WHILE I TRAVEL
Global terror intensifies, and home territory looks horribly vulnerable. At the same time I am in Vietnam experiencing a culture and environment still coping with the horrendous effects of war, dealing with poverty and corruption, but today feeling rather safe and optimistic. It's a different world, far from the face of terror today. It's a strange feeling being away from London when it's under attack. I feel guilty not being a part of it. I am staggered by the brutality of the London police shooting a man in the head 5 times. Such facts are daily realities in Israel, and will be increasingly in England. But Israel is a lot easier to police. We have enjoyed relative liberty and safety for a long time, but it can't continue in the same way. I can't help but think of all the juicy vulnerable targets in England I could strike at if I were a terrorist. I am thinking of home and Egypt and wondering how anyone can stop people who want to kill themselves to kill. Sounds trite but there we are.
ANG-KOR BLIMEY GUVNA
Siem Reap is surrounded by mind-evaporating temples from the Khmer Empire 1000 years ago. It's SE Asia's premier Wonder which means that 5:30am sunrise at Angkor Wat includes several hundred tourists. Low season. It's testament to the sublimity of the sight/site that hoards of chattering tour groups can't spoil it. The whole walled area of AW is 500 hectares (that's big). The temple/mortuary (for it might be either) itself is encrusted with age and surmounted by 5 enormous lotus bud turrets like missile silos sprouting out of a craggy and weirdly symmetrical island. The temple faces West, and the sun rose behind it, streaking the sky with pink like a demented artist.
I bought a book on Angkor from a shoeless urchin-
segue way into
DO YOU FEEL LIKE A SPOONFED TOURISTIC CHIMP?
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are paved with backpacker stepping stones. Travellers are all doing some cocktail of the 20 or so key spots. Little shoeless urchins walk around with boxes containing a selection of academic texts on Khmer Rouge, the Vietnam War and the temples, as well as your normal guide books and the Da bloody Vinci Code. And Mr Nice. Why Mr Nice? Who gives a shit about Howard Marks? Every place has its three or four things that tourists do, and people crowd you in the street offering to facilitate your doing of them with a motorbike or some kind of wheelchair bicycle contraption. The backpackers all go to the same couple of bars, usually the ones in the South East Asia Lonely Planet guide, which I've got. I do indeed feel like a spoonfed touristic chimp sometimes, travelling from one highlit place of interest to the next, learning about massacres and genocides and getting pissed and making transitory relationships. Don't think I'm complaining. A cynical self-critic hangs around me like a friend with whom I sometimes can't be bothered but usually find entertaining. Sometimes he is yawning at my neck, and sometimes keeping me awake with interminable whining.
I could leave the beaten track I know, and have done over the last few days. But when you have two weeks to travel through Vietnam, you gotta move your ass. And there's so many friendly people around offering highly convenient all inclusive bus tickets. I feel less like a walking sack of cash here than I did in Cambodia. In fact, in Cambodia I felt more like a fat cow at a meeting of hungry butchers.
BACK TO THE TEMPLES
I bought a book on Angkor from a shoeless urchin and painstakingly read extracts to Dan while we strolled around examining bas reliefs and distinctively Khmer architectural features such as porticos, vaulted ceilings and cruciform passageways. The place is encrusted with Time and stokes the imagination with exploits of another era as I'm sure Machu Picchu must do. Bas reliefs surround the temple detailing Hindu legends and Khmer military exploits. The most memorable one depicts the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
The Churning of the Ocean of Milk - a cockeyed and half-arsed version
Around 1000 gods and 1000 demons both crave the elixir of immortality, obtainable only by Churning the Ocean of Milk. Must have been some kind of cheese. The foes decide to co-operate. They each tug on an enormous snake coiled around a god/mountain, thus turning the mountain and churning the milk. They keep at it for 1000 years (which makes one wonder why they need the elixir of immortality anyway) when - FUCK! - the mountain begins to sink.
Enter Vishnu, who seems to be THE DUDE in all these Hindu legends. He is incarnated as a tortoise. He supports the mountain until the job is done. The gods nab the elixir (thank gods) and many gifts appear, including a three headed elephant, worth a fortune on the ivory market. And thus, cheese is born.
N.B. My irreverent tone in the foregoing passage is not due to any scorn of the Hindu religion or its legends. In fact I love the legends, and Vishnu is a GEEZER.
FACES
The Bayon temple has over 200 faces staring out North, South, East and West from over 50 enormous turrets. The faces are HUGE and weirdly benevolent. No-one knows if it's some buddhisatva or the face of King Jayavaraman VII. I was unable to shed any light on this. Dan and I walked round the temple for an hour or two, literally FACE TO MASSIVE FACE. At the end of the day we happened back past the Bayon, and decided to have another look. 'Oh my god!' exclaimed Dan on approach. 'Have you seen the faces?' Faces, you say?
CHILDREN
Many children hang around the temples. As young as 6, they have a startling knowledge of history. Leeching onto you ('Hello, where you from?') they follow you around spewing out interesting facts about Angkor and Cambodia and then beg for dollars to 'help me at school'. How can you refuse?
In fact children working the streets is endemic along the S. E. Asia tourist trail. They roam around the streets of Phnom Penh, hitting and poking you if you refuse to buy their postcards. There are hundreds of them. I feel a moral quandry about whether to support child labour, combined with an increasing hard-heartedness owing to the sheer number of people who want cash out of you. However this is balanced against the desperation of the kids, and the effect of seeing children wheeling their hideously deformed friends from tourist to tourist. In Saigon chewing gum selling kids are still working the tables outside the bars at 3am, mostly barefoot. So sometimes I bought and sometimes I didn't and mostly I just felt sorry.
