Archives for "Travel"
Ho Chi Minh City
In the morning we begin an eight-hour long bus journey to Ho Chi Minh City, previously known as Saigon and still known as Saigon for the majority of the people in and out of the city. The road from Chau Doc to Saigon is pleasant after the Cambodia’s rocky roads, but travelling is slow because of the massive amount of traffic. There are currently 85 million people and more than 35 million motorcycles in Vietnam and after four hours in the bus I feel I have seen them all – at least twice. I even witness a road accident – surprisingly the first one I have seen (counting out the random kerb hitting tuk-tuk ride in Phnom Penh I participated in). The accident is one big mess of people, scooters, triangular shaped hats and sandals spread across the motorway. But on and on we go. We take ferries on two different occasion which give us short breaks from the bus and a bit of fresh breeze.
I quickly realise that the mental visual image I have had of Vietnam is completely made of American films, with the popular quotes such as “Good morning Vietnam!” and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. Platoon, Apocalypse now, Full Metal Jacket, Good morning Vietnam, Forrest Gump… The reality feels very different: I see several colourful wedding ceremonies in the road side restaurants, multi-coloured flags, adverts (every other one sign says Honda. I learn Honda has turned to mean any scooter or scooter related item or service in Vietnamese. Talking about successful branding there). I see thousands of coloured scooter helmets, it is compulsory to wear a helmet in Vietnam – they had 13 000 lethal scooter accidents only last year. The traffic outside the bus is one chaotic and merry party. Everyone uses the horn to signal where they are going. It sure does get loud.
I watch the driver doing some interesting hand gestures for few hours, before I dare to ask the tour guide what they mean. So, if you ever have to drive in Vietnam (which I definately wouldn’t recommend), make sure you know how to:
Gesture 1: Hold your arm forward, spread your fingers like holding an invisible tennis ball
Meaning 1: “No police where I come from – you can keep on driving faster than the speed limit allows”
Gesture 2: Hold your arm to the right side of the road like you were pointing out something in the kerb
Meaning 2: “A police patrol where I came from, slow down to a legal speed limit”
Gesture 3: Pointing your thumb backwards over your shoulder
Meaning 3: “Police is following on my trails.”
I didn’t see the driver doing the third gesture the guide taught me. It would be funny if we had been chased, though. Maybe next time. I check from the tour guide that in few days we will be driving the highway one – that is meant to be the busiest and most dangerous of the motorways of Vietnam. Even this one we are driving is more than enough, I wouldn’t want to drive here.
We reach Ho Chi Minh City in the evening and I get a room, which is more of a dungeon than a room. There is a window, but it leads to dark narrow corridor between the buildings. When I look upwards, I only see steel bars blocking people from entering or getting out – in case of fire I am in a death trap. Cool. No natural light for the next two days in the room.
As a nerd I am positively surprised that this hotel also has a wi-fi. But to my disappointment, it is not working in this hotel either. “Internet is broken” tells the receptionist. I wonder if anyone is repairing teh Interweb of Vietnam.
This evening is the last evening of the first part of the tour. Our Cambodian guide will return to Bangkok tomorrow to start a new tour and the new Vietnamese tour guide will begin her work tomorrow. Five of the twelve of us will continue the trip all the way to Hanoi and seven will finish in Ho Chi Minh city and continue to their separate adventures. We have our last meal together and say farewells. This was my first ever tour and I have enjoyed every moment of it.
Mighty Mekong, Hello Vietnam!
In the morning I try to get inside the royal palace, because I have heard that king Norodom Sihamoni holds a morning ceremony every day at 8am. He is single so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go to in the front row. When I asked people why he is in his mid 50’s and still single the reply is somewhat unexpected – people think he is gay. I have to laugh aloud, I thought he would be considered something like a representative of God and instead people think he is just gay.
Unfortunately the palace is closed because it is a special festival day celebrating the new harvest and the prince has gone to give a speech to the farmers, so therefore he has skipped his daily morning palace ceremony and I won’t become the Queen of Cambodia. Wikipedia knows that it is ok to be a bachelor: “Sihamoni remains a lifelong bachelor and has no children, which means he does not have a direct successor. However, this is not a problem, as the king in Cambodia is selected by the throne council even when such a successor exists.”
