The "sleeper" bus proved to be anything but. Designed for oompah loompahs, the "bed" was approximately five foot long, which is ample if you're of South-East Asian descent but ridiculous for anyone Western and over the age of 12.
Our plan to catch this bus, get a good 10 hours sleep (the journey time), and then arrive in Nha Trang refreshed and calm, dissolved before our eyes as we climbed aboard and looked around. Now I know I keep whingeing about the bus journeys so I'll try to keep it short, but man, this one took the biscuit...
We located our beds..top bunks next to each other above a large Vietnamese family with 2 small children and grandad sleeping on a piece of foam in the gangway. Kicking off my flip-flops I climb over him and try to cram my size 8's in the rungs of the tiny ladder up to my bunk.I manage to fit only my big toes in and yank myself up using my arms. Then I attempt to lay down. Hmmm, can't seem to fit my legs inside the metal casing of the lower half of the bed, designed to stop you rolling out when Jenson Button (aka the Driver) takes a bend at 100K's per hour.
Bending my knees to one side, I try to lay down. Nope, not gonna work. I try again, this time bending my neck at right angles to my body. I fit in, just. I look over at Liam, who's doing the same. I look like Alice in Wonderland, after she's drunk the potion that makes her grow.It's funny for about 10 minutes, as we crack up and take phots of each other wedged in these little coffins. We're the only Westerners on the bus and the locals nearby laugh as they watch us trying to contort our bodies into the beds,casually stretching themselves out in theirs, elbows behind their heads.
As we stop laughing, reality sets in. We've got to spend the next 10 hours in this unnatural position. The roof of the bus is only a few inches from our heads, so sitting up isn't an option. After an hour, during which the 2 TV screens have played loud sitcoms and karaoke in Vietnamese, the neon strip lights above my head have been switched on and off at least 10 times, and the aircon has broken, it's not funny any more. Combine this with Lewis Hamilton senior at the wheel, honking away and bouncing us out of our beds every few seconds and it soon becomes painful. Liam and I put on the belts that strap you to this metal torture device (aka the "bed") and resign ourselves to a sleepless night...
Thankfully, our hotel's driver is waiting at the bus stop in the pitch darkness to pick us up at 6am, bless him, only it's not the taxi we'd arranged, but a motorbike taxi. He was a little over-optimistic, seriously planning on taking 2 6-footers, 2 large rucksacks, 2 daysacks and another shoulderbag to the hotel on one clapped-out bike. Finally giving in, he calls a mate over to help and we make the journey to the hotel, which, thank God, is lovely. For a two-star. We're shown to our rooms and collapse.
When we woke up we realised that we have a large balcony, seaviews and a lovely ensuite with... a bath. A luxury for a traveller.
Feeling better, we explored the city, taking in the huge sleeping Buddha statue, the Long Son pagoda and the Hindu temple, where the monks were sleeping.
We walked along the picturesque beach, watched the stage being set for that night's concert and had lunch at a restaurant before heading back to rest and change for the night's celebration for Tet and the Chinese New Year.
That evening we headed down to the beach along with a mere 40,000 others to watch the show. Brightly-coloured costumes filled the stage as the live music filled the air. Being the only ones on foot, we managed to get a good postion at the front. Almost everyone else had driven to the square on motorbikes and were staying on them, lined up neatly for miles around.Young men in red satin costumes played the drums and danced, neon dragons on metal sticks were paraded across the stage.The dancing and music continued, followed by parades beautiful young girls dressed in the traditional dress of "ao dai", a silk tunic slit to the waist with elegant wide-legged trousers. The atmosphere was happy, charged, but without the alcohol-fuelled menacing air that often happens in England at such large events.
We took a break to get some dinner, before returning to the beach to watch the rest of the show and catch the fireworks. By now, there were even more people, although we only saw a handful of westerners and were aware of locals gawping at us and whispering, but in a nice way. The people here are extremely polite and friendly towards us, as they have been all over South-East Asia, smiling and calling hello to us. Ok, so it's usually followed with requests that we buy something, but people have also stopped their bikes to offer help if they've seen us looking at a map or looking lost, for example. We've never felt in danger or had any "encounters" as we did in South America.
We watched the fireworks from the beach, which were being let off simultaneously on 2boats out at sea - it was an amazing display and must have cost a fortune.Despite the size of the crowd, it was peaceful to watch, with just the "oohs" and "aaahs" in stereo all around us to remind us that we were not alone.
It had been a fantastic and memorable night, and a stroke of luck that we just happened to be in Vietnam for Vietnamese and Chinese New Year...
About Me
- Sam and Liam
- We wanted to celebrate our 10 year anniversary with a holiday we'd never forget - we reckon 6 months of travelling the world (from trekking on the Inca Trail and through the Amazon to riding an elephant in Thailand) should just about cover it!
Monday, 26 January 2009
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Saigon and the Cu Chi Tunnels
The first thing that struck us when we arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) was the motorbikes. Literally. Well, almost.Crossing the road after piling off the long-distance bus from Cambodia, we were almost run over by the spider's web of motorbikes that criss-crossed the main roads. Indeed, we were so overwhelmed that when a Vietnamese man with a taxi beckoned to us to get in we couldn't wait to escape the chaos all around us and jumped in. Having been travelling for almost five months now, I knew to agree a price beforehand, but he insisted that he had a meter so we clambered in. What he didn't say, however, was that his crafty little hands had been tampering with the aforementioned meter and within a few minutes it was reading 100,000 dong. Which is about 4 quid. Not as scary as it sounds in Dong I know , but a complete rip-off nonetheless. I started pulling him up on his dodgy money-making scheme, gesticulating wildly, and asked him to turn off the meter. Suddenly, he developed a classic case of selective hearing and went completely deaf. "Stop the car, we're getting out here, " I shrieked in his earhole, the meter now on 210,000 dong. As we'd only been in the car for 5 minutes, I reckon he had his meter set to "London black cab." I argued the price but he was having none of it, so I chucked a 200,000 dong note at him resentfully and we huffed out of the cab, dragging our rucksacks, daysacks, books and a handbag with us off into the humid evening. We weren't even at our chosen hotel. Upon finally finding accommodation that wasn't on the 4th floor of a block with no lifts, we checked in and collapsed. Out of interest, I asked the guy on reception how much a taxi should have cost: "about 20,000 dong max...". Oh well...
I went to the cashpoint to get some money out. All the options were in the millions. I randomly selected 3 million (about 120 quid) and feeling like millionaires, we set off to explore the city and have a few drinks.
