Slezzer.com

Running Again

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:56:58 +0000

On Saturday evening, I signed up to run another marathon: Berlin 2012. It’s on 30 September 2012. I have about 46 weeks to learn how to run again; it hasn’t started well.

On Sunday morning, I went for a 10k run with Nancy. I used to run faster than Nancy. I haven’t run more than once a week since 2007… I hadn’t run at all for the past six weeks. Nancy, on the other hand, has been training. Nancy is much faster now. I’m not.

I was pretty chuffed with our time: 54 minutes - not far off my PB from what I remember, despite a bit of a walk at the 5k mark. Unfortunately, I put my left foot down wrong part way through the run.

The ankle started to feel bad within a few hours. When I woke up the next morning, I could barely walk on it. But it got better. The problem is that the pain migrated to the base of my foot: outside edge, midway down the sole. It hurts. It’s Thursday now and it still hurts. Hmmm.

As Nancy put it: I’ve got 46 weeks for it to heal. And learn how to run again. And train for a marathon…

Free Books

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:18:59 +0100

As mentioned in the post below, I’m planning on giving away most of the books that are sitting on my shelves. I’ve updated the list of books to add another shelf’s worth. Let me know if you want any of them: www.slezzer.com/freebooks

Books

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:54:00 +0100

I’ve got a lot of them. Many that I have read. Some I haven’t yet. I can’t imagine that I will ever reread any/many of those that I have read already and I can see little point holding onto so much dead paper. So I’m planning on giving them all away. Yes, that’s right, I plan to give away all (or nearly all - I may keep a few) of the books that I have read.

Friends and family (ie. you lot) will get first choice. Anything that you do not want will end up going to Hackney Library or to a charity shop.

I’ve set out below a list of the books I’ve read from one of my shelves. If you want to read any of these let me know and I’ll put them to one side for you. It’s first come first served. Further lists will follow.

Simon

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EDIT: I’ve updated the list of books and created a page just for it here: www.slezzer.com/freebooks

Back to Life...

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 22:29:24 +0100

… back to reality.

Since I’ve been back, I have been asked the same three questions over and over again. “Did you have a good time?” “How does it feel to be back?” “What are you going to do on your next six months off?” I’ve also been asked (repeatedly but always by the same colleague) when I was going to update my blog. I guess the answer to that one is now.

I got asked whether I had a good time whilst I was away so many times that I started to answer with a deadpan, “no, not really, it was a bit sh*t”. Stupid the questions deserve stupid answers: of course I had a good time. Who wouldn’t enjoy six months off work travelling around the world doing all the things they’ve wanted to do for ages with no real worries about money? I had a great time. Taking that time off was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Workwise coming back hasn’t been nearly as bad as most people seem to have expected it would be. It was strange in a way: back to same office, the same people (more or less), the same cases… it was almost as if I had never been away. Except I had. Even if work hadn’t changed that much, I think that I have. One of the big changes for me is that before I left, I almost felt like I was working where I was because I hadn’t quit yet. Coming back, I know that it is a firm that I have chosen to work for.

Before I went away, it was easy to see all of the issues that everyone complains about. Having taken some distance, it became easier to see just how irrelevant most of those niggling little issues are and to notice some of the great things about where I work. I have a bit more of a positive mental attitude since I’ve been back. Some might call it a positively mental attitude.

More generally, being back in London is great. I really love this city and the many opportunities there are to do something interesting every day. More than anything though, it is just great to be back with my friends. I really missed a lot of the London crowd when I was travelling and it is great to see them/you all again.

As to what I will do on my next six months, my answer is always the same: I don’t think I’ll do it again. That may change but, for now, I’m glad that I took six months off but I’m happy to be back. I’m not planning on doing it again. Certainly not anytime soon.

Planes, trains and automobiles

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:11:11 +0000

I spent four days in Bangkok seeing the sights that I missed first time around (National Museum, Jim Thompson’s house, Design Museum, BACC…) and generally chilling out.

I then spent four days travelling home. I hadn’t planned on it taking so long… It should have taken around 24 hours. Which was a depressing enough thought when my taxi picked me up from my hotel in the early hours of Saturday morning and took me to the airport.

I was flying Oman Air via Muscat and the first leg of the journey was very very smooth: a lovely modern A320 with a great inflight entertainment system and very decent food. Nothing to complain about. The onward flight from Muscat seemed to be going very well too. We nearly made it to Heathrow before snow stopped play and we were diverted to Frankfurt.

The airline managed to lose two busloads of passengers (including yours truly) in the maze that is Frankfurt airport but once we were found we were taken to a very nice hotel on the outskirts of town. Most of us that is: those who didn’t have a European passport had not expected to need a German visa and were forced to stay in the airport overnight whilst emergency visas were arranged.

I had had a whole host of plans to see friends in London on Saturday, Sunday and Monday before heading to my parents’ for Christmas on Tuesday. Those plans came to nought, as I was stuck in Frankfurt until Monday afternoon when the airline gave up on trying to fly us to Heathrow and arranged for buses to pick us up and drive us there. Again, most of us that is: the bus route went through Belgium and France which would have caused yet more visa issues for the non-Europeans. I am now even more of a fan of Britain’s EU membership.

It took about 16 hours for the Brits and other Europeans to be driven and ferried to Heathrow. I followed this with a very expensive black cab ride to my flat where I quickly switched the shorts and t-shirts in my backpack for jeans and jumpers, before bussing it to King’s Cross to catch a train home that I had booked months ago. The train was cancelled about two minutes after I arrived at the station and I was told that it would be best to head to Sheffield from St Pancras. Oh joy. At least I did not have to join the two kilometer long queue for the Eurostar which I walked past. It did not look fun waiting outside in -5 degrees…

In all, it has taken six buses, three trains, two airplanes, two taxis, one ferry and a Ford Focus a total of 93 hours to get me from Bangkok to my parents’ for Christmas.

I’m here now though. My Mum’s happy, and so am I.

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Diving on the Andaman Coast

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:06:45 +0000

I flew from Siam Reap to Phuket via Bangkok. I was getting picked up from the airport later that day and thought that I should make the most of the time I had to kill. I checked my backpack at left luggage and went straight to the nearest beach. Six hours later, I got picked up by a minibus and started to meet some of the others that would be diving with us: two American expats based in Singapore; two mad Australian expats also based in Singapore; the owner of a resort on Koh Samet (together with one of his employees/servants who wouldn’t be diving but helped him in and out of his gear every dive); and two others. The minibus took just under an hour to get to where the MV Black Manta was docked and from the banter on the way, I knew that I would have a good time onboard.

When we arrived, we realised that there were a lot more people on the MV Black Manta: two Londoners (Nikki and Ren); an English racecar driver and his girlfriend; a group of Germans and several others. In addition to the divers, there was a team of five dive instructors, about a dozen crew members and someone’s young baby.

The diving was great. We cruised overnight and spent the first day on board diving off the coast of the Similian islands. The next day, we dived at Koh Bon and Koh Tachai. On day three we had a couple of dives at Richelieu Rock before diving some other sites at Koh Tachai and Koh Bon. I did not feel too well on day four and so skipped the last two dives (Koh Bon and a wreck). I was not too upset to miss these dives: I had had a great few days.

