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Published: April 11th 2010
Greetings Pop Fans.
We hope the last blog was OK... On reflection, we decided it was a little long and rambling. Also very annoyed about the situation with the cameras and the memory stick as it made the blog look very dull!!
We're currently in Cambodia and struggling to find anyone or a shop that may be able to help us resolve the problem... So we are unable to upload pictures from Jaipur, Jodhpur, Mumbai, Singapore (including Universal Studios theme park visit with Shrek. Gutted) Kuala Lumpur and now Cambodia. It turns out the new memory card we thought wasn't infected with a virus is also screwed... So no pictures here either. Yes, we are crying.
We left Mumbai on an Air Singapore flight which may have been the poshest flight either of us have ever been on. Gail turned into a giggling mess at the sight of the flight attendants and clearly developed a little crush. She also stole everything she could from the toilet (sickbags, toothpaste, comb... the list is endless) so now we are carrying around a lot of crap. We also decided to get pissed on the flight as it was unlimited and free! We
were embarrassingly informed at one point that 'customers were only allowed one drink at a time'...
Arrival in Singapore after India was like...well, there are no words. It's fair to say that along with the hangover, Nikki also suffered from severe culture shock. The streets are so quiet, organised and peaceful. No one is shouting at you, no spitting, burping, pissing, litter... no-nothing really. There is also a normal amount of people living in Singapore meaning that the streets are spacious and the footpaths are available for walking on. Very alien. Having checked into our hostel (run by a slightly Hitler-ish woman who wanted to fine $100 for drinking from the shared water bottle) we decided that the best way to overcome the culture shock was to 'throw some money at the situation' (Gott, 2010) and spend the next day at the 6 day old, brand new Universal Studios on Sentosa Island. OH MY GOD. We're not even ashamed to say that this was the best day we have ever had. Nikki hasn't smiled so much since, well, ever really. Some of the rides weren't working, as they were still being tested. So we got free lunch (big fat
American burgers) and a free gift. We spent a lot of time in the land of Far Far Away (Shrek) which has an amazing 4D film showing amongst other rides. Gail's highlight was watching the campest man in the world drag Nikki up onto the stage referring to her as the Fairy Godmother! She did well not to a) hit him b) cry. The pictures from this day will do it far more justice than words ever can so we're afraid you'll all just have to hold your excitement in until we can get the bloody camera fixed!
The second day in Singapore was spent sight seeing with a lovely girl from the hostel called Sali. All the major sights were covered, including the national statue/monument thing which is called a Merlion. Yes, you guessed it; it's a cross between a fish and a lion. Weird. We all thoroughly enjoyed a funny little museum called the Battle Box. WW2 underground tunnels formed Singapore's communication center. The English were mainly based down in the secret tunnels before the Island was surrendered to the Japanese. The curators of the museum have made about 100 wax work figures to reenact the different
scenes of the surrender. Obviously, we tastefully posed on said wax-works for comedy value. Lunch was had in the old China Town and pushed our bravery to its limits. Those of you familiar with Asian cuisine will have heard of the much detested Durian fruit. It stinks, it's yellow and tastes of vomit. So, 'I'll have a durian ice-slushy with mango and strange jelly-like balls, please,' was probably the worst decision to make. Disgusting as ours was, Sali's came with the extra touch of gravy and peas hidden underneath the lump of slush. Strange place.
Nikki struggled with Singapore, finding it overall a bit boring and dull. She thought the buildings were too new and clean and that they lacked character. Even the traffic jams were silent as all the cars are so new and economically friendly. Nobody plays music on mobile phones; nobody seems to talk to anyone... Gail on the other hand felt right at home with the 'organised fun' and loved the cleanliness and the city buildings. It's modern, calm and apart from deserts, just makes sense! We fear there maybe some difficulty in future on agreeing to anything domestic.
