"cambodia" in Weblog

Evening one and all! After days of wandering we’ve made it to Siam Reap in Cambodia. Well, we’ve actually been here a while now but I was after a bit of drama. Always a good start with a bit of drama. Rambling apologies are the second best. I’ve managed to combine both into a kind of hybrid super-intro. Impressed? Eh? Hmmm.

Well, we flew out of sunny London on Wednesday (I think). Me and Rich arranged to meet at 12 in Paddington but both of us managed to be 1:45 late, which was quite an auspicious start. We then flew to Vienna: “You know, the place with the canals. No Mike you fuck-wit, that’d be Venice. Oh yeah.” That little confusion aside, Vienna turned out to be… a shit-hole. We had to sit in the transfers lounge with what appeared to be a Status Quo audience (i.e. a significant number of people displaying the tell-tale mullet/jeans/tucked-in-and-buttoned-up shirt with optional cardigan combo) for hours with nothing to do except watch people amuse themselves by wheeling their trollies around the small fountain in the middle. Honestly. One guy managed several dozen laps before losing the will to live.

Our connecting flight was with Lauda Air which was actually surprisingly funny. The safetly announcement was read out by a female porn voice-over woman which gave a whole new meaning to “adopt the recommended safety position” and “masks will drop automatically”. Plus they call business class “Amadeus” class and have fake wood panelling for the plane’s interior… Maybe you had to be there. I spent the whole announcement giggling. I think that makes me purile and immature but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

We had a night to stop over in Bangkok… We intended to stay on the Kau San road but first we walked the wrong way and then we got slightly lost so we ended up one road over. As it turns out, this was a blessing. The Kao San road was like a 18-30s holiday camp for wanna-be hippies. There’s only so much tie-dye one man can take… I did spot my first lady boy though. Damn, they make them well out there! No, not tempted, just impressed in a kind of “Holy shit, that can’t be a guy. Surely.” kind of way.

Bangkok was followed by a quick 12 hour bus ride over the border. Well I say 12 hour… It turned out to be closer to 17 hours on the bumpiest ‘road’ on earth after being royally screwed by the driver but that’s another story. And not a very interesting one. I know that’s never stopped me before but frankly I can’t be arsed.

Anyone still reading? Nothing better to do? Ah well. I’ll continue then.

Siam Reap has been wicked so far. We spent a day just getting orientated - i.e. eating and drinking with some limited walking in between and then a boat trip out to see the floating village and sunset on Tonle Sap lake. Our boat was driven by a 9 year old! Said kid then foolishly let Rich drive… I was scared. Very scared. Somehow we survived, saw the sunset and made it back to dry land in time for a motorbike ride through the darkness with a distinct lack of headlamps and lane discipline. Then a day of temple watching… Which was awesome!!! Up for dawn over Angkor Wat (as spectacular as you can imagine) followed by 8 hours in the back of a motorbike-drawn carriage (because we’re classy like that), tootling round about a dozen temples and spotting scenes from Tomb Raider.

Today was some more temples, lots of chatting to random locals and monks, with motorbike rides in between. I’m not sure yet but I think I prefer being on the roads at night because while what you can’t see can hurt you it doesn’t scare you so much… Tomorrow it looks like we’re going to hire motos for ourselves and brave what passes for roads out here. If no one hears from me again, I love you all and I wish you all the best for the future. For now I though, I’m going to assume that I will survive so I’ll just wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Catch you all around New Year somewhere!

I’m done.

Right. Well. I feel like I’ve been beaten up… and in a way I have… We recently spent 4 hours travelling up and down what some guy described as a ‘road’. Dear sweet Jesus, that was never a road! It was more a cross between a dried up river bed and a bombed airfield, which I think makes it a bad ‘road’ in a country of bad roads. Anyway, 4 hours being beaten about the buttocks with a moto seat has left me slightly tender. Who knows, one day I cold grow to like that sort of thing. It was worth it though. The aforesaid ‘road’ lead up from a little town called Kampot (where ginger people are worshipped as gods) into Bokor National Park where there’s an abandoned French settlement, including a 3 storey hotel which is almost completely intact but utterly deserted. It’s up above the cloud level and the only noise comes from the jungle a hundred feet below…Very cool indeed.