The visibility was superb (especially after diving in Cambodia!) and there was so much to see. The highlights include several kinds of lobsters (elegant squat lobsters, giant spiny lobsters and a sculptured slipper lobster), crabs (big red reef crabs, coral crabs…), shrimps (peacock mantis shrimps, harlequin shrimps, coral shrimps…), starfish, dogtooth tuna, barracudas, a clown trigger fish, seahorses, various nudibranchs, eels (white eyed moray eels, giant moray eels, ribbon eels, garden eels…), sea snakes, rays (blue spotted kuhl rays and an eagle ray - sadly no mantas) and a leopard shark. Listing these highlights however fails to acknowledge the beauty of all the other fish swarming around: the huge shoals of glass fish, fusiliers, groupers and snapper, the various parrot fish, huge groupers and trigger fish, the anemones and feather stars, the coral formations… These were some great dive sites. I’ve got a disk full of photos that one of the dive instructors took and will post some of these when I get a chance.

We had a great time out of the water too. The boat was well organised, the cooking was excellent and there was a great atmosphere amongst the divers. The weather was not perfect, but it was still very good. All in all a great time.

I spent a night and a day with Nikki and Ren at a beach resort in Khao Lak before moving on to Bangkok by overnight bus. I arrived at the out of town Southern bus station around 5.30am and immediately grabbed a cab into town. I was heading to the Lumphu Tree House hotel. Or at least that is what I thought. When the cab stopped I knew it was in the wrong place. I had only spent two days in Bangkok before but I had a basic sense of the city’s layout and I was not in the right place. It took about 15 minutes to explain this to the cabbie who spoke only very little English. He had taken me to Soi Rambuttri (Rambuttri lane). The problem in our discussion was that (like many Asians) Thais have great difficulty differentiating between the ‘r’ sound and the ‘l’ sound. To make things worse, they also confuse ‘p’ and ‘b’. Rambuttri and Lumphu Tree apparently sounded exactly the same to him…

Temples, More Temples and Yet More Temples.

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:23:37 +0000

Over the past two days, I have visited far too many ruined temples.

Yesterday, I headed out to the Roulos group temples: Lolei (a tiny site packed with 10 tour buses’ worth of Korean tourists), Preah Koh (slightly larger, much less packed, pretty) and the Bakong (went there a couple of days back when my camera had died, one of my favourites, a really cool Ziggurat) before heading to the Angkor Thom complex.

Angkor Thom is the site of a city that was founded in the 12th century. It is huge. It is a perfect square with 8 metre high walls on each 3km long side. The walls are surrounded by a moat a couple of hundred metres wide. The city is thought to have supported a population of over a million at a time when London had about 50,000. The North West quarter features some of the most important ruins of the Angkorian period.

I walked around the walls from the South gate to the West gate (spotting monkeys along the way), before visiting the Preah Pithu group temples (deserted tumble down ruins), the Terrace of the Leper King (beautiful carvings of asparas dancing for Yama), Preah Palilay (peacefully falling apart), the Phimeanakas (a vertiginous pyramid), the Baphuon (the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle - after French archaelogists carefully took the temple apart brick by brick for restoration all records of how to put the pieces back together again were lost), the Terrace of the Elephants (featuring, you guessed it, carvings of elephants) and the Bayon (with its 216 gigantic faces).

As if that wasn’t enough, today I got a guide to take me around the ‘Grand Tour’ (skipping Angkor Thom) and we visited Pre Rup (a pyramidal cremation site), the Eastern Mebon (a similar burial site), Ta Som (forgettable - I cannot remember a thing about it seven hours later), Neak Pean (whose waters were believed to have healing properties but that probably just gave rise to infections), Preah Khan (the holy sword, thought to have been a military training site), Angkor Wat (massively impressive: it’s the largest religious building in the world) and Ta Prohm (overrun by nature, but not as cool as Beng Melea).

I’m exhausted. But I’m glad that I’ve managed to see so many of the Angkorian ruins. I’ll probably never get another chance.

I’m leaving Siam Reap tomorrow, flying to Phuket where I will board a boat for four days of diving at Ko Similian, Ko Bon, Ko Tachai and Richelieu Rock. They’re supposed to be amongst the best dive sites in the world. I’m hoping to see sharks. Just not hungry Egyptian ones. After the diving, I’ve got five days to get back to Bangkok for my flight home. I’ll be in London in ten days. Home for Christmas within two weeks. It is strange to think that this wonderful trip is coming to an end so quickly. In many ways though, I’m looking forward to coming back: it has been a long time since I’ve seen my friends and I cannot wait to catch up with them all.

Outlying Temples

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:23:04 +0000

First off, I want to take this opportunity to wish my grandfather a happy birthday: Happy Birthday Granddad! The rest of this post is basically about my visits to some of the temple ruins that are slightly further out from the Angkor Wat / Angkor Thom area. I am saving the central temples for last.

Banteay Srei, Kbal Spean and Beng Melea

The Lonely Planet recommends that travelers combine their trip to these three sites into a single long day. In the description of each, it mentions that a driver is likely to charge extra to visit these temples given how much further afield they are. What they don’t mention is that Banteay Srei and Kbal Spean are over an hour North of Siam Reap and that Beng Melea is over an hour to the South. This makes combining the three sites a bit stupid really. It costs a lot more and huge amounts of time are spent driving from one site to the next. It would make much more sense to combine a trip to Beng Melea with a trip to the some of temples near Roulos. Hindsight is a great thing but I still had a great day.

Banteay Srei is one of the jewels of the Angkor site. It is one of the smaller temples, but nearly every inch of its unusual pinkish sandstone is covered with beautifully carvings. It really was very pretty. Unfortunately, as it is one of the highlights of a trip to Angkor, the site was very crowded even early in the day.

Kbal Spean was very different. It is not really a temple. In fact, it is basically a river and a waterfall. To get there, you have to walk up through the jungle for about 1.5 kilometres. As a result, it was much much quieter. In English, the Angkor era site is usually referred to as the River of the Thousand Lingas. A linga is a phallic representation of the Hindu god Shiva. I have seen lots of these in the museums and ruined temples that I have visited so far. It seems that the linga would usually be placed in a yoni (representing the female). Priests would then pour water over the linga which would flow down over it, into the yoni and out through a channel where the (now) holy water could be collected by worshipers.

Over a stretch of the Kbal Spean river of several hundred metres, the riverbed has been carved with hundreds and hundreds of lingas, along with linga-yoni motifs and representations of various Hindu gods. It is believed that the carvings were intended to make the water flowing down towards Angkor more fertile.

After visiting Kbal Spean, I settled into my remork for the two hour journey to Beng Melea. Beng Melea was stunning. The guidebook mentioned an easy route around the site as well as a ‘clambering route’. The Indiana Jones wannabe in me definitely wanted to head along the clambering route and after crossing the moat and walking along the long approach road, I set off to where I thought the route started from the diagram in the guidebook and started to climb up a pile of rubble. One of the guards soon spotted that I was heading the wrong way and started to guide me around: pointing out the safe places to clambers, the best sculptures and the places to take good photos.

