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We had four nights in Bangkok, which is not enough to do this city justice. The city itself is huge, with sprawling spaghetti overpasses, skyscrapers, shopping malls, street hawkers and the Skytrain, which is excellent. The first day I just went shopping, mainly for other people's computers, as three people bought new ones in Pantip Plaza, five floors of tech heaven. I remain computer-less, as my choice of machine is apparently unavailable here.
Being a tourist in Bangkok seems to result in weird experiences happening quite regularly. Tim, one of our crew, was contacted by a producer from TAN, an English language Thai TV channel, who had seen the truck and was interested in interviewing him for a segment on one of their shows. Tim, being the fine, stand-up bloke that he is, immediately volunteered four of us to do it instead, including me. So the stage was set, the camera crew and interviewer arrived the next day and started filming us and the truck. It turned out quite well as it happens, the questions were well thought out and allowed for decent answers and the volunteers performed well imho.
One question they asked of all of us was, "Where is your favourite place on the truck?" My favourite is the roof seats, and they were quite impressed when we showed them how they worked. It is rather surreal sitting on the roof of the truck in the middle of Bangkok with a cameraman standing at the far end whilst explaining what my definition of the truck is. This is my second TV appearance on this trip, the first was in a rooftop restaurant in Lhasa, but the difference here is that we will get DVDs of the finished show, which should be good for a laugh.
Weird TV show out of the way, experiencing Thai culture was next on the agenda. I visited the Grand Palace, which is the main residence of the Royal family here, making it the equivalent of Buckingham Palace in the UK. Here though, it is more of a complex of buildings than just one. It is, as you would expect, magnificent, with ornate buildings, a museum housing coins and Royal clothes and jewellery, and dress guards on either side of the entrance. What I did not expect were the squads of real, heavily armed guards dotted around the place: clearly here they err on the side of caution. I did want to see the reclining Buddha statue near the Palace, but it was so hot that I gave up and went back to the hotel.
There are a few men on the trip who are, like me, single, and so no trip to Bangkok would be complete without a visit to the red light district to see a ping pong show. Well, I did say that experiencing Thai culture was next!
We tried to find our own ping pong show but ended up in an establishment which was probably the worst strip club in the world. It was indescribably bad, suffice it to say that I did not think it was possible to be so turned off in a room full of naked women. Bangkok has no shortage of strip clubs, however, and it was easy to find a better one. It is not easy to find ping pong though, and we eventually had to admit defeat and ask a tuk-tuk driver to take us to one.
So here we were, watching unusually talented ladies do unusual things with no clothes on. What made it even more odd was the rest of the small crowd watching: all tourists, mainly women, some Japanese businessmen, all clapping politely when the performer did her thing. It must be odd to be talented in this department, there are not many career options open to one with such skills. Perhaps this is for the best.
Pics are Bangkok from one of the many motorway overpasses, a part of the Palace and a detail from a mural inside the Palace. No ping pong pics unfortunately.
We only have six nights in Cambodia, and now, on the last night, I can say that this is nowhere near enough. I will definitely come back here at some point, there is so much of the country we simply haven't had time to see.
However, what we have seen has been great. Our first stop, the capital Phnom Penh, was a surprisingly pleasant city which I really enjoyed. Wat Phnom, the legendary location of the founding of the city is a pretty temple on a small hill populated mainly by beggars and monkeys, and is almost the only touristy bit of the city I saw. This is partly due to the rain, which is torrential when it decides to appear.
We took a tour the next day which visited the decidedly miserable Tuol Sleng genocide museum, and the infamous Killing Fields. The museum is housed in a complex which was a prison during the days of the Khmer Rouge for important prisoners like political enemies and intellectuals. Before this it was a secondary school. It is a strangely sterile place to visit, with no feeling left of the acts which took place there, but this doesn't mean it leaves you unaffected.
The Killing Fields are actually only one of dozens of similar sites dotted across Cambodia, where mass executions took place, this site just happens to be the one nearest Phnom Penh, and the one used for the prisoners in Tuol Sleng. It is now a memorial to the people who died there, with a monument containing the skulls and clothes of the people exhumed from one of the mass graves there. Again, it is grim, and again, it feels unexpectedly inert, as if time has washed the slate clean of the horrors of the past. The tour walks you through the now beautiful and peaceful paths meandering past the unexcavated mass graves, where it is common to see pieces of clothing and bone coming to the surface of the ground. The guide waits until you are standing on them before he points this out.