We headed to Kampot from Phnom Penh where we’d spent a few days. I spent most of my time in Phnom Penh without the use of much of my right hand after I managed to inflict upon myself some sort of RSI injury from clinging (in pure terror) to the handlebars of the motos we hired on our last day in Siem Reap. This unfortunately left me unable to open bottles, use keys and zips, or type emails - hence the holiday email drought. I’m sure you’re all gutted. It’s all better now though so here we go!

Our day on the motos in Siem Reap was damn cool, once I’d resigned myself to a horrible truck-meets-moto related death. We headed out into the country-side to check out one final temple and a carved waterfall, both of which were awesome. The best thing about the trip though was getting the chance to see a bit of the country-side… The people were so friendly! Everyone waved as we passed, all the kids shouted hello, and whenever we stopped we’d get a crowd of curious locals testing their English on us. We gave some guy a lift home from the waterfall and as a thank you he bought us some coconut wine from the local police… Best not to ask too many questions. I got back with a feeling of enormous well-being. And a buggered hand.

We caught the boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh the next day having seen most of the accessible temples. The boat ride was an experience in itself. We’d been advised to get the fast boat because the slow boat is hijacked every now and again, so we were dropped at this evil-looking, floating metal tube that lurked in the middle of a floating village just outside of Siem Reap. Inside there were about 70 seats, a TV playing Cambodia karaoke disks and only one exit. Hmmm, death trap. So we sat on the roof. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, the boat moves fucking fast and therefore generates quite a lot of spray. If you’re foolish enough to be sitting more than half way back you’re going to get soaked; we were sitting more than halfway back. Luckily, loads of people got bored of being wet and cold and moved inside to brave the karaoke. We, the hardcore, moved further and further up the boat until we were in the dry bit from where we could watch the fishing villages slip by us in comfort. The river was absolutely enormous and the scenery gorgeous. We also passed and entire floating town of Vietnamese fisher-folk (including floating schools, post offices and petrol stations!) which was pretty feckin’ cool. I felt a bit sorry for a few of the fishermen though as our boat’s driver treated the journey like a big game of British Bulldog meets Titanic, safe in the knowledge that our boat was bigger than everyone else’s. In fact, that seems to be the primary rule in the highway code over here. The bigger vehicle gets right of way, regardless of which side of the road it’s supposed to be on. It’s an entirely faith-based set of rules in a country that believes in re-incarnation.

Phnom Penh was really chilled. We checked into a guesthouse on the Boeng Kak lake, which has the most surreal natural phenomenon in the form of migrating plant-life. The day we got there, the lake stretched out on either side of us completely unobstructed… When we got up the next morning it was covered with green plants as far as the eye could see. I spent about 10 minutes just trying to figure out whether I was imagining things before deciding I was mad and sitting down for breakfast. Halfway through my pancake I looked up to see the plants making for the opposite bank at high speed! I finished my pancake, skipped back to my room and muttered quietly to myself about baboons and their wives, safe in the knowledge that I was completely insane. I later saw a lonely backpacker walking the streets playing a ukulele. I think that bit might have been real.

We did all the usual stuff in Phnom Penh: visited the Genocide Museum and the killing fields, shot AK-47s and visited the royal palace. We also spent a lot of time just chilling and watching the plants happily wander about the lake. I wasn’t a big fan of the shooting range - I felt I was taking advantage by firing such an infamous weapon for kicks. It’s hard to explain but I won’t be doing it again. Rich loved it though! The palace was interesting too. The outside was awesome, although it was packed with flocks of Japanese tourists carrying with them a moveable forest of tripods and thousands of pounds worth of camera equipment. The inside, however, was a bit of a disappointment. One of the highlights, according to the guide book, is a floor covered with solid silver tiles. For some reason, someone has used selotape to hold them together which kind of detracts from the beauty… Selotape for fuck’s sake!

Anyway, following Phnom Penh we went to Kampot, where we got spanked by moto seats, and after that dubious pleasure we moved on to Sihanoukville for a couple of days on the beach, and that is where we are now. Christmas day was spent sitting in the sun eating pineapple and playing frizbee. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

I’ve gotta head off now to argue with our hotel owners about a broken bath (story another time) so once again I’ll wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

See y’all soon!