It really was an amazing site. By far the best ruined temple experience I have had so far. Beng Melea was used as a set during the filming of Tomb Raider and you can see why. It is beautifully overgrown with huge trees climbing up through the stone work. Parts of the temple complex have collapsed into piles of rubble (that my guide and I clambered over), others still stand proud. It is a large site and I couldn’t stop myself snapping picture after picture of the beautiful dereliction and of nature starting to take over again. Eventually though, I was forced to stop as my camera ran out of juice. Whilst I couldn’t record any more of the site’s beauty, I was happy to walk and clamber around for ages. I just hope that the photos I managed to take turn out well.

On the way back to Siam Reap, we stopped off briefly at the Bakong, one of the Roulos group of temples, to see the sun set. I climbed up to the top of the pyramidal temple and watched with a bus full of Japanese tourists as the sun dipped over the horizon. It was a great end to the day.

To the Back of Beyond (and Back)

Yesterday, I went to Prasat Preah Vihear. Cambodia’s other UNESCO World Heritage Site is a temple complex built high up a hill on the border with Thailand. One of my guidebook’s editors declared it to be his highlight of the country. So I was pretty determined to get there. The only problem was that Prasat Preah Vihear is in the middle of nowhere and difficult to get to. Until very recently the Preah Vihear province as a whole didn’t have a single sealed road.

The receptionists at my hotel declared that it was impossible to get there independently and that I would need to join a tour. Only they weren’t sure if any tour groups would be going there. This only made me more determined to go. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to make it there and back in a day, so on Friday night I packed the essentials for an overnight stay in my day bag and planned to set off early the next morning.

I overslept a little but managed to make it away at a reasonable time taking a remork to the taxi station where I managed to get a seat in a share taxi to Sra Em. The share taxi kept stopping at markets to pick up or drop off fresh produce and passengers. It took forever but eventually I arrived in Sra Em: a tiny town at a T-junction of minor roads. I decided to have an early lunch and walked into the nearest restaurant. No-one spoke a word of English. It took a while but eventually I persuaded them that I wanted to eat and that rice and pork would be good. In fact, it was delicious: a very simple meal but delicious.

As I was eating, a moto driver with basic English approached and asked if I wanted to see the temple. We agreed a price for him to take me to Kor Muy from where I would need to take another moto up the hill to the Prasat Preah Vihear itself. Before we arrived in Kor Muy, he saw a police check point ahead and as he had no helmet on was unwilling to go further. Another moto driver was following close behind and so we pulled over and negotiated for that driver to take me the rest of the way up to the temple and back to Sra Em again.

The drive itself was pretty interesting. Shortly after Prasat Preah Vihear was recognised as a World Heritage Site in July 1998, a long running border dispute with Thailand (which claims the site is Thai) flared up again. The border crossing has been closed for over two years, shooting occasionally breaks out and both sides have been building up their military presence near the border. On the plus side, this has led the Cambodian government to use part of their military budget to start paving the road out to the temple. It is now paved all the way to the bottom of the hill and work is going on to take it all the way. All along the road, there are barracks with sandbagged machine gun nests and (poorly) camouflaged bunkers. Hidden away behind camouflage netting, you can see tanks and artillery pieces as you drive past and there are countless small groups of men in military fatigues standing around smoking. Just about every man I saw from the moment I arrived at Sra Em to the moment I left was wearing at least one piece of military clothing.

The drive up the hill was a fairly hairy experience. I’m not too happy sitting on the back of a moto at the best of times but this was worse than heading down the wrong side of a busy road during rush hour (an experience that I was to ‘enjoy’ later that day). We both had to get our weight as far forward as possible to stop the moto tumbling over backwards as the poor 100cc engine struggle up the ridiculously steep unpaved track. The driver had to stop several times to throw bottle after bottle of water onto the engine to cool it down… What was worse was the realisation that I would have to ride the moto back down again…

Still we made it. And it was worth it. The temple complex was beautiful. It runs 800m along a North-South axis. The so-called ‘monumental stairway’ takes you up to the first of a series of gopura gateways. Each gopura marks a shift in height and completely blocks sight of the next level which only becomes visible as you pass through the gateway. Each of the five ruined gopuras was separated by a long pathway and more steps. Eventually, you arrive at the ruined central sanctuary surrounded by two (remarkably intact) galleried courtyards. It really was very impressive, as were the views over North-Western Cambodia from the cliffs behind the sanctuary.

I probably spent an hour and a half visiting Prasat Preah Vihear but whilst there were a small number of Cambodian pilgrims / tourists, I only saw two other Westerners in all that time. My driver told me that there are usually only one or two tourists a day, so I guess that made it a busy day but compared to the crowds at Angkor it was amazingly quiet.

The journey back down the hill wasn’t too bad. The driver made me lean right back to keep the back wheel on the ground and as he applied the brakes to kept our speed under control. On the way back to Sra Em, he explained that I would have to wait until the next day to get a taxi back to Siam Reap. Whilst I was quite prepared to stay the night (especially as the complete lack of light pollution gives great views of the Milky Way), I was determined at the least to try. The moto driver took me to the taxi stand and spoke with the drivers for a while. Eventually, one of them offered to drive me back to Siam Reap for $30: expensive by Cambodian standards, but for about the price of black cab from my office to my flat, I was going to be driven for over 3 hours. I accepted.

Today, I’ve had a very quiet day. I’m heading out to see more ruined temples tomorrow.

Of Bamboo Trains and Boat Rides

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:14:08 +0000

The bus ride to Battambang took forever. Well. Not quite forever. But a long time. I checked out of my hotel in Sihanoukville at 6.30am and arrived in Battambang at around 6.30pm. A long day sat in a bus. In the evening, I met up with Lakki who was on the yoga retreat with me. Lakki is working on a research project at a clinic in Battambang and so she knows the town. She took me to her favourite restaurant and her favourite bar. Sadly, they didn’t have her favourite beer, so we had to put up with ABC…

The next day, I arranged for an English-speaking moto driver to give me a tour of the countryside and sights outside of Battambang. Motos seem to be the main form of short range tourist transport in Cambodia. The tourist sits behind the driver of a moped, holds tight, closes his/her eyes and prays.

Our first stop was the bamboo railway. Back in the early 1930s, the French built a single track railway line to the South of Battambang. This was all but useless, as you could only ever run a single train on it. That is, until someone came up with the genius that is the bamboo train. Bamboo trains comprise five simple elements: two axles with wheels, a lightweight bamboo and wood platform, a small six horse-power engine and a fan belt. When two bamboo trains heading in opposite directions meet, all passengers on the train carrying the least weight disembark and the train is quickly disassembled. My “train” was carrying me, my moto driver and his moto, two train drivers (I couldn’t see why you needed more than one) and a young boy. The weight of the moto gave us priority at every meeting.

After riding the bamboo train along the rickety 80+ year old rails for a while and quietly laughing an evil laugh the five or six times trains coming the other way had to be dismantled, we disembarked and went for a pootle around the back streets (back pot-holed dirt-track lanes?) of the Cambodian countryside. This involved overtaking ox drawn carts, doing u-turns to avoid flooded roads, watching rice being harvested, crossing a one metre wide suspension bridge at speed as a cyclist crossed in the opposite direction, and stopping to see fruit bats in the trees outside a Wat.

