| Friday, June 12, 2009 |
| 2009-06-08 Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, Angkor Thom |
It’s early. Too early. We’re up and out of bed at 4.30am to get a tuk tuk out to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Dragging our corpses down in the lift, we shuffle across the lobby to the front doors and out into the driveway. Mr Sam is waiting for us. “Hello!” he says, cheerfully. We try to make small talk. It doesn’t go well. Not through lack of trying. Never mind. Into the tuk tuk and out onto the road to the Angkor temples, Mr Sam is being overtaken by other tuk tuks as the sky grows gradually lighter. We pull into the ticketing area and buy our one day passes (entry comes at three price points: one day for $20, three days for $40 or a week for goshknowshowmuch – we’re only here for two days and don’t have $80USD on us for the three day pass so figure that financially, it doesn’t matter if we buy the three day or just buy another single entry tomorrow).
Back in the tuk tuk, we begin a slow crawl towards Angkor Wat. Then slower. Then slower. Then slower. Then... oh, you know what happens now, don’t you? The tuk tuk breaks down. Fer serious. The sky is lightening more quickly now. Mr Sam hails another tuk tuk driver who allows us to clamber in with his passengers, two lovely ladies from Hong Kong. Scott tries to tell Mr Sam not to worry about picking us up. Mr Sam doesn’t speak enough English to know what the hell Scott is on about and just says “OK, see you seven hours!” We’re cranky but on a mission so jump out of the second tuk tuk, thank the ladies and the driver profusely, beat off (no, not literally) a bunch of yoofs trying to sell us water and trinkets, and leg it along the bridge across the moat to Angkor Wat.
Amongst all this kerfuffle, our first impressions of Angkor Wat are slightly tainted. It is spectacular to come around the corner and view the first silhouette against the early morning sky.
Heading along the bridge, there’s a quiet calm about the place, despite the hoardes of tourists doing the same thing as us (hopefully sans tuk tuk incidents). Entering the outer wall and walking through into the “front yard” of the place is amazing, the sunrise isn’t as vibrant as others we’ve seen, but hey, we’re at Angkor Wat!
We wander around the suggested path oohing and aahing over the bas reliefs, stair cases and sheer size of the place. We reject a guy in a uniform’s suggestion that he can take us up to a blocked off renovated area for a price.
We laugh at the various domestic animals trotting around like they own the place. We come across the first of many still-utilised Buddhist shrines. We take a lot of photos. A LOT. They won’t do justification to the place, of course.
And then we get hot. It’s only 6am and the sweat is literally pouring out of us. We decide to stick to an adapted version of our original plan of seeing sunrise, seeing Angkor Wat, going back into town for a nap, then having lunch at the temples and seeing Ta Promh, the jungle-covered ruins, most recently seen in Cambodia’s favourite western actress Angelina Jolie’s film “Tomb Raider”. Well, that’s according to the tourist guides, anyway. We curse Mr Dorn for sending us a b-grade tuk tuk as we walk back along the moat. Exiting the site, we’re accosted by the same mass of children as earlier. As we clamber into another tuk tuk, one little hindu girl jumps on and tells us she's coming with us. Argh, our hearts!
We down an excellent bacony brekky and hit the sack for a while, realising that we've managed to dehydrate quite thoroughly in a very short space of time. Once we're rested up, we head next door to a restaurant which we figure, seeing as it's next to a 4 star hotel, has to be OK. Some scummy barely washed glasses make us think we're heading for some severe sickness, but in the end it's all OKish. Some average faux chinese fare for bugger all dollars, and a fine lesson in how much Cambodians like it when you make a poor attempt to learn their language: a request for ice for our drinks and a thank you in Khmer improves everyone's outlook dramatically, and all of a sudden the waitress is testing out her english on Meils.
We negotiate a cheap price to get us back out to the temples with one of the half dozen tuk tuk drivers who hang out next to the hotel, Mr Lika. We're on our way to Ta Prohm. Passing the hospital, where possibly a hundred people are waiting outside in front of Haemorrhagic fever sign is a wake up call: firstly, the juxtaposition of this borderline third world scene against the 4 star hotel just back over our shoulder reminds us just how frontier Siem Reap really is, and secondly it reminds us to get the mozzie repellant out of the bag and start applying liberally.
After a very pleasant, breezy ride through farm land we reach Ta Prohm. Blessing of blessings, it's the one which has been left to look like it's still under attack from the jungle, and that means shade, and 32 degrees celsius instead of the 38 or so out in the sun. Ta Prohm is super awesome. While Angkor Wat is impressive in size and endless sculpture, Ta Prohm makes you feel like you're in Temple of Doom or King Kong.