No sooner had we left our hostel than we bumped into 2 lads from Leeds who we'd met a few days earlier in Cambodia, at the shooting range. They'd recognised me from the dreaded "Ibiza Uncovered," (my second recognition in 2 days due to Sky's current reruns) and we'd got talking. Calling us over to join them, we ordered some drinks. And some more."One for the road?". "Why not?". By 1am we'd ploughed our way through the cocktail menu and were staring in amazement at the strange scene playing out in the street in front of us:
Two bikes had crashed into each other. Both passengers were a bit dazed, then suddenly one of the motorcyclists jumped up off the floor and started punching the other guy who'd just picked himself up. He knocked him clean out. Then ensued a huge fight, with bikes swerving, people rubber-necking and near-misses taking place. It was a crazy sight.
Forget New York, Saigon is a city that never sleeps. Watching the action on the streets is like watching a movie on fast-forward..even more frantic than the hectic scenes we witnessed in Cambodia. There are so many bikes on the road that motorists start riding on the pavement too. Pedestrians scatter like skittles trying to avoid becoming another statistic. Honking your horn is not something you do occasionally if someone cuts you up - in Vietnam it's essential, like breathing. A policeman who's supposed to be directing traffic stands helplessy with his arms by his side, baton dangling, in the middle of the road whilst everyone completely ignores him.
The sound is deafening. I'm sure it's chaotic anyway, but combine that with the fact that it's currently Chinese New Year and Vietnamese New Year (called Tet) here and it's a recipe for a heart attack. Crossing the road you just have to close your eyes and hope for the best. Freeze in a panic (like I did) and you're more likely to get mown down. In the last week, we've witnessed 4 accidents (we were the victims in one of them.)
After drinking the bar dry, we all agreed to meet up the following morning to visit the Cu Chi tunnels, a rabbit warren constructed by the Vietnamese in order to avoid the bombs dropped by the Americans during the Vietnam War.
Obviously, when the morning came around we were all nursing a mild hangover and weren't really relishing the prospect of crawling around on hands and knees in hot, dirty underground tunnels. We met up with Richard and Danny, resolving to do the tour the following day instead. Liam and I then went off in search of food and found a great place with a cinema upstairs and decided that a cool drink and a darkened room was just the place to recover from the previous night's frivolities. The fact that there was a film on too was just a bonus. We emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight, a few hours later having watched Slumdog Millionaire feeling much better and continued our sight-seeing.
The next morning we set off bright and early for our tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. Having hit it hard on the cheap booze again, The Northerners were nowhere to be seen. Lightweights.
Luckily, I had the tickets so Liam and I joined the tour on our own and set off for the Cu Chi tunnels, stopping on the way to visit an art factory, where people who had been disabled by the chemicals dropped on Vietnam by America during the war. The chemical, called Agent Orange, was a herbicide meant to defoliate the countryside and wipe out al the food and vegetation. It also had the effect of disabling thousands of people and causing birth defects in their children.We watched them work painstakingly with tweezers, applying tiny fragments of broken eggshell to decorative artworks, then laquering them, with impressive results.
A few hours later we arrived at the tunnels. Our guide was an eccentric Vietnamese veteran of war - a skinny little old man with a huge personality, which made the tour all the more interesting. He showed us various booby traps that the Vietnamese set for the Americans, such as a grass-covered trap door that gives way to reveal deadly pointed shards of bamboo. He showed us huge craters left by B-52's, old bombshells, tanks and other remnants of war. Then came the piece de la resistance..the tunnels themselves.
The Cu Chi tunnels are a complex network of tunnels that run over 3 levels underground - around 4, 8 and 12 metres deep. As they get deeper, so the tunnels get smaller, so that even the Vietnamese, who are tiny, had trouble squeezing through. These tunnels became home to thousands of Vietnamese during the war - people lived underground, eating, sleeping and working here. People were married underground, there were honeymoon suites, a maternity hospital, kitchens and armouries. The tunnels continue for over 250 Kilometres, stretching from Saigon to the Cambodian border.
Much to the frustation of the Americans, the tunnels were undetectable from the surface and the American soldiers used sniffer dogs to try and find the entrances to these warrens, located deep in the forest. The main entrance was in fact underwater, so the Vetnamese would swim to the surface at night to wash in the river and clean their clothes. Since the Americans didn't fight at night, they did so in safety.
The Viet Cong soldiers even tunnelled their way directly into the Americans' barracks, stealing their weapons in the dead of night. Our guide explained that as the Vietnamese army couldn't afford such expensive guns that as well as stealing them from the Americans, they also drew on other natural ways to defeat their enemy, such as positioning beehives, boobytraps and scorpions where they knew they would cause maximum damage.
Soon it was time for us to go down into the tunnels. I wasn't feeling too keen on this seeing as it was about 30 degrees, humid and dark in there, but knew it was essential in order to really understand how they worked. We had to crawl on our hands and knees - me in a nice silk dress, the rest of the group in shorts and t-shirts.
After only a few minutes we felt claustrophobic and hot as the tunnels were so narrow. And these were the tunnels that had actually been widened for tourists. Fortunately, there were evenly-spaced "emergency exits" that led up to ground level, which I took advantage of after about 60 metres.
Following the tour we went back to Saigon city and spent the next day or so sampling the local food (though not the cockroaches, as one of the Northern boys did), drinks and generally getting into the spirit of the Tet (Vietnamese New Year) and Chinese New Year celebrations.
We agreed it would be great to celebrate Tet at the beach concert in Nha Trang rather than the smoggy city so booked ourselves onto the sleeper bus out of the city on Saturday, ready for the festival on Sunday night...
I went to the cashpoint to get some money out. All the options were in the millions. I randomly selected 3 million (about 120 quid) and feeling like millionaires, we set off to explore the city and have a few drinks.
No sooner had we left our hostel than we bumped into 2 lads from Leeds who we'd met a few days earlier in Cambodia, at the shooting range. They'd recognised me from the dreaded "Ibiza Uncovered," (my second recognition in 2 days due to Sky's current reruns) and we'd got talking. Calling us over to join them, we ordered some drinks. And some more."One for the road?". "Why not?". By 1am we'd ploughed our way through the cocktail menu and were staring in amazement at the strange scene playing out in the street in front of us:
Two bikes had crashed into each other. Both passengers were a bit dazed, then suddenly one of the motorcyclists jumped up off the floor and started punching the other guy who'd just picked himself up. He knocked him clean out. Then ensued a huge fight, with bikes swerving, people rubber-necking and near-misses taking place. It was a crazy sight.
Forget New York, Saigon is a city that never sleeps. Watching the action on the streets is like watching a movie on fast-forward..even more frantic than the hectic scenes we witnessed in Cambodia. There are so many bikes on the road that motorists start riding on the pavement too. Pedestrians scatter like skittles trying to avoid becoming another statistic. Honking your horn is not something you do occasionally if someone cuts you up - in Vietnam it's essential, like breathing. A policeman who's supposed to be directing traffic stands helplessy with his arms by his side, baton dangling, in the middle of the road whilst everyone completely ignores him.