I didn’t make it to the palace, but I hear that somewhere inside there is a room the floor made of pure silver and an emerald Buddha with a huge 25K diamond attached to his forehead. Feels unbelievable that such wealth can exist in this poverty stricken country, but all the money eventually ends up in the government and very little is given back.
We pack our bags and around noon head out to the riverboat. The next six hours will take us out from Cambodia to Vietnam. The Mekong river is a vast net of rivers and in six hours I think I have seen more Mekong than I ever thought I would see.The river turns to a delta in the end and we hop out of the boat in Vietnamese border city called Chau Doc.
In the border the signs and adverts change from the Thai alphabet’s circles and curves to the familiar Roman alphabet. The Romanised written Vietnamese was introduced in 1700th century by a Jesuit and a scholar Alexander de Rhodes, for the use of educated elite in that time. It was not until 1954 that this Romanised script became the official written script for all Vietnamese. There are loads of accents the French style and it feels good to be able to read things again even if don’t understand anything. The price of water drops to half, because the water is produced locally in Vietnam. In Cambodia everything was imported, because so far there is hardly any local industry or factories. I didn’t see a single factory in Cambodia.
The name Vietnam means Viet people, meaning the people from the south, not from China. Vietnamese language is derived from Chinese, though the two languages are now miles apart. Vietnamese has six tones, which means that a word can be said in six ways and have six different meanings. There are also regional variations, to confuse matters further, so what one learns polite in Ho Chi Minh CIty can be quite opposite in Hanoi.
The transition between Cambodia and Vietnam is really interesting. Cambodia feels humble, quiet and sad. Vietnam is like one big fiesta. There is no sign of the war in the Vietnam side and there is this constant buzz around me. When I walk the streets of Chau Doc with my rucksack, little kids point at me, laugh and yell ‘hello’. A fellow American tour member with his big moustache gets everyone’s attention. No one in Cambodia or Vietnam has a moustache and people are genuinely curious about him. The Chau Doc central market is full of colours and happy faces, the triangle Chinese style hats are everywhere. Vietnam is loud and Vietnam is laughing. I drop my rucksack to the hotel and leave to a scooter ride up to the hills to watch sun set over the rice fields.
The last event of the evening is a meal on a floating restaurant. Vincent Connare would love Asia – his font Comic sans turns out to be as popular font in Vietnam menus as it was in Cambodia. So far almost every menu I have seen is written in that font. And as a bonus, very often the menu is spiced up with clip art with added drop shadow effects in the bravest ones. I decide to try out river frogs, because I thought Mekong river must be full of fat ones to eat. My frogs turn out to be tiny and there is not much meat on the bones. Note: fellow travellers, frogs are not worth the effort unless you are into gnawing little bones. Instead of Angkor beer I now get served Saigon beer.
The hotel has a wi-fi, but it is broken. “Internet is broken” tells the receptionist. Grrr…who broke teh Interweb?
Tuol Sleng, killing fields, cyclo tour & eating spiders
The morning tour takes us to a genocide museum in Tuol Sleng (=poisonous hill). The area was once Angkar area’s premier and feared security institution designed for interrogation and extermination, and later opened to a public in 1980. During the Pol Pot Regime this former high school was turned to a Documentation Centre of Cambodia Security Office 21 (aka S-21). The Security Office and its branches were under the authority of the Central Committee and the KR Minister of Defence, Comrade Son Sen alias Khieu, appointed Comrade Duch to head the S-21 system. In the photo below Duch is in the second row, the two pictures from the left. He is still alive and currently awaiting trial (believe or not – after 30 years he still hasn’t been convicted).
The prison area was 600×400 meters, surrounded with walls and electric barbwire. All the classrooms were transformed to cells 0.8 x 2m each and the houses around the prison were used for administration, torture and interrogation. Because the prison records were burned and/or destroyed before the Vietnamese liberated the prison on the 7. January 1979, the identities of most of the prisoners are unknown. The last prisoners were quickly shot to the cells before the red khmeres left the scene. However, about 3000 surviving photos of the prisoners were found later. It is being estimated that during the years 1975-78 the prison held more than ten thousand adult prisoners and two thousand children.
Only seven S-21 prisoners escaped alive, and those seven only survived, because of their useful special skills, a photo below. Three of them are still alive and one of them had visited the prison just a week ago and the tour guide had been able to attend the event to hear his stories.
