No tittering at the back

Sometimes it pays to talk to strangers: there was I, three nights ago, wandering round the riverfront in Battambang and wondering how I would use the next few days. Bloke pulls up on a bike and asks me to explain what a microchip is (it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that he was talking about computers and nothing McCain-related). Following my inept attempt to do so, he asks whether I have a few hours spare. And so very quickly I find myself in front of a classroom of giggling 18-year-olds, trying and failing to define the difference between 'although' and 'even though' and staving off hecklers asking me to bed them (well ok, there was one heckler, and yes, of course it was a guy). Turns out the bloke who asked me along is unemployed but borrows the local primary after school to help teenagers from the area with their English and presumably roams the streets looking for bewildered-looking native speakers to lend a hand. In my heart of hearts I really can't think I was that much use to them (if anything it highlighted my alarming ignorance of grammar), but we all got along famously and it did feel slightly more worthwhile than my usual evening's occupation of seeing how lashed I can get without falling off a motorbike. I even went back for more punishment yesterday and today - you should be able to see photos of me holding court on Ringo.
Tomorrow I'm heading back to Bangkok, and Tuesday is the end of the Asian affair; or at least of this instalment. It's been indescribable.

Easy rider

Someone up there's laughing at me but seems to like me too (perhaps you can empathise) - for anyone who was fearing things were going too smoothly, I've knackered myself again: this time only semi-my fault though. I think.
So I'd spent the day at Kep, lovely little seaside town, and I'm heading with my trusty moto (motorbike taxi) driver back to my guesthouse down the road in Kampot. It's nighttime, as I'd fancied a quick dip in the sea at sunset - madly picturesque, as my dad would say. On the way back we stop for gas. I'm looking at the sky and marvelling at the stars (massive sky + no light pollution = wow), doing all the 'What a tiny speck I am in all this vastness' thing. All well and good. I look down and see dude on motorbike gesturing me to get on. Fine. I get on. Ten seconds later I realise it's not the same dude. *rse: I haven't paid the other guy yet and he waited all day for me at Kep, he's gonna be mad if I bail on him, and obviously it would be just a touch out of order anyway. So I try and get the guy to stop.
I don't know if it was my distracting him, something on the road (that's what he said) or a combination of the two, but suddenly he's lost control and slewing violently right and left; in another half-second there comes the realisation that I'm not staying on, then crump oof crash bang wallop and I'm saying hello to the tarmac. My cheek, shoulder and side all look like someone's gone at them with a cheese-grater and there's an ominous ache around my collarbone.
Despite this little setback the guy's still very anxious to get my fare and I'm in such a daze I get back on again, leading to the inevitable: 20 seconds later my original driver catches up with us, in the sort of huff you would imagine; I try and explain with my face bleeding that I've made a mistake but I've obviously hurt his feelings. So I end up getting back on his bike and giving the other guy a dollar for a 500-yard drive with free gravel. Just to put the icing on the cake, the bike I'm on now's lamp goes, so we have to do the rest of the drive back in the dark, thoughts of lightning striking twice uppermost in my mind.
Despite all this, I actually feel a bit lucky: if we'd been going any faster (think we were only doing 20-30 mph), there'd been a car behind us, I'd landed on my head etc., I might not be here anymore. Also, there isn't a break, the pain in my shoulder should be gone in a day or two and the scratchmarks so far have been having the effect of eliciting sympathy from numerous barmaids, which can never be a bad thing... Still, some part of me will heave a sigh of relief when I touchdown in Oz!

Bruised buttocks (steady Keith)