The sound is deafening. I'm sure it's chaotic anyway, but combine that with the fact that it's currently Chinese New Year and Vietnamese New Year (called Tet) here and it's a recipe for a heart attack. Crossing the road you just have to close your eyes and hope for the best. Freeze in a panic (like I did) and you're more likely to get mown down. In the last week, we've witnessed 4 accidents (we were the victims in one of them.)
After drinking the bar dry, we all agreed to meet up the following morning to visit the Cu Chi tunnels, a rabbit warren constructed by the Vietnamese in order to avoid the bombs dropped by the Americans during the Vietnam War.
Obviously, when the morning came around we were all nursing a mild hangover and weren't really relishing the prospect of crawling around on hands and knees in hot, dirty underground tunnels. We met up with Richard and Danny, resolving to do the tour the following day instead. Liam and I then went off in search of food and found a great place with a cinema upstairs and decided that a cool drink and a darkened room was just the place to recover from the previous night's frivolities. The fact that there was a film on too was just a bonus. We emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight, a few hours later having watched Slumdog Millionaire feeling much better and continued our sight-seeing.
The next morning we set off bright and early for our tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. Having hit it hard on the cheap booze again, The Northerners were nowhere to be seen. Lightweights.
Luckily, I had the tickets so Liam and I joined the tour on our own and set off for the Cu Chi tunnels, stopping on the way to visit an art factory, where people who had been disabled by the chemicals dropped on Vietnam by America during the war. The chemical, called Agent Orange, was a herbicide meant to defoliate the countryside and wipe out al the food and vegetation. It also had the effect of disabling thousands of people and causing birth defects in their children.We watched them work painstakingly with tweezers, applying tiny fragments of broken eggshell to decorative artworks, then laquering them, with impressive results.
A few hours later we arrived at the tunnels. Our guide was an eccentric Vietnamese veteran of war - a skinny little old man with a huge personality, which made the tour all the more interesting. He showed us various booby traps that the Vietnamese set for the Americans, such as a grass-covered trap door that gives way to reveal deadly pointed shards of bamboo. He showed us huge craters left by B-52's, old bombshells, tanks and other remnants of war. Then came the piece de la resistance..the tunnels themselves.
The Cu Chi tunnels are a complex network of tunnels that run over 3 levels underground - around 4, 8 and 12 metres deep. As they get deeper, so the tunnels get smaller, so that even the Vietnamese, who are tiny, had trouble squeezing through. These tunnels became home to thousands of Vietnamese during the war - people lived underground, eating, sleeping and working here. People were married underground, there were honeymoon suites, a maternity hospital, kitchens and armouries. The tunnels continue for over 250 Kilometres, stretching from Saigon to the Cambodian border.
Much to the frustation of the Americans, the tunnels were undetectable from the surface and the American soldiers used sniffer dogs to try and find the entrances to these warrens, located deep in the forest. The main entrance was in fact underwater, so the Vetnamese would swim to the surface at night to wash in the river and clean their clothes. Since the Americans didn't fight at night, they did so in safety.
The Viet Cong soldiers even tunnelled their way directly into the Americans' barracks, stealing their weapons in the dead of night. Our guide explained that as the Vietnamese army couldn't afford such expensive guns that as well as stealing them from the Americans, they also drew on other natural ways to defeat their enemy, such as positioning beehives, boobytraps and scorpions where they knew they would cause maximum damage.
Soon it was time for us to go down into the tunnels. I wasn't feeling too keen on this seeing as it was about 30 degrees, humid and dark in there, but knew it was essential in order to really understand how they worked. We had to crawl on our hands and knees - me in a nice silk dress, the rest of the group in shorts and t-shirts.
After only a few minutes we felt claustrophobic and hot as the tunnels were so narrow. And these were the tunnels that had actually been widened for tourists. Fortunately, there were evenly-spaced "emergency exits" that led up to ground level, which I took advantage of after about 60 metres.
Following the tour we went back to Saigon city and spent the next day or so sampling the local food (though not the cockroaches, as one of the Northern boys did), drinks and generally getting into the spirit of the Tet (Vietnamese New Year) and Chinese New Year celebrations.
We agreed it would be great to celebrate Tet at the beach concert in Nha Trang rather than the smoggy city so booked ourselves onto the sleeper bus out of the city on Saturday, ready for the festival on Sunday night...
Friday, 23 January 2009
Wildlife Sanctuary and Wat Phnom
After the horrors of the previous day we decided to lighten things up a little with a visit to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Santuary - a shelter for rescued animals. After several near misses in out tuk-tuk on the way there we were a little disappointed with our first sight of the sanctuary - it appeared deserted, depressing and underfunded,almost completely run by kids.
Some kids sprang from nowhere, offering to be our guides, and led us the entrance, where a pregnant deer with a broken leg was grazing. Tugging at the heartstrings, the kids offered to sell us some bananas and coconuts as food for the animals. I thought this was supposed to be our fun day, with none of the sadness of the previous one? I didn't think I could take another tear-jerking day of grief.
It is bad enough seeing all the human victims of landmines, without meeting all the animal ones too. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with an estimated 6 million unexploded landmines still littering the landscape.
"Never EVER stray from the path" , warned the Lonely Planet. I hadn't even thought of mines as I'd gone into the bushes to answer the call of nature the previous day.
The sanctuary turned out to be better than expected, even if the streetkids DID relieve us of precious dollars every time we came to another orphaned or maimed animal. I didn't realise that bears ate coconuts,and stared wide-eyed as the children tossed in our overpriced purchases. The baby bears tore them open and drank the juice before devouring white flesh. (the coconut's not mine, fortunately)
And so the tour continued..my favourite animals were the gibbons, swinging like gymnasts with ridiculously long arms from their many poles.
When we came to the footless baby elephant, I began to smell a rat. Once again,we were asked for cash, this time for a new foot for Chouk. Bereft and now skint too, we politely declined. When I asked what had happened to her foot,the keeper said she had got stuck in a snare. Her foot is probably an ashtray now, or maybe an umbrella stand.
After fleecing us of any "spare" cash (as if any traveller has spare money knocking about) we sat down to lunch with our driver. Seeing as tourists pay around 3 times what a local would pay for food, we decided to let Sambath order. Big mistake.
The "food" arrived. Thinking it was beef in black bean sauce, I began serving it onto my plate. Then, on closer inspection, I realised it was actually the bony knuckles and kneecaps of chicken. Oblivious to my disgust,Sambath began tossing these knuckles into his mouth, crunching bones and cartilage before spitting the remains back out.Gross.When I saw a whole chickens foot, complete with claws, on the plate I had to subtley put my lunch down and turn away, pretending I was full after only a few mouthfuls of rice.