The prison held more than thousand prisoners at any time, held there up to four months before the execution. No one was let free once they got to the prison, so technically there was no point to interrogate, but that didn’t stop the interrogators from torturing. Prisoners were locked in the small cells, shackled with chains fixed to the walls or concrete walls. They had no personal belongings, and when they were brought to the prison they were stripped from their outer clothing to prevent people from committing suicides, so in case one did not have any underwear, they were completely naked.
Years ago I visited Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and this place has similar eerie heavy feel to it. It is just old buildings with empty rooms and collections of victims’ photos and a grim history, but it feels it contains more. It is hard to imagine what it has been like when in operation, the hundreds of people inside it, but it still manages to leave a hollow feeling and loads of unanswered questions.
After the genocide museum we are taken to the killing fields, located about half an hour away. From S-21 no prisoner escaped alive. The killing fields are where the prisoners were taken after few months of pointless interrogation. They were kept blindfolded during the whole imprisonment and never saw the guards. Truckloads of people were brought to the fields, each truck bringing around 20-30 people. The grave had been already dug open for them. To prevent the prisoners from hearing the sounds of the dying people, a loudspeaker was attached to a tree producing noise to cover everything. One by one the prisoners were taken to the edge of the grave, where they were hit in the back on the head. In the grave their throats were slit to make sure they were definitely dead. No guns or bullets were used. Every morning a new grave was dug and by evening the grave was full of bodies ready to be covered.
In 1980 about 9000 skulls were dug up from this specific killing field. And this field is only one out of 343 similar ones in the country. The bones were left to the grave but the skulls were removed and are now piled inside the glass walled memorial (built in 1988) in the centre of the field. UN removed the nine European skulls from the memorial in 1993 and they were returned to Europe. I am told that there are another 43 mass graves in the area that have not been opened. My photos from killing fields are foggy, because it was boiling and I think I managed to get sunscreen to the lense. It was so emptional that I only realised it long afterwards.
When walking the path I am walking on pieces of bones and pieces of rotten clothing sticking through the mud. There is even a separate mass grave for children. I hear that small children that couldn’t talk, and therefore couldn’t reveal any information, were killed immediately and not taken to prison at all. All the children in the mass grave were found naked.
During my travels I have talked to loads of non-Cambodian people who say that Cambodians are loving their misery and are filled with unconstructive self pity and wonder why the Cambodians just don’t get over it and do something. I think they just don’t get it at all. Cambodia lost one third of its people in just four years time. This all happened less than 30 years ago, which means everyone aged 30 in the country has witnessed the genocide. It is not an easy thing to get over a killing spree in this grim, systematic and huge scale, where the enemy is made of the familiar, not the unknown foreigners. One of our guides lost his father and all his five brothers. Losses of that scale create anger that lasts through the lifetime. And what adds the anger even more, the responsible still have not been convicted. The main five war criminals are held in comfortable jails, living in much better conditions than an average Cambodian, and most likely will not be convicted before they die of natural causes. I also heard that the current Cambodian prime minister used to be a member of Red Khmer and he is still a prime minister. How this can be allowed to happen is unbelievable.
The Pol Pot regime used children to do most of the dirty killing work. They chose poorest of the villages and recruited children aged 10-15 to join the Red Khmers. These children were illiterate and not educated and therefore an easy target for brainwashing. Some of them were taken from the lunch table, no questions were answered, they were just quickly taken away from parents. The photo of the child soldiers below shows the red khmer soldier uniform,a black outfit, a cap and sandals.
If the soldiers were so young then, they are now only in their mid 40s now. So I asked one of the guides where they are now and how they are treated. He said that they have left the village they were from, they have started somewhere new and they are everywhere. One can easily escape the past in Cambodia. He said that he knows one a bus driver who used to be a red khmer soldier. “But what can you do” he says smiling sadly.
I cannot understand what Pol Pot was trying to achieve. He called the revolution when he took power year 0 and started the new rules. He killed all the educated people, forced everyone back to agriculture, and cruelly executed everyone with an alternative opinion. How did he think he would make a country bloom with that approach? He was a paranoid madman who also executed all his highest officers one by one, so no one was safe even on the same side. By 1978 he had killed so many people that there were not enough people left to work, so he invented the concept of arranged marriages to produce more offsprings to the country: form a line of men, form another line of women. Take a spouse who is given to you – have a baby in a year or you are both killed.
