Some Pictures

One Pillar Pagoda

 Temple Of Literature

 Hanoi Mopeds

Want a helmet?

 Military Museum B52 Collection

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum

 Ha Long Bay

 On the way to Danang

 Hoi An

 Japanese Bridge Hoi An

 My Son Temple Ruins

On the Mekong rowing boats

 Reunification Palace Ho Chi Minh City

 Some heroic proletariat

 Royal Palace, Phnom Pen

 Genocide Museum, Phnom Pen

 The first of many temples

 Monk with iPod

 Banteay Sri Temple carving

 Ta Phrom Temple (plus tourist hands) 

 Ankor Thom

 Ankor Wat

 Pre Roup Temple

Not bad; 23 pics posted, only 1872 to go...

So shiny

Been at Changi for a few hours and just about got used to normal prices again. Mind you the toilets are lovely and clean. After three weeks in workers paradises that is such a luxury.

I am being forced to watch the US Wheel Of Fortune though so it's not all wine and roses in the free world (Singapore is pretty close).

Quiet time

Just got to Siem Reap airport and discovered that it doesn't open until 2 hours before departure. Obviously not masses of security checks to do here then.

Actually it's a very nice airport. All open to the outdoors, high ceilinged Khymer- ness. Lucky it's relaxing as it helps with getting over the tuk-tuk ride here. Seven kms is a long way in a trailer on a moped on main roads in the rush hour. I really wish they'd learn to drive their massive four wheel drives on their own side of the road.

So two hours here then an hour to Phnom Pen, an hour on the tarmac, three hours to Singapore, five hours at the airport then five hours to Perth, then an hour in immigration and quarantine. I should be home by 2 am.

Not bad; 17 hours traveling to do 7 hours flight time. I might as well be going by sea.

Angkor What?

We had a different guide to take us to Siem Reap but the same minibus, which was a shame as it's a very long way and the seats are very, very uncomfortable. I think it's designed for littler people than Europeans. It was another four hours of scary driving with the extra hazards of horses and carts on the main road, quaint but life threatening when our bus overtakes a truck overtaking a moped overtaking the pony. You'd never believe the roads are only two lanes wide then number of vehicles there are travelling abreast on them. I did discover however that even in the wilds of Cambodia's heartland they recognize an iPhone, at least that was the only words I could understand the waiters saying while I took some pictures. 

After a couple of hours we turned off the main road and proceeded down a dirt track that got rougher and rougher, passing through poorer and poorer villages. It was at this point that I realized I had not asked to see the new guides credentials. My unease was not helped by the fact that he was wearing a Glock handgun t-shirt. Ir though our time was up but it turned out that we were going for a cruise on Ton Le Sap lake. This is the largest lake in south east Asia and people live on it in floating villages during the wet season. It was surprisingly pretty but it made me very glad that I had the fortune to be born anywhere except here and didn't have to make my living drying fish and making 'cheese' from rotting fish guts. The lake was absolutely huge and pretty rough as the wind gets a chance to kick up some waves across it's length. I was particularly astonished that I could still get a perfect mobile signal in the middle of a lake in the middle of Cambodia. Take that Optus.

When we finally arrived in Siem Reap it was a really pleasant surprise, very pretty, quite green and very quiet, except for the noise of building hotels, there seems to be a new one going up on every corner. The last two days have been temple-ing. So many temples. In fact I've pretty much got one memory of one giant temple. I did write down all the names and details of the ones we went to but I'm not sure it's going to help when I go through the photos. The group had a bit of a mutiny when we realized it was meant to be three full days of temples and asked for Monday off, Som the guide was pretty ok with it, I just hope he still gets paid.

The temples themselves are spectacular, all built between the 9th and 12th century then pretty much forgotten about for 400 years. It's a bit like forgetting where you built Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame. The only tiny downside is the huge crawling mass of tourists everywhere. It's impossible to get a picture without a Japanese person dawdling into shot. I would imagine that 10 years a go it was a wonderful and majestic place to visit, now it's a bit of a nightmare.  In some of the more popular temples (I'm blaming you, Angelina Jolie) you literally have to run into place to get your picture before someone else beats you to it. There is also a constant barrage of people trying to sell you stuff. There is also a massive number of children begging and running around outside the temples which explains many NGO's concern for these children's safety. There is still a huge problem with the Gary Glitter brigade in Cambodia and you can see how easily these kids could be bought. They have absolutely no stranger danger programmed into them. There are a lot of organisations trying to help them, but often it's difficult to see where the line between teaching a skill for the future and child labour is, when you see 30 kids under 15 in one shed diligently carving tourist souvenirs it definitely looks more like labour.

