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

Snooping about Snookyville

06.06.2003 34 °C

Johm riab sua! (Khmer for hello)

After a few nights of rather restless sleep in Bangkok, mostly due to the incredible humidity and my reluctance to pay an extra couple dollars for air-conditioning, I decided I might be best to take the day bus to Trat (province near to Cambodian border) from where I could take a minibus in the early morning on to Had Lek and then a boat on to Sihanoukville on Cambodia's south coast.

Trat is a gem mining/trading town about 50km from the Cambodian border. There isn't a whole lot to do in Trat but meander through the markets looking for delicacies to sample. After a 6 hour bus trip from Bangkok I checked into a bungalow style hotel -very swish and for 70 baht (less than AUD$3!) - and that's including the token geckos running on the walls and the roof of the hallway bathroom. If you've never been to a market in Asia before, here's just a taste of some of the goodies on offer if you have a rather bold palate.....deep-fried chicken feet, dragonfruit, durian, mouse-shit peppers, black jelly, boiled frogs, rambutans, boiled eggs with red yolks...I could go on for ever! Visually intoxicating, though not always appetising! I had some Ladnaa (rice noodle & vege dish with chillis, lime, pepper and i have no idea what else) at some stall in the market for 20 baht (80cents) and an amaaaaaazing banana crepe for dessert. They fry it in egg yolk, cook slices of lady-finger bananas into it, and then coat it with sugar and condensed milk...mmmmmmmm. It's divine!!

On Tuesday morning I awoke at the crack of dawn (i.e. before 5am!) to make sure i was up at the bus station by 5.30 for a bus to the Cambodian border town at Had Lek/Cha Yeam in order to make sure I could get through immigration etc. and then moto down to Koh Kong to catch a speedboat to Sihanoukville, a beach resort town on Cambodia's southern coast. Of course, running on Asian time (or maybe Rodionoff time if you know the family - greetings guys!) the bus arrived at the border late and by the time I got through immigration (a shack at the side of the road), I was too late for the boat so wound up taking a very uncomfortable bus for over 6 hours to Sihanoukville. The highway to Sihanoukville is predominantly a red dirt road (mind you it's quite good, compact dirt for the most part) with some rather nasty looking pot-holes here and there - the driver did a commendable job at missing most of them. Compared to some of the hair-raising 'roads' I've had the pleasure of experiencing in Sapa, Vietnam, it wasn't too bad. We only saw one major crash on the way.... According to a German guy I met in Trat, the waters along the coast to Sihanoukville are notoriously choppy at this time of year and the chances of seasickness, pretty high so a bumpy bus trip really didn't seem that bad.

So what's the verdict on Cambodia - 2 thumbs up - so far anyway....It's quite a delight to be here after the headiness of Bangkok. And it's really very mellow, tranquil, cruisy....you get my drift. Nothing like what you'd remember from the media a decade ago...or for that matter what you'd read on the DFAT website (mostly a load of rubbish)......sure, the country is still under the rule of a rather corrupt government and the poverty is quite confronting, but so far it's all pretty chilled. It's hard to even begin to imagine (at least from Snookyville) how messed up things were a decade ago.

Aside from dealing with the usual border crossing hassle (i.e. 20 moto drivers vying for my monetary affection all at once - "where you going miss", "madame you want moto?", etc. etc), and the ensuing hostilities when I told them at least a dozen times each that my chaffeur was indeed awaiting my arrival, my intro to Cambodia was pretty easy.

It was quite relaxing kicking back on the bus watching the scenery float on by.....luscious green rainforests, stilt houses made from bamboo and coconut wood sitting in the middle of rice paddies, locals zipping past on their motos, cows stopping for a chat in the middle of the road, oxen aimlessly wandering around the rice paddies, chickens pecking at the rich, red earth for worms that don't appear to be there, little kids running around and staring wide-eyed at as pasty farangs cruise past, checkpoint officials wiling away the time whilst rocking gently in their hammocks in the hot morning sun.....