BREAKFAST AND PHYSIO
In Angkor Wat Dan and I had breakfast with a couple of English girls, one of whom was a North London Jew (I know - they're everywhere). That night we bumped into them in a bar and played drinking games with a guy called Hedley who later vomited twice on the floor of the Martini club. What was amazing was his utterly blasee attitude about it. I think his brain had shut down all unnecessary feelings to keep him alive. His friend Will was unsupportive, and Dan and I took care of Hedley before emotionally blackmailing his friend to remove him forthwith to his bedchamber. We drank with the girls until 4:30am and then decided to head straight for Angkor Wat for the sunrise. Sadly we just missed it, but sat for a long while staring at the brightening sky reflected in a crystal pond in the compound, clouds occasionally breached by leaping frogs. The girls were both trainee physios and worked our hamstrings in an ancient library. Needless to say we never saw them again. Beware girls who physio and run.
DEAD FISH AND BLIND MASSAGE
Our guesthouse, evocatively named 'The Dead Fish Tower' offered free head massage to all guests. Dan took advantage of this to discover that 'head massage' actually means 'quick shampoo'. We stormed off to get massaged by blind people instead. In a dank crepuscular room I lay face down on a table with my head stuffed in a cushioned hole. My masseur enjoyed clicking bones. 'Is it good to pull each toe until it cracks?' I wondered. Then he folded my leg back onto my bottom and sat on it until it gave out with a deafening POP. I yelped in agony and limped for the rest of the day. Where's a physio when you need one?
PHNOM PENH AND THE KHMER ROUGE
The capital of Cambodia delivered to me the mess of the country with startling vivacity. The poverty and desperation of so many people, bearing scars from the insane Khmer Rouge regime of 25 years ago everywhere are juxtaposed against a stunning confluence of rivers and an exhilerating buzz on the streets. The place is alive, monstrous, fascinating.
My friend Eelco, a Dutch pilot, ska sax player and all round great guy whom I had initially bonded with impersonating fish on Perhentian Island, Malaysia, had a stopover in Kuala Lumpur and flew down to PP to meet me. We went to S21, Tuol Sleng prison, used by the Khmer Rouge to torture 'intellectuals' before sending them off to be executed in the killing fields. Intellectuals was a broad term that included teachers, foreign language speakers, anyone who wore glasses. The place was originally built to be a school, with a series of multistoried buildings facing into a large central courtyard. However, all the classrooms had been converted into cells.
There's something horribly symbolic in the way that schools and temples were transformed into places of detention, torture and death. In the Khmer Rouge 'experiment' education and spirituality meant brutal repression and hideous cruelty.
For high ranking KR officers, there were individual classrooms, which still had the shackles and torture implements lying rustily in the centre. Photos of the brutalised corpses found by the Vietnamese invaders in 1979 hang on the walls. Rank and file prisoners were put in brick cells of 2 square metres crudely put up inside classrooms. Blood stains remain on one of the floors. Medieval instruments of 'interrogation' are in glass boxes. A gallows stands in the centre of the courtyard next to a large pot that was used for dunking people in shit.
But the most affecting is the display of 4000 portrait photos of prisoners taken by the Khmer Rouge before the subjects were executed. The faces are confused, stubborn, normal. Young and old, male and female. All women had the same bob haircut required by the Pol Pot regime. Some had number tags pinned into their chests. They look terrifyingly alive as they stare out at you.
Our guide had been separated from her family at 10 years old and forced to work rice fields 7 days a week dawn to dusk on 6 spoons of porridge a day. A huge amount of rice was produced by the millions of Cambodians who had been evacuated to the countryside and forced to farm, but most of the produce was sold abroad by the government. I saw the killing fields south of Phnom Penh with its dug out mass graves and dizzying tower of skulls. The Cambodians I spoke to told me they don't talk about it, but they all remember. The sheer nonsense of it befuddles me. Two million people killed, for an incomprehensible experiment. All cars, trains, clocks destroyed. Families separated, men and women kept apart. Barely any children born in the 5 years of the regime. Teenage guards at prisons and the killing fields worked for 6 months to a year before being killed themselves. No Cambodians even knew who was in charge at the time. And now amongst the population live people who killed, tortured, perhaps as much the victims as those they killed. I don't understand how the Cambodian people with minimal education can even begin to deal with what happened not thirty years ago. Especially when it makes no sense.
HEART OF DARKNESS
A seedy gothic bar red lit and filled after midnight with tourists, ex-pats, groups of locals, and plenty of working girls. In fact basically all the Cambodian women there are working girls which is a fact I was unaware of at first, thinking that a particular girl 'just liked me'. Always have had a high opinion of myself.
Other entertainment in Phnom Penh includes 'happy herb pizzas'. I indulged in one with an Alex from Texas and a Claire from Edgware, plus 3 other random English girls. I became one of the world's leading pool players for 15 astounding minutes, before suffering an attack of paranoia that a disgruntled motorbike driver was going to break into the cardboard box where I was staying and slit my throat. Actually he didn't, and I employed his services the next day (as moto driver) to his immense gratitude. When you walk in tourist areas of Phnom Penh you get offered, in this order:
Moto? (ie. I'll drive you like a maniac where you want for $1)
Tuk tuk? (ie. I'll trundle you where you want in my golf buggy for $2)
Smoking? (ie. would you like to be overcharged for some shit weed?)
Opium? (ie. would you like to be massively overcharged for some shit opium?)
Boom boom? (have a guess)
With the patience of a wildlife photographer, I said 'no thank you' to each of these requests, which came with relentless regularity from every person I walked past on backpacker alley. My guesthouse was based on a wooden deck that spanned out onto the lake. Bats flew under wooden bridges at night. It was cool.
