Sunday, July 31, 2005

'Nam

I'm in Cantho, the transport and industrial hub of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. I got here after a slow boat journey from Phnom Penh down the Mekong River, which was a great chance to see people fishing, boating and doing everything else they do by or on the river. The Mekong is huuuge, and branches off into lots of tributaries and smaller waterways, feeding and housing thousands of people in a lush, fertile flood plain. The people I have met so far have been very friendly and hospitable, so it's made leaving Cambodia a bit easier. I got to like Cambodia quite a bit in case you hadn't guessed, but that was helped by Siem Reap, the Sangkheum Center, and the people I met at Earthwalkers and the Angkor What... sometimes places may not be so extraordinary but the people are just right, and enough to make you want to stick around longer than you should. It even took Iris and I an extra day to leave Siem Reap for Phnom Penh in the end, after yet another night on the whiskey buckets, and deciding that Battambang really wasn't worth a visit after all. I'm sure it was but the whiskey bucket won.

Phnom Penh was an experience, albeit a short one. We got off the bus to the largest and most aggressive crowd of tuk-tuk drivers I have ever encountered, making the ones I've met anywhere else meek and retiring by comparison. After ignoring all of them on principal (if you get in my face and ask me if I want a ride ten times in a row, my answer will stay 'no', just to spite you), Iris and I walked to our hotel, except we hadn't booked into it so it wasn't ours in the end as they didn't have space. So we walked a bit more and a bit more and we were soon getting to the point where the tuk-tuk drivers' offers of guesthouses were looking attractive.

Phnom Penh wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, with a conspicuous absense of gun-toting Khmers on every corner waiting to demand all of my money and my camera. Staying at the riverside (in the friendly Indochine hotel) provided a pleasant mix of river breeze, outside seating under canopies, good food, very cheeky street kids - and even the tuk-tuk drivers were capable of being charming. I can honestly say I left Phnom Penh feeling good about the place.

While in Phnom Penh, Iris and I visited the two main tourist attractions there, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (former S-21 detention center) and the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek. We saw some awful, sad, tragic things, confirmation if it were needed of the insanity and brutality of the former Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. I've added some photos in a set here, but be aware that some are disturbing. I'd also recommend the political biography of Pol Pot, Brother Number One, by David Chandler for those with an interest in the Khmer Rouge and the recent history of Cambodia. It's highly accessible, but nevertheless a fascinating insight into Pol Pot and the development and rise to power of the Khmer Rouge. I bought my copy from a street kid in Phnom Penh, those at home might just try Amazon.

Tomorrow it's some floating markets, and then on to Ho Chi Minh City.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Furrier liver

After just over three great weeks, it's time to leave Siem Reap, tomorrow morning. I'm leaving with a fantastic teaching experience behind me, lots of new e-mail addresses in the back of my notebook, and a furrier liver than when I got here. The Sangkheum Center, Earthwalkers, Siem Reap, the people and the temples have added up to a memorable time. It's just the evenings I have difficulty remembering.

The Angkor What? Bar in Siem Reap is mainly responsible for this furry liver and patchy memory (and a large bruise on my hip), but the Laundry Bar is also to blame. The Angkor What sells buckets of Cambodian Mekong whiskey, Coke and Red Bull for four dollars, and they're enough to get an elephant feeling tired and emotional. The walls of the bar are covered in writing from the hundreds of drunkards that have patronised it, and the word used most often is 'regrets'. People seem to come over all wise after eight beers and a bucket of whiskey, so sayings such as "It's better to regret the things you haven't done than the things you have done" compete for wall space with "It's better to have no regrets at all", and "The Bromley Massive was 'ere 2003".

On one night in the Angkor What, I had to talk convincingly to a pretty Dutch girl for two hours as if I was a writer for Lonely Planet, after I met a genuine Lonely Planet writer and he pointed at me when she asked who the Lonely Planet writer was. "Yeah, there are some great places to see here, but you have to get off the beaten track and into the countryside to get the real Cambodia" I said sounding thoroughly authoritative, resisting the urge to laugh my ass off and admit I'd only been in town for four days.

Something does mystify me though - I swear every single student I've met traveling studied at Leeds. Even all the way out here, you can still have a conversation along the lines of "Yeah, Headingley is just so commercialised now", or "Skyrack? No way, maybe the Oak".

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Many many pics


Toothy
Originally uploaded by Big Trippy Nathan.
I've now finished teaching English at the Sangkheum Center (at least for the moment), and have finally had the time to upload lots and lots of recent pictures from Cambodia, including the two weeks at the center, Chong Kneas floating village, and more of Cambodia.