The sadness of Phnom Penh, combined with the dodgy meals and an abundance of lone middle-aged Western men with questionable motives for visiting the city, meant that we were eager to leave for Sihanoukville...
Unfortunately the Vietnamese Immigration Department would only issue us with a 15-day visa for Vietnam, bought for us through our hotel reception for 30 dollars each. This meant that we had to leave immediately for Saigon, since the clock was ticking on our visa, yet we hadn't even visited Sihanoukville yet. Any dreams of beach life were banished as we packed our bags and hurridly left for Saigon in Vietnam, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. Another bustling city. Oh well,we'd just have to squeeze some beach action in later....
Some kids sprang from nowhere, offering to be our guides, and led us the entrance, where a pregnant deer with a broken leg was grazing. Tugging at the heartstrings, the kids offered to sell us some bananas and coconuts as food for the animals. I thought this was supposed to be our fun day, with none of the sadness of the previous one? I didn't think I could take another tear-jerking day of grief.
It is bad enough seeing all the human victims of landmines, without meeting all the animal ones too. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with an estimated 6 million unexploded landmines still littering the landscape.
"Never EVER stray from the path" , warned the Lonely Planet. I hadn't even thought of mines as I'd gone into the bushes to answer the call of nature the previous day.
The sanctuary turned out to be better than expected, even if the streetkids DID relieve us of precious dollars every time we came to another orphaned or maimed animal. I didn't realise that bears ate coconuts,and stared wide-eyed as the children tossed in our overpriced purchases. The baby bears tore them open and drank the juice before devouring white flesh. (the coconut's not mine, fortunately)
And so the tour continued..my favourite animals were the gibbons, swinging like gymnasts with ridiculously long arms from their many poles.
When we came to the footless baby elephant, I began to smell a rat. Once again,we were asked for cash, this time for a new foot for Chouk. Bereft and now skint too, we politely declined. When I asked what had happened to her foot,the keeper said she had got stuck in a snare. Her foot is probably an ashtray now, or maybe an umbrella stand.
After fleecing us of any "spare" cash (as if any traveller has spare money knocking about) we sat down to lunch with our driver. Seeing as tourists pay around 3 times what a local would pay for food, we decided to let Sambath order. Big mistake.
The "food" arrived. Thinking it was beef in black bean sauce, I began serving it onto my plate. Then, on closer inspection, I realised it was actually the bony knuckles and kneecaps of chicken. Oblivious to my disgust,Sambath began tossing these knuckles into his mouth, crunching bones and cartilage before spitting the remains back out.Gross.When I saw a whole chickens foot, complete with claws, on the plate I had to subtley put my lunch down and turn away, pretending I was full after only a few mouthfuls of rice.
The sadness of Phnom Penh, combined with the dodgy meals and an abundance of lone middle-aged Western men with questionable motives for visiting the city, meant that we were eager to leave for Sihanoukville...
Unfortunately the Vietnamese Immigration Department would only issue us with a 15-day visa for Vietnam, bought for us through our hotel reception for 30 dollars each. This meant that we had to leave immediately for Saigon, since the clock was ticking on our visa, yet we hadn't even visited Sihanoukville yet. Any dreams of beach life were banished as we packed our bags and hurridly left for Saigon in Vietnam, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. Another bustling city. Oh well,we'd just have to squeeze some beach action in later....
S-21 Prison and The Killing Fields
As our bus pulled into Phnom Penh, tuk-tuk drivers clambered over each other, forming a scrum as they competed for our business. It was like being a movie star on the red carpet, with paparazzi shouting your name and trying to get your attention..only less glamorous.
"You want tuk-tuk?" shout the men. "Mine has air-con," jokes another, pointing to his vehicle. As all tuk-tuk's are just basic open-air carriages attached to a motorbike they all inadvertently benefit from a cooling system I guess.
Searching out the least dodgy-looking tuk-tuk driver, we select one with a round, warm face and climb in. The reason we chose so carefully was because once you've taken a tuk-tuk, it's hard to shake off the driver, who will cling to you long after the journey is complete, a bit like a bull mastif with a stick. You literally have to prise their salivating jaws from you in order to disembark, so eager are they to be your driver for the duration of your stay. Having been driven around several unsavoury guesthouses (even though they were in the Lonely Planet), he finally suggested a budget hotel that he knew. Having inspected the umpteenth room and agreed a price with the manager, I went back to the tuk-tuk to retrieve our bags and Liam, who was animatedly doing a deal with Mr Tuk-tuk for 3 days' chauffeuring around Phnom Penh and the surrounding countryside.
Agreeing to pick us up at 9am the next morning, Sambath drove off into the sunset, happy now he could feed his family for another few days.
The next morning we went downstairs to find a cheap place for breakfast to find Sambath waiting patiently for us outside, 30 minutes before the agreed pick-up time. As these drivers tend to congregate around hotel entrances, he had been worried that we may go off with another driver. I wondered if he'd been there all night...
We knew that Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor had shown the awe-inspiring beauty of Cambodia, but also that the country had a sad and tragic history, which we would be presented with in Phnom Penh...
After stopping at the riverside for breakfast, the first place we had arranged to visit was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly the S21 Prison. Now this may sound a somewhat morbid choice of venues but we were assured that to really understand Cambodia and it's people we must first learn about it's bloody past.
During the late 1960's Cambodia was sucked into the Vietnam War. The US began secretly carpet-bombing Cambodia and shortly after the 1970 coup, American and South Vietnamese troops invaded the country to root out Vietnamese communist forces. The country plunged into Civil War, ending only after Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975.
The Khmer Rouge, led by the evil Pol Pot,then implemented one of the bloodiest revolutions the world had ever seen. Within hours of taking over they had begun to systematically round people up, particularly those who were educated or wore spectacles. Once Tuol Svay Prey high school, Pol Pot turned this instead into the infamous S-21 prison, where over 20,000 were taken, tortured and dumped in mass graves between 1975-79. Only 7 people survived.
Walking through the silent corridoors it was possible to imagine it as a school, that is until we stepped into one of the rooms. Instead of desks and chairs, there was a single rusty metal bed, leg irons and a small metal bucket. On the wall was black-and-white photograph of the same room and furniture, only in the picture there is a horrifically dismemebered body on the bed, pools of blood underneath. When the prison was finally discovered after the fall of the Khmer rouge in 1979 (soldiers were led there by the smell of decomposing bodies), this was the exact scene that greeted them. Our tour guide took us through many rooms like this, each with a few items of torture or a bed and a picture on the wall depicting what was found in each room. To prove that the items in the room were authentic, she pointed out a dent in one of the beds which was the same in the photo. It was extremely distressing to pass through these rooms and see what had happened 30 years ago on the exact spot that we were standing.