Colonially, I became rather fond of spending happy hour (5-7pm) at the Foreign Correspondent's Club, which is high above the street and looks out onto the gorgeous Tonle Sap river at sunset. I met some charming Ozzie vets called Kate. My last night in Phnom Penh was spent in Heart of Darkness with Israeli Avi, Edgware Claire and French Sabrina. We danced to shit music and then finished up sitting on the lake as the sky whitened. I packed my bag and boarded the bus to Vietnam.
HIDY HIDY HIDY HO CHI MINH CITY
I love Vietnam. I love the food, the business, the persistence and optimism of the people. Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) is a big dirty city. Great! It's a whirling maelstrom of motorbikes, driven with outrageous audacity. As in Cambodia, it's customary to drive for about 300 metres on the wrong side of the road before turning left. I hung about, went to some bars with a Canadian metaller called Yakob, and did a fair amount of eating.
I ate some strips of beef that I cooked on a personal barbeque at the table. I made friends with a Vietnamese guy in a bar who spends his days in marketing and his nights trying to pull foreign girls. He likes Jamaican girls the best because of their bottoms. His friend was wearing a Dutch football shirt in hommage to his Dutch girlfriend, who also has a big bottom. I think Vietnamese men are bottom-starved.
WAR AND DESTRUCTION AGAIN
The War Remnants Museum is an excellent museum, rather anti-American in stance as one might expect, with an intense selection of war photographs, and a gallery of paintings and sculpture. The US dropped 4 times the amount of explosives on Vietnam than they did anywhere during WWII. The museum included foeti in jars deformed by the chemical warfare deployed by America. The courtyard contains aircraft and enormous guns. I spoke to some Americans who felt uncomfortable. We call it the Vietnam War, but they refer to it as the American Aggression War. The guestbook was filled with anti-American comments from tourists. The war was totally misguided and carried out with insane brutality. I found myself wondering what would have happened had they not invaded. Would the feared 'domino effect' have taken over South East Asia as predicted? Certainly large areas of Laos and Cambodia would not be scarred by craters now. And the Pol Pot regime might never have happened. But these are all what ifs. Some Vietnamese still hate the Americans, but most are looking forward. There is a great drive to become a developed country.
My Vietnamese seamstress friend Hoi's father fought for the US-Saigon army during the war. As a consequence of that she was unable to find work as a lawyer and had to drop out of law school. Most Viets that I speak to say there is a great difference between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and some ill feeling. Saigon is very much a Western city these days, even with hammer and sickle flags draped from lampposts.
A DIRTY BEACH
I 10 hour bussed it to Nha Trang, a rather long beach flanked by mountainous outcrops and coasted by litter. The sea was warm and the waves were high, making the dodging of plastic bags rather difficult. I played pool with a Vietnamese guy called Ben who rather liked me and ended up dancing with him and his 'sister' (not actually his relative) at the Sailing Club, which has big noisy parties every night in a picturesque outdoor setting on the beach. I wisely stashed my bag behind the bar for safekeeping and then unwisely forgot to pick it up before wandering off down the beach with Yakob the Canadian metaller. The beach turned out to be crawling with unbelievably persistent working girls, so I ran away. The next day I picked up my bag. Everything was in it except my nail clippers (darn it) and spare batteries. 'Phew! there's my camera', I thought, only to discover that the rechargable batteries in it had been replaced by dead AA ones, and the battery compartment filled with water. Now the bastard doesn't work. Do you think I could find anyone at the Sailing Club to hold accountable? You might as well try tracking down a dog whose shit you've just stepped in.
Wandering along the beach with my guitar I was called over to a large Vietnamese Californian family whose parents had just married, and were on their honeymoon with their three enormous daughters, who seemed significantly older than their father and mother. They gave me beer and we sang some songs. The new husband had grown up in Nha Trang but skipped the country at 10 years old. His mother and brother (the latter was also there at the beach - he had a piercing whistle) had failed to make it to the bus in time. He had arrived in Boston alone. Apparently there are 300,000 Vietnamese people in California, who are slowly bringing their whole families over through a lengthy sponsorship system. The guy I met was unable to do that because he had changed his name. They gave me a bowl of sweet tofu to taste - delicious!
HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN IN THIS GORGEOUS PLACE?
Hoi An is a small town filled with mazy streets, Chinese temples, tailor shops, and a fantastic market. It's riverside is fringed with sweet cafes serving some of the most delicious food I have had in Asia. Hoi An has plenty of its own specialities from the large Chinese influence, and I have been stuffing my face. I had a suit made for some reason, and was invited out fishing by the seamstress, Hoi. On the back of her bike we sped off some 10 miles out of town to a little village, where we met a few of her friends. They didn't speak much English, or really any, but that was okay. We caught three tiny fish, that flapped on the rock for a while. It's amazing how long they live out of the water. Eventually they found their way back to the polluted river. We sat up at a rooftop cafe and drank beer with ice, smoked cigarettes and chatted. Her friends were lovely. We communicated fairly well considering they didn't speak English. They insisted on paying for everything - Vietnamese culture. Then we went for the obligatory Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) on the street. You sit on plastic kindergarten chairs and get a huge bowl of soup with white flat noodles, strips of beef and vegetables. Simply add fish sauce, chilli paste, and leafs of various herbs, and then scoff with loud slurping noises.