Iris joins me tonight from Hong Kong, so shortly it's back round the temples with her! I'm also toying with the idea of staying here longer. I was warned - you come to Siem Reap, you might not leave any time soon. Leaving is made no easier by Earthwalkers Guest House being a fantastic place to be.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Barang! Barang!

An apology is due for appalling performance in the blog-updating stakes of late. To sum up, I've been busy all day teaching English to four classes of children, giving endless piggybacks to hysterical toddlers, gone to a floating village on a river, sat in a waterfall, drunk whiskey and coke out of a bucket, nearly met my demise in a tuk-tuk, and experienced a Cambodian nightclub. It's been a blast. You know you're having a good time when there's too much to put down here all at once. Blogging, e-mailing, and anything at all using the Internet is also not easy here, as the slow internet connections conspire with computers marginally more powerful than a kitchen timer and keyboards stickier than a sticky thing to make using the Internet a truly frustrating experience. I have some beautiful photos, more than I can possibly upload without a full day sitting at a computer, so I promise I will as soon as I can.

I started teaching at the Sangkheum Center last week for two weeks, and it's been a fantastic experience. Two beginner-level classes a day and two intermediate-level classes a day, along with a computer class, and keeping lots of children amused when they cling to your leg like limpets shouting "Barang! Barang!" - this makes for a fairly demanding day. Barang means foreigner - the students are much kinder and just call me 'Teacher'. The center cares for around 30 orphans or victims of neglect from the surrounding area, and offers free education to children from the local area as well, when children have to pay for school and most can't afford to. The children are amazing - they really look after each other, the older ones looking out for the younger ones, changing pants if someone has an accident, sharing food. The older kids are very confident, clever and eager to learn. I've been having a blast arsing about with the classes, shouting, singing, dancing and generally acting the fool.

While the children at the Sangkheum Center are well cared for, a night out in Siem Reap is not complete without scores of children who beg for dollars or food - many of whom carry very young babies in their arms at all hours. 'Pub Street' in Siem Reap features a drag of bars and restaurants where most tourists and many expats head to eat and drink, and this area naturally attracts every beggar in town. Eating a meal or drinking a beer becomes a slightly odd experience with the sight of a pathetic child or landmine victim staring at you, and brings back for me the dilemma I experienced first in India - what to do, whether to give, how to help. The simple answer is there is not much you can do that won't encourage begging in the children, and any money they get is likely to end up in the hands of a gang leader or parent with a drug problem. That said, a friend and I bought lunch for two girls the other day, and tourists here occasionally play music and make food for the street kids. Many young street children sniff glue, and some the other night were behaving so oddly I was convinced they were on something.

Cambodia's history, and its present, is far too complex for me to understand any time soon, but I have spoken with Khmers and ex-pats working and living here, and have read some of the background. One bar on Pub Street shows the Killing Fields on a regular basis. The fact that Khmer people just want to forget the past because it is unbelievably brutal is understandable, and many even deny the Khmer Rouge was ever real, that it was a conspiracy of some kind. It is strange that the Khmer Rouge never really left here - they simply changed their uniforms for those of policemen or army, started driving tuk-tuks or farming. Cambodia should by all rights be as paranoid a place as it was under the Khmer Rouge, but it's so poor, people have quite enough to worry about as it is. I was giving a computer class the other day and the letter that was in the course manual as practise was from a fictional Khmer girl to her Western boyfriend, asking when he would marry her and take her away to his country.

More soon, including the strange experience of a Cambodian nightclub and a village that moves when the water rises.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Cambodia


Monk, the Bayon
Originally uploaded by Big Trippy Nathan.
I'm in Cambodia at Siem Reap, the town nearest the temples of Angkor. Siem Reap is still a fairly simple place, but the road from the airport is lined with ever bigger and more expensive hotels, western bars and food are plentiful, and there is a decidedly touristy feel. The US Dollar is the standard currency here, and most stuff costs a dollar or more, but you can also spend Thai Baht and even the Cambodian Riel, thought the Riel is so devalued that you get four thousand Riel to one Dollar, so I think people just use the Dollar because the sums are easier.

Arriving in Cambodia, and since, has been a fantastic experience, particularly after the anticlimax of Thailand. The Cambodians I have met so far, almost without exception, have been exceptionally friendly, happy and open people, something all the more amazing for the treatment they have received at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and the USA, with the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot still a very recent memory. The Cambodian countryside is beautiful, flat, with lush green paddy fields surrounding houses built on stilts, and Angkor-era temples jutting out of the undergrowth at every turn. The journey into Cambodia wasn't the easiest - the road from the 'wild west' border town of Poipet to Siem Reap was diabolical, so after a lengthy border crossing from Thailand into Cambodia, it was then a four-hour arse-numbing drive along roads with potholes big enough to swallow a man. The tourists who stay in the Raffles hotel probably fly in. The vehicles of choice here fit the environment - Honda 250cc dirt bikes, scooters, and virtually all cars are Toyota Camrys. There must be a thriving trade in replacement axles and shock absorbers.