When I ask people how they see the future, no one is waiting for a miracles in the July 2008 election. People say the same party that has ruled the country for 25 years will win again regardless of whom they vote.
After the killing fields we stop to an orphanage that holds about hundred kids. HIV is the biggest cause for these children having no parents. The kids are performing traditional Cambodian music and dances. They are very talented and enthusiastic and beautiful as well. Some foreign support is given to Cambodian orphanages, but the donations are minor and do not cover the costs.
In the afternoon we go for a cyclo tour around Phnom Penh. Cyclo is a three-wheeled bicycle taxi. It is a new thing in the streets of Phnom Penh and not yet as popular as tuk-tuk taxis, but it is hoped that there would be more of them in the future to decrease the pollution. The traffic never stops but somehow the cyclo riders manage to blend in.
In the evening we take tuk-tuks and head further from the town to have a dinner with the local family. Before entering the house, we go visit a school downstairs. Every evening for an hour the neighbourhood children can attend an English class. The class lasts for an hour and the teaching is free. We are welcomed by these talkative little kids, who all want to practice their English. I talk to a girl named Pari, who wants to be a fashion designer. She is excited to hear I am a designer, but web design turns not to be as cool as fashion design J. She draws a sketch of the top I am wearing and I get to keep the original artwork.
The dinner is excellent. Cambodian food is generally mild unlike in the neighbouring Thailand. For the dinner we have noodles, soup, spring rolls, fruit and as a special treat some tarantulas. When I eat mine, some of the ladies are close to fainting.. Some people do not try it even though I try to convince them it is not that bad. People seem to be afraid of spiders. The spider legs are actually nice and crispy. The meat in the body is quite heavy and leathery, but with a bit of tarantula whisky it goes down surprisingly well. The taste in my mouth afterwards reminds me of my cat’s breath after it had eaten a mouse. But it is definitely a thing worth trying. I wonder if mouse tasted anything like it.
On steel wings to Phnom Penh
The morning is free time, so I get some private time in the room to be a nerd and write the journal. The days go by quickly and the tour is so full of activities that I am falling way behind my writing schedule. On the other hand, I can’t complain that I get to see so much more than I ever expected. I hear the thundering of an approaching daily monsoon rain and soon the ground is covered with deep puddles of water.
At three o’clock we take a bus to the Siem Reap airport and take the plane to Phnom Penh, the Capital of Cambodia. The distance between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh is merely 300 kilometres, but the trip would take at least ten hours by bus. I hear that the roads are deliberately kept in a bad shape so that the people do have to fly from city to another. That brings money to the only national flight company, which gives money for the government. The corruption is part of everything in Cambodia and a massive hindrance to the country’s progress. Lonely Planet guide describes the situation: “the progress is often despite the government and not because of it.”
The plane turns out to be a Bangkok Air propeller plane. I find it odd that a Cambodian domestic flight is flown by a Thai flight company. I keep on hearing about the big amounts of money spent for Cambodia by foreign companies, but which only bring money to their owners and no wealth to the locals.
Phnom Pen was made the capital in the mid 15th century. Its airport is beautiful. Straight from the plane we walk to a windowless check-in hall, surrounded by ponds. A minibus transfers us to our hotel Riverside. The hotel deserves to be mentioned, because it is very peculiar with its pompousness. The lobby has a massive relief of Angkor Wat, a huge crystal chandelier is hanging from the ceiling. The glass doors have decades old stencilled Christmas decorations. The lift smells of cigarettes and dust. Time has stopped to around 1970, the hotel is just as I expect Moscow hotels to be. No renovation or repainting has been made, no money spent, and the hotel seems to tell stories about the times gone by. In front of the hotel flows the mighty Mekong river, which in few days will take us to Vietnam by boat.
We have the dinner in a local restaurant, where the street kids are trained to cook and that way they learn themselves a profession. The food was rather funny – I was wondering why my pumpkin soup tastes odd and has meat in it. I was already half way eating a fellow travellers chicken curry before the waiter brings me the pumpkin soup. And by that time I was already stuffed. However, the atmosphere and our group is as joyful and forgiving as always. The yellow walls of the restaurant are covered with colourful art, the Angkor beer is cold and refreshing. It is one of those nights when eating out is not about eating.
The highlight of the evening is the motherly speech I get from a 53 year old Australian lady about the pleasures of life. She met her husband through a personal newspaper advert. When I asked what made her to reply to that specific ad, she says: “He was from same area I lived in and within my age range.” No wonder I am single, her criteria allows way more possibilities.