Yesterday evening we spent the sunset at a temple. I completely misunderstood. I assumed we were going to take pictures of the place as the sun set and the stone glowed red. But actually we were all meant to sit on the top and watch the sun set over the trees. To be honest Ive seen sunsets; live in a place with some of the most beautiful in the world so it seemed a bit pointless. I was the only one left at ground level and it was the quietest time I had all day. 

Back to town for dinner last night made me realize how buzzing Siem Reap is compared to the rest of the country, shops, cafes, bars and unfortunately still quite a lot of the dread-locked breed of traveler filling up the bars. These people are everywhere in their sarongs and beads, wherever you go in the world. I assume they all come from one place in Europe which must be empty most of the year.

So tomorrow is our free day and then I fly back to Oz so not much more to post really. If I happen to bump into another temple I'll let you know.

The stupa

Here's the killing field memorial. It didn't upload last post.

Bad Mojo

So to Cambodia and Phnom Pen. The first thing you see when you get into Cambodia is a whole string of casinos, which us a bit odd as since then I've realized not many here will be able to throw their money away in a casino. The drive from the border to the capital is about 200 kms but our guide told us it would take 4 hours as the road "isn't quite finished". He wasn't kidding. Firstly they have yet to build a bridge over the Mekong so you have to get a ferry. Now consider that this is THE main road in the country, National Highway 1, the trans-Asia highway. And they're missing a bridge. It's like having to stop on the M4 at Reading to wait for a 20 vehicle cross river ferry. This is minor handicap to say the least but it did give us a taste of being in a zoo. The locals were very interested in us, faces pressed to the glass kind of interested. Disconcerting. Not as disconcerting as the last 15kms of the road though. It really isn't finished. It's not like there's a contraflow or anything, there's just no road. At all. We spent probably 45 minutes bumping over two lane dirt tracks trying not to have a collision with the many motorbikes, push bikes and massively expensive 4x4s that all the "businessmen" drive. This was the first clue that Cambodia really has some problems.

It was over dinner that we learned a little of the history here. Our guide was telling us about his experiences under the Khymer Rouge. He lost 50 members of his family and was two days from being sent to certain death in the eastern famine zone. Only the fact that his brother in law was dying in hospital, and the commune leader let them wait for him, saved him and his sister. It's calculated that the Khymer Rouge killed 2,000,000 people in their time in power. That's only 3 years 8 months and 12 days. My mind cannot comprehend that. Neither the number (about a third of the population) nor the fact that people could do it to each other. The level of control Pol Pot and his fellow murders exerted over the population is incredible. Everyone was watching everyone else and anyone could be killed at a moments notice for any infraction, real or imagined. The killing started immediately too, as soon as the KR took Phnom Pen they emptied the city and arrested thousands.

The place the arrestees were taken was called S21 and we went the next day. This was a high school turned into a prison but is basically a torture centre and death camp. If you went in you never went out alive. Out of possibly 20,000 plus inmates there were 7 survivors. I don't believe in ghosts or spirits or auras but Tuol Sleng Prison has some very, very bad vibes. There are displays of the prisoners arrest pictures and many are just children. The KR killed the whole family if one member was found 'guilty'. Children and babies were not spared. What makes it more horrifying, if that's possible, is that most of the KR soldiers were barely more than children themselves. Pol Pot was a big fan of brainwashing kids, he was a high school teacher after all. Anyone in Cambodia who was remotely intellectual or educated was guaranteed a certain death, ironic as Pol Pot himself received his education free of charge in France. He never passed the final exams though and this may explain his psychopathic dislike of the educated. The killing was totally indiscriminate however, it was used as a tool of control and as a means to an end, but no one seems to be able to say what that end was. We were lucky enough to meet in of the survivors though, and when I find his card I'll update this to give him credit, and he was a lovely man. He survived because he was a sewing machine repairman and was thus useful to the party. However it was also the reason he was arrested. If you broke needle while you were making the standard black suit you were accused of being an FBI spy and arrested. One of his co-workers gave his name under torture and he was arrested. I think it shows the level of madness that you could be killed for breaking a sewing machine needle. There is still blood on the ceiling of the cells to prove it.

Once you'd admitted your "crimes" under torture you were moved to the killing fields. This was our next port of call and was pretty traumatic. There is a 8 storey tall memorial stupa.

It is full of skulls.

