As I've said a few times, starting a blog is usually difficult. This time though it's worse than usual. First off, Laura is in the pool chilling with some friends in the sun (from where I've dragged myself away) and the keyboard I'm using is missing most of the lettering so I don't really know which key is which. This could take a while...............................oh, that''s the full stop key.
Just a quick one. Something that I forgot to write about a couple of weeks ago was a peculiar sign that I came across in a hostel. Now, usually there are hand written signs in hostels that don't make a lot of sense or have hilarious spelling mistakes which turn an innocent message into something entirely offensive. A million times we've been in restaurants where you can order cock. Not male prostitutes, just misspelled 'coke'. Disappointing for some I'm sure. That said, a message that we found outside of our room in a hostel in Laos could not have been mistaken for anything else. The message read "No having sex with children in the rooms". Take that in for a second. Usually, making a sign like this is a reaction to something that happened in the past. It gave me the shudders. I could only hope that we were not sleeping in a bed where some dirty paedophile had been breaking the laws, loose as they may be in some of these countries. It's a weird thing to know that all around you weird and often illegal sexual acts are being committed. It's one of those things that you know is there, but you put it to the back of your mind and try to pretend that in fact it might not be happening. But, when you have a sign plastered outside of the door to your bedroom, it really makes you think.
We're now in Cambodia after traveling over the Laos border. We've spent some time in Siam Reap (the home of Angkor Wat), Phnom Penh, a busy and bustling city not too unlike some of the places we visited in India and we're now on the southern coast. As is often the case, the journey itself provided a little excitement and annoyance. Just a couple of weeks ago I posted "VIP's"within which I shared our dreadful journey from the North of Laos to Lunag Prabang. Well, we just encountered an equally as bad but totally different journey to get across the Laos-Cambodia border. First off, the bus itself cost us $35 each which is roughly our daily budget so that was the first kick in the balls, but only one of many. In a nut shell, to get from the piddly island we were on to Siam Reap we had to get on one boat, three buses and some sort of tuk-tuk which was just a trailer strapped to a moped. Now again, this was a VIP service but I didn't hold much hope for that after last time. The staff organizing the transport and border crossing were....arseholes. They didn't care for much other than getting the money out of your hand and fobbing you off onto the next rude guy but I can deal with that, I didn't want to make friends with them, I just wanted them to provide what was agreed when we paid. I'm pretty easy to please. Everything was going fairly well up to the point that we reached the border. We had a comfortable bus with air-con (actual air con, not just opening windows) and there was no-one singing shitty local songs on the mic. Result. Unfortunately that leg of the journey was only one hour long.
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| The whole bus annoyance just to see what I'd already seen. |
As we were paying massively over the odds, the travel agency were in charge of obtaining our visa's for Cambodia when the time came. All we had to do was walk across the border with our bags and jump on another bus. Easy. As we were walking I was chatting with a friend about how easy this all seemed. I think the quote was "This has to be the most hassle free border crossing ever". He had hardly finished saying the words when an almighty 'DONK' resonated across the whole of South East Asia. Everyone turned to see what had happened knowing that something had whacked into the traffic barrier that separated Cambodia from Laos. Each person turned to see what had happened and I could see a look of relief on their faces when they realized it wasn't their boyfriend, girlfriend or travel buddy who had just nutted the barrier. Any guesses what I saw when I turned around? Yep, A weeping Laura holding her head. How she managed to walk into a bright red and white barrier I have no idea, but it was no time for asking questions. The poor girl was white as a sheet and swaying like a boxer who had just be caught by Ali's right hook. If there was a pivotal moment which signified the beginning of a shitty journey, that was it. After that everything was annoying. Firstly, the trip was supposed to take 14 hours but ended up more like 19. And, on the last 4 hour leg of the journey the bus was overbooked so some people had to sit on the floor......at 10pm....after being on a bus already for 14 hours. FUCK THAT. The Cambodian fella organizing us all tried to tell me that we would be sitting on the floor. I'm normally a placid guy who either a) would just take it on the chin and be thankful that I was getting to where I needed to go, or b) politely request that I might instead take a seat. This time though, after such a day I decided on option C. Telling the guy to go fuck himself because I've paid 35 fucking dollars to get on this shitty bus so if he thinks we're sitting on the floor he can think again.....Prick. I felt damn hard at that point but he wasn't fazed and that was pretty much my only argument. Uber fail. So, all I could do was to take on the German tourist mindset and push my way to the front of the queue to make sure we got seats which unfortunately meant that some other unlucky people would have to sit on the floor. I felt pretty guilty in the end but 'what to do?'.