It's falling down, the trees are attacking and holding up the walls simultaneously. Mosses and lichens create wonderful colours and the combination of stone and jungle help you understand the time that's passed since construction.
In reality, this site is just as cared for as any of the others, and it is a great example of the hand wringing that goes on in relation to these archaeological treasures: what's the appropriate ratio of restoration to preservation to tourist access?
Angkor Thom is the next stop. It's the biggest complex out of the lot, a collection of temples inside a massive total area which originally housed tens of thousands of people. On the way there we pass through gates where hundreds of games of vehicular chicken happen every day.
Heading in through the stone elephant guarded inner walls, we head north hunting one of the minor temples when we happen upon a small settlement. Chanting is coming out of what we later find out is a buddhist nunnery, and people on the steps are being drenched in water thrown upon them from above while they hold a praying posture. Nearby, a couple wash in well water while we bashfully make our way past. The line between people making their livings at a tourist site, and living at a tourist site is thin here.
There are two major temples inside Angkor Thom: the Baphuon and the Bayon. The Baphuon is worth a look, but pales in comparison to its neighbour.
The Bayon is one of the most recognisable spots in the Angkor temples. Covered in "enigmatic faces" which depict it's "god-king" sponsor, it's a badly packed pile of rocks from a distance which up close becomes an amazingly complex collection of towers and murals and sculptures. It's a 1.2km walk around its walls, well worthwhile for the massive murals which cover that entire distance, telling the story of Cham invasion and sacking of the city, followed by the Khmer's victory and reclamation of the city.
We planned to take in sunset at the Bayon, but it's taking too long to arrive so we decide to head back to Angkor Wat to take see it in a different light. By this time, Meils has decided that ancient cultures suck for having not invented travelators.
We notice something we recognise from Sarajevo: a mortar shell/grenade impact crater on the bridge across to the city. Other tourists wonder what the hell we're looking at. It's noteworthy that so much of the history around here is quite unrecorded; we've spent all day reading about the events of 700 years ago, and here's a story from 20 years ago. The Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese fought around and occupied these temples up until around 1983.
Sadly, the temples close at 5:30PM. You have to drag your heels and pretend to be walking out slowly in order to photograph them at sunset.
Labels: Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, Bayon, cambodia, siem reap, Ta Prohm |
posted by Scott Herbert @ 2:06 AM  |
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| Sunday, June 7, 2009 |
| Phnom Penh to Siem Reap - The Overland Way |
The early morning Mekong Express bus was booked out, so with midday checkout from the Blue Lime, we find ourselves with a leisurely morning ahead when we wake up. Customary breakfasting on tropical fruits, eggs and coffee as well as the passionfruit juice which has replaced VN Iced Coffee as our lifeblood whiles away a a bit of time.
At 11.45 we drag our bags down the Angkor-ish staircase and bump into a couple of Canadians and their daughters in the lobby. Stanley and Pat are from Vancouver and are on the same bus as us up to Siem Reap. We all check out, they get into a ME minibus, we jump in a tuk tuk, and we all arrive at the bus office at the same time.
A quick scan of the block fails to produce a mini mart to buy some drinks and snacks for the bus trip, so we head back into Amazon Cafe across from the bus office and order a couple of juices and a big bottle of water to take away for our journey. The juices are freshly squeezed, presumably using some sort of ancient alchemist-charged stone device as they take about fifteen minutes to arrive from the kitchen, at which point we start sticking our heads out the cafe door to make sure that the bus doesn't take off without us. A world-champion effort at sculling sees them disposed of in a hundredth of the time they took to make, and we scuttle across the road onto the bus, which leaves only two minutes after its scheduled departure time of 12.30pm. Not a bad effort!
Our "bus hostess" is doing the run for the first time and nervously apologises for her English announcements. This is met by a round of applause and cheering from the half of the nearly-full bus that are English-speakers, for her efforts. From her giggles we're not sure if such things are customary in Cambodia or if we've embarrassed her, poor thing!
Ooo, snack time! This time instead of floss and bean paste filled rolls, it's a savoury chicken pastizzi and a sultana pastry scroll. Much more palatable.