After a while, we came to Phnom Banon: a hill that appears out of nowhere in the flatness that is Battambang province, and that is named after the temple complex at its summit. My driver rested at the bottom as I climbed the 358 steps to Banon, an eleventh century temple which allegedly inspired Angkor Wat. It was pretty impressive but a far cry from the image I had in mind of Angkor Wat. And, it turns out, a far cry from Angkor Wat. I really cannot see how anyone could claim that Phnom Banon inspired Angkor Wat, other than in the loosest possible sense: “there was this temple right, and someone saw it and thought ‘I could make a temple too, and I could make mine better.’”

After Phnom Banon, we drove to Phnom Sampeau another hill with a temple on top. A young Khmer boy with remarkably good English gave me a tour for a dollar and two even younger kids followed us around. The temples had been used a prison by the Khmer Rouge and prisoners were thrown down into a series of caves about half way up the hill as a cheap form of execution. Some died from the fall, others died of starvation, still others died when bodies landed on them. Steps have now been built down into some of the caves and the human bones have been brought together in a couple of open shrines. Cambodia’s recent history really is quite grim and they don’t make any effort to gloss over or hide the atrocities.

After the Khmer Rouge were pushed back from the hill, the new government forces installed a number of artillery pieces on the hill to target Khmer Rouge positions. Two of these are still there and you can clamber up to them. I’ve got some great photos of my guide and the two other kids clambering over the guns playing soldiers…

My moto driver then took me on another scenic tour of the countryside, coming round to the North of Battambang. We stopped off to see the outside of a modern and Western looking Pepsi factory that was shut down in 1973 and then visited a much more modest family workshop producing rice paper for spring rolls. My guide explained the process and how, on a good (sunny) day a family (a couple and their two young kids were working when I visited) might be able to produce 2,000 sheets worth about $10 dollars. Of course, if it rains, the sheets don’t dry and the family makes no money. The whole village made spring roll rice papers, so it was called Spring-Roll-Rice-Paper Village according to my guide. The guidebook calls it Pheam Ek.

We then moved on to Wat Ek Phnom another ruined eleventh century temple. This one was properly ruined. Large parts of the temple had been reduced to piles of rubble and there were ‘danger’ signs everywhere. Everyone else seemed to be ignoring them so I did too. After scrabbling up the rubble and entering the remains of the central temple, I began to understand the need for the signs. It was quite clearly about to collapse. I took some photos of some beautifully carved lintels that might not be around that much longer and got out as quickly as I could.

My moto driver then took me to a village where they made a sweet snack of sticky rice, black beans and coconut milk baked in bamboo. According to my driver, the village was called named Sticky-Rice-In-Bamboo Village. It isn’t in my guidebook, so I have no idea whether it has a real name as too. Then we visited a prahok factory. Prahok is a kind of fermented fish paste and a Cambodian specialty. It is made by mixing fish and salt and then leaving the mixture to ferment (some might say ‘to rot’) in big vats. It stinks. It is an essential ingredient in a lot of traditional Cambodian cooking and is also served on rice for breakfast. Westerners are generally unable to get past the smell, and I really cannot understand why anyone would think the factory might be a good place for tourist visits…

That evening, Lakki and I were again disappointed by the lack of Black Panther beer. She had words with the owner of the bar and is hoping that the issue will be rectified soon… This internet cafe serves Black Panther though, so I’m ok.

Today, I took the slow boat from Battambang to Siam Reap. I had heard that it was very scenic and several of the travelers that I have met had described it as a must. For my part, I had been on several scenic boat rides in Laos and wasn’t expecting much. I was wrong. It was great. If you ever get the chance, do it yourself.

The boat set out from Battambang at 7.30am. Most of the passengers were Western and a large number of backpacks were piled onto the flat roof. We all sat downstairs on uncomfortable wooden benches that looked like they had once been in use at a school. I spent the first hour or so gazing out of the window, watching life on the river banks as we passed through the outskirts of Battambang, dozing gently and trying to read (Kerouac, On The Road). After a while, I got my camera out and started taking photos of people waving from the riverbanks or passing us in small boats.

I soon noticed that that there were less and less people on the boat but didn’t remember anyone getting off. After a while, I realised that more and more people had been climbing onto the roof. I had just about decided to join them when the boat turned off the river into what looked like the riverbank. The driver was not entirely stupid. There was water there, but lots of vegetation too. There was a very narrow channel linking two rivers, too narrow for our boat really. The boat basically ploughed its way through for about half an hour, branches whipping at the sides of the boat and flinging spiders and grasshoppers on-board. Eventually though we made it out to the other side and I had a chance to climb to the roof.

Nearly all of the Westerners were there, lying in the sun and chatting in small groups. A Swiss couple who seem to be stalking me were there too. They had been on my bus to Battambang, shared my tuk tuk into town, stayed at the same hotel as me and, it turns out, are going to be taking the same flight as me from Siam Reap to Phuket next week. We chatted for a while and then I started taking more photos. There was so much to see.

We passed huge fishing contraptions that resembled giant floating bamboo cranes with a net. We passed floating villages, villages built on stilts and villages where every house has its own little crocodile farm. We passed fields of waterlilies and of water hyacinths, forested areas and open wetlands. We passed through the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary (where we saw rare breeds of pelicans and storks and all sorts of other birds) and the great Tonle Sap lake (where we saw basically nothing). We saw blood red dragonflies (and yellow, blue and green ones too) and all sorts of butterflies. I took over 200 photos and only stopped shooting when my battery ran out. It was a really good day out. Much more than just travel from A to B.

I haven’t done much else today. I had lunch, wandered around town to get my bearings, sorted out my laundry, booked a tuk tuk to take me around various temples tomorrow…

Late afternoon, I had some time to kill so I went for a little wander around Angkor Wat as the sun set. Pretty impressive.

Movie Night in Sihanoukville

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:05:57 +0000

Back in London, three of my best friends host Monday Night Movie Night. As the name suggests, this involves watching a film (or as one of them would say a ‘filum’) on Monday night. Sometimes, we watch our way through a TV series instead. But Monday Night TV Series Night isn’t quite as catchy. My friends have got a projector, a large white wall and a comfy sofa. Everyone brings along far too much nibbly food and plenty of drink. We settle in, eat, drink, gossip and watch a film.

Since I’ve been travelling, I’ve seen a fair few places running their own versions of movie night. These are generally bars or cafes with a large TV screen and comfortable seating on the floor. They tend to show illegally copied DVDs or downloaded movies. They’re generally pretty good quality but often display dire warnings that ‘this screener has been watermarked and illegal copies will be traced to their source’. At L’Etranger in Luang Prabang, we had the comedy experience of watching the film Taken but with the (English) subtitles to Star Wars Episode 1. Whilst some of these places charge entry, most seem to make their profits from sales of drink and food.

Sihanoukville takes this to a whole new level. Within a two minute walk of Serendipity Beach, there are two ‘cinemas’ showing recent releases and ‘classics’ (tonight’s offerings include The Social Network, Buried, Wayne’s World, Inception, Same Same But Different and Eat Pray Love). They both have screens the size of a small UK cinema and comfy armchair seating with coffee tables. Entry is cheap ($2) as are the drinks and snacks ($1 for a beer, a bar of chocolate or a pack of crisps). You help yourself from the fridges and pay on the way out on an honesty bar basis. The Topcat Cinema will even arrange pizza delivery (with the optional “happy” additives favoured by many backpackers). You can also take in your own food and drink. No-one seems to mind. Both ‘cinemas’ allow customers to smoke (anything). No-one seems to mind.