It wasn't only the situations that were stressing me out or getting me annoyed though. There were some people on that journey that were idiots, and sadly, they were English. I'm always embarrassed about the way our nation acts in foreign countries. It's weird, it's as though we have some sort of superior opinion of ourselves, we think that everyone should just bow down and accommodate us. There was one particular English lad who definitely passed as a Grade A wanker. He was about 20 years old, had clearly been mothered too much, was probably traveling on an allowance from Daddy and had decided to embrace the 'traveler' look by wearing a raster beany hat and some other stereotypical hippie wannabe attire. They aren't his worst points either, he argued with every local at any opportunity presented, and he spoke in broken English. Nothing riles me more than an English person speaking in broken English to try and force their point across to a foreigner. How will that help?! If a none English speaking person is having difficulty following what you are saying, the last thing to do is to start speaking poor English yourself! That will only make things worse!! Anyway, I don't want to rant too much, I'm still feeling guilty about my last post where I ripped into that Glaswegian fella. Poor Guy. Although, I doubt he can read so he'll probably never know.
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| Full on Indiana Jones stuff. |
During out time in Siam Reap I mainly visited ancient temples and got flipped off by disabled kids. First, temples. Angkor Wat is probably the only temple that I actually wanted to see. It's a huge collection of ruins and temples that sprawl across Siam Reap. The norm for tourists here is to buy a 3 day pass so that you have enough time to get round all of it but I know my limits so one day was all we opted for. We started early and went straight for the most famous temple first. Truthfully it was a let down. It didn't really seem much different from any other ancient temple or ruins that we'd seen. I was panicking. How am I going to be able to show interest in this shite for a full 10 hours?! I wasn't, I knew it and Laura knew it. I tried my best to show interest and take photos of the same things as the other tourists but I was pretty bored. Luckily, as we moved away from this particular set of ruins, things started to get a little more exciting. Nothing I saw was quite as interesting as The White Temple in Chiang Rai, but as long as I was humming the Indiana Jones theme tune as I walked through the different sections I was pretty happy. There were some cool sights to be fair. Huge stone heads mounted high up on the top of temples, trees growing on top of the ruins that had done their part to destroy walls and ceilings, and, a big ass spider on a huge web that I fooled Laura into pretty much walking into. As I said, I was bored. In the end I think we managed about eight hours of temples before we called it a day, I was pretty pleased with myself. I couldn't not do it though, Angkor Wat is one of the most famous ruins/temples in the world. So now when I get back and people ask me if I seen it I can say yes. I find myself seeing quite a lot of things for this reason.
I was sat in a bar a few days ago with an American guy that we met earlier in the trip having a casual beer (for 35p) when a young disabled lad came up to us trying to sell us a book. We didn't really want the book but you feel bad when young disabled lads are giving you the hard sell and telling you that your money will help to send them to school, even if you know it's bullshit. The lad wanted $5 for the book which is pretty steep. Remember, a beer is 35p. Even so we decided to go for it but he didn't have change and all we had was a $10 note. He said he couldn't do anything with that. I found three $1 notes which I offered instead but he wouldn't take less than $5. We went backwards and forwards for a few minutes but it got pretty old pretty fast. I'm trying to help, I'm also trying to relax and this kid is not working with me at all. Forget it. I've tried,
he hasn't tried and now I can't be bothered, I don't really want the book anyway. As we couldn't reach an agreement, we told him that we were sorry but we no longer wanted the book. He didn't like that much. He said he was sick of hearing sorry and that people saying sorry doesn't send him to school. Fiery little lad. There is only so long you can argue with a 10 year old disabled lad about a book in public. We didn't want to be particularly mean but we just had to ignore him until he left us alone. I think this might sound harsh if you're reading back in Europe but if you've been to Asia then you will know that you eventually build up barriers and can become cold towards beggars and such. Eventually he left but he decided to spend the next 10 minutes or so walking backwards and forwards past where we were sitting flipping us off and mumbling some Cambodian at us. Cheeky little fucker. What can you do? If it was a full grown man you could tell him to piss off. Even if it was a young lad you could probably tell them to piss off. But a young disabled lad with a speech impediment? I draw the line there. So our relaxing casual beer turned into us sitting being pretty much bullied and flipped off by a 10 year old disabled lad. Good times.