In comparison to the war related sights I saw in Vietnam, Cambodia seems to have been able to leave the past behind and move on, I feel that Vietnam still hurts from their recent conflict.
From Phnom Penh it was off to Battambang, the second city of Cambodia, although you would be hard-pressed to believe it. It looks and feels like a Wild West town, but perhaps fortunately we only stayed one night here to be able to get the boat to Siem Reap the next day.
The boat was optional, and cost us foreigners $18. I think the locals paid closer to $5. This was to be the way of things in Cambodia. Regardless, the boat trip was pretty cool, the fields were all flooded and it was impossible to see where the river was at times, the pilot had, however, obviously done this many times before. We passed through several floating villages which were amazing to see, some buildings were on stilts to get above the water, whilst others simply floated on the top. The local schools had flights of steps leading to the water's edge, there were floating pigstys and chicken coops and a mobile phone mast on stilts. Some floating houses even had pool tables inside, don't ask me how they got them in there, or how they play pool on a wobbly boat.
Siem Reap is a town which is booming thanks to its proximity to Angkor Wat, and the hordes of tourists that it attracts. The town itself is tourist central, with loads of hotels, restaurants, bars, and high prices. To be fair, if you had just flown in from the UK, you would think that it was all quite cheap, but compared to what it should cost here, Siem Reap is a rip-off.
The complex of temples around Angkor Wat however, is worth every penny, and then some. We only had time to see the small circle, which includes just the most famous temples, but even this was amazing. The highlight was of course the Tomb Raider temple, which I think is called Ta Prohm. Walking through this temple is just like being in a computer game: it is so different to anything else that it is difficult to suspend your disbelief even though it is all real. Also, you can pretty much wander wherever you want, through collapsing doorways, over rubble, up on top of roofs, and no one says anything, just like a computer game.
We have one more night in Siem Reap, and then off to Bangkok for four nights of hedonistic mayhem.
Pics are the Tomb Raider temple, our luxury boat to Siem Reap, some floating houses and the skyline of Phnom Penh.
After a rather epic minibus journey we arrived at Jungle Beach resort near Nha Trang, where it was dark already so we couldn't see much of the place although I could see that my accommodation was another bamboo hut. The following morning showed us the fantastically beautiful location we were in with a gorgeous beach and warm sea to swim in. It turned out to be a resort for relaxing, and not much else, as we were quite far from anything touristy. This was a nice change for a while, but I get bored of doing nothing and three nights of this was enough for me.
We took the day train to Saigon after the R&R on the beach, this was an experience. Soft class seats, the best on the train, were reminiscent of British Rail in the early Eighties, with torn seat covers, seats that reclined only when they wanted to, and very little luggage space. One good thing was the food on the train: very tasty and quite cheap, a bit of a surprise really.
Saigon was like the chalk to Jungle Beach's cheese, a massively busy metropolis which seemingly never sleeps. I visited the War Remnants museum, which was undeniably one-sided but this could be forgiven since it is the side we never see in the West. It is not a pleasant experience to see this museum, the images inside are brutal and graphic, but it does show vividly the futility of war. The area of the museum which I found most difficult to deal with was the part showing the children born since the end of the war with massively deformed bodies or strange syndromes due to Agent Orange. I found myself edging farther and farther from the displays: I did not want to see this. Only later did I realise that this was the reason for the high number of people I saw in Vietnam with deformities, it just didn't click before.
The next day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, another remnant from the war. This was quite regimented and touristy but still gave some of the atmosphere of really being there. The guide leads you through paths cleared in the jungle, past bamboo booby traps laid for American soldiers to fall into, B52 bomb craters and finally to the tunnel entrances, where we could visit only the first of three tunnel levels, the lower two being too small for Westerners. The atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the nearby gunnery range: the sound of machine gun fire echoed constantly through the jungle and gave some idea of what it must have been like to fight there.
We got a boat back to Saigon, which went past some of the most expensive housing I have seen in Vietnam, and some of the slums as well, which reminded me a bit of Sao Paulo: the divide between rich and poor is just as great here.
I am writing this on the bus to Cambodia, which is slowly filling up with other people's huge quantities of luggage. Pics are Tim contemplating the train in Nha Trang station, and some slums next to the river in Saigon. Next stop Phnom Penh.
We got a chance to spend two nights in an eco-lodge deep in Phu Hin Bun National Park: we were supposed to be camping but this proved to be impossible for various reasons. I was not particularly looking forward to this, but how wrong I was.