The next day Hoi took me to the Marble Mountain - a huge, um, marble mountain, out of which have been carved a range of pagodas and grottos. Dark caves streaked with green and red contain huge Buddhas. The view from the top reaches the spectacular coastline. Whenever I see a giant Buddha I am always beset with the notion that he might get up and start stomping around smashing buildings and throwing people around. Not sure why. She also took me to meet her family, and to the place she grew up. It has been nice to see a real side to this place, outside the tourist cafes and western faces. I think I could live here, even just for the noodle soup.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Against a backdrop
LONDON
On the first night I've had a tv in two and a half months we switched it on to hear the announcement that London had won the Olympics. On the second night we switched it on an hour after three London Underground trains and one bus had been bombed by terrorists. We sat stunned for three hours watching the chaos unfold, feeling a combination of long-held fears realised and a deep sense of unreality. We stared at the streets we know so well on the television in Cambodia and raced through mental lists of all the commuters we know. Even now as the media and the world digests the news there are still pieces of body being collected far underground in unbearable heat. We phoned and emailed and made contact, and still wonder about those people down there. I miss the city (for the first time), and feel distanced from the mood I am sure is tangible there in the streets. I also feel something else strange - a bubble of nationalistic outrage. Certainly it's been the talk of the travellers. And the next morning we watched the sun rise over the magnificent 1000 year old Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, powerfully reminiscent of a different time filled with different atrocities. I keep thinking about the people affected, and selfishly hoping I don't know any of them. I recall Tony Blair standing in front of a group of the most powerful people in the world, arms rigidly by their sides, faces like waxworks.
On the first night I've had a tv in two and a half months we switched it on to hear the announcement that London had won the Olympics. On the second night we switched it on an hour after three London Underground trains and one bus had been bombed by terrorists. We sat stunned for three hours watching the chaos unfold, feeling a combination of long-held fears realised and a deep sense of unreality. We stared at the streets we know so well on the television in Cambodia and raced through mental lists of all the commuters we know. Even now as the media and the world digests the news there are still pieces of body being collected far underground in unbearable heat. We phoned and emailed and made contact, and still wonder about those people down there. I miss the city (for the first time), and feel distanced from the mood I am sure is tangible there in the streets. I also feel something else strange - a bubble of nationalistic outrage. Certainly it's been the talk of the travellers. And the next morning we watched the sun rise over the magnificent 1000 year old Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, powerfully reminiscent of a different time filled with different atrocities. I keep thinking about the people affected, and selfishly hoping I don't know any of them. I recall Tony Blair standing in front of a group of the most powerful people in the world, arms rigidly by their sides, faces like waxworks.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Backtrack to Laos and forward to Cambodia
DOWN THE PAN
In the en suite bathroom of my room in Luang Prabang was no sign that said 'Pleas put paper in bin, nott in tolet!'. There was also no bin. So I put toilet paper down the toilet, just like the conditioned Westerner that I am. After a few days, the toilet was filled to the brim with liquid of spine chilling colour and throat mangling consistency. I was forced to tell the tiny slightly deformed guy who ran the hostel, who came into my room with three of his friends. Many toilets out here have a little spray hose with a trigger firing action next to the toilet for arse cleaning purposes. Fearless and businesslike, our man set about detaching the trigger, causing a jet of water to start firing out of the hose. He plunged his hand into the toilet up to the shoulder. His three friends gently closed the door, shutting him in there alone. They giggled at me while I sat on the bed mortified. Horrific sounds of splashing and squealing emanated from within the bathroom for ten minutes. Eventually he emerged, soaked in water from head to toe. The bathroom was spotless and the toilet was an apogee of flushable perfection once more. I couldn't look at him. All I could do was sheepishly press a wad of notes probably equal to a week's wages into his hand. He was naturally thrilled.
BIG JUGS
I travelled with Daniel and several to Phonsavan to look at the Plain of Jars. Fields full of unexplained enormous stone jars thousands of years old. They are huge things, hewn out of rock found nowhere nearby. Over 4000 jars in total, but you can only see 1000 because most of the fields are littered with unexploded ordinance from the USA's steady carpet bombing of Laos in the 70's. We took a 'local bus', which means it breaks down every 20 miles and has enormous bags of grit in the aisles. The bus was red and white and resembled something clambered together from scrap metal found at the back of a supermarket. The driver smoked cigarettes constantly, possibly to disguise the black smoke billowing from the engine. My knees were pressed into my head. But it was okay - the journey was only seven hours.
The jars themselves were differently shaped and differently sized, just like countries can be. Some had square holes and some had round ones, just like people can have. One jar in particular was big enough to contain at least three members of the New Zealand rugby team, whilst others could barely have contained a contortionist midget. None of them were filled with sweets or amphetemaines, but some had algae and even flowers.
We visited a Hmong village (a local tribe), where houses and fences have been built out of U.S.A. missile casings. We saw wide expanses of fields studded with enormous craters. Grass grows at the bottom now but the flat land was once blown apart by bombs. Strange to imagine that in peaceful arable land scattered with villages and rice fields.
FIFA KARAOKE AND WHISKY NATIONALISM
I managed to single handedly get all the tourists in Phonsavan to Fifa Karaoke Bar. Their concept of karaoke is to put Chinese karaoke videos on a tv while a DJ plays mix cds of cheesy dance music. However, it was 2 pounds for a litre of whisky. 20 Lao teenage girls danced on the dancefloor in a circle, taking in turns to dance in the centre. The other girls responded to the centre dancer's antics by letting out a collective scream you might otherwise hear at the appearance of headless zombie holding a dead baby and an axe.
