthouse in 3ft deep water....soaked right through, but having enjoyed the experience!

I spent Friday visiting some of the more remote Angkorian temples. First I went out to Banteay Srey, the Citadel of Women (967AD). Because this temple is so far out of town (37km), it's not so touristed and until 1998 was considered too unsafe to visit as their were major pockets of Khmer Rouge nasties in the area. It has also missed out on much of the looting after the collapse of the KR back in 93 so is in quite good condition. It's quite pretty as it's made from pink sandstone and the bas-reliefs here are superior to any of the others seen in Angkor temples. It was about an hour each way on moto but definitely worth it. After that I headed to the Rolous Group of temples, about 12km away......Rolous served periodically as the capital of the Angkorian empire and there are some pretty awesome ox sculptures there.....not that I'm a big fan of oxen or anything. I got chased by a little snake here....I initially panicked cause I had heard that highly poisonous Hanuman snakes hung about many of the temples.....but the vendors assured me it was ok and after my moto driver ran over it's head (hey, not my idea!!!), I felt pretty safe from harm. I'm going to refrain from regaling the story about the kid with the knife...aside from saying that I called his bluff and it was all fine in the end...phew...After about 5 hours of temples in high 30s heat, and at least half of that on the back of a motorbike....I was done for the day.

We decided on Saturday morning to rehit some of the more interesting Angkorian temples..... Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and finish up the day at Angkor Wat for sunset. We started at the Bayon (at the centre of Angkor Thom temples), where we were chased about by a monk who was intent on massaging a small linga (phallic totem) and giggle as he did so. He explained to his, through gesture mostly, that the hole in the roof above the linga was so the rain could fall upon it...and that men came here to aid their virility. We also took a closer look at the bas-reliefs which lined the walls of the temples - some include pictures of Chams (Vietnamese Hindus) fighting against the Khmers, people playing chess, cockfights, a woman, people picking lice from other people's hair, Khmers getting drunk, and King Jayavarman VII riding atop a horse whilst being followed by a legion of concubines - every man's dream perhaps. We also took time to look at the rather enigmatic smiling faces that are all over the complex (200 or so of 'em). We were really keen to go back to Ta Prohm as it's so different from most of the other temples....and this time we were lucky enough to meet one of the monks that (i think) lives there. He's the one on the cover of the most recent Lonely Planet Cambodia edition (not the pirated old I got in Saigon). We went to the "Hall of echoes" where he likes to hang out - it's quite cool there as you get another person to stand on the opposite side of the hall and you both take turns pounding your chest and listening to the echo come back at you. We found him feeding one of the local dogs and sweeping the pathway - "I tidy up", he said. He's 83!!! Very very rare for a Cambodian. I think the average life expectancy hovers around 50.....

On our last night in Siem Reap, we hit the Beatocello concert at the big children's hospital in Siem Reap. It's put on by a Swiss paediatrician, who has been based in Cambodia since the early 1970s. In between items, Beat told us a little about the history of the hospital and about the health situation in general in Cambodia. Even now, there are still kids getting sick and dying every day because of malaria, dengue (haemmorrhagic) fever, tuberculosis, Hep A and B, encephalitis, and land mine injuries. And you have people from the WHO and other international organizations saying that US$2.10 a day is too much money to provide per child for health care in Cambodia. They of course are having $345 a night rooms at the Sofitel Angkor down the road.....honestly....you can get a room for $3!!!! Music was pretty good too. As Beat is Swiss, he is multinlingual so performed in about 6 different languages - a mixture of Bach, and some ditties he had written himself. Some of it was a little zany.....i think the hot climate and ex-patriate life-style has gotten to him somewhat. A group of us met up at The Red Piano afterwards. It was the cafe/bar where the Tomb Raider crew hung out when they shot the film back in 2000. Good food, good company - but the only piano you see is a 20cm wide toy one stuck on the wall above the photos of Angelina Jolie, who is a national hero here!

Next it's on to Battambong - second largest city in Cambodia but somewhat off the tourist map. Let's just see how I cope with the 4 or so hour speedboat trip.

Ciao

Belinda

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm

The Bayon

In front of Angkor Wat

From atop Angkor Wat

At Banteay Srei temple

Kampot, Kep and PP

09.06.2003 35 °C

So after Sihanoukville, it was on to the "somnolent riverside town of Kampot" (to quote Lonely Planet). It certainly had a sleepy feel to it with cows lulling by the roadside, pigs pottering about in the rubbish piles, chickens and ducks taking their time to cross the road, locals bathing in the waterholes, and endless views of palm-fringed farmlands.

It unfortunately also had a small overpopulation of feral dogs...