The place we stayed in was two hours drive from the main road, so it was rural enough already, but then we had to take boats for 40 minutes as well! The boats were small wooden things which seated three plus the pilot, who also had to periodically bail out the water which flooded the bottom of the boat. This adventure out of the way, we arrived, and found our accommodation. This varied in standard somewhat, mine was a bamboo hut containing two hard beds with mosquito nets, a light, and nothing else. Even by the standards of this journey this was very basic accommodation!
The national Park was apparently most known for its huge cave system which the river flowed through, so we all booked on a trip through the caves for the following day. This made the whole journey worthwhile: this cave was vast. It is accessible by boat, and is 7.5km long! It is big enough for a cathedral to fit inside in maybe half a dozen different places, and a church almost everywhere else. It really is astonishing, the sheer size of it is barely believable, the rock formations inside are fantastic and we even met fishermen inside in the dark. If this cave was in Europe it would be a national treasure, famous around the world, but because it is in a remote part of a remote country, it is virtually unknown.
The house speciality of the eco-lodge restaurant where we were staying was whole roast pig, so we had to order it for the last night, it would be rude not to. It was in fact roast piglet rather than pig, and the two piglets needed for our meal made a lot of noise in the morning, which was slightly unnerving to us Westerners used to pre-dead food. In any event, the food was excellent once cooked over an open fire for the whole day.
To get to Hue in Vietnam we went via Savannakhet in Laos, which is a fairly uninteresting town. We had to leave the truck here, because Vietnam wouldn't let it over the border. So we bussed it to Hue, which is a great place to spend a few days. Nothing ever goes completely smoothly though, our bus had a blown tyre on route.
Unfortunately we only had one full day in Hue, which I used to visit the beautiful Imperial palace. It was bombed heavily in the Vietnam war, and so is in the process of being restored, but until all the work is finished it is possible to see the bullet holes and shell damage.
One more bus took us to Hoi An, where I am writing this. I really enjoyed Hoi An, the old town was mostly pleasant to wander around: the two downsides being annoying street sellers and the fierce heat. The highlight however was definitely the nearby beach, where the sea breeze made the heat much more bearable. There were jetskis available for hire there too, they were so good I hired one twice, fell in once and got sunburnt into the bargain!
We're off to a beach resort near Nha Trang now, 11 hours on a minibus. Pics of Denis helping out with the blown tyre on our bus, and the beach at Hoi An.
We've been in Laos now for about a week, it is a welcome change from China. Don't get me wrong, I loved China, even with the stupid bureaucracy, but the cities all felt very similar: the same massive selection of shops trying to sell the same massive selection of products to almost no-one.
Laos is hugely different, in almost every way. The infrastructure is basic to non-existent, the population is sparse, prices are even lower than China and it rains. A lot. Actually the rain can be a relief because the humidity has so far been hard to cope with, for me, anyway. Laos is also the first country I have visited in which you can occasionally see World Vision and other charitable organization's offices around the place. It must be a sufficiently "poor" country to warrant the intervention of these agencies, although, to my eyes, it does seem slightly patronizing for the well-meaning West to rush to help all these people who appear quite content thank you very much.
Anyway, back to the trip, and Laos is a very laid back country, not a lot happens quickly here. This is changing fast though, the more I see of the country, the more touristy it is getting. I can well understand why, with tourist prices being maybe three to five times local prices, but still half of European prices. As far as I can see, if you wanted to see the "real" Laos, it has already virtually disappeared, at least from the easily accessible places.
I went kayaking for a day in Luang Prabang, which was excellent, and included lunch at a waterfall where you could go swimming, and ride an elephant! I did both. The elephants here are much smaller than the African ones, but they are still not exactly small, and they were just as eager to be fed as the African ones I met years ago. Riding an elephant involves sitting on a seat a bit like a park bench on its back, but with a fairground ride safety bar on the front. The elephant then does its thing under the command of a mahout, the handler, who sits on its neck. All you have to do is hang on, as you get flung around when the elephant goes up and down hills: the reason for the safety bar is blindingly obvious.
The elephant ride takes place directly in the waterfall, which is more like dozens of small falls in the middle of the forest. The trees all grow directly out of the rock, which seems impossible until you try to break the rock on a tree trunk: it is about an inch thick but fairly soft and cracks easily. The water in the stream must be very high in minerals to deposit so much onto the trees. This water is just the right temperature to cool you down in the heat of the day, and is great to swim in too, which is what most of us did before lunch.