Seeing Angkor Wat is listed in several places as a thing to do before you die, and while it wasn't a religious experience for me, it is a very beautiful building, with monks in bright orange robes standing around happily having their photos taken by the Japanese tourists who stumble up the steep steps into the temple in high heels, and amazingly intricate carvings somehow having survived the elements for all these years. As impressive as Angkor Wat were the surrounding temples of Angkor, the Bayon, Bantei Srei (including stunning pink sandstone carvings), Preah Khan, Ta Prohm and others. Each has its own character, and apart from the stunning visuals, a visit to each gives you an earful of an incredible racket of insects, birds and frogs, chirping, tweeting and belching away. There was probably a time when seeing Angkor Wat was considered a truly special experience as so few could do it before, with Cambodia being unsafe and inaccessible, but I missed it - the tourist trail has truly come through town here. It makes me wander if I'll be able to see anywhere this year unaccompanied by half a dozen souvenir sellers and without the benefit of pay toilets and ice cream on hand.

I'm staying in Siem Reap for a little while - it's a nice place with a nice feel. As Earthwalkers is involved with an orphanage which provides care and education for local children, I've been out to see it, and from next week I'll be teaching English to four different groups of kids for two weeks on a voluntary basis. I can remember the songs 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes' and 'The wheels on the bus go round and round' - any other ideas?

Friday, July 01, 2005

Eating dragonfruit in a hammock

It's not all bad here, you know. After going on about the lack of sociable people here, and there certainly is a lack, bunch of stony-faced overtanned boring so-and-so's, I'm finding it curiously difficult to up sticks and move on to Cambodia. This despite the non-party atmosphere and the constant state of damp sand-encrustedness I have found myself and all of my possessions in (I washed my socks five days ago and they still haven't dried, and everything feels gritty now, including my bedclothes, which is funny as Simon actually paid for our exfoliating back scrubs in Shanghai and I'm getting mine for free in bed every night). Michael and Carla who I've been spending some time with have been doing a great job of keeping me sane.

I hired a motorbike (well, scooter) today to take a ride around the island, while the other residents sat on the beach in their bikinis and shorts hoping for the sun to come out, despite it being the rainy season. After nearly driving it into the sea I got to grips with the throttle, and took myself off round the muggy, thickly wooded hills of Koh Chang. I stopped for lunch in the village of Ban Bang Bao, a fishing village existing almost entirely on a jetty poking out into the water. Ban Bang Bao, much like the rest of the island, had a slightly depressed off-season feel to it, as if to say "Why weren't you here two months ago when the sun was out? Oh sod yer, do what you like". Nevertheless I was able to grab lunch in a waterside restaurant accompanied by a gigantic sweaty white guy and his tiny Thai girlfriend, and a cat with massive gonads that miaowed incessantly through my fried shrimps and steamed rice.

Moving on from Ban Bang Bao, I rode to the end of the road on the South side of the island, where I reached a very plush looking holiday resort with a big Stop sign to prevent through traffic. I was thinking of being pushy and demanding access, then decided I couldn't be bothered, so I rode back towards Lonely Beach, dodging several dogs and a macaque I suspected of being more than up for taking me off my bike and eating my face or stealing my camera. I stopped briefly on the way back at a place that promoted 'Real Coffee', having survived on Nescafe coffee-flavoured gloop for the past few days. Breezily I said to the proprietor, a white guy with an attractive Thai wife, "I saw your sign said 'Real Coffee', and thought it sounded too good to pass up!"
"Eh?" he says in a stern German accent.
"I saw your sign said 'Real Coffee', and [sighs] in there, is it?"
"Yes. Go inside."
Feeling like I'd been ordered to, I went inside and had a cup of something that reminded me of real coffee while not being remotely like it. Feeling flustered at this, I paid and went back outside to the bike, which I promptly overaccelerated straight into the middle of the road, fortunately not in front of anything.

So despite all of this, I've been looking moderately cool in a crash helmet and shades, riding the open road like Boon in some tropical island special Christmas episode, and I've ended the active part of my day by eating dragonfruit in a hammock, which has to be a good thing in anybody's book. Unless you don't like dragonfruit. Or hammocks.