Daniel and found ourselves in the street with two French guys and a Canadian. We respectively sung our national anthems while the others respectfully downed shots of whisky. We were then ready for Phonsovan Night Club. It was reminiscent of a Greek restaurant in Finchley, replete with pillars, murals and a fantastic keyboard player who was accompanied by two fat men singing with gusto. There had been some kind of event and the entire party was made up of middle aged Lao types. On the floor they danced in couples, not touching or even looking at each other, but twirling their hands and revolving incredibly slowly while the group as a whole moved round in a larger cirle, as waltzers at a fairground. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they call them waltzers. Did everyone else know this already?
VANG VIEN
...is a tourist strip on the Song River surrounded by vertiginous limestone karsts (cliffs, you dummy). The strip has restaurants which each serve 'special' food, such as marijuana pizza, mushroom shakes, opium tea, spaghetti heroin bolognese and crack waffles. Ok, not the last two. Many of the bars show episodes of Friends all day, which gives you the eerie feeling of being in Hell. Daniel and I acquired a gorgeous bungalow with a charming veranda overlooking the stunning view. I wonder if I might have included a few more positive adjectives in that sentence. Hannah and Emma, from Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Luang Prabang, were there. We all went tubing together along with Daniel's Germans and Irish.
Tubing is sitting on a massive rubber ring and floating surprisingly quickly down a river. In Vang Vien there are little bars alongside the river, where men with long sticks hook you in for a drink. Actually getting over to the side in time can be tricky. I had to watch Dan torn away from me by the current, screaming and clutching in vain at flimsy branches only to disappear round the corner. May I never see such a sight again. Caught up with him later in a bar. He had gallantly reentered the water to rescue Katrin (one of our Germans) and managed to sustain serious scratches on his arm as well as puncturing his tube. That's what you get. The bar had a swing on which you stand while three guys run up the hill pulling you back on a rope. There is a moment when you are thirty feet above the water, horizontal, staring straight downwards, when they release, and you hurtle downwards, skimming the water before being thrown in. For the rest of the way down the river I had to drag Dan alongside me on his deflated bit of rubber. We stopped several more times, being handed shots of Lao Lao whiskey (rather like sake's demented cousin). We were quite merry by the end and sailed well past our get off point, necessitating a 2km walk back to town. Fantastic.
VIENTIANE TO SIEM REAP IN 30 SHORT HOURS
Spurning Southern Laos and dodgy border crossings, Daniel and I opted for:
Vientiane to Bangkok - 11 hours
Bangkok bus station - 1 hour
Bangkok to Arunya Pathet (Thai border) - 7 hours
Cambodian Immigration and waiting for bus - 4 hours
Poyet - Siem Reap - 9 hours
Travel incident 1:
Laos immigration forgot to give me an exit stamp, so when we arrived on our bus at Thai immigration, they refused me entry. Our bus would not wait very long - it had to catch the connecting bus to Bangkok in the bus station. Er.. so did we. The Thai immigration officials were stonily intransigent. 'It's not my fault!' I wailed. They pointed back to Laos. I wildly banged on the estate car of a well-to-do Thai couple and begged them to take across the bridge to Laos immigration. Then I coralled a young Thai guy listening to rock music in his pick-up truck to take me back to Thai immigration. Daniel stood forlornly with our bags - our bus had gone. We boarded a tuk tuk which drove us torturously slowly towards our bus station, resigning ourselves to spending the night in wherever-the-fuck-we-were. But in the bus station, like a shaft of light penetrating the bleakest dawn, was our bus, all kitted out with pink frilly curtains and free cans of coke. I blissfully sank into the seat, my feeling of elation only partially undermined by the deafening volume of the Thai pantomime they were showing on the tv.
Travel incident 2:
I left my guitar on the bus at the Thai-Cambodian border. I realised when we were almost at immigration in a tuk tuk. We returned and I ran around in the midday heat from bus to bus. I frantically boarded 7 buses, but none was ours. Finally our tuk tuk driver stepped in, like Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man when he has just been defrosted. He made a few calls and took us round some side streets to a barren country road, where our bus was sitting happily by the side of the road. My guitar had sustained a serious neck injury, but nothing that Cambodian glue can't fix.
Travel incident 3:
The road to Siem Reap from the border makes a quarry look like the M1. The distance is 120km but the journey takes 9 hours. Car-sized holes abound, and so do the passengers in the bus, up clear off the seat. We stopped occasionally to be mobbed by the cutest kids in the world selling stuff we didn't want. 'No thanks,' I said, several times, and then bought a pack of postcards, a bracelet, a drink and gave several donations. Cambodians are very pushy, and know how to use extremely cute kids to full financial advantage.
BYE FOR LAO
It is a beautiful country. Wonderfully relaxed, though that might be because most of the people don't have jobs. It's one of the poorest countries in the world, yet the people are so much less pushy than Thais or Cambodians. Might be the opium. Beer Lao is the elixir of immortality, though it makes you sleepy. The cliffs are astounding. I missed the 4000 islands in Southern Laos, but I figure I can go to the 3000 islands in North Vietnam and just take a bottle of thousand island dressing. I didn't do Laos justice; it's so hard to cram everything in. Or even anything. Not that I'm complaining. Hannah went off to Thailand so our frequent meetings along the way are at an end. Daniel has also gone the way of the Thai islands, and I'm now travelling alone for the first time. Daniel was an unexpected blessing, and we had a great time together. Now, for the open road, with only a brown paper bag and a plastic windcheater for company. I'll tell you about Angkor another time. If anybody's out there.