Aside from that, it's a laid-back town with some quite lovely examples of colonial architecture, and as it doesn't see too many tourists, is a place where the locals are still surprised (even shocked sometimes) to see the face of a 'baraang' (foreigner) and kids run out onto the roadside just to say hello and sometimes pinch your skin or high-five you. Some of the most radiant smiles I've ever seen were in and around Kampot. There are also plenty of local students who are keen to practice their English with foreigners and if you take a stroll up the riverside, you are sure to meet several young people eager to converse with you.

When I arrived in Kampot I took a moto straight out to the delightful seaside resort of Kep-sur-Mer. Around the turn of the century, Kep was a favourite haunt for the French upper-class and since then the Cambodian high rollers have decided it's a nifty place to hang out and swim, laze about and lose money on the pokies! It's hardly what you'd call a beautiful beach but it's certainly a peaceul enough place to cool down from the afternoon heat.

It's surrounded by rather thick jungled mountains, and former villas of the King. Most of them were gutted and looted in 1980 because of major famine following the ousting of the Khmer Rouge (officially anyway) and all the goodies were sold off to the Vietnamese. It was nice to swing on a hammock under a beach hut while eating my lunch and having the locals stare at me. At one stage I had about 7 kids from the one family taking turns peak-a-booing me and then running off to hide. Kep isn't far from Phnom Voar, the hill where the three backpackers were held out in in 1994 before being executed. It's all pretty safe now though. The area still has major land mine problems though so you can't really do too much aimless wandering off the main roads.

I spent Saturday up in Bokor National Park. For many years, this park was off limits for visitors as it was held by the Khmer Rouge during their reign of insanity and occasionally is a hang out joint for illegal armed loggers. But now it attracts visitors who want to suss out the wildlife (gibbons, tigers, leopards, sambars, drongos (!!) and buzzards) - not that we saw any as they are mostly nocturnal- and have a look at the Bokor Hill station, built by the French in 1922. From atop the station, you get awesome views of the Cambodian coast and Phu Quoc Island (now part of Vietnam but according to our 'guide', it really belongs to Cambodia). If you go up there on the right day, the whole hill top becomes enshrouded with thick clouds and fog that pass through the decrepid buildings that once formed the hill station complex. You can wander through the old casino, dance in the deserted ballroom, peek in the old kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms....and clouds will suddenly pass through the building. At times the visibility drops to nothing. But hey, we went on a clear day!!! So much for me visiting "the eeriest place on the planet".

Grrrr...the place is still a little creepy though as it is in the middle of nowhere and if you wander back towards the old watchtower to take a photo of the casino, the silence is penetrative and the isolation, incredible. The Khmer Rouge used Bokor Hill station as a hide-out in the 1970s and for three months in 1979, kept prisoners holed up in the catholic church and primary school while the Vietnamese attacked them. Also on the hill is the former Summer Palace of King Norodom - a rather spartan palace but one of which the King was very fond. It was a good day though - nice crowd of people.

On Sunday it was on to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. When it was part of French Indochina, PP was considered to be the most charming of the Indochinese cities and it's easy to see why. It's really very delightful.....I'd had high expectations for PP and I wasn´t disappointed! It's a little like a grungy version of Paris (that's my take on it anyway) - you still have the wide boulevardes, the chic cafes lining the riverfront, and the elegant buildings. Instead of insane Parisiens driving around in their cars trying to run down pedestrians, you have insane Khmer people on their motos swerving around the pedestrians.

Along the riverfront of the Tonle Sap you can watch the locals strut in their Sunday-best and pose for photos in front of the Royal Palace; monks stopping for a smoke (true!) or a chat with a foreigner; odious, corpulent (ok let's just say they're FAT), middle-aged men salivating over pre-pubescent girls dressed in outfits purchased for them by their sugar-daddies.....

I guess you have to look at it from the point of view of the young girls preyed upon by these slimeballs. To many of them, the ogre is but a one-way ticket to somewhat of a better life.....he buys them clothes, drives them around on his snappy moto, takes them to fancy restaurants...... in exchange for some "company" (in one way or another). As much as we can sit back and look on in horror from our comfortable perches, I think that as much as we'd hate to admit it, many of us would do exactly the same....

Also more apparent in PP than down on the south coast is the number of land mine survivors and homeless kids. I guess as in all big cities, they come to the city in search of the better life....but are still unable to attain their dreams and survive by begging. It's been tremendously confronting here as there are so many of them and they can be relentless at time. You see children as young as 4, nursing 6 month old babies, walking down the street and asking for money, food....anything.....you could try to give a little money to each of them but it's impossible to give to everyone, and then how do you know who is actually getting the money or what it's used for?? And how can you possibly discriminate between the children. Why should you give to one and not another? Do you give to the one that looks the saddest? The one with the dirtiest clothes? The one who fell victim to a land-mine? How to discriminate between hundreds of children who are all desperately in need?

