Monday, February 26, 2007

I'm not drunk now...



Sorry about yesterday's post. I was tipsy. I'll tell you something else you shouldn't do. You shouldn't get drunk and then get up early next morning to take a two hour boat ride and go snorkeling. Still, saw some fish and some space-hopper sized sea anemonies. Found the breathing a bit tricky so will go snorkeling a few more times before I splash out for a scuba-diving course in Thailand. I may see an octopus!!!

The Angkor Arms (Angkor Wat/Anchor Arms...see what they did there?) was apparently the first pub/bar to be established in Sihanoukville (a town on the coast near Thailand) after the Khmer Rouge thing plus the years of instability following it went away. Doesn't it make you feel proud that it's a British one? It was quite an authentic approximation of an English pub inside, just quite a rough one where you wouldn't necessarily want to stay in. But look, established in 1995. That means that before twelve years ago there was no pub here! The horror! The horror!

Ate in a restaurant called The Snake Pit a few nights ago which is a working reptile house with tanks with snakes in around the walls and snakes in the tables under glass. I had some kind of python in mine.

Off to Thailand tomorrow. Later.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

I'll tell you what you shouldnt do...

You shouldn't drink a bottle of wine and then go wandering round Cambodia in the middle of the day in 98 degree temperatures.
I feel peculiar.
Still....um.....whatever. The computer I'm typing this on is ancient. I think it's a Commodore 64. I may have played Daley Thompson's Triathlon Challenge on this back in the day. Not as good as Manic Miner obviously.
My memory card broke. It now says it only has room for 32 pictures rather than 99. Also, whenever I charge a battery up and then put it in the camera it seems to run down before it has even been used...almost as if it's life-force is being sucked out by some invisible entity from a John Wyndham novel.
Whilst we're talking, why doesn't Margaret Atwood just write a straight up sci-fi novel instead of skirting round the issue?
Oryx and Crake doesn't count as that is a sci-fi novel and totally destroys my argument. Whatever the fuck that is.
Is anyone out there actually reading this crap or am I just spitting textual exaculations out into the void?.....Kind of like having a wank in space.
It's exactly like having a wank in space. Only not really. SOME RESPONSE PLEASE!!!!!!!!
Umm....cant think of anything else to say.
Christ it's hot.
They serve red wine chilled here, the ignorant uncultured swine. Okay so your country is thrown into a hellish genocidal maelstrom of terror that it is only now emerging from...but for fuck's sake the world does not stop!
Half Man Half Noodle. The best name of a bar/restaurant I have seen so far.
Bye.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Ha! Ha! I am a cliche.

When I got back to Phnom Penh I stayed by a lake in the north of the city. Well, I say a lake...it was really more like an enormous toxic puddle that had a weird rotting metal smell if you got too close. There is a cul-de-sac of a road running down one side of it which is crammed with pack-packer hostels, Western restaurants, book exchanges, money changers, music download places etc. Basically it made the Khoa San Road in Bangkok look positively open and ethnic by comparison. At least you could walk through that from one Thai-ish bit of the city to another. Once you got into this place you were trapped in a web of Westernism. Anyway I embraced it wholeheartedly for a bit. Ate steak and mash (there was a place called The Lazy Gecko which had the best sauces I have ever tasted. The blue cheese sauce was to die for. Shame the staff were fantastically unfriendly. The blurb in the menu went to great pains to point out that it was a Western run place and the Cambodian staff were paid a decent wage, had health benefits, holidays etc. which may explain it. Give people Western conditions and you get Western surliness. Keep 'em hungry and they have to work for their tips. Just kidding...a bit.) and downloaded an Orb album (got a massage in Siem Riep and the floaty music gave me a childish desire for some of the ambient gubbins I used to listen to as a youngster whilst on acid) which I 'zoned out' to whilst enjoying a beer in a guesthouse bar overlooking the lake (which may be deadly to human life should you fall in but does at least look nice) as the sun was setting. These places are fun and quite welcome occasionally but I find them a bit suffocating after a while so I headed on to Kampot (was horrible hungover for the journey...first time I have travelled with a hangover since leaving Bangkok oh-so-many moons ago) for a couple of days and am now in Sihanoukville on the coast which will be my jumping off point to get back into Thailand.
Will write some more later but the internet is quite expensive here.
Toodles.
By the way, I don't know if Kevin is reading this blog but if he is he will no doubt be vindicated and happy to know that I also downloaded Stevie Wonder - The Definitive Collection. Okay, okay, he is rather good (although I Don't Know Why I love you is a big pile of plops).

Saturday, February 17, 2007

My arse hurts...

I left Siem Riep by boat yesterday at 7.30am heading for Battambang, the second biggest city in Cambodia after Phnom Penh. We had to get out at midday as the water levels are too low at this time of year to get all the way there by river and we all piled into three pick-up trucks, thirteen people in the back of ours plus luggage, three people sitting on the roof of the cabin, and set off for a two hour journey along a "road" stopping occasionally when the truck stalled or when the driver/guide had to get out in order to hack vegetation from our path with a machete or more alarmingly to guide the truck through pits, holes and dips in the "road" that threatened to tip us over. I sat/bounced on the side of the truck hence the arse-ache-age. Still it was all quite good fun as we had some lively characters in the group who cheered everyone else along. Left to my own devices I would undoubtedly have sat there in silent uncomplaining discomfort for the whole trip. We all met up for a meal that evening and are doing the same thing tonight. Just as well really as there is flip-all to do in Battambang apart from visiting Wats and various caves outside of the city and I've seen enough Wats and caves to last me a good long while. I've just bought my ticket back to Phnom Penh for tomorrow so will be there for one night before heading to the coast. It's Chinese New Year tomorrow so there may be some craziness afoot. When I arrived in Battambang I kept hearing what I took to be gunshots and thought hmm..maybe I will stay in my hotel room but then remembered CNY and realised they were fire-works...probably...most of them.