Gorblimeyguvnor, never did I think I'd be harking back to the Bangkok-Siem Reap road with fondness, but compared to the Kampot-Bokor run it's a bloody autobahn... Got back an hour ago from my day tour to Bokor Hill Station, a creepy twice-deserted place (1940, during the fight for independence, and 1972, as Khmer Rouge forces slowly took over the country) up a massive great, er, hill, built by the French in the 1920s as a retreat for their workers in the capital. There's a blasted, cursed feeling to the place, the exterior walls all covered with a rust-like moss and the rooms stripped almost to the brickwork. Strangest of all the buildings of what used to be a small ex-pat village is the old grand hotel, the 'Bokor Palace' - you can wander through the whole place, trying to picture the grandeur of former times, seeing the old ballroom with its walls covered in the graffitied tags of hundreds of former visitors. There's obviously a god-like perspective from the top floor, out over the cliff, following the river as it curves through the rice paddies to the glittering sea... when there's no cloud. Today we couldn't see 20 yards. You can't have 'em all.
Again, I'd been warned the road was bad - again, I was not deceived. This time I was amid five other masochists on the back of a pickup struggling to contend with arse-shattering potholes, biblical rainfall and getting smacked in the face every five minutes by conveniently-placed tree branches, up and up and up for 40km (90 mins). And then back down again... what used to be the only other way out is no longer, the bridge having obligingly collapsed a few months back. A particularly hilarious 15-minute entertainment was provided when we were blocked by another pickup whose axle had snapped (gives you an idea of the road when it slays a 4WD), forcing us to sit and be bucketed upon, pondering the futility of man. Joy unconfined it was not, but I'd still recommend having a look - provided you can bagsie a seat in the cab. Ooh me Rockford Files...

Down by the riverside

How civilised. I'm in Kampot near the southern Cambodian coast; just enjoyed a baguette and iced tea whilst watching the sun go down over the Kampong Bay River. It's a lovely-looking little place - a lot of the architecture round here, as in some parts of Phnom Penh and other towns, is French-influenced and complements the natural surroundings very nicely - and the guesthouse I've picked seems pretty funky too. All this helps to begin to calm the almost-exploded spleen I had on the way here, having been ripped off (or had my 'head shaved' as the locals apparently have it) to the tune of $20 on what should have been a $1.50 minibus fare. No wonder the driver was laughing all the way here, nnngh... Oh well, I'll know next time. Maybe.
Got to Takeo last night from Phnom Penh: it's a small, undistinguished place, altho it does contain the old house of Ta Mok, one of the Khmer Rouge leaders - there's a volleyball court in front of it now and a drinks stall selling Coca-Cola behind it, don't know which would dismay him more; but then he's a **** so who cares? Haha. Got a ride on an outboard this morning out over flooded paddyfields to Angkor Borei (a 6th & 7th century stronghold of an earlier state, Funan) and Phnom Da (nice-looking laterite temple on a hill nearby) - both reasonably diverting but as the book says, it's the ride you go for. They talk about Kansas skies but I swear they can't be much bigger than Cambodian ones - the land's so flat and undeveloped you can very nearly see from horizon to horizon, it's beautiful.
Heart of Darkness turned out to be a lot less scuzzy and violent than I'd been expecting, what a let-down! Well OK I don't mean that exactly but it did seem quite a bit snazzier than anywhere else I've been in Cambodia, obviously a lot of money's gone into the place recently. One difference between clubs here and home - by and large, excepting Croydon of course, you don't get patted down for Uzis and there aren't signs banning you from taking grenades in (boring!) at home... must say though, it does add a certain something to the evening's entertainment knowing you might be about to get blown to smithereens.
OK that guesthouse I mentioned has got Happy Hour on for another, well, hour and after the bludgeoning my wallet got today I feel I need to save some cash - yes, Mum, it would be much better to do that by not drinking at all but I'm sure you all agree that sobriety's vastly overrated. Naturally I will still hold this opinion come 9am tomorrow. Bottoms up!

