The fault, dear brutus...

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Is not in the stars, but in ourselves.

I'm going to try to tie that into my story, but it might get a little contrived, in which case i'll delete the linkages and it can stand as a random quote.

Now This is travelling!!

Having left phuket no more impressed than when i arrived, I flew to bangkok, where i was very proud of myself for finding my way from the airport to the hostel, then to the royal palace and back using nothing but public transport. Of course, by the time i got to the royal palace it was only half an hour till it closed so i chose not to pay the 250 baht entrance fee. it's not the destination, it's the journey.

then i had to get up obscenely early to catch my flight to phnom penh. I was a little nervous about cambodia because i'd heard mixed reviews and the lonely planet said things like "if you get mugged, just keep your hands in the air", which i didn't take to be particularly encouraging. I'd also heard on various bribes and commission scams at the land borders, so i was relieved to be flying in - i figured officials at airports would be at least mildly more legit. But all this added up to a very nervous stacey.

So walking out of the airport I immediately got offered a taxi by what looked to be the main tour desk, so i took the offer. On the drive to the guesthouse I kept looking for signs to indicate how dangerous a place it was.... people looking at me through the car windows, not a good sign... but the car windows aren't tinted to prevent carjackings like they are in papua new guinea, good sign.

After a few wrong turns and missed streets the taxi driver and i eventually found my guesthouse. So i checked in and had a nap, then decided I better get moving if i wanted to see anything of the city because i had promised myself (and others) that i would venture out after dark.

So downstairs to reception and i got a tuk tuk to the national museum, which was very much like alot of museums - lots of old stuff. The best part about the museum is the the building and grounds are really lovely, ornate building with a gorgeous courtyard in the middle with ponds and shaped hedges etc. As it's so obscenely hot, i sat down on a bench in the shade for a bit of a rest.

While i was sitting on the bench this monk came up to me and asked if he could talk to me. Now i thought this a little strange because i was under the understanding that monks aren't really supposed to interact with women all that much, but since he asked i of course said yes. After about 10 minutes of conversation in broken english which involved the standard questions - where are you from? how long have you been in phnom penh? how many brothers and sisters do you have? - there was a lull and i was thinking how very "old-world asia" the whole scene was... the immaculate gardens, the monk in the robe... when out of the folds of this saffron coloured robes floated the very familiar sound of a polyphonic ringtone. "Is that your cellphone?" I ask incredulously. "yeah, my friend is trying to get hold of me" he says with rolled eyes.

So we carry on the conversation for a while longer, and he says "maybe, if you have time spare, you come visit me at my pagoda?" and writes down his name and how to find him at unnalom pagoda, and his email address. of course.

slightly stunned at this encounter, i decided i should probably find some food before it got dark, so i walk to where i believe the restaurants are, and find a name i recognise from the lonely planet. so i sit down and order a pizza, and while i'm sitting waiting for my pizza, this elephant strolls along the footpath on the other side of the road. It was being led by an old man, but nevertheless it substantially added to the wierdness of the afternoon. Unfortunately I was still in nervous-mode and had my camera safely stashed in my money belt, so i couldn't get it out quick enough to take a picture.

Once i had finished eating, i paid the bill and watched the tuk-tuk and moto drivers gather like buzzards. Before i had even stood up one of them asked if i need a lift. "sunday guesthouse?" i say, going for the map i was given "yes yes, i know, i know" alright, and he starts pulling this motorbike (a moto as opposed to the tuk tuks which are little carriages attached to the back of motorbikes). Given the number of accidents i'd seen on the road and the amount of traffic, i was more than a little apprehensive, but I sure as hell wasn't walking home, so for lack of better options, i jumped on the back and asked "slowly?". Of course, like most things, it wasn't as bad as you expect, although i did close my eyes through most of the intersections. Ignorance is bliss.

The next day, like a good little tourist, i had arranged a tour to the killing fields. so at 9am i jumped in the tuk tuk (grateful to be back in the safe confines of a tuk tuk) and was followed in by two irish guys, so together we rode to the backwaters of phnom penh on roads that i was half expecting would require the tuk tuk to double as a roll cage. A gate with a sign "the killing fields" came past and we didn't stop, and went on to even more precarious roads until finally turning it to a fairly innocent looking house - at least at first glance. The two irish guys and i were looking at each other with puzzled expressions, "shooting range" the driver said, and the puzzled expressions of my companions turned into kid-on-christmas-morning glee.

I kind of knew this was a possibility - the cambodians and vietnamese have long found commercial gains in surplus weapons from those pesky wars- and i had already debated with myself at length whether i wanted to try my hand at firing an ak47, just to say that i had. But I decided that, on moral grounds, i really didn't want to put my hands on anything that could once have been used to kill people. It could be suggested that this moral argument is merely a cover for a girlish phobia, but i've fired a rifle at a clay target before, but that was a purely recreational gun created for purely recreational pursuits.

On closer inspection this debate was purely academic anyway, because the staff never even looked at me. They presented the guys with menus - ak47 US$30, M60 $40, colt 45 $15, hand grenade $30, rocket launcher $200, coke $1.

Being specifically told we can't take a photo of this menu - priceless.

So the guys chose the ak47, colt45 and a hand grenade each. I was, however, allowed to don earmuffs and go into the concrete hallways to watch while they shot the guns at a target. The hand grenades they threw into a specially-made pond outside and it made the whole ground shake and weird bubbles came up from the bottom of the pond. Lord knows how many grenades have interrupted that soil.