These poor victims had been plucked freom their homes, for no better reason than the fact that they were educated and that Pol Pot wanted to "start again" as Year Zero, with "fresh" citizens, the abolishment of money and a peasant-dominated cooperative.
At this very high school now called S-21, thousands of people were tortured, with an average of 100 innocent people dying every day. Those who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. Those who survived were driven in the dead of night to Choeung Ek Killing Fields, where they were executed and dumped into mass graves.
We were shown various torture devices used for pulling out people's fingernails, dunking people underwater, stretching limbs, electrocution, boxes for containing scorpions used to sting victims into false confessions...
Victims were also stabbed, hit, the list of horrific acts goes on.You get the picture. Classrooms were converted into tiny cells, or left as they were but with 20 people shackled together with leg irons. We were shown a blackboard, once innocently used by teachers, now used by Khmer Rouge soldiers to write a list of rules for prisoners. For some reason that was one of the things that disturbed me the most - seeing the rules written in chalk in curly, girly writing, orders such as "do not speak, remain totally silent, do no move unless ordered to do so..." The writing looked childlike, and in the next room we found out why...
On the walls were pictures taken by the Khmer Rouge of hundreds of their victims before they were killed, numbers tagged to their clothes for identification. The terror these poor people were feeling showed in the mugshots, many of them children or teenagers, some were even holding their babies, who were also executed in cold blood. Then the guide pointed out the soldiers who had carried out the killings...children themselves, many of them under 18 years old. It soon became apparent that many of those perpetrating such atrocities were also victims themselves - children who had been forced to join the regime as soldiers, or who had joined voluntarily, not knowing what disgusting tasks would be required of them.
As the sunlight reflected the bars on the windows onto the glass frames containing these tragic portraits, it gave an eerie, ghostly quality that made me want to escape the confines of this haunting place.
Out in the sunshine, I was glad to leave this disturbing memorial, amazed that such horrendous acts could have taken place so recently, during my lifetime. It was shocking to think that all this was going on here, whilst I was being bounced on someone's knee and gurgling innocently on the other side of the world. I said as much to Liam, who gently reminded me that such atrocities are STILL going on today, only this time in Zimbabwe..
Our history lesson not over yet, our driver continued on to Choeung Ek, the "killing fields", where excavations in 1980 uncovered around 17,000 bodies of those held at the nearby S-21.
There is a huge white memorial called a "stupa", which has glass windows and contains the skulls of 9000 victims. A truly unforgettable sight. Other bones are encased underneath, and there are piles and piles of the victims' clothes.
The fields themselves are dotted with 129 huge grassy craters, mass graves which have now been excavated. Hundreds of people were found in each one, many headless,or grouped by sex or age. The victims were made to crouch, were shot or beaten about the head,then rolled directly into the mass graves.
We walked silently amongst the huge ditches, both noticing something at the exact same time...the areas where the bodies had been were now host to hundreds of beautiful butterflies, all fluttering in and around the grave sites. Thinking this must just be a lush area where there are naturally lots of butterflies we looked around us. The other side of the fields and the surrounding areas where there were no graves had hardly any butterflies. They definitely appeared to be clustered only in the direct area of the graves. Perhaps it was merely a coincidence, but it was both a beautiful and haunting sight nontheless...
The Khmer Rouge was eventually overthrown in 1979, but not before they had tortured and killed around 3 million Cambodian people, one fifth of the entire population.
In the newspapers here there are details of the trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders, due to start next month, 30 years after the killings took place. Unfortunately, several key defendants have already died, including the evil Pol Pot, who escaped justice when he died in 1998.
And so ends my history lesson.
Before heading back to the hostel for a stiff drink (medicinal of course to help with the shock of what we'd seen), our driver suggested we visit the shooting range. I was conspicuous as the only female for miles around, as testosterone-fuelled guys fired live rounds at the targets. Liam opted to fire an AK-47, so I hovered nearby as the official photographer. I'd hardly had time to switch the camera on before Liam was firing away, trigger-happy as he discharged the entire 30 bullets he'd paid 40 dollars for in about 20 seconds. That was 2 night's accommodation.The staff at the range thrust the menu back to Liam, offering him a choice of M-16's, rocket launchers and other such monsters available for a hefty fee. "For an extra charge you can shoot a chicken or even a cow, " we were told gleefully. "No, I'm not in the mood to kill anything, funnily enough..."
It had been a stressful, sad day, but left me admiring the Cambodians even more - these strong people who have suffered so much yet are still one of the friendliest, most good-humoured nationalities we'd met on this whole trip.
"You want tuk-tuk?" shout the men. "Mine has air-con," jokes another, pointing to his vehicle. As all tuk-tuk's are just basic open-air carriages attached to a motorbike they all inadvertently benefit from a cooling system I guess.
Searching out the least dodgy-looking tuk-tuk driver, we select one with a round, warm face and climb in. The reason we chose so carefully was because once you've taken a tuk-tuk, it's hard to shake off the driver, who will cling to you long after the journey is complete, a bit like a bull mastif with a stick. You literally have to prise their salivating jaws from you in order to disembark, so eager are they to be your driver for the duration of your stay. Having been driven around several unsavoury guesthouses (even though they were in the Lonely Planet), he finally suggested a budget hotel that he knew. Having inspected the umpteenth room and agreed a price with the manager, I went back to the tuk-tuk to retrieve our bags and Liam, who was animatedly doing a deal with Mr Tuk-tuk for 3 days' chauffeuring around Phnom Penh and the surrounding countryside.
Agreeing to pick us up at 9am the next morning, Sambath drove off into the sunset, happy now he could feed his family for another few days.
The next morning we went downstairs to find a cheap place for breakfast to find Sambath waiting patiently for us outside, 30 minutes before the agreed pick-up time. As these drivers tend to congregate around hotel entrances, he had been worried that we may go off with another driver. I wondered if he'd been there all night...
We knew that Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor had shown the awe-inspiring beauty of Cambodia, but also that the country had a sad and tragic history, which we would be presented with in Phnom Penh...
After stopping at the riverside for breakfast, the first place we had arranged to visit was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly the S21 Prison. Now this may sound a somewhat morbid choice of venues but we were assured that to really understand Cambodia and it's people we must first learn about it's bloody past.
During the late 1960's Cambodia was sucked into the Vietnam War. The US began secretly carpet-bombing Cambodia and shortly after the 1970 coup, American and South Vietnamese troops invaded the country to root out Vietnamese communist forces. The country plunged into Civil War, ending only after Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975.