S-21

A sobering day. Went this morning to Tuol Sleng and the killing fields of Choeung Ek. Tuol Sleng is the former high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a torture and interrogation centre, codenamed S-21. Officially it's called a prison, but when all but about a dozen out of at least 14,000 prisoners there, all supposed 'class enemies' - i.e. victims of Communist Party paranoia - were sentenced to death, you can't really call it that. They've left a lot of it more or less as it was when the Vietnamese liberated the city in 1979 - you walk into the first lot of cells, formerly classrooms, and can see the iron beds that prisoners were shackled to, as well as on the wall a photograph of the bodies discovered there by the photographers who arrived with the Vietnamese army. They'd been tortured to death, literally about a day before the prison was abandoned. You find yourself wondering how much pain those walls have witnessed and how much a human being can inflict on another, but you can't get your head round it. You see the electrified barbed wire preventing prisoners from throwing themselves from the upper levels of the buildings (suicide a luxury they were denied). You see the boards displaying hundreds of black-and-white mugshots of prisoners taken on their arrival, one board made up entirely of photos of children, and feel like crying.
Choeung Ek is a pretty piece of green over the road from a school, attractive longan trees growing in an orchard to one side. You can hear the kids singing in the distance. If you didn't know, you'd wonder what the several dozen pits were doing there. This is where prisoners were brought from S-21 to be executed and buried in mass graves. The numbers are staggering: the Vietnamese exhumed almost 9,000 bodies but think that at least 20,000 were buried there (and Choeung Ek was only the principal burial ground of dozens all over the country: it's estimated that from 1975-78 through execution, starvation and disease, Pol Pot's government cost Cambodia about 2m people, 20% of her population). In places you can still see victims' clothes half-buried in the dirt. Perhaps most distressing of all, in fact of anything I've ever seen, is the 'Killing Tree', against which up to 100 babies and small children were beaten to death. What's happened to the mind of someone to whom smashing a baby's skull in the name of ideology has ceased to be something wrong, I don't know and pray I never will.
Sorry to darken the mood so much but it's impossible to describe something like that lightly; on a more positive note, as my book says, it does go to show how far the Cambodians have come in the years since. I hope, so far as it's possible, that they succeed in putting the past behind them.
OK, deep breath, other matters: I've also now seen the National Museum and Silver Pagoda which were pretty cool. The National Museum's in a lovely old Khmer-style building, bit shabby and lots of the exhibits for some reason were in packing cases, but what there is on show - the vast majority of it Khmer sculpture - is worth seeing. The Silver Pagoda is part of the royal palace complex, with some extraordinary (and extraordinarily valuable) stuff inside: even the floor must cost a bomb, it's made of half a ton of solid silver! Not to mention the 90kg solid gold lifesize Buddha figure, covered in almost 10,000 diamonds (perfect for my back patio but don't think the budget will stretch), or the stacks of other Buddha figures and Khmer sculpture they've got packed in there. If you're ever in Phnom Penh you should definitely have a look.
Still haven't decided where I'm going next, or when I'm going there: to be honest I'm quite tempted to stay in PP for another day, it's a cool place. Tonight I should be checking out the famed/notorious Heart of Darkness, despite its sinister name the most popular nightspot in the city, but also one where if you're not careful you'll find yourself on the end of a beating from some rich kid's bodyguards. Well, I've been missing the old bar brawl scene, will probably get all misty-eyed at the first sound of crashing chairs... You'll have my review soon.
In the meantime, take care all of you. Bye for now.

Feeding frenzy

Back once again. Another day, another few hundred k's. So now I'm in Phnom Penh, hiding in the internet shop from the taxi driver who I thought was trying to get me to go to some rip-off place rather than where I actually wanted to go, but who now I think was actually being honest and whom I'm a bit ashamed to see again. Oh the joys of paranoia. To be fair, your correspondent was very nearly torn asunder on arrival at the bus garage and can claim some right to being frazzled: there's a screaming mob of taxi drivers all desperate to get your fare and blows are almost exchanged trying to get your luggage into their vehicle. One bonus though is the operation of market forces - within 5 seconds they had undercut each other from a dollar down to 500 riel, almost a 90% saving...
Went from Kompong Thom to see the hillside pagoda at Phnom Sontuk, stunning view over central Cambodia and some very attractive 16th-century reclining Buddhas carved into the rock; half-killing 980-step stairway to get there though, you have to suffer for your art here. Check the 'Kompong Thom' folder on my Ringo site to see pics if you want. The other lot of photos on there are of the place I went this morning, Sambor Prei Kuk - a group of temples a good 200-400 years older than the ones at Angkor: some are 1,300 years old and are incredibly well-preserved given their age, if not in the same league as their more famous successors. Worth the visit though.
Going to try out the Lonely Planet-recommended (I've resigned myself to my fate) walking tour of the city tomorrow, hopefully including the National Museum and Silver Pagoda, then the grim Khmer Rouge-related sites (Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields) the day after. Haven't yet decided for definite on the itinerary after that but I think water will feature in some form or other. I'm being mysterious Lynne.
'Til next time.