After all this tom-foolery with ammunition, we went back up the road to the killing fields and i was at once settled in my decision to not have any part of those guns. It was haunting. There was a "stupa" (tower thing) at the entrance that was filled with the bones that had been excavated from the grave sites. The graves themselves were little more than big holes, the bigger ones with permanent rooves and signs. but the most disturbing thing was the clothing and piles of bones just lying around under trees or on the edges of graves. are they there for dramatic effect or is there just nowhere else to put them?

after that little episode we went back into phnom penh town and went had lunch at this lovely little restaurant just across the street from the most famous khmer rouge prison/torture/interrogation unit.

Toul Sleng was a school before the war, but it was turned in to something that defies description. About 20,000 people were imprisoned here during the war years, and of those, only 7 survived. the stories of what people endured here, at the hands of 13-18 year old khmer soldiers are the very definition of horrific and while they're only rooms with perhaps a bedframe in them, i almost threw up when i walked into the first few, but somehow you get numb or something, and then I felt some stupid sense of obligation to go into all of them.

Some people have guides that walk them through all these sites, but I don't know how you get those and even if i did, i'm not sure i'd pay for it. So we didn't have a guide, but we stumbled upon a group of fellow vistors - an american guy with two middle aged cambodian women and a young cambodian guy. One of the cambodian woman told us (threw the american guy translating) how her daughter had been in some group of girls during the war, and the guy assigned to look after these girls decided he was going to kill them all. so he built a huge fire and just threw the girls on. The woman's daughter was "lucky" because she had other girls beneath her and on top of her so she managed to survive, but with bad burns. For a long time she was terrified of even the sight of matches. These women pointed out spots where there were still blood stains on the floor, and holes in the walls where they drained the blood. It was horrible. I couldn't understand how they were talking about all this, given that it didn't happen to me and i couldn't get a word out for being choked with tears, but one of the irish guys said that they did break down in one of the rooms with stories about people being taken and never seen again. I suppose there's only so many tears you can cry.

So that finished our day of morbid fascination. As, as i mentioned before, i was not allowed out by myself after dark, and the food at the guesthouse wasn't that appetizing, i suggested to the irish guys that we find something together. After we had dinner we moved on to another bar where low and behold, we met more irish people and drank till the wee hours. Even though they all claim they were speaking english, most of their accents were so broad that i think i only understood about as much as i do with the cambodians who try to speak english.

The next morning there was definitely a fault in me (see, i knew i'd get a link in there somewhere) - on top of the expected hangover i had developed some stomach bug which, i suppose, isn't bad going, being five weeks into the trip and all. Still, it wasn't pleasant, so the plans i had to visit the royal palace and silver pagoda (and update my blog) sadly went by the wayside. I managed to leave my room for a total of about 15 minutes, and that was just to reception to get fluids.

The next morning i was feeling mostly better, so i booked the midday bus to siem reap and managed to last the distance. My guesthouse in phnom penh had arranged for me to stay at their sister guesthouse in siem reap, and so i got picked up at the bus stop by khawp - my moto driver for the last few days.

So yesterday and today has been spent exploring the temples of angkor - angkor wat, angkor thom, ta phrom etc etc. They're fantastic! I felt like lara croft (with the addition of thousands of other tourists and minus the unfathomable attractiveness, but still) and as it happens, tomb raider was filmed at ta prohm. I suppose that's how ms jolie got hooked up with that cambodian kid she totes around.

But when you're from a country whose oldest structures are Pa's (and nobody really goes near those things anyway), things like this are out of this world. Trying to imagine people wondering around them when they were fully functioning temples, big enough to house thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of people is pretty difficult, especially the state that some of these are in... ancient ruins, overgrown in some places by thick cambodian jungle. clambouring up steep steep staircases in sweltering heat... i'm definitely sweating out my sins now... and every frigging turret you climb, you reach the top, sweating like a *?*? and gasping for air... and staring you right in the face is a buddha statue with a serene look on his face as if to say "what's the problem? a few stairs won't kill you" Thanks

of course to get around all these temples you need some sort of transport, so we're back to khawp - my driver. These guys are amazing, they drive these foreigners around all day and wait as long as you want and never accept any drinks or food you try and insist on buying them... and they do this every day, for as long as you can stand... i lasted about 6 hours yesterday, got him to take me back to the guesthouse for a nap, then take me into town and pick me up again, at which point he suggested i go see some apsara dancing (traditional cambodian dancing, like the bas-reliefs on the temple walls), so he dropped me at the restaurant with the dancing and picked me up from there too. and he was there bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 5am so i could watch the sun rise over angkor wat this morning... i feel so bourguois.

after I'd had my fill of temples for today (about 11.30), we went to the land mine museum. More morbid fascination. Now, when i say "museum", I really mean " tin shed with LOTS of disarmed or exploded mines, grenades and other random ordinance". The guy who set it up, Aki Ra, was a child soldier for both the khmer rouge and the vietnamese army and now uses the knowledge gained from laying the mines, to find and disarm them. The museum also acts as an orphange for kids who have been affected by landmines, it's a damn admirable cause. For a small donation you can buy a pamphlet with his life story and the stories of the kids he cares for and christ are those tear-jerkers.

And that brings us about up to speed. I've got one more day at the temples - a late start tomorrow, 2.30pm so i'm not wore out by sunset, even though khawp was suggesting 8 again, another couple of hours and i'll be templed out thanks.

then on friday i fly to kuala lumpur and on to borneo!!

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Photos

Mass Grave at the Killing Fields
the sign reads "Mass grave of 188 bodies - without heads"

Photos of those sent to Toul Sleng
There were rooms and rooms of these boards, each person staring straight at the camera

Through the barbed wire
you can see the bars where children played before the war

Temple head
at Ta Som perhaps??

Comments

[fd]

good stuff
strange reading your blog, i did almost the same stuff (same same...) a week or so ago... very odd. any way take care