In the en suite bathroom of my room in Luang Prabang was no sign that said 'Pleas put paper in bin, nott in tolet!'. There was also no bin. So I put toilet paper down the toilet, just like the conditioned Westerner that I am. After a few days, the toilet was filled to the brim with liquid of spine chilling colour and throat mangling consistency. I was forced to tell the tiny slightly deformed guy who ran the hostel, who came into my room with three of his friends. Many toilets out here have a little spray hose with a trigger firing action next to the toilet for arse cleaning purposes. Fearless and businesslike, our man set about detaching the trigger, causing a jet of water to start firing out of the hose. He plunged his hand into the toilet up to the shoulder. His three friends gently closed the door, shutting him in there alone. They giggled at me while I sat on the bed mortified. Horrific sounds of splashing and squealing emanated from within the bathroom for ten minutes. Eventually he emerged, soaked in water from head to toe. The bathroom was spotless and the toilet was an apogee of flushable perfection once more. I couldn't look at him. All I could do was sheepishly press a wad of notes probably equal to a week's wages into his hand. He was naturally thrilled.
BIG JUGS
I travelled with Daniel and several to Phonsavan to look at the Plain of Jars. Fields full of unexplained enormous stone jars thousands of years old. They are huge things, hewn out of rock found nowhere nearby. Over 4000 jars in total, but you can only see 1000 because most of the fields are littered with unexploded ordinance from the USA's steady carpet bombing of Laos in the 70's. We took a 'local bus', which means it breaks down every 20 miles and has enormous bags of grit in the aisles. The bus was red and white and resembled something clambered together from scrap metal found at the back of a supermarket. The driver smoked cigarettes constantly, possibly to disguise the black smoke billowing from the engine. My knees were pressed into my head. But it was okay - the journey was only seven hours.
The jars themselves were differently shaped and differently sized, just like countries can be. Some had square holes and some had round ones, just like people can have. One jar in particular was big enough to contain at least three members of the New Zealand rugby team, whilst others could barely have contained a contortionist midget. None of them were filled with sweets or amphetemaines, but some had algae and even flowers.
We visited a Hmong village (a local tribe), where houses and fences have been built out of U.S.A. missile casings. We saw wide expanses of fields studded with enormous craters. Grass grows at the bottom now but the flat land was once blown apart by bombs. Strange to imagine that in peaceful arable land scattered with villages and rice fields.
FIFA KARAOKE AND WHISKY NATIONALISM
I managed to single handedly get all the tourists in Phonsavan to Fifa Karaoke Bar. Their concept of karaoke is to put Chinese karaoke videos on a tv while a DJ plays mix cds of cheesy dance music. However, it was 2 pounds for a litre of whisky. 20 Lao teenage girls danced on the dancefloor in a circle, taking in turns to dance in the centre. The other girls responded to the centre dancer's antics by letting out a collective scream you might otherwise hear at the appearance of headless zombie holding a dead baby and an axe.
Daniel and found ourselves in the street with two French guys and a Canadian. We respectively sung our national anthems while the others respectfully downed shots of whisky. We were then ready for Phonsovan Night Club. It was reminiscent of a Greek restaurant in Finchley, replete with pillars, murals and a fantastic keyboard player who was accompanied by two fat men singing with gusto. There had been some kind of event and the entire party was made up of middle aged Lao types. On the floor they danced in couples, not touching or even looking at each other, but twirling their hands and revolving incredibly slowly while the group as a whole moved round in a larger cirle, as waltzers at a fairground. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they call them waltzers. Did everyone else know this already?
VANG VIEN
...is a tourist strip on the Song River surrounded by vertiginous limestone karsts (cliffs, you dummy). The strip has restaurants which each serve 'special' food, such as marijuana pizza, mushroom shakes, opium tea, spaghetti heroin bolognese and crack waffles. Ok, not the last two. Many of the bars show episodes of Friends all day, which gives you the eerie feeling of being in Hell. Daniel and I acquired a gorgeous bungalow with a charming veranda overlooking the stunning view. I wonder if I might have included a few more positive adjectives in that sentence. Hannah and Emma, from Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Luang Prabang, were there. We all went tubing together along with Daniel's Germans and Irish.
Tubing is sitting on a massive rubber ring and floating surprisingly quickly down a river. In Vang Vien there are little bars alongside the river, where men with long sticks hook you in for a drink. Actually getting over to the side in time can be tricky. I had to watch Dan torn away from me by the current, screaming and clutching in vain at flimsy branches only to disappear round the corner. May I never see such a sight again. Caught up with him later in a bar. He had gallantly reentered the water to rescue Katrin (one of our Germans) and managed to sustain serious scratches on his arm as well as puncturing his tube. That's what you get. The bar had a swing on which you stand while three guys run up the hill pulling you back on a rope. There is a moment when you are thirty feet above the water, horizontal, staring straight downwards, when they release, and you hurtle downwards, skimming the water before being thrown in. For the rest of the way down the river I had to drag Dan alongside me on his deflated bit of rubber. We stopped several more times, being handed shots of Lao Lao whiskey (rather like sake's demented cousin). We were quite merry by the end and sailed well past our get off point, necessitating a 2km walk back to town. Fantastic.
VIENTIANE TO SIEM REAP IN 30 SHORT HOURS
Spurning Southern Laos and dodgy border crossings, Daniel and I opted for:
Vientiane to Bangkok - 11 hours
Bangkok bus station - 1 hour
Bangkok to Arunya Pathet (Thai border) - 7 hours
Cambodian Immigration and waiting for bus - 4 hours
Poyet - Siem Reap - 9 hours
Travel incident 1:
Laos immigration forgot to give me an exit stamp, so when we arrived on our bus at Thai immigration, they refused me entry. Our bus would not wait very long - it had to catch the connecting bus to Bangkok in the bus station. Er.. so did we. The Thai immigration officials were stonily intransigent. 'It's not my fault!' I wailed. They pointed back to Laos. I wildly banged on the estate car of a well-to-do Thai couple and begged them to take across the bridge to Laos immigration. Then I coralled a young Thai guy listening to rock music in his pick-up truck to take me back to Thai immigration. Daniel stood forlornly with our bags - our bus had gone. We boarded a tuk tuk which drove us torturously slowly towards our bus station, resigning ourselves to spending the night in wherever-the-fuck-we-were. But in the bus station, like a shaft of light penetrating the bleakest dawn, was our bus, all kitted out with pink frilly curtains and free cans of coke. I blissfully sank into the seat, my feeling of elation only partially undermined by the deafening volume of the Thai pantomime they were showing on the tv.