The bus does what buses do, alternating between coming to a complete stop resplendent with horn on sections of the road blocked by broken down minivans, tractors and motos pulling agricultural carts; and trundling along at about 70km/h. Halfway through the journey we stop for a fifteen minute break. Unfortunately this bus stop restaurant is street stalls without any menu, Khmer or otherwise. The only thing on display is some "fresh" pork rice paper rolls, but the fact that the glass cabinet they're sitting in isn't refrigerated and we have another two hours of bussing to go shies us away from them. There's fresh fruit which we don't feel like consuming, cool drinks which we do feel like consuming, and Malaysian-made Pringles that we buy because they're in a packet. Food fail! Oh, nearly forgot - there's bugs. Deep fried bugs. Crickets and roach-like critters. Travel equilibrium reached, we don't even bat an eyelid, which is more than can be said for the other tourists on the bus who crowd over the pan with cameras ahoy. Sorry readers, no bug photos for you from these bloggers.
We arrive in Siem Reap at 5.30pm or thereabouts - a comfortable, five hour trip all up. The tuk tuk drivers at the bus station are organised with badges and numbered vests, a far cry from the rabble of Phnom Penh. The prices are seemingly fixed, too. $3USD to hotels. "Mr Dorn" appoints himself our tuk tuk driver and takes us to the Tara Angkor. Then he presents us with his card. It all looks pretty legitimate, he's even got a website. He tells us he's studied Angkor Wat and can take us on guided tours of the site for $15USD for the whole day, which sounds reasonable. He shows us maps, guidebooks, and speaks excellent English. We agree to go on a tour with him starting for sunrise the next day.
And then things go a little pear shaped. After agreeing to take us, Mr Dorn tells us that he has a Philipino tour group to take out the next morning, but that his "cousin" "Mr Sam" will take us to the temples in the morning and maybe after lunch Mr Dorn will come and pick us up and drive us around then. What to do? Dude seems OK, and seems to provide a good service for a decent price, what could possibly go wrong, even if he won't be taking us for the AM part of our tour? Alright, we'll give this a go.
We check into the hotel properly and are shown to our room. Meils, social policy nerd, and Katy, lawyer, have discussed the ethics of telling big international hotels you're on your honeymoon when you're not, in the hope of getting room upgrades or free booze. Both concluded that it's worth a shot. Unfortunately, it backfires big time when, instead of a suite or a bottle of cheap bubbly, we're presented with a "Happy Honeymoon" rose petal bed display and a cake. Bugger.
We take our sorry butts to the pool for a beer and a dip. There's a guy there who was eating in the Amazon Cafe in PP while we were waiting for our juices, and was on our ME bus. He tells us he started the day in Sihanoukville! Crazy.
Cooled down somewhat, we get a tuk tuk into town for some dinner. We end up at the Khmer Kitchen, where Mick Jagger ate this-one-time-at-band-camp; after a quick beer at the Red Piano, where Angelina Jolie drank this-one-time-she-was-Rainbow-Babbying-her-house. Sigh. But although Siem Reap is tourist-central, it's nowhere near the hell of Nha Trang. Our dinner, of fresh spring rolls, banana flower salad, Khmer chicken curry and fish amok, is good. So is the cheap Angkor beer.
Afterwards, we head to the Night Markets, where Scott buys some of the art-form of rubbings for our walls at home. Calls for the other sort of rubbings ("massage, sir!?") are coming thick and fast. Meils wants to know where her offers are, but is distracted from the thought by a shiny thing which she thinks is silk yarn, but turns out to be a hammock. Pfft. Lame.
Back in a tuk tuk and we head back to the hotel, pay our driver $4USD for the return journey, and are asleep by 10.30pm. Big day tomorrow!Labels: cambodia, Phnom Penh, siem reap |
| posted by Baby Animals vs. MSPaint @ 9:23 PM |
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| Saturday, June 6, 2009 |
| Phnom Penh Happy Times |
After yesterday's tour of Phnom Penh's misery, we're in the mood for something a little lighter today. We begin our morning with breakfast by the pool at the Blue Lime - a plate of tropical fruit, some walnut bread, pineapple jam, passionfruit juice, coffee and eggs. Good fuel for the day to come!
We decide to walk down Sisowath Quay to the Mekong Express bus office. It's nearing midday, and it's a hot, dusty, dirty walk along the Tonle Sap river. We cross the road to avoid the motos and tuk tuks parked on the sidewalk, but decide to brave the traffic again when we approach a woman talking to herself and smashing bottles on the paving next to the billboards and mud that designates the riverbank from the road. Sadly, that sort of behaviour isn't uncommon in Sydney but with limited medical care we don't really want to spend the rest of the day having shards dug out of our legs in a local hospital, and in the absence of a pizza cutter, the surgical skills that Meils has been brushing up on with her “A. Surgeon” iPhone game are rendered useless.