There was a nice crowd on the bus too - a Dutch couple, some Canadians (Andrea and Jamie) and a girl from Belgium (Els) who I shared a room with at the MASH (Mash as in potatoes I suspect) hotel when we first arrived. US$1.50 each but at 35 degrees or so, really not worth the bargain price! I had dinner with the Canadians and Belgium at a lovely little Indian restaurant next to our guesthouse - run by an American ex-pat with an ever-increasing monobrow (and I thought it was just an Aussie, Greek and Italian thing). Aside from the longevity of the bus trip, the Michael Jackson music that played over and over the whole 6 or so hours was a little too much. Now an odd spot of Wacko Jacko is good for the moonwalker in all of us, but this wasn't MJ singing - rather it was some nasty karaoke style impersonator. I've now polished my MJ impersonating skills so if you're up for a karaoke night when I return to Sydney, you too can experience the joys of MJ - a la Khmer popstar.

I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing down on Victory beach, sipping coconut milk from the shell while lying on a deck chair (under a beach umbrella of course mum!). I had the pleasure of having four Khmer kiddies all competing for piggy-back rides on my shoulders as I was swimming about and I met a Pommie guy who has been living in Cambodia for the last six months writing a novel - he kinda scared the crap out of me with warnings of the local rabid dog population - apparently 1/8 of them!!

They don't however, scare me nearly as much as the notion of David Beckham becoming President of the whole of Asia.....I'm quickly discovering that everyone in Asia is obsessed with him. It was exactly the same in Vietnam and Thailand! Becks' perma-tanned face is on my mousepad in Sihanoukville as I write (along with Ronaldo, Mark Viduka and that rather handsome Totti). I did meet one Khmer at the beach today who explained to me that in spite of Becks' obvious sex-appeal (being 'metro' and all), all he jolly does is shoot goals - isn't that largely the point of soccer!?!??!

I spent yesterday morning back down at Victory beach (really not the nicest but it's only a couple hundred metres walk down the hill) in a monolexical conversation with some Khmer kids. I'd never known it before, but apparently a conversation for 20 mins duration that consists of nothing more than "Hello Hello" can be extremely engaging.....the shop vendors were quite friendly too. Lida, Lina and Linda (curiously very "same same but different) spent the morning trying to get me to buy all their fruit..... Aside from that, not a whole lot of action down there aside from the odd borderline rabid dog chasing one of 50 or so other borderline rabid dogs and the cargo ships coming and going from the harbour. In the late afternoon I motodopped it down to Ochheuteal Beach to watch the sunset.....Didn't even run into any sleepy cows on the way!

At breakfast this morning I met an Austrian girl who's been bumming round SE Asia for the last 2.5 months and we spent the day hanging out at the beach - sipping coconut milk from the pod while sitting under bamboo and palm leaf thatched huts, lounging in rubber tyres, talking to the local vendors, swimming in the overly warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand (I haven't had a hot shower since i left Australia so it was quite a nice change), and watching the Phnom Penhians frolick about (often fully clothed) in the shallow waters......One of the vendors we met claimed to be from the moon and was sad because her boyfriend (who lives deep in the ocean), would not visit her this weekend.....she enjoyed showing off her Aussie accent ('G'ray made') and filling us in on all the local beach gossip.....like the cross-dressing habits of the bloke two stalls up from our hut - as you do!

Tomorrow I'm heading by share taxi (hopefully only 5 people, not the rumoured 8 or 9!!) to the riverside colonial town of Kampot from where I'll visit Bokor National Park, Bokor Hill Station (the hotel on the top is purported to be one of the eeriest places on earth) and Kep-sur-Mer (a former Cambodian high-roller hotspot and also near to the cave where the Khmer Rouge kept the backpackers hostage back in 1994.

And from here it's on to Phnom Penh. I'm hoping to avoid becoming the trophy of a mad-as-bollocks Phnom Penh moto-driver.

Anyway, back to the hotel now....wish me luck with those bloody dogs. Thank goodness for my flat fat cat umbrella.

Ciao
Belinda x

The Seething City of Bangkok

Wat Pho

02.06.2003 34 °C

Sawadee from beautiful Bangkok. OK, so perhaps 'beautiful' is a tad hyperbolic as the city is perhaps better described as, well, a little hectic...