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| A bed used to chain up prisoners. |
We only stayed in Phnom Penh long enough to depress ourselves. The city itself is great, its a kinder, easier version of India which we liked. It had all the same hustle and bustle, just without the smell of shit or Laura shitting herself or guys shitting in the street. The reason that we were so depressed is that we spent our time looking around S-21 and The Killing Fields. Let me just give you a quick and easy background; Pol Pot, a crazy Cambodian lad got fed up with his lot after failing his degree in France. Later, after teaching in Cambodia for a bit he got fed up with that too. So like any level headed fella would he went crackers and decided to take over the country with the Khmer Rouge. He forced Cambodians into the countryside to work the fields and got rid of any educated folk, people with glasses or anyone who opposed him. In the three years he was calling the shots he killed an estimated 2.5 million people (the population at the time was about 8 million). Swell guy.
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| Faces of those killed at S-21 |
S-21 was a high school that was taken over by Pol Pot to be used as a prison and torture site for pretty much anyone he fancied throwing in there. In the three years it was running, an estimated 17,000 people were brutally tortured and killed. S-21 has now been turned into a museum which displays the meticulous documents that were kept during these years and trust me when I say, it's creepy. The beds, shackles and torture equipment remain in the rooms where it all happened, often coupled with photographs of the deceased, post torture. An entire section of a building is used for displaying 'mug shots' that were taken of the prisoners, some as young as 4 years old. 90% of these pictures show the faces of desperate and scared people that stare at you blankly from the past. Interestingly, the other 10% show some smiling faces. I don't know what the smiles meant, I can only put it down to an act of defiance from those being photographed. I have a romantic fantasy that not all of these people were scared and that they were ready to die without giving the Khmer Rouge the satisfaction of hearing them plead for their lives. I suspect that it's just my way of trying to make the situation seem better. The methods of torture used in these buildings is beyond comprehension. To even begin to try and understand what the inmates went through, and, what went through the minds of the torturers as they carried out there barbaric acts is pointless. I'll never know, or at least I hope I'll never know. The scariest thing about Pol Pot and his regime is that it happened less than 40 years ago. I can't understand how something so dreadful happened so recently. Why was it not stopped? What were we doing at the time? I had never even heard of this until a few days ago.
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| Not much more to say here. |
After our upbeat morning at S-21 we decided to lighten the mood and go to the killing fields. The killing fields are essentially an extension of S-21, it was the area that prisoners were taken to be executed and dumped. Again, the fields are particularly unpleasant. As we walked around the site we found teeth and other remains sticking out of the ground where the pits had once been. It was sickening. The whole place seemed to seep pure evil. Although what we had learnt throughout the day was all difficult to handle, one particular place within the killing field really got to me. There is a tree within the grounds named 'The Killing Tree'. The Killing Tree was used for executing babies, they would be picked up by the ankles and literally smashed against the trunk of the tree. Can you imagine that? I tried not to. What kind of person do you have to be to do something like that? I couldn't stand the thought of it and just writing about it now is making me feel a little sick so I think that's enough of that for now. It's not pleasant to write and I'm sure it's not pleasant to read.
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Just to lighten the mood. Enjoy us dancing in the
street with a fat lad. |
Sorry for ending it on such a depressing note but that's the way it goes I suppose. There are up's and down's. Luckily now we've made it to the Southern Coast for a bit of beach time. We both need to recuperate our energy before that liability of a brother of mine flies out to meet us with our old flat mate. I can't wait to see them both. Hopefully our antics during that time will provide for some interesting tales to share. If we're lucky, they won't be quite so depressing either.
Lessons Learned This Week;
- I can type without needing the letters to be printed on the keyboard.
- Angry disabled kids are the worst. You just have to sit there and take their shit.
- VIP standards do not exist in Cambodia either.
- It's easy to get depressed whilst travelling in Cambodia.
- There is no way I can do the'Pol Pot Saga'justice in just a couple of short paragraphs.
