As I walked through Phom Penh to Tuol Sleng a man was boiling clothes in an iron tub over an open wood fire by the side of the road. Occasionally he would pull them out and dunk them back in with a long metal pole. This has no relevance to anything, I just thought it was curious. The most noticeable thing about Tuol Sleng, former school and infamous former Khmer Rouge S21 prison in the quiet outskirts of Phnom Penh, is its likeness to a school. The conversion in the 1970s into a holding prison for capitalists, foreigners, peasants, spectacle-wearers and [View Full Entry]

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Kneeling down with two aged nuns near a smoking bunch of incense sticks, I would never thought this was one of the most visited spots of the country's most popular destination. Tourism in Cambodia lives for the temples of Angkor, the country's symbol and once one of Asia's most important cities. And yet here I am in Angkor Thom having my arm stroked in thanks for promising to send prints of the photos I've just taken. As I experienced this kind of reception again and again, just yards from the paths trodden last year by two million people, I was puzzled [View Full Entry]

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I haven't been getting a lot of sleep on this trip. Overnight buses and early starts have made for an exhausting time and getting up at six on New Year's Day to catch the bus to Mytho, it didn't look like that was about to change. The only realistic way to see the Mekong Delta with a couple of days and no Vietnamese is to take a tour from Saigon. From what I heard from travellers coming the other way, if you go independently you'll only end up at the same tourist sites, paying more. So I struck a compromise: I'd [View Full Entry]

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It's Têt and my last night in Saigon. I'm sitting on a blue plastic stool at a busy junction waiting for my food to arrive, all around me are clustered little tables and sizzling stalls. From one of these stalls I've ordered something by just saying "One, please!" and when it comes I still don't know what it is. Small lumps of glutinous matter are heaped on a plate, on top something vegetable and an undeniable fried egg. I drizzle over something like chili sauce. Over the road stands a man selling huge red balloons and lucky New Year trinkets and [View Full Entry]

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Boarding the battered old ferry at Beihai we were torn between relief and trepidation: happy to be leaving that frozen, barren town but distinctly hesitant about the impending 12-hour sea-bucket journey. We had managed at the last minute to upgrade ourselves from the 30-to-a-room cattle-class about which we had heard so many colourful, zoological analogies and which, we now saw, offered little more than a bamboo mat and a selection of shrieking, smoking roommates. Putting Steerage a good deck below us, we settled into our cosier 2-bunk cabin to contemplate our trip. Behind us: Bei [View Full Entry]

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