Not all the skulls, just some. At this single place they've found over 20,000 people in mass graves. Babies were killed by having their heads smashed against a tree. KR troops who were destined to die were beheaded and their heads discarded. It is simply one of the most awful, moving and tragic places I've ever been. There are still bones and pieces of cloth coming out of the ground in the wet season. There are teeth still lying on the path.

What amazes me most about this is that no one seems bitter or calling for revenge. Pol Pot died under house arrest in 1998 and only five other leaders of the KR will likely stand trial. One, the commandant of S21, is serving 30 years. I can only guess people just want to get on with their lives and try to forget. Many if the former KR are now members of the government after 'coming across' and the whole period is universally referred to as the Pol Pot Regime. It seems it's often best to blame one person for the collective madness and then move on (see Nazism and Stalinism).

Every part of Cambodian life was affected the the Khymer Rouge period and the repercussions are still here. All the doctors were killed, all the engineers, teachers, architects, bankers, builders and so on and so in. It's why the road isn't finished. It's why all the hospitals are run by NGOs. The population was decimated so that now 60% are under 21. Cultural treasures and knowledge were lost or destroyed. Everywhere we've been there have been holes in the fabric or story of the places. Always the reason given is "under the Khymer Rouge...".

However I think the country will pull through. The poverty here is startling in it's depth but there are many good people trying to help and the Cambodians are nothing if not resilient. we went for dinner in the evening to a restaurant called Friends, run to teach rescued street kids to cook and get jobs in the hospitality industry. The food was fantastic, the students were happy and it was all started by an Aussie NGO.

I felt ridiculously proud of my adopted countrymen and left the biggest tip of my life.

I just hope it helps.

Bye bye crazy...hello poverty

So as you know I'm in Cambodia now but I'll finish off Vietnam first I guess. We had the last supper in HCMC (which is what you call Saigon when you want less typing) as expected which will be memorable mainly for the atrocious service. I mean totally terrible and after living in kalgoorlie for so long I am well qualified to judge. They seemed to be willfully confused, bringing out the main courses before the starters, bringing all the rice at once then leaving it for 20 minutes in the bar to get cold which we ate the main meals. When we asked for new, hot rice it came and had a thumb print in it where they must have checked the temperature. I still ate it as I was starving by then. At the end it took us 45 minutes to get the bill, separate billing takes on a whole new meaning when each person is brought their bit, pays then waits while the waiter goes down three flights of stairs to get their change. If I could remember the name of the place I'd tell you to avoid it.

The last morning in Vietnam was spent at the Cu Chi tunnels. These are the system of 250km of narrow tunnels dug by the Vietcong to hide and fight the Yankees from. The whole place was a bit odd, like a Disneyland of Death ("the gruesomest place on earth (TM)). After the now obligatory bit of propaganda, this one a film from the period showing smiling girls laying booby traps for the GIs and picking rice with AK47s on their backs, we got the tour. I don't know if I said before but it's strange to have people give information to you about a war where absolutely no one has any remorse. They are more than happy to talk about their medals for being a "hero for killing Americans". With the body count recounted too. All I can say is that the VC got down some pretty tiny holes, which I didn't. I went down but it was way too small, dark and hot for me. We got to try VC rations too, basically tea and cassava, which may explain how they got down those tiny tunnels. The best thing was the cheapest gift shop we'd seen for ages. There was much purchasing of scorpion wine. This is wine. With a scorpion in it. Beats tequila I guess.

The group finally split and we went to the the border and the rest went back to HCMC. Lots of fond farewells and promises to keep in touch. I hope we do.

We thought we were the lucky ones going on to a new place but I personally had no idea what we were in for. The six of us remaining piled into a minibus and headed for the border and after a few U-turns we got there. It was the first time I've done a land border crossing and it was all very cold war, going through, having your passport checked half a dozen times and then walking about 400 meters across no mans land into Cambodia. I did finish my trip to Vietnam the same way I started by getting ripped off. I changed money from Dong to Rials and got half of what should from some dodgy looking money changer. Trouble is I didn't realize till I was well into Cambodia. So a big tip: never change money at a border crossing.

The change from Vietnam to Cambodia was startling. Just 400 metres and the people looked totally different, the writing turned into squiggles and the poverty became overwhelming. In fact Cambodia has been pretty confronting so far.

But more of that from the next hot spot.

Still alive...

Still here but a dearth of wifi in Cambodia. Will update when I get chance. Needless to say I survived Vietnam and am finding Phnom Pen a bit hard going.