Everywhere you go....

Aside from all this, I'm glad to be back in a city of motos, though the amount of trust you have to put if your baseball-capped driver is quite astounding at times. What are the road rules? Are the moto drivers even licensed??!?!!? Everytime you think you are going to crash..... you somehow make it through. Sometimes you can be heading full-on into the traffic and they all just go around you. Crazy stuff.....but the locals do it every day and they manage quite well. And it's really good fun. Pretty much anyone here with a motorbike has his own business, so I guess, irrespective of how ludicrous the driving may seem at times, there is an element of caution employed in the ludicrosity.

I visited the National Museum after some lunch. I'd heard that if you go at sundown, you can see a swarm of bats flying out of the belfry of the museum. I'd for some reason, been looking forward to that more than the contents of the museum (terrible, I know). Unfortunately, the government pumped some extra funding into the museum earlier in the year and got rid of the colony. The museum was pretty interesting anyway....lot's of pre-Angkorian and classical Angkorian ruins, relics, ceramics, and many many Buddha, Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Jayavarman etc statues....pretty interesting stuff and perhaps useful as I'm heading to Angkor in a few days.

In the evening I met up with Leila, and a couple we met on our Bokor trip (David and Sheila) at the Foreign Correspondent's Club on the riverside (very comfy bar/cafe). Nice place to sit for a while but a little too upmarket for me in my backpacker garb.

Yesterday I made my way to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the S-21 prison used by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge for imprisoning, interrogating and torturing the 17,000 or so people who passed through here. Aside from the intellectuals who were held here before being moved off for execution at the Killing Fields, there were ordinary men, women and children whose only crime was that they were affiliated with someone that the Khmer Rouge opposed - or in some cases, they were executed for no reason at all. Initially the KR wanted to restructure Cambodian society into a Maoist, agrarian co-operative and within two weeks of them toppling the government, they shifted the whole population out into the countryside to work the land....they killed off all the intellects they thought might uprise against their movement and scared the hell out of everyone else....then just started massacring people at random. As many as 2 million people were slaughtered...

The setting of the prison is in the grounds of an old high school...it's in a relatively nice neighbourhood in the centre of town....it could be any school, anywhere in the world.....you can still see fragments from the school's running years, amidst the remnants of the prison.....
From there I visited the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, which have now largely been cleared out. The mass graves in which remains of people once lay are now large holes in the ground.....there is now a memorial stupa built in the centre of the fields containing some 8000 skulls....this was only one of hundreds of these fieldsscattered across the nation. Very informative place, but, predictably, bleak. Bizarrely, right next to the Killing Fields is a shooting range where, if you are warped enough, you can shoot 5 bullets from an AK-47 for $5, or if you are a complete pycho, you can shoot a cow with a bazooka gun for $100....needless to say I didn't partake in either activity.

I needed something a little less heavy after this, so hit the Psar Tuol Tom Pong ("Russian Market"), located funnily enough on Mao Tse Tung Blvd (plenty of Commo dudes had streets named after them around town) and without too much haggling managed to purchase a ridiculous number of things for a ridiculously small amount of money. This morning, Leila and I met our motos and spent half the day riding round town and stopping to visit Wat Phnom, The Royal Palace & Silver Pagoda, and Central Market.

Wat Phnom rests atop the only hill in town (it makes perfect sense to name a whole city after a mountain right, even if it's thesize of a molehill?) and has been the site of pagodas since 1373. People come from all over town to pray for good luck and success and visit the statue of Lady Penh, after whom the city was named. The Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda were a tad pricey at 3 dollars, considering the royal family were in residence and half the buildings were sectioned off!!! And then the Silver Pagoda....well I had in mind that the building itself was silver in colour (at least!) but it's the tiles on the floor that are silver, andthey are covered by carpets!!! Crazy......This pagoda was home to another Emerald Buddha, about the size of an average adult head! This one is made of Baccarat crystal though rather than emerald. Quite enjoyed the Central Market....good variety of gear and lots of vendors hassling you for business! The Cambodians are much easier to haggle with than the Vietnamese which makes super bargains a cinch.

Quite a cruisy afternoon today. Motoed a little around the town to take some more pics, and then went and vegged out in a cafe for the afternoon along the riverside....doing some reading and people watching. I actually met an Aussie guy down there who wasn't a) old b) overweight or c) salivating over a 12 year old Khmer girl!

Tomorrow we're catching a boat up to Siem Reap....I'm quite looking forward to sitting on the rooftop for five hours (with sunscreen slapped on of course) and checking out the view.

Will write again from Siem Reap....

Cheers
Belinda xo