After the dinner my tuk-tuk driver first runs out of petrol and then hits the street kerb in the dark. Somehow the tuk-tuk gets stuck to the kerb and he has to struggle quite a lot getting back to the road in the darkness. It is all rather funny, I don’t know if I should rather laugh or jump out to push the tuk-tuk back to the road. I just laugh quietly.
Angkor Wat, floating village
We begin our day in Angkor Wat, “A City Temple” built for Vishnu. It has become a symbol and a great national prde of Cambodia. A depiction of Angkor Wat is in the national flag, bank notes, beer, simply everywhere. The build began around 1113. Angkor Wat has nine towers, I learn that odd numbers are considered lucky in Cambodia, which is odd considering that I remember in Buddha religion even numbers are lucky.
Angkor Wat is in remarkably good shape. It has gone through considerable restoration in the 20th century, such as the removal of accumulated earth and vegetation.
When all the rest of the temples in the area face east, symbolising the beginning of life, Angkor Wat faces west. The moats surround it representing the oceans of the earth. In the middle of the temple is the tallest tower representing Mount Meru, a sacred mountain considered to be the center of all physical and spiritual universes, place where the Gods live. When the king died in 1152, he was cremated and buried in the centre of this temple tower. The temple tower is currently under construction.
We walk along the wall covered with wall carvings. They illustrate the three different places where people can be: the world, the hell below and the heaven above. In the photo some unlucky ones are falling through the floor to hell so one must be careful. I learn that people in Cambodia believe in reincarnation. An example is what happens to the gossiper – in next life he will turn to a crocodile, who will not be able to say a single word. Should teach him well.
Another carving shows a big tug of war between the demons and people. God is in the middle as a judge. Above him the ladies called Apsara dance for the God. Apsara is a dance that was traditionally only performed for the king and no common people were allowed to see it. According to the tour guide one can learn the dance at school, so the traditional culture is staying alive.
In the center of the temple is a point that once was considered the center of the universe. It is surrounded by four pools dedicated for the four elements: water, fire, air and earth. They all used to have a statue representing the element. Elephant for water, lion for fire, horse for air and human for earth. The statues have vanished so there was no telling which pool was which. Standing in that opening gave me vivid feedbacks of the Tomb Raider games. The designers have definitely visited Angkor Wat 
After Angkor Wat we are heading to a floating village, a village permanently on boats. The road goes through fields that are currently still green, but which in few months will be all under water. The road gets flushed away every year and every year when the monsoon rains are over gets rebuilt again. Along the roadside the little huts built on the wooden poles show how high the water will rise in a month or two.
We get ourselves a boat and follow the river down to the lake where the floating village is located. I learn tha the people living in the village are of Vietnamese origin, even though they hold a Cambodian citizenship. I assume they speak Vietnamese. Little kids row around our boat and beg for dollar bills, some of them carry snakes, some sell bananas. They are dirty, poor and tiny. It is heartbreaking.
We stop to see crocodile farm (a single crocodile can be worth 1000USD, so farming is profitable. I learn they are money is paid by the metre).
The monsoon rain falls in its brutal force and all the children are forced to look for cover from their floating huts. This part of the tour is hard to describe, because it is so hard to witness anything like it. It changes the way of thinking – the life for children is not what western children get. It is work for survival since the age one learns to walk.
Two orphans climb to the bus to get back to the other side of the village where their orphanage is located. They introduce themselves as John , 14 years old and Anna, 12 years old. They both look about eight to me. The bus gets stuck in the mud and we have to wait for a while. An Australian lady shows the kids her iPod and lets them watch music videos whilst waiting. The kids learn to use it immediately even though they haven’t seen one before. We are stuck in the mud for a long time – the monsoon rain that hit us in the floating village has made the road wet and it takes a big tractor with a plough to drive in front of us and make the road good enough for the bus to leave.
I sit in the bus and watch the people outside. People use motorcycles for transporting and their narrow tires get stuck in the mud on the soft road. The barefooted children are pushing the scooters and their heavy loads. I remember hearing that the most of the 14 million population of Cambodia lives in less than 1 USD a day. To be able to do that requires a lot of effort and a supporting community. Half of the population is younger than 30, and HIV is very common. The other diseases that are creating orphans like John and Anna is tuberculosis and dengue fever.