Miss Saigon?

I've been in Ho Chi Minh City for 24 hours and I'm suffering some serious culture shock. Arriving here is like landing in a totally different country from the rest of Vietnam. I was expecting it to be a bit more westernized than the north but this is totally unexpected. It's like being in Singapore or Bangkok.

That whole communist thing? Well they tried it but didn't like it. That statue of Uncle Ho up there is your standard soviet 'leader as guide to the children and nation' business, reading some Marx to the attentive kiddie sort of thing (it's good to see that those Russian artists are still getting work). What you can't see in the picture is the Chanel, Gucci and Ralph Lauren shops in the Rex hotel. Right in the bronze HCM's line of vision.

They must have Uncle Ho tied down tight in his mausoleum to stop him spinning like a Catherine wheel (he was definitely stationary when I saw him but I suspect he's not been to his eponymous city for a while). I'm finding it hard to reconcile. I mean I can almost cope with poverty next to obscene wealth but I can't cope with Louis Vuitton with hammer and sickle flags flying. I cannot imagine how long communism can survive here when the failure of its central tenets are so obvious on every street. At least before the "economic miracle" started everyone was poor and hungry.

And I suspect lots of people are hungry here as it's significantly more expensive than the rest of the country and multiple times more than Hanoi. If you ever come to Vietnam I would suggest doing your souvenir shopping in the north and keep plenty of money for HCMC, I've had to change $50 extra just to eat for two days.

Apart from the weirdness of the commie/cashed-up combo it's an interesting city. We did a tour today and the architecture is beautiful and surprisingly well preserved. Not much bombing of the city as once the Americans left the South Vietnamese army couldn't really keep the VC back and the destruction was kept to a minimum. Although one South Vietnamese pilot, who was sympathetic to the North, did drop a bomb on the presidential palace. He's the VP of Vietnam airlines now. I'm hoping bombing runs are way down the list of their current training requirements. The Presidential palace is truly luxurious and built like the palace for a monarch, even though the 60s architecture has the feel of a Milton Keynes civic centre about it. It called the Reunification Palace now and open to the public.  Being president of South Vietnam was pretty good, you got a great house thrown in. Of course getting bombed and the significant chance of being killed in a coup did take some of the gloss of the position. There is a bit of propaganda involved in the tour but it's subtle, just the tiniest hint of Ministry Of Truth.

Unlike the War Remnants Museum. This used to be called the War Crimes Museum, which pretty much sets the tone. It's filled with harrowing pictures of the suffering of the Vietnamese at the hand and weapons of the USA. All I can conclude is that the Vietnam War was nasty, vicious, dehumanizing and brought out the worst in young men who almost certainly didn't want to be there. It's hard to get a balanced view however as there is no mention at all of any inhuman acts of the Viet Cong and NVA. It's a clear case of history being written by the winners and I would never condemn any individual GI; who can say how any of us would behave in such a brutal situation. However it's pretty clear that the USA did break many rules of civilized war (incidentally one of the most crazy ideas of human invention, as if war is in any way civilized). The use of chemical defoliants being one of the most obvious, the Agent Orange (dioxin) is still causing birth defects in Vietnam and Cambodia, even the US and their allies have reported genetic abnormalities in their ex-servicemen's children.

I have nothing but sympathy for both sides and just hope that such a nasty war never happens again, and that if it does, that the soldiers, and especially their political masters, remember their humanity.

There was also a exhibition of war photos taken by journalists killed in the conflict (called Vietnam Requiem). They are pretty much an unsung group of heroes, if not for them being there at the front line we would never have known what was going on in Indochina. Relying in the military high command would have been pointless and the soldiers would have had no one to tell their stories. I think the war would gave gone on for many more years as well. I suspect we will never see such press freedom in a war zone again and it's why we don't really see what the troops are putting up with now in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's about the only lesson the top brass seem to have learned from Vietnam.

The rest of the tour round the city was your usual sight seeing, I was particularly looking forward to seeing the US embassy as the pictures of the helicopters evacuating the last americans are some of the earliest images I can remember from the TV. Sadly the original building was demolished by the government in 1975. Not that it would have mattered as the only place we were forbiddeen to take photos in HCMC was outside the US Embassy. Gotta love the land of the free.