So first impressions.....well it's the "same same but (quite) different" to Vietnam. Firstly, it is much easier to be a pedestrian here than in Saigon (or for that matter, anywhere in Vietnam). There are not so many motos for starters, and because of the abhorrent congestion on the roads and the motorists' relative compliance with road rules (plus plenty of traffic lights!), you can cross the road without fear of being turned into minced-meat. Secondly, I find I'm actually walking on the footpath here rather than along the middle of the road as the motorists' tend to park their vehicles on the side of the road rather than all over the footpath like in Hanoi. Thirdly, the hassle factor is pretty minimal here. Instead of getting 'woo-wooed' by moto/cyclo drivers and getting chased down the street by each and every single enthusiastic driver every 10-15metres, it only happens every couple of hundred metres here. And lastly, noone wears masks here to stop themselves from inhaling the filthy Bangkok air - i think only one tuk-tuk driver I've seen has worn a mask - and he was probably worried about SARS!

If you've never been to Bangkok before, here are some completely useless but somewhat rivetting facts for you (from Lonely planet):

*Bangkok is short for Bang Makok, meaning "Place of Olives". This seems to be somewhat of a misnomer as there are no olive trees here - though perhaps before the city became the whopping metropolis that it is today, olives could actually breathe in the smog-laden air, not to mention oppressive heat.

*In 1824, an English trader spotted an 'eight-legged creature with two heads' swimming in the Chao Phraya river in BKK. It turned out that this 'creature' was in fact a set of conjoined 13 yr old twins (hence the term Siamese twins). He took them touring the world for five years, showing them off at medical conferences across the US and Europe (a la Jim Rose's circus).

*Thai women scare their boyfriends/husbands off infidelity by the following threat "If you don't behave, I'm going to cut IT off and feed it to the ducks". Sometimes the ducks miss out and IT goes flying off into the sky attached to a helium balloon. Thailand happens to have more re-attachment surgery than any other nation.

*Petrol stations across BKK sell comfort-100 portable potties so commuters can relieve themselves when stuck in traffic. The average Thai spends 44 days per year stuck in traffic!!
So there you go....

Anyway, I arrived here Friday morning and after checking into my 170baht a night hotel (AUD$6.50), I set off to explore the city, first heading to Lak Meuang, the city pillar and shrine to BKK. The spirit who watches over the pillar is considered by the locals to be the city's guardian angel hence the place is constanty abuzz with Thais offering such goodies as severed pigs' heads with joss sticks sticking out of their foreheads! (charming). I was delighted to behold the performance of a lady of questionable gender assignment who looked a cross between Barbara Cartland and Vanessa Wagner - on a good day! It must have been the orange lippie and hot pink rouge, along with the orange and green sequinned number that was pulling the crowds cause it certainly wasn't 'her' voice - he/she did have a certain charisma about him/her though.

Next it was on to Wat Pho, the oldest and biggest wat (basically a home and school for monk training) in BKK. It is home to the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand. At 46m long it's quite impressive. At the Wat you can take classes in Buddhist philosophy, meditation, Thai medicine and massage. It's probably one of the few completely legit massage parlours in town!!!
I also visited Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) and then the Wat Phra Kaew (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha) - it shares the grounds with the Grand Palace. WPK was consecrated in 1782 when BKK first became the capital of Thailand. The wats here are a pretty colourful mixture of gilded stupas, coated in green and orange tiles (the Irish influence?) and the pillars are covered in mosaics. Everwhere you go you can also here the soft tintinnabulation of the bells hanging off the eaves of the rooves. Just as a matter of interest, I was informed that the 'emerald' buddha is actually made of some type of jade. The officials are pretty tight on the dress-code here. If you have bare shoulders or a skirt/pants shorter than your ankles, you are expected to hire some clothes to cover up. And shoes too! But this is only if you are a foreigner. I can, to an extent understand the notion of foreigner pricing (we are all relatively rich bastards after all), but if the covering-up thing is a matter of respectfulness, shouldn't it apply universally?? Ok, my gripe for the day....