I hear about a Swiss doctor, Dr. Beat Richner, who is considered almost a God in Cambodia. He first came to the country in 1974 but had to leave when the Khmer Rouge came in power. He returned to the country in 1991 only to see the massive devastation. There were no hospitals left in the whole country after the genocide.
Richner built the first hospital in Siem Riep with the support of Bill Gates Foundation and Swiss charities in early 90s. So far he has opened four children’s hospitals in Cambodia; the one called Jayavarman VII in Siem Reap alone has more than 600 beds for various needs. The healthcare in the hospitals is free for everyone. There are no charges for medication. There is a maternity unit for women to give birth in a safe hygienic environment. If people do not have money for food whilst having to stay in the hospital, free meals are provided to them. The hospital is a desired place to work: the wages the nurses get paid is enough to support their whole family. Hearing all this, it is no wonder why he is so loved amongst the people in Siem Reap and Cambodia.
He is also a cellist and his free concerts are held every Saturday in the hospital, where the audience also gets to hear more about the history of Cambodia. “He asks the young tourists for blood, the older tourists for money, and the ones in between for both.” (Wikipedia). People get so emotional they all end up crying. Few of the people in the tour are nurses and they wanted to see the hospital facilities. They were kindly told to come back on Saturday for the concert instead.
Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm, Landmine Museum
A dose of Cambodian history: Angkor Thom was the capital of Cambodia between 802-1472 AD. It had up to a million inhabitants and it was abandoned when Siamese (Thais) invaded it in 1472. Eight meters high walls surround its 3km x 3km structure and four gates in each side of the city allowed people in and out.
The gates all had different use: the south gate was for the common people, north people for important people, east gate a.k.a. Victory gate for the warriors and the west gate for the king. There was a fifth gate called ‘spirit gate’ or ‘ghost gate’ for taking dead bodies out of the city. Currently only certain religious people are allowed to live In Angkor Thom and UNESCO is restoring the area.
I get my three day pass and head to Bayon temple, the center of the city of Angkor Thom. Bayon is known for its smiling Buddha faces and its 54 towers representing the 54 provinces. The official state temple took hundred years to build and was built by one of the most loved rulers of the Cambodian history King Jayavarman VII, who ruled the country for 40 years until 1181. He did not only build palaces but also built 102 hospitals around the country saying “the suffering of the people is like suffering of the king.”
The foundations are made of hard volcanic rock, and the visible parts are made of sandstone. Sandstone was brought to the area from 50km away and brought to the place on the boats by the river. Volcanic rock was brought from even further from the east. The holes in the rocks are used for moving them. By placing sticks in them they carrying is easier and they can also be placed more accurately.
I proceed to the Carving of the Elephants, a 300 metres long wall in the edge of the kings palace overlooking the playing fields. In those fields the king enjoyed watching his warriors, dancers, wrestlers and other entertainment from the top of the elephant wall.
Next stop is a jungle temple Ta Prohm. Wikipedia tells: “The temple of Ta Prohm was used as a location in the film Tomb Raider. Although the film took visual liberties with other Angkorian temples, its scenes of Ta Prohm were quite faithful to the temple’s actual appearance, and made use of its eerie qualities.” I watched the film when it came out and can’t honestly remember anything of it. However, I have spent loads of quality time with Tomb Raider computer games, so I feel very familiar with the feel of the temple.
Ta Prohm was built 1181-1218 as a memorial to the King’s mother and the king also built another temple called Preah Khan dedicated to his father. The massive gum tree roots have penetrated the walls and the foundations of the jungle temple. Most of the roofs have collapsed through the time. I learn that the trees cannot be removed, because killing them would collapse the rest of the temple, so all people can do is to wait until one day they day naturally and only remove them then. An Indian restoration group is currently working on this temple. There also used to be a room with a thousand gem stones glued in the walls, but now all one sees is a series of empty holes, the gems are long gone. This is my favourite temple of all the temples. One day I want to return here again and spend more time here.
The daily monsoon rain begins when we leave the jungle temple. The rain is so intense that it soaks you in few seconds. Monsoon rain hits with its full rage and then finishes as quickly as it begun. The English rain has enough patience to annoy for days in a row.