Travel incident 2:
I left my guitar on the bus at the Thai-Cambodian border. I realised when we were almost at immigration in a tuk tuk. We returned and I ran around in the midday heat from bus to bus. I frantically boarded 7 buses, but none was ours. Finally our tuk tuk driver stepped in, like Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man when he has just been defrosted. He made a few calls and took us round some side streets to a barren country road, where our bus was sitting happily by the side of the road. My guitar had sustained a serious neck injury, but nothing that Cambodian glue can't fix.
Travel incident 3:
The road to Siem Reap from the border makes a quarry look like the M1. The distance is 120km but the journey takes 9 hours. Car-sized holes abound, and so do the passengers in the bus, up clear off the seat. We stopped occasionally to be mobbed by the cutest kids in the world selling stuff we didn't want. 'No thanks,' I said, several times, and then bought a pack of postcards, a bracelet, a drink and gave several donations. Cambodians are very pushy, and know how to use extremely cute kids to full financial advantage.
BYE FOR LAO
It is a beautiful country. Wonderfully relaxed, though that might be because most of the people don't have jobs. It's one of the poorest countries in the world, yet the people are so much less pushy than Thais or Cambodians. Might be the opium. Beer Lao is the elixir of immortality, though it makes you sleepy. The cliffs are astounding. I missed the 4000 islands in Southern Laos, but I figure I can go to the 3000 islands in North Vietnam and just take a bottle of thousand island dressing. I didn't do Laos justice; it's so hard to cram everything in. Or even anything. Not that I'm complaining. Hannah went off to Thailand so our frequent meetings along the way are at an end. Daniel has also gone the way of the Thai islands, and I'm now travelling alone for the first time. Daniel was an unexpected blessing, and we had a great time together. Now, for the open road, with only a brown paper bag and a plastic windcheater for company. I'll tell you about Angkor another time. If anybody's out there.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
The People's Democratic Republic of Laos
SPANIEL KILLER
My grandma used to say to me, 'No sooner have you lost one Dan than you find another in an Indochinese night market.'
I finally understood what she meant when, wandering among the stalls of Luang Prabang, I was approached by Daniel Miller. We had lived round the corner from each other through our formative teenage years, travelled to and from school together every day, and even had the occasional conversation. You don't get much closer than that. Neither of us had known the other was in Laos. I naturally had to fire two of my communications team, which means my having to write this post myself. In fact Dan and I had planned to meet in Hong Kong in about a month. But there we were face to face on a dusty brown street lined with fine fabrics and ceramic Buddhas. Later we discovered we were staying on the same little alley in opposite guesthouses. Fate has a backpack, and it's full of flowers.
Dan had collected a large group of people, like a good boy. In Luang Prabang (or 'lung problem' - D. Berelowitz) the tourists actually do come in by the boatload. Every day one may see large groups of people chatting and eating together like old friends or members of an apocalypse cult - they have all travelled together for two days on the same hard wooden benches. It creates a sense of shared destiny. In his collection Dan had some Italians, Germans, Dutch, Danish and Irish. He is planning to exhibit them in Earl's Court.
THE CAT AND THE FROG
I said goodbye to Cameron the Ozzie over a beer as we walked downside the Mekong. It was late and most places were shut up in accordance with the Government's dictat. We were quarrelling over the exact meaning of 'ignorant' when we noticed a grand double door lit up with flourescent strip lights.
In the globe of light were hundreds of moths. Not sturdy British style moths but flimsy ones with bright orange plastic bodies and tan wings that fall off at the slightest provocation. They were out in force. Perhaps they were only alive for a day. Certainly they were dying profusely. The light itself was clouded with the living. On the floor, the concrete step was carpeted with wings and moths in their death throes, vibrating wildly as they desperately guzzled their last sips of Life.
Among the half dead and the fully dead was a cat. The cat hugged the door, walking backwards and forwards and stuffing it's face with pawfuls of moths. It had wings sticking out from its mouth. It barely even toyed with them. It was like the unconscious movement of a fat man's hand travelling from pretzel dish to mouth as he watches the football.
Working alongside the cat was a large frog. The frog began in the thick of it, but moved down a few steps to the outskirts. These were the stragglers and the hopeless, fallen down horribly far from the light that drives them crazy with instinctive desire. The frog was chowing down. His belly sagged on the floor as he stood in front of a flightless moth buzzing on the floor. He'd stand with immense gravitas for a few seconds - waiting for something? - and then WHOOP - the insect would fly into his mouth as if sucked up by a powerful vacuum. The tongue was invisible - too fast.
The frog must have eaten about 30 moths while we stood there. The cat possibly an even tally. Who knows how many they'd eaten before we even arrived? We had the sense we were watching an experiment unfold. Humans had put the light and the cat there, the moths blindly chased a moon and the frog was an opportunist. The blindly wild moths came on and on and the feast continued. I felt blessed.
TURNOVER
People come and people go. Most travellers have a bold sense of Itinerary. Mine grows paler and more flaccid by the day. I ended up staying in LPB for a WEEK. Such a timeframe is abhorrent to your average backpacker. I spit in their figurative face - it is charming. I want to stay everywhere but now I have Daniel spurring me on with puppy-like zeal.