Up another few blocks and we finally arrive at the "proper" Mekong Express office - we say "proper" because along with a lot of agencies claiming to book the bus, there's several companies who have identical branding just with different text or slightly different colours. This office has an actual bus parked out the front of it so we figure we're pretty safe. We've used ME for our trip between HCMC and PP, so know what to expect, and are prepared to pay an extra $2USD each over the other companies for the familiarity on the four to six hour trip. But when we get into the office, the lady womanning the counter claims that we can't book the bus until 3pm. Huh? Even if we pay now, like we did four days in advance in HCMC? Apparently not. Cambodia, eh.
Sighing, we trot across the road to the Amazon Cafe and have a cool drink and look at their photos. We flick through the LP for suggestions of other stuff to do at this end of town - heading back south to the Palace was our plan, but now we're not so sure. A quick discussion and we come to a half ethical half tight-arse decision that we don't really want to pay about $7USD each to go into Sihanouk's palace and see his shiny Silver Pagoda. Instead, we decide to go and see Wat Phnom (a shrine on the only hill in town) then walk up to the French Embassy, where around 1500 expats and Cambodians took refuge as the Khmer Rouge descended upon PP on April 17 1975. Powerful stuff.
After another long, hot, dusty, dirty walk seeing a more "real" side of PP than the riverside areas, we arrive at the towering white-washed walls of the Embassy. Even though it's guarded more tightly than Fort Knox, it's pretty powerful seeing the location of one of the major events of the beginning of encompassing KR power. After taking a few snaps we hire a tuk tuk to take us back down to the National Museum, for $3USD - much more than the going rate according to the NGO workers at the FFC, but in some twisted fate of PP, he was the only tuk tuk in sight. We actually end up outside Friends Restaurant, where we are planning on having lunch, after our driver has no change for a five dollar note. Note to travellers - you go through $1USD notes quicker than toilet paper here.
The restaurant, run by the Mith Samlanh Foundation, trains former street children in hospitality-related fields: everything from cooking to hairdressing to tailoring. They run off a peer-to-peer model, hence, our wait staff are comprised of two young people wearing “student” tee-shirts supervised by another young person wearing a “teacher” tee-shirt. We order some of their ice-cold drinks – a passionfruit and watermelon slushy for Scott and a raspberry and vanilla smoothie for Meils. Just the thing to cool us down after trekking halfway across the city. The food hits our table in a tapas format – bok choy and black mushroom stir fry, leek and mushroom spring rolls, Tonle Sap fish and tomato stir fry with mint, Khmer chicken curry and some shrimp dumplings a little like a closed in version of Nyonya “top hats”. All the food is delicious, and we eat and eat and eat... until disaster strikes. Meils tries to pass some tomato across the table to Scott’s plate and bumps over her raspberry smoothie, resulting in a glowing pink sludge drowning the bok choy and half the table accoutrements. It’s quickly mopped up by our waiter, but unfortunately the diversion in eating (or perhaps Buddhist deities angry at Meils’ clumsy waste) has resulted in our Khmer chicken curry, the last thing to hit the table, being exposed to a breeze from the street. Not usually a problem, you say? Try it on a dry afternoon in Phnom Penh. Our curry and rice is covered with gritty black and brown particles of... well, Maude knows what. We try to battle through but sense gets the better of us. The bill comes to $17USD. Not bad for what, extenuating circumstances aside, would’ve been a schmancy meal in Sydney-town.
After lunch we make attempt number two at buying bus tickets, via tuk tuk this time. We’re more successful this time, and celebrate by going back to the hotel, having a shower and lazing around in the air conditioning for a couple of hours.
Before we know it, it’s time to eat again. What, were you surprised? We pop around the corner to what looked like a Tiger Beer garden from our balcony but is more of a barbecue restaurant on street level, but we decide not to go in and instead get a tuk tuk to the Goldfish River Restaurant on stilts above the less foul end of the Tonle Sap. We enter the restaurant to a blast of Khmer pop music – they have a band here on Saturday nights, and we suspect that Cambodian amplification systems must START at eleven, because we’re wondering how our hearing is going to survive the experience. Luckily there’s a table available to the side of stage – we still have to shout to hear each other, but at least we’re not in the direct line of fire. We order a couple of Angkor Beers (“It’s My Country: It’s My Beer”) and then peruse the vast menu, fighting off the waiters who appear every ten seconds, obviously expecting us to have some sort of post-human reading speed for the 300+ items in front of us. Eventually we pick a chicken and banana leaf salad, shrimp in curry spices with baby eggplants, barbecue beef with lemon and pepper and the pis de resistance, a plate of black pepper crab. The soundtrack helps us digest, as does a bit of seat dancing in response to a large circle of Khmers and NGO workers shimmying in a circle around a centre table.