In Sihanoukville it’s movie night every night and with little else to do around here (apart from drinking or getting an early night), I’ve been along to see a few films: The Social Network, Wall Street, Eat Pray Love, R.E.D. … The thing is, no matter how closely these places try to imitate Monday Night Movie Night, something is missing: my friends. I’m looking forward to seeing you all next time I make it.

I’ve been in Sihanoukville for 5 days now. I went diving on my first day, spent a day sunbathing by the pool, and two more days diving. My plan was to spend today on the beach before catching a night bus to Battambang. Sadly there is no night bus (so I’m getting a 7.30am bus tomorrow) and the weather was too overcast for the beach to seem appealing. It’s even been raining this evening. Then again, I shouldn’t complain about the weather. Despite the lack of sun, it was in the low thirties all day, and even now at 10pm in the rain, it is very warm out…

Coasting in Cambodia

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:12:00 +0000

I left Phnom Penh a week ago and travelled by bus to Kampot, a small town that used to be Cambodia’s main port before the construction of the port at Sihanoukville / Kompong Som in the 1950s.

Thankfully, this meant that I was not in Phnom Penh when a stampede during the Water Festival resulted in over 375 deaths and many injuries. The latest news around here suggests that the stampede may have been caused by the police inexplicably using a water cannon on the crowds crossing the bridge. Other rumours suggest that it was sparked by electricity cables coming loose and electrocuting a number of people on the bridge. Whatever the cause, it is a real tragedy and a lot of the people that I was with at the time the news broke (a mix of Phnom Penh resident expats and Khmers) were very shaken, upset and angry.

Kampot is a rather sleepy little place, with very little going on other than tourism only it isn’t entirely clear why tourists go there… There is no beach as the town is actually a little way up an estuary. There is some interesting colonial architecture but it isn’t particularly special. I guess the Lonely Planet people needed to fill some pages…

I only stayed a couple of nights and spent my only full day in the area at Bokor National Park. Interestingly, much of the national park is currently a construction site. A huge swathe of the land has been bought up by a private investor who is bulldozing the primary forest to build hotels and golf courses… The French had built a hill station at the top of Bokor mountain in the 1920s for colonialists to take a holiday from the heat and experience cool weather similar to that of their home country. You can now visit the derelict remains of a hotel/casino, the Bokor Palace Hotel, and an abandoned Catholic church. It was really interesting walking around in the empty shell of the hotel (straight past the ‘danger, do not enter’ signs), imagining what it must once have looked like.

It is strange to think of people wanting to go somewhere cool/cold for a holiday (other than, of course, a skiing/snowboarding holiday). I can’t say that I particularly want to head back to London weather right now. I see they are forecasting temperatures around the zero degree mark. Today, I was scuba diving in water 29 degrees warm. It was in the mid-thirties out of the water. I’m spending tomorrow on a beach.

From Kampot, I went to Kep for a four day yoga retreat. I’ve been trying to take yoga classes when possible on my travels and when I went to a drop-in class in Phnom Penh they were trying to fill the last couple of spots on a retreat. We stayed at the Vine Retreat, a lovely little hotel set on a farm which produces vegetables for the hotel kitchen and fiery Kampot Pepper. I did between 3 and 5 hours of yoga a day, lazed around in the shade, ate really good khmer food and met lots of really interesting people: an Australian novelist (her book, The Danger Room will be released in the UK early next year), UNIFEM’s country coordinator for Cambodia who had previously been the country coordinator for Afghanistan, a Norwegian dietitian working on a research project in Cambodia (where she had actually been born before her Cambodian parents fled the Khmer Rouge as refugees when she was only a couple of years old) and people working for various NGOs. The yoga teaching assistants were two young girls that had been rescued from sex trafficking and were being cared for, taught English and trained as yoga instructors by an NGO… It really was fascinating speaking to them all and once again I am reminded that one of the best things about traveling is the people that you meet.

I’m now in Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s third biggest tourist centre. I haven’t made it to the beach yet. Instead, I went scuba diving. The visibility wasn’t great and the coral is pretty badly bleached, but there was plenty to see. Countless little fish and large sea urchins, giant anemones, sea cucumbers, a cuttlefish, a crab, several nudibranches and scorpion fish, loads of lovely soft corals… It really was great to be underwater again. As mentioned above, I’m spending tomorrow on a beach but at the weekend I’m heading out diving again. I cannot wait.

Phnom Penh

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:22:59 +0000

I’m not sure what I think about Phnom Penh.

Part of the problem is the contrast with Don Khon. Arriving here was quite a shock to the system. Don Khon probably only has a hundred or so permanent inhabitants. Rush hour involved two mopeds and a bicycle slowly tootling past. It could not get more more laid back. Phnom Penh has over 2 million inhabitants and the traffic is sheer chaos. Cars, mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians pushing hand carts vie for space on congested roads. No-one seems to bother with one way systems. No-one even seems to care which side of the road they are on. Trying to cross a road seems impossible. It would probably be easier blindfolded. Walking around town also involves huge amounts of hassle as you are constantly asked whether you want a motorbike or a tuk tuk. The drivers don’t seem to understand the concept of a foreigner wanting to walk… The drivers also don’t seem to know their way around town. Virtually every time I have taken a bike or a tuk tuk, I have had to give directions myself… I’ve only been here a couple of days!

Phnom Penh also contrasts with itself. One moment it’s drowning in rain. The next I’m worried about heatstroke. One moment I’m visiting an outstandingly beautiful monument. The next I’m looking at a collection of mass graves.

I arrived in town late evening on Sunday and it was pouring with rain. Properly pouring with rain. Torrential rain. The kind of rain that soaks you to the bone in minutes even when you are wearing a waterproof. And when the local version of a black cab to your hotel involves hopping on the back of a moped, this means that you get wet. I got very wet. My backpack also got very wet and I learned that it is not very clever to ride the back of a moped with a heavy backpack on. Getting off safely requires a lot of balance… To give you an idea of how bad the rain was, at one point the water was so deep it came up over my ankles. Given that I was sat on the back of a moped at the time, that’s a good foot or so of water flowing in the streets. For a city subject to tropical rains, you would have thought that they might have installed some storm drains. But no.

The next day, I woke up to searing sunshine. There was very little sign left of the previous night’s downpour. It was hot. Very hot. I got very wet. This time it was sweat not rain. Even less pleasant. That evening it started to rain again. I had just left my hotel for dinner but, as the rain got heavier, I decided to forget my plans for food and to take refuge back in my room. The rain just got heavier and heavier as I ran back to the hotel… The next morning, I again woke up to blazing sunshine. It hasn’t rained since. But I don’t trust it. It’s just waiting for me to be outside again, somewhere a long way from the safety of my hotel room.