I learn that the main reason why certain temples are in bad shape is because of a bad foundation / draining, which don’t let the rain water out of the structures properly. So, if you want your building to last for the next thousand years, get a good engineer and spend both money and time with the foundations.
The third temple of the day is a small hindu-style temple called Banteay Srei. The French archaeologists only discovered it in the early 20th century. Its carvings are very delicate and it is hard to believe they are made of sand stone. The temple itself has been cleared from mines, but we are not allowed to go far, because there are still landmines in this area that used to be the heartlands of Pol Pot regime (I will talk about Pol Pot later).
After the temples we go see the landmine museum. It focuses around the work of its founder Akira and demonstrates the grim recent history of the Cambodia. Akira was fighting with Red Khmers and his job was to mine the lands. After the war he has been helping to get rid of the landmines and estimates that he has removed more than 50 000 mines single handed. However, there are still at least three million landmines in Cambodia. People are not still able to access big parts of the land, so there is loads of work to do for him and many other people. There are press cuttings on the walls from a Finnish newspaper Vihreä Lanka. How random.
The guide tells me that Cambodia is still a gigantic prison without the prison walls: all the borders are mined so there is no way out. I learn that it costs 2 USD to lay a mine and 1000 USD to remove it. People cannot are stuck in their villages because of the landmines and lack of infrastructure. There are no accessible. Even our tour cannot continue from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh by car – the 300 kilometer distance would take at least 10 hours by car – so we will have to fly there. The roads are deliberately kept in bad condition to prevent people from moving and to make sure the only official air company gets the money. I assume that means Royal Khmer Airlines. Internal flights cost around 20USD per person.
“People never forget. If you forget it will happen again.” tells my guide. The young generations will slowly change the country, but that it will not happen in the next year or two but rather in the next twenty or thirty years, predict the locals. I learn that the current prime minister Hun Sen was in charge of killing his fellow Cambodian citizens in the genocide, so in a short term the guilty ones and war criminals have not been judged for their wrongdoings. None of that past is mentioned in his official Wikipedia profile. I hear that no people have been convicted for their crimes.
I hear about the neighbouring country “Vietnam is pulling our strings.” The money is still going through the Vietnamese businesses, who have been strongly involved in the local politics since the war.
A rocky road to Siem Reap
In the morning we leave Bangkok in two minibuses. Some people stayed out late the night before, so only me and driver stay awake, when we are driving the wide Thailand motorways towards Cambodia. The minibus has a unique interior decoration somewhere in between a pinball machine and Rio Grande from DS9 (NCC-72452, for all you nerds). A set of buttons above the driver’s head makes me feel confident in case we ever need Turbo Boost.
The motorways, concrete constructions, massive roadside adverts, power cables and the yellow-gray sunlight are a huge contrast to Australia. I would replace the blue and red stripes of the Thailand Flag with gray and yellow instead.
The Thai writing style is decorative and friendly – even the Stop signs don’t look like an order. The curves, circles and dots are feminine and so beautiful that I think that even the worst insult written in thai alphabet would not look bad. The countless photos of the Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej, publicly acclaimed “the Great”, repeat on the bridges, massive road signs, paintings, walls – everywhere. He seems to get around a lot. According to Wikipedia he is also a billionaire, well done. In the photos he transforms smoothly from religious pope-lookalike to loving father a baby in his arms, a respected leader in an army outfit, a post-modern man surrounded by technology. His PR campaigners are keeping busy.
The weather is getting hotter, but some people travelling in the pickup trucks are wearing woolly hats. Or it could simply be another fashion statement.
We pass palaces and coloured temples with steep roofs. The decorations head boldly upwards, looks almost like they were in flames burning and reaching for the sky. They are a massive contrast to the Finnish architecture, which is above all about modesty and box shapes.
Cambodian visa is quick and easy to get – I fill in an application in the petrol station, give 1000 Baht (about 30 USD), a photo and my passport to a clerk and in two hours we get the visas from the Cambodian consulate in the border. The inefficient Russian consulate (“…depends on how much you pay the Embassy…any length of time between an hour and two weeks”) might want to take some notes from these people.
Last preparations
My brand new rucksack looks constipated. I pile some clothes and toiletries on the bed and force the zipper up. I haven’t even started the tour and my rucksack is already giving up.