After our meal, we wander across the road to the night markets. The most interesting thing there is a young Cambodian woman on a stage singing Britney Spears covers. Back in a tuk tuk, we call it a night.
Labels: cambodia, Phnom Penh |
| posted by Baby Animals vs. MSPaint @ 9:15 PM |
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| Nom Nom Nom Penh. |
After yesterday's tour of Phnom Penh's misery, we're in the mood for something a little lighter today. We begin our morning with breakfast by the pool at the Blue Lime - a plate of tropical fruit, some walnut bread, pineapple jam, passionfruit juice, coffee and eggs. Good fuel for the day to come!
We decide to walk down Sisowath Quay to the Mekong Express bus office. It's nearing midday, and it's a hot, dusty, dirty walk along the Tonle Sap river. We cross the road to avoid the motos and tuk tuks parked on the sidewalk, but decide to brave the traffic again when we approach a woman talking to herself and smashing bottles on the paving next to the billboards and mud that designates the riverbank from the road. Sadly, that sort of behaviour isn't uncommon in Sydney but with limited medical care we don't really want to spend the rest of the day having shards dug out of our legs in a local hospital.
Up another few blocks and we finally arrive at the"proper" Mekong Express office - we say "proper" because along with a lot of agencies claiming to book the bus, there's several companies who have identical branding just with different text or slightly different colours. This office has an actual bus parked out the front of it so we figure we're pretty safe. We've used ME for our trip between HCMC and PP, so know what to expect, and are prepared to pay an extra $2USD each over the other companies for the familiarity on the four to six hour trip. But when we get into the office, the lady womanning the counter claims that we can't book the bus until 3pm. Huh? Even if we pay now, like we did four days in advance in HCMC? Apparently not. Cambodia, eh.
Sighing, we trot across the road to the Amazon Cafe and have a cool drink and look at their photos. We flick through the LP for suggestions of other stuff to do at this end of town - heading back south to the Palace was our plan, but now we're not so sure. A quick discussion and we come to a half ethical half tightarse decision that we don't really want to pay about $7USD each to go into Sihanouk's palace and see his shiny Silver Pagoda. Instead, we decide to go and see Wat Phnom (a shrine on the only hill in town) then walk up to the French Embassy, where around 1500 expats and Cambodians took refuge as the Khmer Rouge descended upon PP on April 17 1975. Powerful stuff.
After another long, hot, dusty, dirty walk seeing a more "real" side of PP than the riverside areas, we arrive at the towering white-washed walls of the Embassy. Even though it's guarded more tightly than Fort Knox, it's pretty powerful seeing the location of one of the major events of the beginning of KR power. |
| posted by Baby Animals vs. MSPaint @ 9:07 PM |
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| Friday, June 5, 2009 |
| 2009-06-05 The Dark Side of Phnom Penh |
What shall we do today, the "nice stuff" or the "depressing stuff"?
We choose.... Depressing. Off to S-21 and Choeng Ek (the Killing Fields) for some, let's be frank, genocide tourism.
All the facts that you might need to know are pretty well summed up in Wikipedia. Standing in a cramped, hurriedly constructed single person cell in what used to be a class room and looking out onto the wooden beams from which people hung until they passed out, only to be woken up in a barrel of water, repeat, it's shocking and depressing.
Thousands of photos of victims. Instruments of torture. Paintings by survivor Vann Nath showing the methods of confession/fiction extraction. Skulls. A souvenir shop.
Several amputee beggars await out the front. There's a man with a molten face.
We move on the Choeng Ek, one example of "the Killing Fields". It's about 15km out of town, so on the way we get to see some of the outer burbs of Phnom Penh. Amazing juxtaposition of structures: rice paddy, garage, convenience store in a corrugated iron shed, huge fenced off mansion, slum. Some horrifying rotting and sewage smells. A party headquarters with cattle grazing at the front step.
Choeng Ek has two parts. Firstly, the gigantic Buddhist stupa containing 8,000 or so skulls.
Then there's the fields of mass graves, some left unexcavated, surrounded by various signposts showing where a chemical shed used to stand, or a tree against which children would be smashed.
Most horrifying of all is that the graves are no longer clearly demarkated; the paths worn by thousands of tourists are gradually revealing more bones.
People are living in the grounds of the site. Caretakers? While there are signs asking for quiet, rock music blasts from a third world camp site. Children beg at the fences.
More amputees at the gates. Later we find out that the site is licensed to a Japanese corporation.