Gilbert and George (My new trip mascots - named after the utterly camp pop-artists who pose in the background or sometimes foreground of all their works), my bright green tree-frog companions had to be smuggled in as there were no clothes small enough to fit them.

I finished the day up strolling along the backpacker ghetto of Thanon Khao San. It's a pretty lively street packed with budget hotels, cafes, and shops/stalls selling silver jewellery, pirated clothing, CDs (expensive at US$2.50 each!!), handicrafts, tattoo parlours etc. It's also home to plenty of backpackers who have decided to reveal their inner feral now they have hit SE Asia. Great spot for people-watching.

On Saturday I tuk-tukked up to Dusit to visit the Vimanmek Teak Mansion. It is set on the grounds of the Chitlada Palace (home of the present King and Queen of Thailand - very popular folks according to my taxi driver from yesterday and it is quite obvious they are revered if you look around at the whopping big posters all over town. He is also well liked because he spends time incognito visiting all the folks in the remote villages around the country) and is the largest golden teak building in the world. It used to be the residence of Rama V (King of Thailand, 1868-1910, also very popular), but is now a gigantic museum. The grounds of the mansion are home to a collection of museums exhibiting Royal memorabilia, antiques, lacquerware and Ratanakosin (19th century-present) artworks. It manages to be quite charming in spite of its ostentacity. Here as in about 50% of the places I have visited since I've been here, the museum attendants seem to like to use the museum floor to cut their finger and toenails on (As far as I know, nails lack any sort of natural resin that may be useful to floor polishing)! The present King's son, Vijaralongkorn (?) attended the King's school in Parramatta and also went to the Australian Defence Force Academy in Duntroon (Canberra)! On the grounds of the teak mansion is the Royal Elephant Museum - the elephants now live in hiding at the Chitlada Palace but the museum contains plenty of tusks and a blubber like chunk of who-knows-what sitting in formaldehyde.

While in the area I also visited Wat Benchamabophit (home to 53 Buddha images) and the Dusit Zoo (Gilbert & George's idea). It has a pretty good primate display and also has meerkats and alopeciac emu-like creatures called 'rheas' that don't do much but lie on the lovely dirt floor of their enclosure and gasp for air - not the best zoo!

Next I headed up to Chatuchak Weekend market - home to 8000+ stalls and a couple hundred thousand visitors. Among your ordinary everyday things like clothes, ceramics and food, you can buy green tree snakes, opium pipes, amulets, baby stingrays, fluorescent baby chickens, balding roosters and impossibly cute marmosets (half rodent half monkey). You could also buy about a dozen different types of insects including cockroaches, rhinocerous beetles and locusts - for eating! Mmmmm

Sunday morning was spent doing a walk through Chinatown and Pahuart (Indian quarter) of Bangkok and sussing out all the markets. Though quite interesting, you'd nee plenty of stamina to spend more than a few hours there as it is choked with people and with the heat, sights and smells, can be a little overwhelming. While here I visited the Wat Mankon Kamalawat (Dragon Lotus Temple), the largest temple in Chinatown - and full of people praying for their ancestors, waving joss sticks, and offering gifts of cakes, flowers, fruits and fizzy drinks!
In the afternoon I visited Wat Mahathat and the National Museum, the largest in SE Asia and full of examples of Thai art, musical instruments, ceramics, royal regalia, textiles and weaponry
.
As for the food.....well so far it's been pretty standard fare though much of the food is laced with "mouse-shit peppers" (that's their name!!) which are VERY hot....

I was going go head to Cambodia on the bus tonight but have decided to head out to the border sometime today and get up at the crack of dawn to make the early speedboat to Sihanoukville (south coast, beaches!!!) tomorrow morning. It's a bit of a messy journey as it involves a taxi, bus, bus, walking, taxi, speed boat and moto. And if I miss the 8am boat I'm stuck in the seedy border town of Koh Kong. So fingers crossed the transport works out!

Will write again soon - from Cambodia!!!
Ciao B x