After lunch was just lazy kayaking back down the river, but I personally would have been happier with just the half day, as I got sunburn and sore knees from the unnatural exertion: I'm just not fit enough for this! Or tanned enough, yet.
I would love to tell you about Vang Vieng, but I was rubbish ill there and never left the hotel, so I can't. In fact, I'm still not 100% so my experience of Vientiane is also limited, unfortunately.
Vientiane is clearly where all the money in Laos is, it is still a little sleepy by the standards of a city but it is a city. Lots of bars, restaurants, and not a few old fat foreign men with tiny young local women. Seediness aside, it is quite a pleasant city, with impressive wats and the mighty Mekong never far away.
We have been given the details for the optional trip extension to Borneo now, and we have until we leave Laos to finalize our booking. I have decided that it is too good an opportunity to miss, and so will be travelling to Borneo after Singapore for three weeks! Jungles, beasties, orangutans and Brunei, all await on the island of Borneo! It's going to be great.
The pics are all around Vientiane, one showing the storm clouds but hiding the three mobile phone masts behind That Dam, the pointy stone thing. It can be a pretty city, in the right place.
Even two days before we arrived in Laos, it was obvious that we were in Southeast Asia. The climate and surroundings had changed so much from what I had seen up until then: paddy fields, rubber and banana plantations and just plain jungle became the norm. Laos and China just feel different too, Laos is much more relaxed and laid back than frenetic China.
On the way to the border we were supposed to camp for three nights, but we hadn't counted on every available flat space being a field of some sort. The first night we ended up camping at the side of the road next to a virtual cliff in the jungle, an unusual campsite made even more interesting by the torrential rain and the ant invasion of our tent. The second night we spent in a hotel in Jinghong due to the continuing downpour which turned out to be quite enjoyable: it is a cool little town to wander around. I also got my hair cut here, those who know me will know what an era-defining moment this was! We missed out the last camp, thankfully, as it was still raining and there was still nowhere to camp, and we crossed into Laos a day early.
Our first stop in Laos was the sleepy little town of Luang Nam Tha, cute, prone to power outages and very humid, this so far seems to be the pattern in Laos. We spent two nights there, then moved to Muang Ngoy for one night where we had a great guesthouse room overlooking the river. This river was our transport the next day to Luang Prabang on a noisy long wooden boat. It doesn't sound very pleasant, but it was really great to travel on the river. We even stopped at the Pakou Caves which were quite impressive Buddhist cave temples next to the Mekong river. Almost as impressive was the number of small children trying to get us to buy the freedom of the tiny birds they had captured in little cages, you had to run the gauntlet to get to the upper cave.
The pictures are our wet roadside camp, the view from the terrace of our guesthouse in Muang Ngoy and views from the boat including Rich doing what he does best.
On this trip we don't really get to see the "proper" China, the one with millions of people crammed into every available space, but these last few days gave us just a glimpse of what China is really like for most of its inhabitants, and what it is like for the nouveau riche to go on holiday.
We have been visiting towns, and one city: Shangrila, Lijiang, Dali and Kunming. The first three are all tourist towns, but almost exclusively for Chinese nationals. They are all relatively similar, in that they have pretty old town centres which tourists love to walk around whilst buying expensive authentic local products which only seem to be the same as in every other shop in the area. Of the three towns Shangrila is the least authentic because the old town was specially built to attract tourists, and the name of the town was changed to Shangrila from Zhongdian, again to attract tourists. Lijiang has the largest and most original old town, and is also the most popular destination, meaning that the crowds were enormous. It is totally geared up for extracting money from non-locals, and does it very well. Dali is probably the most honest of the three towns, if a town can be called that. It is a tourist town, but not to the exclusion of local life, which to my mind gives it more character than either of the others.
Kunming is a totally different kettle of fish. It is the closest I have seen to a true, massive Chinese city. It reminds me of Glasgow, but with sunshine. It sprawls over the area, with heavy industry surrounding it, and shops, traffic and tower blocks in the centre. Kunming does have an old town, but from what I could see, it is less than a block in size, and what is left is being demolished to make way for a mix of skyscrapers and a new old town, with more expensive shops. You can't stop progress, especially not in China.
Pics are views from the hotel in Dali, and in Kunming. We have three days left in China, then onto Laos, and no mobile data anymore. So updates will be less frequent again, unfortunately.
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