After all jollity of the war museum and its burned children and birth defects I finally got round to some souvenir shopping. Talk about the sublime to the ridiculous. The only thing I wanted was a little, teeny, tiny Ho Chi Minh bust. They were everywhere in Hanoi but nowhere to be seen in HCMC. I finally got one in the market but paid twice the price that they were in Hanoi. There are two lessons from this. Firstly always buy stuff when you see it on holiday 'cos you can't go back to get it. Secondly even though this is a reunified country the mentality of the people is very separate. It's still really South Vietnam and North Vietnam. You can even tell where peoples sympathies lie. If you say "Saigon" and they correct you to " no you mean Ho Chi Minh City" then you know they are the winners. Everyone here, they say Saigon and are the losers. Although in reality only Ralph Lauren is the winner.

It is so hot and humid here that everyone is totally exhausted. It's also the last night the group is all together as six of us head off to Cambodia tomorrow so there's a last supper tonight and, I suspect, a swapping of Facebook and email details. It'll be a bit odd saying so ling after two weeks in their constant company but I guess that's another thing about group travel that I've learned.

I won't, however, miss Saigon...

The mighty Mekong

Well I'm back in civilization after a few days in the Mekong Delta. We left Hoi An at some ungodly hour on the 2nd. At 3am in fact, which is the first time I've seen any road in Vietnam empty of traffic. We had another of those days of multiple forms of travel; bus to DaNang, plane to Ho Chi Minh City, bus to Cai Bei, then boat along the river to our home-stay. I did get to sample a Vietnamese motorway service stop which was miles ahead of any Welcome Break you'll ever see, helped by the tropical weather and outdoor setting of course. There was another moment of over service as there were at least three waiters for each customer (and consider there are 18 in our group alone) and they still got the order wrong. Probably because the guy taking the order couldn't speak English where as the boy he told the order to could. Why they didn't swap jobs is beyond me.

The Mekong was a surprise as it was so much bigger than I thought, over a kilometer wide where we were. It's also weird to see a river that is still so totally part of peoples life used as a thoroughfare, for fishing, trading and even for washing and drinking but that's probably not to be recommended. Actually totally not to be recommended judging by what was floating in it. Even though the river's a kilometer wide our boat's captain still managed to hit three other boats in the course of the day. No sinking luckily although I thunk you'd struggle to sink in the Mekong with all the mud and trash.

We did a few touristy things on the river, including some bartering for goods with the locals. As you can imagine with a group of British tourists there was a dearth of volunteers for this bit. The British just don't like bartering or haggling and even when we do het the price down we just let the seller keep the change, which might be defeating the object a bit. We had a different guide for this bit, a tiny lady called Phuong who had an obsession with tropical fruit. Every lace we stopped, the popped rice factory, the garden centre, the historic house, we had to "please now enjoy more tropical fruit". I really never want to see another piece of jackfruit in my life. It's all about sampling everything that grows in the Delta, which seems to be pretty much anything you want to plant. It's the rice/fruit/vegetable basket of Asia apparently.

We spent the night at a hone stay on a beautiful 19th century traditional house. All wood inlaid with mother of pearl and imported French tiles. The people who built it must have been loaded until the state took their land away and shared it with the locals. See communism does work...

Even though the house was beautiful the bits we were in were a bit more basic. I thought for minute we'd been called up and shipped to Khe Sahn. Camp beds, five to a room, cold showers and mozzie nets, which are a bit of a booby trap when you need a pee in the night if you're not used to them. We were entertained with more traditional music but this time the band was all pizzaz, all tits and teeth as they say in musical theatre.

Considering the camp beds and lack of aircon I slept really well. But that could have been because of the 3am start I guess. I'd have slept even better if the locals didn't turn up at 6am on un-silenced mopeds.

We spent the rest of the morning being rowed around the island by old ladies in row boats. They stood up to do it which was a bit odd but also faced forwards to row which makes much more sense than in Europe. Wise though considering the number of boat related incidents we'd already had. We also had to wear conical Vietnamese hats. Now I'm all for trying the local flavor but nothing looks more ridiculous than a European in a coolie hat.

I suspect that's why we had to wear them.

Happy New Year

Well that was the weirdest New Years Eve I've ever had. It was cross between karaoke, a rock eisteddfod, a high school fashion show and a pub quiz where the questions are badly translated into English and presented by the Vietnamese equivalent of Ant and Dec.

The entertainment was provided by the hotel and all the staff had been practicing for weeks to be prepared. Sadly it was still woeful so the tables slowly emptied as the night progressed. I felt slightly sorry for them, but not once we found a trendy bar to drink.

Anyway I'm signing off for a couple of days as I'm going to the Mekong Delta. And its a 3 am start.

Wish me luck.