Back in town he head to a restaurant called Frizz for a late lunch. The Cambodian food gives us a feeling of a precise cross between Thai and Vietnamese. Complex and rich and spicy, but fresh and zesty as well. The food's so good we enquire about taking cooking classes, but it's all booked up. Apparently there's some good classes in Siem Reap, so fingers crossed for later in the week.
We head down to the Foreign Correspondents Club for some refreshments, and quickly realise we're both emotionally drained and burned to the proverbial, so we don't linger.
Even though it's a great place to people watch.
Back at the hotel we've been moved to a "better" room. Better means that now it's up 15m of stairs, and has no water pressure. Some sooking later, we head next door to a mexican place where people are smoking pot, watching Shrek, and preparing quite passable tex mex burritos. The huge biker looking guy behind the counter may well be wanted in several US states and is hiding out in a dark alley in Phnom Penh. Which we are as well, in a vastly different way.Labels: Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, S21 |
| posted by Scott Herbert @ 2:30 AM |
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| Thursday, June 4, 2009 |
| 2009-06-04 Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh |
Exit hotel, drop bags off at the bus company, and duck into Pho Quyhn for breakfast. No menus needed this morning, 2 Pho Tai and ice coffee please.
Hmmm, what's that dark mass in in the glass reflection in front of me? Why is everyone pointing at the sky? Oh it's just ARMAGEDDON approaching at speed.
What was a fine hot blue skyed morning turned in the space of about 5 minutes into the monsoon. Rain fell like it was machine gun fire from heaven. We knew it was extreme due to the odd giggly noises the phoprietor was making.
Thankfully it let off a bit long enough for us to crowd under an umbrella and get our belongings on the bus. Behind us, a dude who smelled like he'd been on the Mekong Whiskey for a few weeks, beside us a lovely Vietnamese lady from Canley Vale, Sydney back to visit family and see Ankor Wat.
Bread-like buns filled with sweet and savoury stuffs are supplied. Amazing Cambodian karaoke DVDs relieve us of the need for entertainment. The scenery changes quickly to rural, and subsistence level agriculture. Oddly though, even the stilt houses made from what looks to be scrap wood often have big ol' TV attennae.
When we reach the border it's a $20US visa on arrival (thankfully we came prepared with US cash and passport photos for the Kingdom's files), and a health declaration where we claimed (perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt) not to have coughed, sneezed, had a headache or diarrhoea recently.
The first things you see in Cambodia is casinos. There's one in the border control grounds. There's dozens. Then, back to farm land and snoozeville.
We awaken and find ourselves at Neak Leung, a ferry crossing town which looks pretty third world, especially when the monsoon starts up again, whipping garbage around the streets and drenching a dozen or so fruit/veggie sellers and child beggars who swamp the bus. People around us purchase some lotus seeds, others donate their uneaten bread products to the kids. Later I find that this town is the one that you see bombed at the beginning of "The Killing Fields", where a B52 accidentally dropped a 20 ton payload killing hundreds.
The bus boards the ferry with a clunk, and we begin to rediscover religion as this thing heads off across choppy brown waters. No probs though, we're off again, having had a worrying glimpse of what life in Phnom Penh may turn out to be like.
When we pull in to the bus station after a 7 hour trip, we're absolutely swamped by tuk tuk drivers, who start reaching for our bags and demanding that we use their services, all while we're trying to find the receipt for our bags amongst our backpacks, with the bus drivers thinking that we're stupid and can't work out the system or that we've lost our tickets. The whole thing was like being a stock traded on the NYSE floor. Really we're just mentally and physically overloaded, and trying not to show everyone present the expensive camera and laptop in our backpacks where our bag receipts are stashed. Eventually we push free from the throng, grab the first tuk tuk guy that spotted us while we were still driving, and negotiate a truly cheap fare to our hotel.
Somehow the divide between rich and poor seems even wider in Phnom Penh than Ho Chi Minh City: the poor are poorer and the rich are doing it in style in far more beautiful architecture. The hotel is a 4 star fortress oasis down an alley that you wouldn't go near in Sydney. Much as we're here for culinary adventures, we decide to regroup with some very passable club sandwiches and a relax by the pool with Ankor beer.