Photos

I'll move them to Ringo when it's working and I can be arsed, but for the moment you can see the Angkor photos here.

Cambodge

Well, and hello again. Sorry to have abandoned you for a while but rest assured I've been busy. Lessee... got to Bangkok for the third time, saw Thai boxing for the second time, got the bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia for the first, last and only time. You get warned in the guidebook that the road from the border's crap, and they don't lie. About twelve of us, plus baggage, packed into a knackered old minibus, minus suspension, and proceeded to spend the next five hours having our bones rattled and our nerves shot. A dozen times I was convinced the five-mile-deep pothole we'd just dropped into would be the one that finally shattered our undercarriage, but by some miracle the old girl made it. Fortunately the guesthouse we got taken to was pretty decent, supposedly you get trouble if you try and choose another (bus company and guesthouse are in cahoots - the bus deliberately goes slow so you'll arrive in the middle of the night in no mind to do anything other than accept what you're given).
A new development: I finally stopped spurning all humanity and have been going about the last few days with a group of guys and girls met on the bus. Quite fun going out drinking with them, and it does give you more of a safety net (falling asleep in the bar last night would have been a tad riskier on my own), but overall I'm still convinced solo is the best option. Everything's so much easier when you don't have to agree with anyone...
Anyway, to the reason for all the efforts: Thursday, yesterday and today I have mostly been templing. Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm to start, followed by five other smaller sites yesterday and Beng Melea this afternoon. Angkor Wat you'll know, and it seems half the world wants to visit: the place is overrun with bleedin' tourists. Even at 5am there are hundreds milling about outside to get that calendar photo of the temple at sunrise. Fortunately though most don't go inside at that time so it's a good opportunity to look around without getting crushed by fat middle-aged white people.
Obviously, it's beautiful; obviously, the scale is intimidating (it's the largest religious structure in the world) and obviously it hardly needs my recommendation. I would say it's much better in the early morning even if you don't get the right light for the photo (it was overcast when we went, disappointing no doubt to the scrum outside but almost made me feel smug - I mean fercrissakes do you honestly go somewhere like that just to take photos of it? Got the distinct impression that some people do), just for the breathing space it affords you. Bayon, much smaller, is the one with the 216 faces of Buddha cut into the stone, all with slightly different, enigmatic, dreamy-looking smiles. Could almost be creepy if they didn't seem so benign. Ta Prohm has become known (lord help us) as 'the Tomb Raider one' cos that's where they made a lot of the film. Very atmospheric: they've left some of the trees that were there when the temple was redisovered to grow on, around and through the stone, so you get a picture of man's work being slowly and beautifully undone by nature. And not so beautifully littered by tourists. OK, I know, I am one, I'll stop banging on.
The other five places were interesting too but I won't bore you further with descriptions - anyway I have to check in the guidebook and through my photos to sort out which was which! Philistine undoubtedly but after a while your head starts spinning and it's hard to remember details. I'll write something down somewhere. Went to see a floating village on Tonle Sap lake (enormous) later in the day, an unusual sight - they even have a floating church!
Beng Melea is like a rawer, more hardcore version of Ta Prohm - it's on a similar scale to Angkor Wat (minus the mahoosive moat) but in this case nature's really had a go and a lot of it's rubble. Again though, very attractive rubble. Which you can clamber about on like a big and quite dangerous climbing frame. And cos it's about 80km out of Siem Reap there aren't many tourists either.
Think I'll leave Siem Reap tomorrow, probably stopping at Komphon Thom on the way down to Phnom Penh, but not totally sure yet. Can't meander as much as before though cos only have a couple of weeks left before I have to get back to Bangkok and the plane to Oz. Full steam, um, somewhere.
I'm off; if you're wondering why I haven't mentioned photos yet, Ringo is being an arse (no Beatles jokes please) and won't let me upload any shots, but as soon as I can you'll have them and can see what I've been going on about.