The Khmer Rouge, led by the evil Pol Pot,then implemented one of the bloodiest revolutions the world had ever seen. Within hours of taking over they had begun to systematically round people up, particularly those who were educated or wore spectacles. Once Tuol Svay Prey high school, Pol Pot turned this instead into the infamous S-21 prison, where over 20,000 were taken, tortured and dumped in mass graves between 1975-79. Only 7 people survived.
Walking through the silent corridoors it was possible to imagine it as a school, that is until we stepped into one of the rooms. Instead of desks and chairs, there was a single rusty metal bed, leg irons and a small metal bucket. On the wall was black-and-white photograph of the same room and furniture, only in the picture there is a horrifically dismemebered body on the bed, pools of blood underneath. When the prison was finally discovered after the fall of the Khmer rouge in 1979 (soldiers were led there by the smell of decomposing bodies), this was the exact scene that greeted them. Our tour guide took us through many rooms like this, each with a few items of torture or a bed and a picture on the wall depicting what was found in each room. To prove that the items in the room were authentic, she pointed out a dent in one of the beds which was the same in the photo. It was extremely distressing to pass through these rooms and see what had happened 30 years ago on the exact spot that we were standing.
These poor victims had been plucked freom their homes, for no better reason than the fact that they were educated and that Pol Pot wanted to "start again" as Year Zero, with "fresh" citizens, the abolishment of money and a peasant-dominated cooperative.
At this very high school now called S-21, thousands of people were tortured, with an average of 100 innocent people dying every day. Those who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. Those who survived were driven in the dead of night to Choeung Ek Killing Fields, where they were executed and dumped into mass graves.
We were shown various torture devices used for pulling out people's fingernails, dunking people underwater, stretching limbs, electrocution, boxes for containing scorpions used to sting victims into false confessions...
Victims were also stabbed, hit, the list of horrific acts goes on.You get the picture. Classrooms were converted into tiny cells, or left as they were but with 20 people shackled together with leg irons. We were shown a blackboard, once innocently used by teachers, now used by Khmer Rouge soldiers to write a list of rules for prisoners. For some reason that was one of the things that disturbed me the most - seeing the rules written in chalk in curly, girly writing, orders such as "do not speak, remain totally silent, do no move unless ordered to do so..." The writing looked childlike, and in the next room we found out why...
On the walls were pictures taken by the Khmer Rouge of hundreds of their victims before they were killed, numbers tagged to their clothes for identification. The terror these poor people were feeling showed in the mugshots, many of them children or teenagers, some were even holding their babies, who were also executed in cold blood. Then the guide pointed out the soldiers who had carried out the killings...children themselves, many of them under 18 years old. It soon became apparent that many of those perpetrating such atrocities were also victims themselves - children who had been forced to join the regime as soldiers, or who had joined voluntarily, not knowing what disgusting tasks would be required of them.
As the sunlight reflected the bars on the windows onto the glass frames containing these tragic portraits, it gave an eerie, ghostly quality that made me want to escape the confines of this haunting place.
Out in the sunshine, I was glad to leave this disturbing memorial, amazed that such horrendous acts could have taken place so recently, during my lifetime. It was shocking to think that all this was going on here, whilst I was being bounced on someone's knee and gurgling innocently on the other side of the world. I said as much to Liam, who gently reminded me that such atrocities are STILL going on today, only this time in Zimbabwe..
Our history lesson not over yet, our driver continued on to Choeung Ek, the "killing fields", where excavations in 1980 uncovered around 17,000 bodies of those held at the nearby S-21.
There is a huge white memorial called a "stupa", which has glass windows and contains the skulls of 9000 victims. A truly unforgettable sight. Other bones are encased underneath, and there are piles and piles of the victims' clothes.
The fields themselves are dotted with 129 huge grassy craters, mass graves which have now been excavated. Hundreds of people were found in each one, many headless,or grouped by sex or age. The victims were made to crouch, were shot or beaten about the head,then rolled directly into the mass graves.
We walked silently amongst the huge ditches, both noticing something at the exact same time...the areas where the bodies had been were now host to hundreds of beautiful butterflies, all fluttering in and around the grave sites. Thinking this must just be a lush area where there are naturally lots of butterflies we looked around us. The other side of the fields and the surrounding areas where there were no graves had hardly any butterflies. They definitely appeared to be clustered only in the direct area of the graves. Perhaps it was merely a coincidence, but it was both a beautiful and haunting sight nontheless...
The Khmer Rouge was eventually overthrown in 1979, but not before they had tortured and killed around 3 million Cambodian people, one fifth of the entire population.
In the newspapers here there are details of the trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders, due to start next month, 30 years after the killings took place. Unfortunately, several key defendants have already died, including the evil Pol Pot, who escaped justice when he died in 1998.
And so ends my history lesson.
Before heading back to the hostel for a stiff drink (medicinal of course to help with the shock of what we'd seen), our driver suggested we visit the shooting range. I was conspicuous as the only female for miles around, as testosterone-fuelled guys fired live rounds at the targets. Liam opted to fire an AK-47, so I hovered nearby as the official photographer. I'd hardly had time to switch the camera on before Liam was firing away, trigger-happy as he discharged the entire 30 bullets he'd paid 40 dollars for in about 20 seconds. That was 2 night's accommodation.The staff at the range thrust the menu back to Liam, offering him a choice of M-16's, rocket launchers and other such monsters available for a hefty fee. "For an extra charge you can shoot a chicken or even a cow, " we were told gleefully. "No, I'm not in the mood to kill anything, funnily enough..."
It had been a stressful, sad day, but left me admiring the Cambodians even more - these strong people who have suffered so much yet are still one of the friendliest, most good-humoured nationalities we'd met on this whole trip.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Journey to Phnom Penh...TARANTULAS!!!
We were jolted awake by our alarm ringing in the darkness for the fifth day in a row..this sight-seeing business can be pretty demanding...and dressed whilst half-asleep for the early bus to Phnom Penh. Amazingly, the minibus to take us to the bus station turned up on time. Then, even more amazingly, the main bus left on time too. Will wonders never cease?!
We settled down for the 5hr journey and attempted to get comfortable, despite the fact that the Cambodian people are tiny and our limbs had to be bent into unnatural shapes to fit in the seats. The little Khmer lady in front of Liam slammed her seat back as far as it would go, meaning that Liam had to have his legs either side of the seat and the old woman's head practically in his lap. I tried to surpress my laughter.
After 5 hours or so I thought we'd scored a hat trick of miracles when the bus pulled into a bus station. Surely we couldn't have arrived at our destination on time? "Of course not," laughed the driver when I asked him. "We have a short break." Hmm, I guessed as much.
We got off the bus to stretch our legs and were immediately accosted by groups of kids touting their wares - soggy , warm pineapple is not that appealing but I felt sorry for them so bought a couple of sweaty plastic bags of it anyway. Groggy from the journey, I hadn't actually noticed until this point that the kids were covered in....TARANTULAS!!!!