There isn’t a whole lot to see in Phnom Penh. A bit of colonial architecture and a few unimpressive wats, and then there are the four must see sights. The National Museum contains a collection of Khmer sculpture. My guidebook states that it is the best collection of Khmer sculpture in the world, but that is a bit of an obvious point really: where else would there be a world class collection of Khmer sculpture? The Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda are amazing buildings and contain a collection of royal regalia, silverware and other golden stuff. Again very impressive.

The last two sights show a very different side of Cambodia’s history. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a former school that the Pol Pot regime used to incarcerate its enemies whilst they were tortured before being executed. The banality of the empty class rooms is haunting. The Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre (more commonly referred to as the Killing Fields) is where most of Tuol Sleng’s ‘guests’ were taken to be killed and buried. They have exhumed almost 9,000 corpses from the mass graves at Choeung Ek and about a third of the graves still have not been opened.

Both places are utterly depressing sites and contrast strongly with the National Museum and Royal Palace. Nearly every visitor at both sites walked around in complete silence. The ‘no smiling’ signs (I’m think that’s what they meant) at Tuol Sleng seemed utterly unnecessary. The ‘Please do not walk on the mass grave’ signs at the Killing Fields were quite disturbing.

So there you go. Phnom Penh is quite a depressing place in many ways but it is charming in its own way too. I can’t make my mind up about the place at all.

Still, I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m not quite sure what I think about that either, but it’s time to go. I’ve been here 3 days already and there isn’t much more to see. I’m heading down to the coast. Hopefully it’ll be a little quieter. I think that I could do with some quiet again.

Lazing in Don Khon

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 11:20:09 +0000

Don Khon is a great place to laze. There isn’t really much to do here. And you don’t have to go very far to do it. In fact, you can’t go very far. It’s a small island in the middle of the mighty Mekong. Cycling the whole way around takes less than an hour.

My first day on the island, I didn’t bother doing anything. I checked into a bungalow by the shore, had a late lunch and then lazed in my hammock until the sun went down. I wandered over to a riverside restaurant for a light bite of supper and a beer lao, before heading to bed for an early night.

My second day wasn’t much more active. In fact, it was probably even less active. I woke up late and walked along the one street for a few minutes, before sitting down with two Belgian girls I had met in Pakse as they were just finishing breakfast. They had energetic plans involving cycling. I passed and went back to my hammock. At around 4pm, I wandered downstream a little way to see the Li Phi waterfalls. The locals think that the spirits of the dead get trapped here as they drift downstream. I would describe the falls as rapids (very impressive rapids, but still just rapids) rather than waterfalls, and think that any spirits floating downstream would struggle to get stuck here. But there you go. Having achieved my one goal for the day, I wandered back to my bungalow, chilled out there for a little while, then headed out for dinner with the Belgians. It was amusing to find out that the 50p “Small Lao Lao” on the menu actually meant a pint sized bottle of the lethal stuff. We quickly scaled back our order for a Lao Lao each…

The Belgians had been out to see the (endangered) Irrawaddy dolphins early that morning and after hearing their enthusiasm, I decided to that day 3 would involve a half day of activity. I woke at 6am, rented a bicycle and headed down to a small bay where some fishermen keep their boats. One of them ferried me across the river to Cambodia (“no visa, no problem”) and then down to a conservation area where every so often, you would catch sight of a dolphin surfacing for air. There is a total population of just 68 Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia and Laos, so I felt very lucky to see as many as I did. We spent about an hour in the conservation area, with the fisherman cheerfully pointing out surfacing dolphins that I had missed, before returning to the bay. I cycled back into town, had a banana pancake for breakfast and crawled back into my hammock. A few hours later, I got out again, cycled once around the island, booked my ticket to Phnom Penh, had lunch, and climbed back into the swaying hammock… I’ve only just got out again.

It’s going to be tough to tear myself away tomorrow. Don Khon is blissfully chilled. I could easily stay here until the money runs out… (Which could take a few years given prices here!)

Tough choices

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:16:45 +0000

It has just dawned on me that I only have about five weeks left out here and that that means making some tough choices about what to do. I know. I know. I shouldn’t complain and yes, I too can hear a quartet of the world’s smallest violins playing in the background. However I do face a bit of a dilemma.

I’m currently in Pakse, with plans to spend the next few days in Si Phan Done - a group of (supposedly) 4,000 islands in the Mekong by the Cambodian border. After that, I’m heading on into Cambodia. So far, it is all very easy. The issue is that I would love to spend the last couple of weeks of my holiday scuba diving in the Andaman Sea and/or relaxing on a tropical beach somewhere. If I do that, I will have less than three weeks in Cambodia which means making some tough decisions about what to do and, more importantly, what to skip.

On the one hand, I will probably never get another chance to visit the Eastern provinces of Cambodia whereas it wouldn’t be too tough to visit the islands of the Gulf of Thailand for a week or two sometime. On the other, I really do want to spend some time diving, sunbathing and generally chilling out before I head home.

Oh well. Lying in a hammock on Don Khon with a bottle of beer lao seems like a good place to mull it all over.

Vientiane and Photos

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 04:23:57 +0000

There is not actually that much to see in Vientiane and after only a couple of days here, I felt that I had seen everything that I needed to. The guidebook describes pretty much every Wat in the city but, aside from Haw Pha Kaeo and Wat Si Saket, they aren’t really worth visiting. Whereas there was a certain chilled out vibe to Luang Prabang that I really liked, there just does not seem to be anything special about Vientiane. There’s nothing wrong with the place but I’ve decided to move on quickly and am getting an overnight bus down to Pakse this evening.

Here are some photos from the past week.

Sunset on the Mekong - Luang Prabang.

Alms giving in Luang Prabang. Early every morning the monks leave their monasteries and walk in a procession around their neighbourhood collecting alms (mainly cooked sticky rice) from the local inhabitants. It has become a bit of a tourist attraction, and the morning that I went there were almost as many tourists as monks…

A pile of UXO outside the Tourist Information Office in Phonsavanh.

The Plain of Jars - Site 3.

That Foun - a crumbling stupa in Muang Khoun. Chinese marauders tunnelled into the stupa over a century ago searching for treasure buried inside. You can still walk through the middle but it looks like it will fall down very very soon, so you might not want to.

Monks at a museum. These guys were visiting Haw Pha Kaeo at the same time as me. Tourists.

Patuxai - the Lao Arc de Triomphe. It is nicknamed the ‘vertical runway’ as it was built with US-purchased cement that was supposed to have been used for the construction of a new airport. It looks ok (ish) from a distance, but up close (and particularly from the inside) it looks more and more like a multi-storey car park. A description of the monument on a sign affixed to the Southwest corner includes the following classic line: “From a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete.”

Sunset on the Mekong - Vientiane.

The Buddha Park (Xieng Khuan). This shot was taken from the top of a what looked like a three storey concrete pumpkin. The Buddha Park is a very weird collection of mid- 20th century concrete sculptures representing Hindu deities and scenes from Buddhist stories, in a field on the outskirts of Vientiane. It is all very odd. Especially the concrete pumpkin.

Another bus ride

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:43:08 +0000

Today I took the bus from Phonsavanh to Ventiane, the capital of Laos. The timetable showed buses at 6.45am and 7.45am. The hotel staff told me 7am and 8am. I arrived at the bus station at 7.30am to be told that the bus was at 9am. I would have to wait outside in the freezing cold. It was a ‘regular’ bus -the lowest class- a rickety old thing with bits visibly falling off. No scooters on the roof at least, but the luggage hold was stuffed full of 40kg bags of rice and a green plastic bag full of live ducks.