Gail's obviously really pleased that
we get to return to Singapore before flying out to Australia. This time, we're going to make sure that we remember to alter our clocks from India time so that we don't accidentally sleep-in and miss our connecting transport. Idiots. After much panic and annoyance, we managed to get a luxury coach (TVs, electrical reclining chair, huge seat, water, head speakers!) to take us to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, which turned out to only be slightly cheaper than flying.
KL was a welcome relief to Nikki as it was a happy medium between India's chaos and Singapore's dullness. Gail spent much of the trip saying, 'It didn't look like this 6 years ago.' It seems KL has been discovered by the fashion world with numerous designer shopping malls and a Starbucks has appeared on every corner. Gail now has a Prada suit and coffee.
Some of our KL highlights include:
• ending up wankered on lethal ‘vodka’ in a KL gay man nightclub called La Queen. Obviously, we blended in and strutted our English moves under the epileptic inducing over-the-top strobe lights;
• walked across the Petronas Towers Skybridge. Unfortunately, it decided to rain as soon as we arrived
up there which made visibility poor; however, The Knitted Characters managed to make a new friend. In the Education Centre on the way out, we got to learn how they were made and Nikki even sat on a simulator (unsexual) to mimic the distance of the building’s sway.
• Gail finally got to fulfill a little ambition and we took a trip out to the Batu Caves. These are huge and full of little temples inside. There’s a giant Buddha at the entrance and yet more millions of bastard monkeys making the journey up the 272 steps rather scary and knackering.
• In keeping with the theme of going up things… we headed up the Communications Tower for amazing views across the city. Nowadays, they don't just allow you to go up, you have to buy a package of different activities so we opted for the one which included a Formula One simulator, trip to the reptile House and a donkey ride. Sadly Nikki wouldn’t let Gail on the donkey for credibility reasons but did allow her to have a parrot popped onto her head in the Reptile House.
We left KL after four days and made it to
the crappy Air Asia flight with 30 minutes to spare-phew. We arrived in Cambodia super excited about the next three weeks of exploring. We spent 4 days in the capital Phnom Penh (which will now on be referred to as PP as we can’t seem to commit this spelling to memory). The guest house we opted for was in the main backpacker ‘hub’. This concept of a ‘hub’ felt a little alien to us as India doesn’t do ‘hubs’. This has been an ongoing theme throughout Cambodia and two weeks in we’re still struggling with it. The room we slept in had cockroaches scratching and scurrying around in the walls all god damn night… disgusting.
As most of you will probably know, Cambodia has a fairly recent and tragic history. A lot of the sightseeing and places of interest for tourists are associated with the Khmer Rouge Regime from 1974 -1979. PP is a very small city for a capital with no tall buildings and no main commercial center. Our few days were spent visiting the sights and learning of the horrors associated with the communist regime. We visited the S-21 site, previously a school which became a prison
used by the Khmer Rouge to hold, torture and kill ‘traitors’ of the regime. The prison has been preserved exactly how it was as the Cambodians feel it is important not to hide the tragic history but to exhibit and educate its visitors; therefore, the rooms still contain instruments of torture, beds, and cells. Some of the rooms are used to show the 1000’s of pictures of all the inmates (the regime seemed to be meticulous about record keeping its victims) and others are use to explain the details of the regime, its leaders and its downfall. Overall the experience of visiting here was very somber.
Further to this visit, we then ventured to a place called the Killing Fields where many of the mass executions took place. Over one-quarter of the population were killed by the regime. The fields appear somewhat normal until you notice the mass graves. Next to them are signs stating how many bodies were found in each pit: 450; headless corpses only; women and babies… One of the most horrific sights is the Killing Tree where soldiers would take babies and beat their heads against the trunk until they were dead. In order to
bring some dignity to the victims here, they exhumed the graves and have carried out extensive research. Now the body parts are housed in a Pagoda with 17 floors, each with a different purpose (skulls, jaws, clothing…). These places are incredibly melancholic and it is comforting to know that the spirit of the Cambodian people hasn’t ceased and they endeavor to learn from the past and build a positive future.