Cameron and lovely Iris and Hester from Holland moved on from LPB like good travellers. I stayed like a bum. Hannah from Bangkok and Chiang Mai turned up with her friend Emma. They are wonderful drinking partners. Hannah and I made it to some disappointing caves crammed with broken Buddhas. Less disappointing was the luxury boat we cheeked our way onto back to the city. It had been commissioned by three Austrailian hotel execs, and was filled with comfortable seats and wine that were lying unused. Down the Mekong in style this time.
I would consider myself an expert on Luang Prabang's toilets thanks to the Diarrhoea fairy. I exceeded 15 times in one day for which I think I deserve some kind of civic award.
BIG JUGS
This chapter will have to wait, along with the one after, which doesn't even have a title yet.
HOW I CRUSHED DAN'S RESOLVE
Dan had intended to go straight from Vientiane to Bangkok and onwards to the islands. Until he met me. With satanic persuasiveness I convinced him to accompany me to Siem Reap to see the famous Angkor Wat, jewel of the Angkor Empire and Wonder of the World. In fact, we are about to take two 12 hour bus journies back to back to get there. Wish me luck and a bag of valium.
My grandma used to say to me, 'No sooner have you lost one Dan than you find another in an Indochinese night market.'
I finally understood what she meant when, wandering among the stalls of Luang Prabang, I was approached by Daniel Miller. We had lived round the corner from each other through our formative teenage years, travelled to and from school together every day, and even had the occasional conversation. You don't get much closer than that. Neither of us had known the other was in Laos. I naturally had to fire two of my communications team, which means my having to write this post myself. In fact Dan and I had planned to meet in Hong Kong in about a month. But there we were face to face on a dusty brown street lined with fine fabrics and ceramic Buddhas. Later we discovered we were staying on the same little alley in opposite guesthouses. Fate has a backpack, and it's full of flowers.
Dan had collected a large group of people, like a good boy. In Luang Prabang (or 'lung problem' - D. Berelowitz) the tourists actually do come in by the boatload. Every day one may see large groups of people chatting and eating together like old friends or members of an apocalypse cult - they have all travelled together for two days on the same hard wooden benches. It creates a sense of shared destiny. In his collection Dan had some Italians, Germans, Dutch, Danish and Irish. He is planning to exhibit them in Earl's Court.
THE CAT AND THE FROG
I said goodbye to Cameron the Ozzie over a beer as we walked downside the Mekong. It was late and most places were shut up in accordance with the Government's dictat. We were quarrelling over the exact meaning of 'ignorant' when we noticed a grand double door lit up with flourescent strip lights.
In the globe of light were hundreds of moths. Not sturdy British style moths but flimsy ones with bright orange plastic bodies and tan wings that fall off at the slightest provocation. They were out in force. Perhaps they were only alive for a day. Certainly they were dying profusely. The light itself was clouded with the living. On the floor, the concrete step was carpeted with wings and moths in their death throes, vibrating wildly as they desperately guzzled their last sips of Life.
Among the half dead and the fully dead was a cat. The cat hugged the door, walking backwards and forwards and stuffing it's face with pawfuls of moths. It had wings sticking out from its mouth. It barely even toyed with them. It was like the unconscious movement of a fat man's hand travelling from pretzel dish to mouth as he watches the football.
Working alongside the cat was a large frog. The frog began in the thick of it, but moved down a few steps to the outskirts. These were the stragglers and the hopeless, fallen down horribly far from the light that drives them crazy with instinctive desire. The frog was chowing down. His belly sagged on the floor as he stood in front of a flightless moth buzzing on the floor. He'd stand with immense gravitas for a few seconds - waiting for something? - and then WHOOP - the insect would fly into his mouth as if sucked up by a powerful vacuum. The tongue was invisible - too fast.
The frog must have eaten about 30 moths while we stood there. The cat possibly an even tally. Who knows how many they'd eaten before we even arrived? We had the sense we were watching an experiment unfold. Humans had put the light and the cat there, the moths blindly chased a moon and the frog was an opportunist. The blindly wild moths came on and on and the feast continued. I felt blessed.
TURNOVER
People come and people go. Most travellers have a bold sense of Itinerary. Mine grows paler and more flaccid by the day. I ended up staying in LPB for a WEEK. Such a timeframe is abhorrent to your average backpacker. I spit in their figurative face - it is charming. I want to stay everywhere but now I have Daniel spurring me on with puppy-like zeal.
Cameron and lovely Iris and Hester from Holland moved on from LPB like good travellers. I stayed like a bum. Hannah from Bangkok and Chiang Mai turned up with her friend Emma. They are wonderful drinking partners. Hannah and I made it to some disappointing caves crammed with broken Buddhas. Less disappointing was the luxury boat we cheeked our way onto back to the city. It had been commissioned by three Austrailian hotel execs, and was filled with comfortable seats and wine that were lying unused. Down the Mekong in style this time.
I would consider myself an expert on Luang Prabang's toilets thanks to the Diarrhoea fairy. I exceeded 15 times in one day for which I think I deserve some kind of civic award.
BIG JUGS
This chapter will have to wait, along with the one after, which doesn't even have a title yet.
HOW I CRUSHED DAN'S RESOLVE
Dan had intended to go straight from Vientiane to Bangkok and onwards to the islands. Until he met me. With satanic persuasiveness I convinced him to accompany me to Siem Reap to see the famous Angkor Wat, jewel of the Angkor Empire and Wonder of the World. In fact, we are about to take two 12 hour bus journies back to back to get there. Wish me luck and a bag of valium.
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