The first half of the journey was pretty uneventful. Aside from a brief stop at a roadside stall where the driver and three passengers bought firewood, we mainly just ploughed on down the winding mountain road. Like all of Laos’ intercity roads, road number 7 was a simple two lane affair, sometimes dropping down to one and a half lanes and occasionally falling into a category that Choy, the Laos guide on the cycling tour, described as ‘broken’: the usual (lightly potholed) tarmac being replaced by a rutted stretch of dirt track.

The bus pulled to a halt in Phu Khoun, the town where my previous bus had stopped for lunch. As before, no announcement or explanation, but I knew the drill now (or so I thought) and was about to follow a few of the other passengers off for noodle soup when the driver got back on board (with a bag of herbs and potatoes from a roadside stall), honked his horn a couple of times and started to drive off. One of the passengers that disembarked in Phu Khoun hitched a lift and caught us up further down the road. I’ll never know whether the others had intended to end their journey there or not.

We did stop for lunch a couple of hours later. Another bus was already at the rest stop. It was a VIP bus. All of its passengers were Westerners. I hadn’t seen another Westerner all day. It was strange to suddenly be surrounded by tourists.

After lunch the bus drove on into Vang Vien province. I’m running out of time on my Laos visa, and decided to skip Vang Vien and to keep on heading South. Vang Vien is known to be backpackers’ party central with bar upon bar selling cheap beer, showing old episodes (is there any other kind?) of Friends and serving Western food with ‘Happy’ additives. Vang Vien is also supposed to be beautiful and a great place for kayaking, tubing, cycling and rock climbing. From the bus, I got some great views of huge limestone karsts soaring up from the riverside, but I’ve seen a lot of beautiful countryside in the past few weeks and am becoming a little jaded. “Oh look, another spectacular jungle valley.” Around 85% of Laos is mountainous terrain and most of the country is forested. The whole place is stunning, and you get used to it. (Interestingly, Laos’ forests are mainly deciduous, but instead of shedding their leaves during the winter, many of the trees shed them over the dry season in order to conserve water.)

Midway through Vang Vien province, the bus pulled to a halt. We had a flat tire. The driver and two other bus company employees spent ages trying to change it. A lot of their time was spent hitting the tire with a metal pole. I couldn’t figure out quite what they were hoping to achieve by that. They were eventually successful and we go on our way.

I very quickly noticed that the bus was travelling faster. The driver swerved around the road at full pelt dodging potholes (unsuccessfully) and other road users (successfully), his fingers constantly on the horn to warn people that he was coming through. He was clearly trying to make up for lost time. I could no longer read as the hurtling bus’ non existent suspension bounced us around. I felt sorry for the ducks still holed up in the luggage hold.

At first, I found it all quite amusing. I assumed that this was fairly normal, that there was nothing to be afraid of and that there was nothing I could really do but laugh and turn the volume on my iPod up. So that’s what I did. Then I noticed the other passengers’ faces. Apart from two Lao girls in their early twenties who somehow managed to sleep through it all, all of the locals were sitting bolt upright in their chairs, looking very very tense. Particularly after the sun set and our frantic journey continued in the pitch black. The anxious looks soon turned into looks of horror when repeated bounces off potholes knocked loose one of the panels forming the aisle’s floor by where I was sat. For the rest of the journey, I kept one foot on the loose panel trying to stop it from jumping out of place again and I too started to look a little tense.

But we got to Ventiane eventually. Feeling relieved to be off the bus, I grabbed a tuk tuk from the out of town bus station. The driver took a turning that, from my brief look at the map, I hadn’t expected and I began to worry that we were heading out of town. Then he turned down an unlit dirt alleyway and I began to really worry. After surviving the bus journey was I about to be mugged or killed? No. The tuk tuk driver was just heading home to pick up his wife and kids. Can you imagine a London cabbie doing that?

Phonsavanh :: Jars and UXO

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:11:00 +0000

I took the bus to Phonsavanh yesterday. My guidebook promised a ten hour journey, but we made it in eight. Laos’ buses are pretty comedy. You have the choice between ‘ordinary’, ‘express’ and ‘VIP’. I say the choice, but I wasn’t given one: Luang Prabang to Phonsavanh was an express only route. Which was ok. I guess. The comedy started before we left when the driver scrambled up on the roof of the bus in order to hoist up two passengers’ mopeds. Seriously. They stuck them on the roof for the journey. It continued with the bus’ stereo being used to play loud Laotian pop music (for the full eight hour journey) with the TV screen showing the karaoke videos. Luckily no-one sang along. I’ve got another long bus journey tomorrow and will be praying no-one decides the bus is actually a karaoke joint…

The driver made pit stops (a) to buy several large pumpkins, (b) to hand a mysterious package to someone on the roadside in exchange for a large wadge of cash, (c) for various passengers to take loo breaks by the roadside whilst the driver repeatedly hit the engine with a wrench, (d) for lunch -no announcement or explanation, but everyone got off for noodle soup and I followed- and (e) for a further attack on the engine. But eventually we got there. Or here rather. I’m still here.

Today, I went on a tour of various local sights. I had a mini-bus, a driver and an English speaking guide to myself. Money goes a long way in this country. The main sights around here are the various Plain of Jars sites. It is very strange to see all these huge granite or sandstone jars, some weighing several tonnes, just lying around on the ground.

Local legend has it that the jars were giants’ drinking cups for an epic binge on lao lao (the local rice whiskey), and we also visited a hut where the whiskey was being distilled. I now know the recipe if anyone wants to try it at home. Personally, I recommend sticking to quality spirits. Lao lao is lethal. Western anthropologists and archaeologists seem to think that it is more likely that the jars were used in burial ceremonies. Either to store corpses before a subsequent cremation, or possibly as a kind of coffin.

I visited Plain of Jars sites 1, 2, 3 and 4. There are about 58 sites in total, but only 7 have been opened to the public. The others are still too dangerous with large amounts of unexploded ordinance (UXO) known to be in the area. Walking around the various Plain of Jars sites, and driving between them, I saw countless bomb craters. The countryside was covered in pock marks.

The Xhieng Khuang province was very heavily bombed during the so-called ‘secret war’ (when America bombed Laos and Cambodia to pieces without informing its own population between 1964-73). Laos is (per capita) the most heavily bombed country in the world. The Americans have records of dropping over 1.3 million metric tonnes of explosives on the country, including very large numbers of cluster munitions. Large amounts of these explosives are still around today.

My guide seemed to have mixed feelings about the bombs. Obviously it was quite terrible, but at the same time he pointed out that selling war junk as scrap metal had made a lot of people in the area rich (by Laos’ standards). He also took great pleasure in pointing out houses held up on stilts made from cluster bomb casings, and bomb shells being used as plant pots. Of course, gathering live UXO to sell for scrap metal isn’t a particularly safe job… There are still dozens of casualties every year, mainly young children.