We read a lot of cautionary tales about bag snatching, robbery and all kinds of tomfoolery going on here, so our first venture out is without the backpack, camera etc. Every corner is covered with dudes lying around in the heat, occasionally calling out "Sir, you want tuk tuk?". Unlike HCMC, a polite "no thank you!" is usually sufficient in letting them get back to their business. Oh, but wait, what's this? A whitey in his late thirties / early forties approaches us. He asks us where we're from in a BRITISH accent. When we tell him, he switches to a more natural AUSTRALIAN accent and asks us how long we've been in Phnom Penh. When we tell him we've only just arrived, he tells us he's from Canberra, has just arrived from Siem Reap, left his wallet and camera in his bag in the hold of the bus, and they've been stolen. He claims that he's been to the Embassy but they won't help him because it's the end of the day, but that he needs some money to call his family to get them to wire him money through Western Union. Dude has a cloud of dodginess you could cut about him, but we give him 5000R (slightly more than a dollar) to go away. We're shocked that our first experience with the "Wildes of Phnom Penh" is a whitey exploiting tourists for ... what? A cheap holiday? Shits and giggles? A subsidised lifestyle choice? A little further down the block we come across amputees in ancient wheelchairs asking for money. Disgusted doesn't begin to cover it.
Shaking our heads in disbelief, we head for the Foreign Correspondent's Club, lauded as a must see in the various tourist guides. After getting fairly lost due to the fact that a lot of the street signs went illegibly rusty sometime in the 50s, we find ourselves outside the DV8 bar, with tasteful silhouettes of ladies on the sign reminding us of the Lonely Planet's simultaneous warnings and how-tos of girly bars/brothels. MMMnnnnaaahh let's find that FCC club.
The FCC is a multi level classic building with its first surprise being an awesome merch desk, from which we pick up some T shirts and stubby coolers (the best souvenirs don't come from souvenir shops). Somehow, they also boast the ability to get you copies (literally) of something like 70 foreign newspapers. I check the Aussie contingent, yes there's the Cairns Post, Meils checks, no the NT isn't represented, sad.
Next surprise is a proper wood fired pizza oven. The food all looks good, we order jugs of Tiger beer, a trio of tasty entres, and watch as the light fades over the river. Cambodian youngsters in pairs hang out by the river on their scooters, next to a bewilderingly massive pile of mud. Journalists and NGO workers discuss their days around us. We have a chat to a French bloke about the comparisons between the countries we've all been to and the differences in their peoples. The Cambodians seem more mellow than the Vietnamese, a generalisation that holds up if only when comparing the tenacity of touts and the very much appreciated lack of constant car horns in Phnom Penh.
The pool at our hotel doesn't have a closing hour. This is civilisation. Floating in salt water, looking up at the northern hemisphere stars is a nice way to end a hectic day. |
| posted by Scott Herbert @ 8:48 AM |
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| Wednesday, June 3, 2009 |
| Au Revoir Tourist Hell! Bonjour Saigon! |
We wake up to the squeals of kids playing in the pool five floors below us. The acoustics of this hotel would be amazing if Bjork was playing on the ground level and NIN were playing on the top, but unfortunately the caucophany of minors isn’t nearly as interesting. We attempt to pack only to be slowed by Meils’ Chinese Laundry attempt at thwarting the Novotel’s ridiculous cleaning charges resulting in clothes failing to dry properly in the sub-Arctic air-conditioning. We shove the wet stuff into plastic and Meils checks out while Scott does a dong-run down the street to an ATM. We said DONG.
 Into a cab that has an overpowering smell of petrol throughout it, and we brave the half hour drive to the airport, only questioning whether Vietnamese petrol still contains lead once. Or maybe twice. Who can be sure? A speedy check in at the slightly-less-barn-like counters and we duck into the airport restaurant for a 70K dong breakfast of pho and iced coffee. The pho has noodles reminiscent of Korean japchae, made from yam flour rather than rice, and lacks the usual accompaniments of bean sprouts and herbs, though does come with some tiny birds eye chillies and lime. On our way out of the restaurant we notice a Vietnamese woman has been given a plate of basil, mint and sprouts, and sliced red chilli. NOOO! DON’T BE STEALIN’ OUR ACCOMPANIMENTS! We wonder whether the restaurant staff meant for us to eat the napalm chillies we were given and forget about the missing ingredients amidst pain of death.  Scott looks up the lyrics to "Most Glorious Uncle Ho, Leader of Them All"
Back into the airport proper and, defying conventional wisdom, we discover that Nha Trang airport has prettied up their DEPARTURE area over the arrivals conveyor-barn. Our upstairs “lounge” even has an entire wall devoted to Uncle Ho! The HCMC-bound flight before ours is delayed due to a late arrival of aircraft, so we sit in front of the air-conditioner and hope that the cool air isn’t privy to Legionnaire’s Disease.