99.9% of the people would say carrying a laptop and scanner around the Asian continent proves I am an idiot. And they do have a point. Still, I rather get rid of clothes and cosmetics rather than leave my precious laptop home. About a year ago I was returning to London from a holiday in Finland I had the same situation not being able to close the suitcase. My mum couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw me sadly pulling out the big power drill I had to leave behind.
Bangkok traffic is alive: a never ending smoking stream, where everyone has a plan, a vehicle and a mission. My survival instinct says that the only way to cross the road is when other people cross it. I always make sure that there is at least one Thai between the cars and me to soften the impact in case the traffic doesn’t stop. With my 157 cm (5’3’’) height, I tower over most people and I can mostly see where I am going all the time, even in the busy chaotic markets where walking is restricted to tiny geisha steps. The markets is a mixture of postmodern city of Blade Runner and the randomness of the Mos Eisley cantina “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” 
It is all colours, exotic smells and loud noise. The markets are everywhere, and in the narrow corridors I mostly have no idea what my direction is. Everything is making noise.
I stop to a food cart. The locals are queuing with their own plates and the thai noodle soup smells great. A plate of noodles costs 30 Baht, around one USD. Just when I am thinking how well I am following the doctor’s orders, I see the chef putting the noodles on my plate using his bare hands. The doctor might not approve with my lunch, but hey, the noodles taste great.
The twelve group members meet for the first time on the hotel roof terrace. We are a good mix of international people, mostly single travelers. The group leader is a native Cambodian and over the next nine days she will guide us from Bangkok through Cambodia all the way to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. I get to meet my new roommate, a nurse from Melbourne. If I keep on ignoring the doctor’s orders on a daily basis, a nurse roommate might turn handy. Common knowledge is that doctors and nurses have the access to the best drugs.
Bye bye Sydney – Hello Bangkok!
The flight from Sydney to Bangkok takes nine hours, which is more than enough to read Bill Bryson’s travel book Down Under. It is an inspiring travel journal about the country I have spent my last six months in, given to me by my friend Bohdan when I left Sydney. The furthest I ever got in Australia was about two hours from Sydney and I realise I might have missed out quite a bit.
Over the next two months I will participate in three separate Intrepid tours. They will take me around South East Asia and parts of China. This is my personal travel pilgrimage to the places I have never visited, familiar from films, photos and people’s travel stories. Australia has to wait for the next time.
I will meet the tour group tomorrow in Hotel Grande Ville, Bangkok. Grande Ville is not the trendiest place to stay in Bangkok – it seems – because the cab driver has never heard about it. He pulls over to the kerb of the motorway to call for directions. Whilst he is talking on the mobile, I watch the motorcycle police appear and give him a parking ticket. Boy, does the cab driver look happy.
The hotel does exist after all, it is located right in the middle of the city about half an hour from the catchy-named Suvarnabhum Airport. A lounge that smells of dust and life lived long time ago, portiers in red jackets, my room in the 22nd floor with a fabulous view over the darkening Bangkok. Perfect.
Sydney is far behind, new adventures ahead. I watch the BBC World News about the Sichuan earthquake in Wenchuan County, China. The aftershocks are still shaking the country, 80 000 peope are presumed dead, some people have already spent five days trapped under the ruins of the collapsed buildings. I will be heading to China in less than three weeks time.
I brush my teeth with the tap water and only afterwards remember what the doctor taught me. Oops.
I fall asleep at 7pm and sleep dreamlessly the next 14 hours. How wild was my first holiday night in Bangkok. Being 33 is so cool.
Prologue: Travel vaccination centre, Sydney
Doctor: I’ll give you all the necessary travel vaccinations for 500 AUD.
Me: I can’t afford that! Isn’t there anything I can skip?
Doctor: Will you be kissing Asian men?
Me: How much does it cost me if I do?
Doctor: 100 AUD.
Me: No Asian boys will be kissed!
The doctor makes me memorise all the most important rules of hygiene and health. Before I get to leave, I repeat after him:
- I will only eat fruits that I have peeled myself.
- I will brush my teeth with bottled water only.
- I will not kiss Asian boys.
- I will not have any ice with any drinks, because the ice might be made of dirty water.
- I will only eat cooked food.
I crawl home dragging my numb arm along, which is already turning blue. The air is full of floating pink and blue dots and the anti-cholera liquid has numbed my tongue.
Andrew C thinks my 100AUD saving plot was rubbish: “If you kissed 100 boys during your trip, one kiss would only have cost you a dollar.”
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