I screamed as they yanked them off their t-shirts and began thrusting them towards me, saying "you like spider madam?". "No," I screeched as I took off across the marketplace. "No bite, friendly spider, " they called after me.
Once I had managed to reduce my heartrate to a normal level, I walked gingerly back to where Liam was happily allowing the girls to attach the huge furry tarantulas to his t-shirt. I'd held the python the day before, but I definitely drew the line at these badboys.
I looked over at the market, wondering what those crispy black things were on the silver platters that all the women were selling. More tarantulas, no less! So the women cook the tarantulas to sell as crisy snacks, whilst a few escape the cooking pot and become pets for their children. I was horrified, although I preferred the company of the deep-fried variety, glad that the cretins had got what they had coming to them.
The huge cooked spiders were accompanied by deep-fried locusts and crickets. I stared at them bug-eyed, wondering who on earth eats these things. Everyone in Cambodia, it seems. The other local delicacy here are duck embryos, which are incubated under hot lights then removed from the shell and eaten whole. I thought I'd seen it all when I saw people chowing down on roasted guinea pigs in Peru but this really takes the biscuit.
After 20 minutes of near heart-attacks as the children dropped their "pets" near my feet and chucked them about near me I could take no more and scrambled back on the bus, where thankfully the driver was now ready to continue the journey., refuelled on crispy duck embryos and a side order of tarantula no doubt.
The bus driver then proceeded to honk his horn annoyingly all the way to Phnom Penh, arriving only 2 hours later than promised....
We settled down for the 5hr journey and attempted to get comfortable, despite the fact that the Cambodian people are tiny and our limbs had to be bent into unnatural shapes to fit in the seats. The little Khmer lady in front of Liam slammed her seat back as far as it would go, meaning that Liam had to have his legs either side of the seat and the old woman's head practically in his lap. I tried to surpress my laughter.
After 5 hours or so I thought we'd scored a hat trick of miracles when the bus pulled into a bus station. Surely we couldn't have arrived at our destination on time? "Of course not," laughed the driver when I asked him. "We have a short break." Hmm, I guessed as much.
We got off the bus to stretch our legs and were immediately accosted by groups of kids touting their wares - soggy , warm pineapple is not that appealing but I felt sorry for them so bought a couple of sweaty plastic bags of it anyway. Groggy from the journey, I hadn't actually noticed until this point that the kids were covered in....TARANTULAS!!!!
I screamed as they yanked them off their t-shirts and began thrusting them towards me, saying "you like spider madam?". "No," I screeched as I took off across the marketplace. "No bite, friendly spider, " they called after me.
Once I had managed to reduce my heartrate to a normal level, I walked gingerly back to where Liam was happily allowing the girls to attach the huge furry tarantulas to his t-shirt. I'd held the python the day before, but I definitely drew the line at these badboys.
I looked over at the market, wondering what those crispy black things were on the silver platters that all the women were selling. More tarantulas, no less! So the women cook the tarantulas to sell as crisy snacks, whilst a few escape the cooking pot and become pets for their children. I was horrified, although I preferred the company of the deep-fried variety, glad that the cretins had got what they had coming to them.
The huge cooked spiders were accompanied by deep-fried locusts and crickets. I stared at them bug-eyed, wondering who on earth eats these things. Everyone in Cambodia, it seems. The other local delicacy here are duck embryos, which are incubated under hot lights then removed from the shell and eaten whole. I thought I'd seen it all when I saw people chowing down on roasted guinea pigs in Peru but this really takes the biscuit.
After 20 minutes of near heart-attacks as the children dropped their "pets" near my feet and chucked them about near me I could take no more and scrambled back on the bus, where thankfully the driver was now ready to continue the journey., refuelled on crispy duck embryos and a side order of tarantula no doubt.
The bus driver then proceeded to honk his horn annoyingly all the way to Phnom Penh, arriving only 2 hours later than promised....
Siem Reap and the Floating Village
After spending 2 full days climbing amongst the rubble of the lost city of Angkor we were all temple'd out so on the third morning in Siem Reap we jumped in the tuk-tuk and headed for the countryside. Our driver was very enthusiastic about showing us the floating village on the Tonle Sap river, which flows into the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's largest lake. During the rainy season (June to Oct) the water flows northwest into the Tonle Sap. As the Mekong river falls during the dry season (Nov to May) , the Tonle Sap river reverses it's direction of flow. This unique process makes the Tonle Sap one of the world's richest sources of freshwater fish, hence why thousands of people live on the river.
As we drove into the countryside we were aware of the poverty becoming more apparent - children ran alongside the tuk-tuk begging for money in dirty clothes, smiling and singing "hello, hello" over and over again, whilst their elders sat at the side of the road offering us small cooking pots to put our spare riels into.
The homes of these people were small wooden huts built on stilts over the paddy fields. Some of them looked at though they were about to keel over at any moment (the people as well as their homes), yet they still managed to support large extended families. As we drove by the locals gawped at us and then smiled or waved and we waved and attempted to smile back without ingesting mouthfulls of the red dirt which was flying up from the dusty road.
Eventually we came to a steep riverbank and were directed to a long boat, or "sampan". I immediately regretted wearing a dress as I clambered awkwardly onto the boat. We bought our tickets and met our driver and guide, who explained that the people who lived on the river were Vietnamese fishermen and their families who had fled Vietnam during the war. We cruised along the river, where thousands of people live in little huts on stilts. As the average family in Cambodia has 7 or more children, there were children everywhere, swimming in the river (which was filthy-looking), playing with their siblings and generally swinging about like monkeys from hut to hut. Even the toddlers were climbing on and off boats and playing over the water, narrowly missing falling in yet their parents showed little concern.
As we passed by, we saw a floating pigpen, a floating orphanage, floating vegetable markets, schools, basketball pitches - everything you'd expect to find in an ordinary village, only floating on the river. I wondered how they felt about the boatloads of tourists like us who pass by every day, snapping away and staring at them llike animals in the zoo.
Our driver stopped to show us the floating fish farm and then the crocodile farm, where lots of angry crocs were snapping about on top of each other.
We stopped for a cold drink at a floating restaurant and a little girl came up to us with a huge python wrapped around her neck, offering it to me to hold. I don't know what I was thinking but I took it from her wrapped it around my neck and posed for a couple of wide-eyed pics before passing it onto Liam, who bravely did the same before handing it back as it started constricting around him. There was pandomonium later in the little gift shop when a snake escaped from a hessian bag and bit a child, before zigzagging off across the floor. We bought some pencils and exercise books for the children in the orphanage (for an extortionate amount) and continued on the river to the orphanage, where we found a teacher barely controlling a small classroom full of young children. As I climbed back on the boat I almost fell into the murky water, (much to the amusement of our guide), just managing to grab hold of a wooden post in time, skinning my shins in the process.