Our evenings were spent with our new friends Daniel, Kayla and 33pence beer around the many bars of the ‘hub’. One benefit of the tourist trap is that Gail actually found a restaurant which served sausage and mash potatoes! The pull of Western food is quite alluring and the food cravings are coming on thick and fast the longer we’re away.
After PP, we headed to the South Coast - Sihanoukeville and we all ended up sharing a cute wooded cabin overlooking the ocean. The Knitted Characters couldn’t get enough of the hammock. To recoup from the grim tourist visits in PP we happily spent a few days lazing around on the beach! In comparison to neighboring Thailand, Cambodia’s tourist scene is a good few years behind. The
beach however seems to be catching up fast with loud bars and overpriced food and beer. Obviously we lapped it up… As referred to earlier, the tourist hubs seem to be making it difficult to get to grips with actual real-life Cambodia and the beach was no exception. We both feel like we actually miss India already! Whether it’s because we spent 3 months there or because there is literally billions of people in India and you can’t spend a minute by yourself we’re not sure. India instantly submerges you in its culture. In Cambodia so far, it’s felt difficult to penetrate the backpacker hub and get to know the people and the culture. We need to bear in mind that there is only 14 million people here and the country is far from overcrowded! It’s been difficult to eat in local restaurants as most of them don’t have English signs or menus and pointing at things hasn’t gotten us very far!
Yet again, we ‘Threw some money at the situation’ (Gott, 2010) and booked a luxury boat cruise to take us snorkeling, river walking and on a rainforest walk. This was rather a brave decision as many of
you will be aware of Gail’s ridiculous fish phobia but Nikki proudly held her hand and she managed to happily snorkel around the coral reef without tears of screams. Just to prove how brave she was, Gail swam solo from the paradise beach to the boat and then jumped off its top deck into the water buggering up her hearing for days. The river walk turned out to be rather disgusting as our guide led us through waist height brown natural hot springs to look at mangoes growing. We were more concerned with keeping our flip-flops from sinking in the mud and falling into the stuff.
Finally, we finished our whistle-stop tour of the South coast by heading over to Kampot (they make pepper there). This town is sold as a place you ‘come to feel, not see’ but to be honest it was rather empty and lacking. The main selling point of Kampot is its location next to Bakor National Park where it’s possible to book jungle tours up there and explore the old ‘abandoned’ hill station village. We did just that. Leaving at 7.30 we set out for ten hours of pure blood, sweat and tears. The
ideas sounded simple: trek up the hill, have a look around, come back down. What they fail to tell you when you’re signing on the dotted line is that it involves a 2 ½ hour military style climbing exercise up the heavy jungle terrain of the rainforest. Not only was this exhausting in the unbearable heat, it was dangerous. Obviously we were at the back of the group not realizing the four months of traveling have made us excellent walkers but terrible climbers. We huffed, we puffed and bloody fought our way up that hill to be greeted by the most stunning and glorious view of… a fucking dirt path.
Following a short drive in a 4x4, we made it to the top to the ‘abandoned ‘hill station of Bakor. After lunch (disappointingly dry rice) we were free to explore. This town was abandoned in the 1970’s following the Khmer Rouge regime and has not been inhabited since. It may once have looked abandoned but now it’s actually just a lot of old, dilapidated buildings with graffiti all over them. The guide books really should update… Nikki was so dehydrated throughout the day, she drunk at least 3 liters
of water and managed only 1 wee behind a rock (from her morning brew…) Just to perk us up, we then had the two hour trek back down which involved continuous falling over, cuts and cursing! The day was salvaged however by our old friends Mr. Burger, Mr. Steak and Mr. Beer!
And so, that’s Cambodia so far. Currently we’re in Siem Reap and about to head to the world famous Angkor Wat Temples!
Thanks for listening…
Ms Pink and Ms Brown x x
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Janny B
non-member comment
Doubtful
OK-what has really happened with the camera? Broken? Or not daring to show the photos?? Have tried the 'I've broken my camera' trick myself on occasion! We are just happy that the weather has gone above freezing! Enjoy following your adventure. Janny B x