Lets see...what else...Oh yes, I nearly got my camera snatched in Phnom Penh by two kids on the back of a moped but fortunately had the strap round my wrist so ran along behind them snarling "Let go you fuckers!"as aggressively as I could before they gave up and buggered off. They nearly came off the bike when they swerved to avoid a lamp-post but fortunately didn't as I would have had no idea what to do then not having the necessary authority or manhandling skills with which to carry out a citizen's arrest.

I have developed something of an aversion to rice which, given the part of the world I am in, is something of a problem.

Read Inversions by Iain M. Banks recently. It was crap. Read Dirt Music by Tim Winton. It was good.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Temples, temples, temples, temples....





...temples, temples, temples, temples. Templey, wempley, dempley, hempley. Temple-emple-snemple-cemple. Yes, it's happened. I am now officially "templed-out". I have temple-fatigue. Temple-tiredness has set in. I'm up to my tits in temples. I just yearn for a two-door semi. or a portloo or something. I am currently in Siem Riep around which are the temples of Angkor making it the temple capital of the world! The first picture is Beng Mealea temple, the second is Preah Khan, the third is Bayon in the Angkor Thom complex, and the last is the big one, Angkor Wat. Not included is Ta Prohm which was used as a location in the puddle of cat sick known as Tomb Raider : The Movie. The Lonely Planet map of Ta Prohm even points out the Tomb Raider Tree (as it calls it) which Lara Croft climbed up to get a magic orchid or something.
My personal favourite was Preah Khan...it had the gone-to-ruin atmospherics of Beng Mealea without the genital punishing bike ride to get there plus the nature running wild spookiness of Ta Prohm but with half the number or tour groups traipsing through, presumably because Angelina Jolie never ran through it in her pants.
Unfortunately I've had a dodgy stomach the last couple of days so had to intersperse appreciation for the architecture of the ancient Khmer empire with frequent trips to the bathroom to unleash the warm jets.
Siem Riep is a nice little town. Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia all have a French influence in the buildings and food but Laos was bombed to hell by the Americans during the Vietnam War (in fact it's per capita the most heavily bombed country in history) and Vietnam itself came in for a pounding so many towns and cities were damaged or completely destroyed. Cambodia didnt cop too much from the Yanks and as the Khmer Rouge were more about up-close and personal genocide rather than artillery based wackiness the lovely old French building are mostly still intact. Every horrendous act of mass-slaughter has a silver lining.
Changing the subject, some people have asked me who is taking all the pictures with me in. Well I shall tell you...random strangers that's who. Either I am more fantastically antisocial than even I thought (which is a possibility) or that whole oh-you'll-meet-so-many-people thing is a complete load of cobblers. Dont get me wrong, I've met people, chatted to folks on the same boat trips, firing range outings etc. but nothing more than that. There are certainly no roving bands of friendly attractive single-travellers littering the Southeast Asian landscape. Good thing I like my own company. The Khoa San road in Bangkok was the most sociable place, mainly because so many Westeners were crammed into such a small place and also everyone was very drunk. Hey ho.
Just got my boat ticket to Battambang tomorrow after which it will be back to Phnom Penh and then to the coast. I'm thinking of going to Malaysia after Thailand and then possibly Singapore for a few days before flying back to Bangkok and then home. Depends on money of course but I think Singapore would be a nice swanky place to end the trip.

It's a holiday in Cambodia!




It's tough kids but it's life! (That's another Dead Kennedy's reference by the way)

Well here I am again, firing weapons and what have you. This was at a somewhat dubious firing range/army base near Phnom Penh airport in Cambodia. Those of a more girly, sensative disposition will be pleased to know that I politely turned down the chance to shoot a chicken. Given that most of my shots went wide of the target it's probably for the best. I didnt fancy watching something I'd just taken a wing off running round squaking and spraying blood everywhere. The target shown had a total of thirty shots fired from an AK47 at it by myself so you can see a career in the Special Forces is not a-calling. I did get the fucker in the throat though and if you ask me anyone who's dumb enough to hang around a firing range with a big bull's eye on their chest deserves everything they get.

To balance this glorification of violence out I also visited the Killing Fields (where the Khmer Rouge carried out mass executions) and the Tol Sleung Museum (a former school that was turned into their primary detention and interrogation centre i.e. somewhere they tortured and killed people).

They didnt actually shoot many of the 2 million people they killed (out of a population of just 7 million, pretty mind-boggling really, that's over a quarter of the population) as that was a waste of bullets, preferring instead to decapitate them or bash their skulls in against trees so I didnt feel too bad mixing genocidal history with gunplay.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Vietnam : A Miscellany






Well here I am again. I havnt posted in awhile because of torturously slow internet connections so I thought I would provide a quick update of my progress. I left Nha Trang and headed to Ho Chi Minh City which was a fun place, very noisy and chaotic. Plus there was a bia hoi place within 12 seconds staggering distance of my guesthouse. I then travelled by boat through the Mekong Delta towards the Cambodian Border. Here are some assorted photographic snapshots -

It was quite odd having a beer whilst a crocodile stares at you.

These are some dead things from a market in the Mekong. I dont know what they are though. Or were.

A mock-up of one of the notorious "tiger-cages"used by the French on display at the War Remnants Museum in HCMC. I think the model looks a bit like Johnny Depp.

I think most people have seen this one (mainly because I sent it to everybody) but this is me firing an AK474 at the Cu Chi Tunnels outside HCMC.

The Delta again. And thank heavens that with just one day of my month in Vietnam left I finally got to travel by boat down a Vietnamese river while listening to the Rambo soundtrack on my MP3 player!