Although Cambodia is cheap, everyone expects to be tipped, for you to give them money or to buy products at greatly inflated prices. Westerners are seen as millionaires, cash cows to be milked until their metaphical udders run dry.
Other travellers have told us that in the last 3 years prices for foreigners have increased greatly due to increased tourism - for example the guide who told us about the floating village charged 10 US dollars (about 7 pounds at the moment) for an hour's work. What we've saved in room rates and food we've made up for in tips, guides and paying over the odds for drinks etc. Whilst you accept that this is how it is and you do want to help the people it can get a little wearing at times, particularly when someone has sidled up and started offering you information that you didn't want or request then demanded money for it.
After the floating village tour it was off to a few last temples called the Roluos Group before dinner and returning to our hostel to pack our bags and catch an early night, ready for the early-morning bus to the capital, Phnom Penh. If this journey was anything like the last we'd need all the strength we could muster...
As we drove into the countryside we were aware of the poverty becoming more apparent - children ran alongside the tuk-tuk begging for money in dirty clothes, smiling and singing "hello, hello" over and over again, whilst their elders sat at the side of the road offering us small cooking pots to put our spare riels into.
The homes of these people were small wooden huts built on stilts over the paddy fields. Some of them looked at though they were about to keel over at any moment (the people as well as their homes), yet they still managed to support large extended families. As we drove by the locals gawped at us and then smiled or waved and we waved and attempted to smile back without ingesting mouthfulls of the red dirt which was flying up from the dusty road.
Eventually we came to a steep riverbank and were directed to a long boat, or "sampan". I immediately regretted wearing a dress as I clambered awkwardly onto the boat. We bought our tickets and met our driver and guide, who explained that the people who lived on the river were Vietnamese fishermen and their families who had fled Vietnam during the war. We cruised along the river, where thousands of people live in little huts on stilts. As the average family in Cambodia has 7 or more children, there were children everywhere, swimming in the river (which was filthy-looking), playing with their siblings and generally swinging about like monkeys from hut to hut. Even the toddlers were climbing on and off boats and playing over the water, narrowly missing falling in yet their parents showed little concern.
As we passed by, we saw a floating pigpen, a floating orphanage, floating vegetable markets, schools, basketball pitches - everything you'd expect to find in an ordinary village, only floating on the river. I wondered how they felt about the boatloads of tourists like us who pass by every day, snapping away and staring at them llike animals in the zoo.
Our driver stopped to show us the floating fish farm and then the crocodile farm, where lots of angry crocs were snapping about on top of each other.
We stopped for a cold drink at a floating restaurant and a little girl came up to us with a huge python wrapped around her neck, offering it to me to hold. I don't know what I was thinking but I took it from her wrapped it around my neck and posed for a couple of wide-eyed pics before passing it onto Liam, who bravely did the same before handing it back as it started constricting around him. There was pandomonium later in the little gift shop when a snake escaped from a hessian bag and bit a child, before zigzagging off across the floor. We bought some pencils and exercise books for the children in the orphanage (for an extortionate amount) and continued on the river to the orphanage, where we found a teacher barely controlling a small classroom full of young children. As I climbed back on the boat I almost fell into the murky water, (much to the amusement of our guide), just managing to grab hold of a wooden post in time, skinning my shins in the process.
Although Cambodia is cheap, everyone expects to be tipped, for you to give them money or to buy products at greatly inflated prices. Westerners are seen as millionaires, cash cows to be milked until their metaphical udders run dry.
Other travellers have told us that in the last 3 years prices for foreigners have increased greatly due to increased tourism - for example the guide who told us about the floating village charged 10 US dollars (about 7 pounds at the moment) for an hour's work. What we've saved in room rates and food we've made up for in tips, guides and paying over the odds for drinks etc. Whilst you accept that this is how it is and you do want to help the people it can get a little wearing at times, particularly when someone has sidled up and started offering you information that you didn't want or request then demanded money for it.
After the floating village tour it was off to a few last temples called the Roluos Group before dinner and returning to our hostel to pack our bags and catch an early night, ready for the early-morning bus to the capital, Phnom Penh. If this journey was anything like the last we'd need all the strength we could muster...
Saturday, 17 January 2009
Tuk-Tuk..BANG!!
Earlier that day we'd been marvelling at how the road users were so adept at coping with the chaos of the streets without the benefit of traffic lights, taking every unexpected manouvre in their stride and making quick life-saving decisions every few minutes.
We were soon eating our words however, as our tuk-tuk driver almost killed us in a road accident. The words of the travel operator in London resounded in my head, "the biggest cause of death or injury for a traveller is a road accident."
Our young driver had taken his eye off the ball for a moment,long enough that he didn't notice that the Toyota Hilux pickup in front of us had braked pretty sharply. It was a main road, jam-packed with traffic coming from all angles, so the driver had little choice but to plough into the back of it. On my side of the tuk-tuk was a coach full of tourists, which we also hit. The side of the tuk-tuk buckled and the bumper of the coach caved in with that horrible crunching sound of metal on metal. I instinctively brought my hands up to my face, narrowly missing getting my arm crushed between both vehicles. Miraculously we all escaped unscathed, but that was the end of our sightseeing tour, and as our driver was dealing with the police crowds gathered and everyone piled off of the coach to survey the damage.When the drama was finally over we returned to our hostel a little shaken. The next morning that same driver showed up beaming away as if nothing had happened, the damage to the tuk-tuk patched up sufficiently to be almost unnoticable. Gluttons for punishment, we climbed aboard and continued with the tour...
We were soon eating our words however, as our tuk-tuk driver almost killed us in a road accident. The words of the travel operator in London resounded in my head, "the biggest cause of death or injury for a traveller is a road accident."
Our young driver had taken his eye off the ball for a moment,long enough that he didn't notice that the Toyota Hilux pickup in front of us had braked pretty sharply. It was a main road, jam-packed with traffic coming from all angles, so the driver had little choice but to plough into the back of it. On my side of the tuk-tuk was a coach full of tourists, which we also hit. The side of the tuk-tuk buckled and the bumper of the coach caved in with that horrible crunching sound of metal on metal. I instinctively brought my hands up to my face, narrowly missing getting my arm crushed between both vehicles. Miraculously we all escaped unscathed, but that was the end of our sightseeing tour, and as our driver was dealing with the police crowds gathered and everyone piled off of the coach to survey the damage.When the drama was finally over we returned to our hostel a little shaken. The next morning that same driver showed up beaming away as if nothing had happened, the damage to the tuk-tuk patched up sufficiently to be almost unnoticable. Gluttons for punishment, we climbed aboard and continued with the tour...
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