One of the most interesting things that I have done today was to visit the local headquarters of the Mines Advisory Group who are working to remove mines and UXO around the world. I watched a video of their work training local Lao staff in UXO removal, and read about their efforts to help communities. MAG has been instrumental in removing UXO from the Plain of Jars sites (over 170 UXOs were removed from Site 1 alone) in order to allow the development of tourism (and thereby allow the development of an economy that had been devastated during the secret war). Even now though, when you walk around the sites, you are asked to stick to designated paths that are known to be safe. It is strange to think that there are still bombs scattered so close to one of the world’s most important archaeological sites. It was also strange to see MAG teams working in fields by the side of the road as I passed…

Having seen the work that they do, I really encourage you to make a donation to this charity. It’s easy, you can do it online: http://www.justgiving.com/mag

On an unrelated note, Xhieng Khuang province is on a plateau 1,200m high and, by local standards, is very cold. I spent most of today in shorts and a t-shirt, the weather approximating that of a warm summer’s day in London. I felt like laughing at the locals wrapped up in winter coats and wearing gloves. They wouldn’t last five minutes in a real winter. Then the sun went down. It’s freezing out here. I didn’t really pack for this…

Photos

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 06:57:58 +0100

Photos have been requested. Here are some of the (raw) highlights from the 1,000+ that I have taken over the past month.

The famous Buddha-head-in-a-tree at Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya.

Sunset over Old Sukhothai.

Laos valley view (on the road from Udom Xai to Nong Khiaw).

Night fishing (deserves a quiet night), Nong Khiaw.

Khamu kids in a village near Nong Khiaw.

Sunset over Nong Khiaw.

Spot the snake (photo taken from Alan and Martine’s balcony, Nong Khiaw Riverside Resort).

Divers at the Kuang Si falls.

Sa Bai Dee

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:15:38 +0100

The cycle from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong wasn’t particularly memorable. I’m sure that I enjoyed it at the time, but a week later I can’t remember much. I do remember stopping at a bike shop in Fang and I regret not buying a cycling jersey from the local cycling club. Other than that, I don’t remember much. Chiang Khong was a bit of a dump, a proper dusty frontier town, but we didn’t stay there long and we driven up a hill (that several of us would have loved to have cycled) to a Hmong and Lahu hill tribe village. The place we stayed was spectacular. A series of “bungalows” each with four two-person rooms and a shared balcony the size of my flat looking out across the Mekong into Laos. After dinner, we were treated to a performance of traditional music by villagers dressed up in their traditional dress. The first act could most favourably be described as ‘interesting’. It all went downhill from there. The finale involved two men and two women walking an odd square shaped ‘dance’ of sorts around the stage area, as the men played instruments which basically made a dull ‘Om’ sound once every couple of seconds. By this stage we had drunk the hotel out of beer and were onto the wine, and when Alan mentioned Simon Cowell, Carl started giggling uncontrollably. This set me off and very soon we were all struggling to keep straight faces. Jokes about the ‘Om’ dance became a recurring feature of the rest of the tour. As did drinking places out of our favourite drinks…

Leaving Chiang Khong the next day, we took a small boat across the Mekong and into Laos at Huay Xai. After passing through immigration, and laughing at the two young children who were helping out in the very bureaucratic office passing passports and visa application forms around, we transferred to a bigger boat and headed slowly downstream to Pak Beng. The scenery was spectacular, but after a while, most of us settled down to read or to doze our way through the eight hour journey. Others, especially Aum (our former Thai guide who was joining us in Laos as a tourist) hit the local beer, Beer Lao.

Our cycling in Laos started from Pak Beng the next day with a mamouth 145km / 90 mile ride to Udom Xai. Laos is a mountainous country, but the route was relatively flat, especially in the morning when the gently undulating road passed through corn fields and rice paddies. The journey was on a good tarmac road and, knowing that there was a long way to go, we maintained a pretty high speed. Our Laotian tour guide, Choy, was a less accomplished cyclist than either Aum or Ant and struggled to keep up with the fastest amongst us and once we realised that there wouldn’t be a single turn until the very end of the day, about half of us overtook him and cycled off into the distance.

After lunch the route was more hilly, and Choy soon joined Diana, Eileen and a few of the others in the support van. The largest hill came right at the end of the day. It was a tough climb and I hit the (figurative) wall about midway up. I have been through the wall before, during the Berlin marathon, and started to talk myself through it. Help came from an unusual source: I heard a scooter spluttering behind me and, thinking that it was struggling to overtake me on the steep hill, I decide to race it to the top of the hill. The burst of speed made me completely forget how drained I had felt only seconds before. As I pedaled faster and faster, the driver laughed and pulled up along side me. His bike hadn’t been struggling at all, he had just been trying to draw level for a chat. In broken English, he asked how many of us there were, where we were going and where we had come from. He was pretty shocked that we had cycled from as far away as Pak Beng. After a few brief exchanges, he pulled away, disappearing over the crest of the hill, where he was soon followed by Carl and Emily who overtook me at full speed.

I had been told about the Lao peoples’ friendliness before I left England, but wasn’t really prepared for it. Every time we rode through a village, we would be greeted by cries of ”Sa bai dee”. It means “Hello”, or so we’re told (see below). Young children would run up to the side of the road, waving wildly and shouting “Sa bai dee! Sa bai dee!” or, slightly confusedly “Good bye! Good bye!”. In some villages, the children would spill out onto the road, holding their hands out to high five us as we went passed. The friendliness was infectious and very soon we were all waving back, our own cries of “Sa bai dee!” being greeted with peals of laughter and yet more shouts of “Sa bai dee!”

Living in London, I am really not used to such friendliness and the cynic in me didn’t trust it. Given the laughter that greeted our responses, I kept wondering whether “sa bai dee!” meant something rude when subtly mis-pronounced or whether there was some kind of national competition with a points system based on foreigners’ response: one for a wave, two for a “sa bai dee!” and five for a high five perhaps.

The happiness was infectious and I really enjoyed every moment of cycling in Laos. I had had a great time in Thailand, but Laos was really special.

Luang Prabang

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:49:03 +0100

This morning I sat on a leather armchair in a coffee shop called Joma in central Luang Prabang. The cafe’s furniture was contemporary, the walls were plain grey concrete and hung with paintings by local artists, and the staff were attentive and efficient. I had a cream cheese bagel and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and read a couple of chapters of the Blind Assassin on my e-reader. I was surrounded by Westerners sipping on lattes and cappucinos, many of them typing away on laptops logged into the free Wifi. It could have been New York or London.

It all felt very different from the past week or so of cycling. Aside from the others on the tour, I have hardly seen a Westerner and there has been no prospect of eating Western food. Arriving in Luang Prabang two days ago was a bit of a shock to the system. There were tourists everywhere and for our final meal of the tour we were taken to a fancy French restaurant. (Three of us rebelled and ate upmarket Lao food instead.)

Despite the initial shock, I love Luang Prabang and plan to stay on for a good few days. There’s plenty to see but it is also a great place to just kick back and relax. I’ll probably cycle out to some nearby waterfalls one day. I may go for a ride on an elephant. I’ll definitely have a massage or two.

I’ll also find time to fill you in on the past week or so of cycling. It’s been really good fun, an amazing way to see Laos and I’ve got a few stories to tell.