We wait. And we wait. Flight 355 to HCMC is called for boarding forty minutes late. We wait some more. Our flight is moved to 1.20pm. We wait again. A VNA flight to HCMC, scheduled to leave after ours, has a line of 50 people waiting at our gate after it is called but no staff come to let them on the plane. We wait. They board and leave. We look at the bare tarmac forlornly. Scott throws defenceless stick people over a wall in a game on his iPhone. Meils goes to the toilet a lot. We wait some more. It has now been two hours since our inferior pho and we are getting hungry. We spot some 30-something Brits with two young Vietnamese girls who were all on our dive boat yesterday. One of the girls says a cheery hello to us. The Brits don’t. We wait. We notice the Jetstar plane on the runway and consider calling in a favour given that we have practically been financially responsible for the successful launch of each and every one of their overseas routes. NO GAMMON. Meils wonders whether Uncle Ho would think the failure of plane scheduling proof of the evils of capitalism. Scott thinks about growing a long goatee and attaining people’s prosperity through pig farming.
Our flight is finally called at 1.15pm. Meils risks divorce and hyperemesis by using the bathroom one last time before getting on the plane – her beloved toilet stall is covered in vomit, and the lack of air-conditioning in the public areas results in her and two British ladies gagging as they line up to use the one unsullied lavatory. Scott, and the partners of the Brits, are not amused. All are reduced to nervous laughter when we see the plane we’ve been transferred to in lieu of our booked aircraft arriving. It’s a prop plane, last internally refurbished in 1991, with the smell of cigarette smoke defying the “no smoking” signs on entry. The plane taxis out on the sole runway, the cracks and foliage growing upon the surface suggesting that maintenance has fallen the way of the Americans who used to call this an air base. Defying all odds, the plane takes off, and we’re treated to an almost-turbulence free flight over some stunning coastal scenery.
The landing has us choking back spew with laughter, the prop plane hitting the runway once, bouncing, hitting it again SIDEWAYS and finally swerving to an almost-stop at the end of the tarmac. The smell of cigarette smoke increases. We suspect that the pilots are having a 555 (local cigarette) and Mekong whiskey session up the pointy end of the plane.
 Kamikaze ahoy!
Hungered by our near-death experience on Vietnam Airways, we go searching for a late lunch. We’ve walked past a street restaurant next to the hotel a bunch of times so decide to give it a go because they have a typed menu in Vietnamese which we figure we can decipher with our Lonely Planet. The owner brings us menus in English, and we order – chicken and noodles for Meils, and shrimp and rice for Scott. Or we think we order. The BaBaBa beers turn up, then Meils’ food, but 45 minutes later Scott’s tiny piece of table is still empty. We try to ask where it is but one of the ladies from the store just waves 50K dong in front of our faces and demands that we pay up. The owner did say something to us in Vietnamese (“our rice isn’t ready yet? / “do you want to choose something else?” / “are you sure you don’t want to go to McDonalds, 'coz, like, SUCKED IN, THERE ISN'T ONE!?”) but we thought he was just correcting our pronunciation of the dishes. Obviously, we were wrong.
 Meils contemplating Pasteur's germ theory and electron transfer on low gauge wiring
We walk around the corner and pull into one of the stock standard cafes along the tourist strip where Scott has a plate of Singapore noodles and a couple of Tiger beers are consumed. A “street physio” comes in while we’re waiting and gives Scott an unrequested but good back and shoulder massage which calms him down, until the guy asks for 200K dong for it. We laugh. The guy laughs and says 100K. We give him fifty (about $4 / two bowls of pho / a taxi ride across the city / way too much) and he is pleased.
 Here, a "happy ending" means not walking away bankrupt
Back at the Saigon Mini we have a quick shower and get changed then with a bit of hassle, manage to book Le Bourdeux, a French restaurant, for dinner. We originally planned to visit Madame Dai’s Bibiliotheque tonight, but all internet searches are fruitless until we come across several pages saying that the restaurant closed after her death in 2007. Double whammy, we’ve both enjoyed reading about the ex-South Vietnamese senator and lawyer in Bourdain’s Cooks Tour. Le Bourdeux is on the other side of town to the airport so after another crazy cab ride later we find ourselves outside. It’s a stark contrast to the com ga and pho stalls on either side of it, but we figure if you’re going to eat French in a former French colony, why not do it properly? The service is amazing, the food is stunning – we both have a roast duck breast with raspberry vinigerette for mains,
and a sublime hot chocolate mint soufflé for dessert, along with a bottle of Bourdeux red.
Chauffered into another taxi at the Le Bordeaux street exit, we note that its frontage resembles Hell's Kitchen. It's a quick trip home before popping our first doses of doxycycline, doing an improvised jig around our hotel room to stop them eating away at our oesophagii, then sleep in preparation for our early start tomorrow.Labels: saigon, vietnam |
| posted by Baby Animals vs. MSPaint @ 6:01 PM |
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