The Hip Dead

So... sorry to disappoint one or two of you but no, I'm not going to the Full Moon party - various reservations, by far the most important of which being my near-certainty of failing to survive it. Also, if I'm going to get to Cambodia with a decent amount of time to have a look round I need to get moving asap. Sorry to be a bore, but do spare a thought for the fortunate ravers spared the spectacle of my (probably topless) mincing.
Ko Phangan passed in a bit of a blur, caused by circumstances on which for now I couldn't possibly comment. I shall divulge more on my return, although you would be right in thinking they have something to do with the Full Moon decision...
Am now on Ko Samui, where I've been since yesterday. Just a flying visit, off back to Bangkok x 3 tomorrow and on to Cambodia the day after, about a week and a half later than originally intended. It's cool here, despite the fairly crappy weather - visited Na Muang waterfall today: a knackering climb through pretty thick forest, redeemed by the pleasant surprise of a natural rock pool you could swim in near the top. Down the road to afterwards to Wat Khunaram, to see a truly bizarre feature in the shape of the ashen corpse of an ex-abbott of the monastery who died in 1973 and whose body miraculously failed to decay, sporting what looked like a quite snazz pair of shades. Anyone else reminded of the Rolling Stones? Pics up in the next day or 2.
Just surrendered to instinct and went for an Indian, for shame etc. The slight culture guilt was more than offset by the excellence of the curry (Dopiaza if you're interested; some may comment on my lack of originality - I concede the point, madam). Might see if I can follow that up with a pancake and icecream combo: I've lost half a stone since coming here, I'm allowed! BEEFCAKE.

Mad dogs and Englishmen

[A crappy early 90s flick starring the young Liz Hurley if anyone remembers, but anyway]
Have been spending a spectacularly lazy couple of days on Ao Leuk, a beach on the southeastern coast of Ko Tao - quite cut off from the busier west coast, as unless you're Superman or don't have any luggage heavier than about half a kilo you can't get there or back without 4WD taxi - it's a ludicrously rutted path up and down a hill which must be 45 degrees at some parts (yes Mike, obviously the ghetto boy would manage without, in the dark, with hands tied behind his back; I'm talking of mere mortals here).
Stayed in a small resort right on the beach - that's resort in the sense of a few bungalows and a restaurant, nothing more, but gee willikins what a view! Blazing white beach, clear green and blue water, boulders at the edges of the bay seemingly hand-picked, scrubbed and placed for maximum picturesqueness, beautiful lush greenery covering the hills behind us, palm trees, the whole holiday brochure covershoot. Suddenly it all made sense. I'd only slept about 4 hours in the preceding 40 (no matter how knackered I am, or what I take (buggering chemists wouldn't give me Valium, the swine) I still can't seem to sleep in any form of transport) and was feeling rather delicate - half an hour later, splashing about in the green, life was much better. That's despite the plastic bags, crisp packets and other rubbish floating around - you don't see that in the photos, surprisingly, but it's quite a problem on the island. No matter, at least I didn't encounter any floating prophylactics, thank the sweet lord. Spent the next day and a half doing not much more than splashing about (proper swimming is a bit beyond me these days), a bit of snorkelling yesterday afternoon around the rocks (another world suddenly appears full of weird-looking plants and gorgeous iridescent fish of all colours of the rainbow - and b*stard shells with feckin' razor-sharp serrated edges stuck to the rocks, of which my hands and feet are now all too aware), loads of reading (not that I want to give credence to some people's erroneous view of my proclivities but it's all been a bit bachelor-gay: last 2 books were The Line of Beauty and Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus, both positively chock-full of bumfun... I've wondered if other beach users have wondered about me - probably not, they're French; anyway if you haven't read it, Beauty is great) and a not inconsiderable amount of hammock-lying. Oh, and in the process broiling my back to the colour of well-done lobster, hence the title. After Sun is now a priority.
I do wonder how much good or edification all this is doing me, but am content for now in the sure and certain knowledge that it beats making up planning dossiers - sorry, I mean 'conceiving and giving birth to a planning application', as I understand the new jargon has it; almost makes it sound interesting.
OK off now, getting a catamaran to Ko Phangan in just under an hour, quite possibly to do more of the same. Will keep you posted, TTFN.