OK, been a long time coming and for one day only…. We’ve been in our final country of Thailand for five weeks now, four of them with friends both from jolly old home Brighton, one just on a holiday and the other VSOing in the North near Burma which we just had to pop into. We’ve traveled the length and breadth of this place as you can see from the last map (next post).
Just one day left of our around the world trip now and it’s quite surreal. We had to forget the last and, for me anyway, possibly greatest, last two countries on our trip… Nepal and Tibet. But there’s plenty of time for them some other day.
I’ve got so much more to write about but that’ll have to wait for a little while. We’ve got a flat to put back together, phone and internet to sort out and a new job to start. So much more to write about … Vietnam,Cambodia and Thailand. I really wasn’t going to write anything about Thailand as it’s got to be one of the most traveled places ever and another load of info could be nothing but boring but I’ve seen loads I wasn’t expecting. Some of that was due to staying a while in Mae Sot on the Burmese border with our friend Claire who is VSOing (and can speak Thai!) and the rest is just because there is so much to see in this place!
Anyway, hope some people stay tuned a bit longer, might be a while but also might be worth it hopefully.
My birthday and it also happens to be some minor little Thai festival known as Songkran. This is just a bit of what happened today down the Ko San road…
After some pretty boring internetting I’ve finally uploaded the “trip so far”. Looks like the software doesn’t like going around the back of the planet and it seems to have taken the long way from the Cook Islands type area to New Zealand. It was actually only a little skip and jump! Pretty darn boring though, playing with GPS data so this will have to do for now!
A little legend and not that easy to find. The Battambang Bamboo Train. It’s a DIY, collapsible portable (Bamboo of course) train and it needs to be really. When the real train comes it’s gotta get off that track pretty sharpish. Fortunately there is only one train a week at the moment after the passenger train was indefinitely cancelled.
To catch the train, whatever you do don’t ask anyone where you get it, or follow the signs. The signs just kind of end and people were directing us all over the place. Find the railway track…. and wait a bit.
The passenger station might not see another passenger. Instead, it’s a slightly unlikely tourist attraction for the few tourists who venture this far.
it’s only 79 years old, plenty of life left in it yet.
Mosquitos and midges can sometimes be a problem. Shown here around this lamp shade in a fairly rubbish attempt to capture the moment.
Cambodia is dotted with places like Choeung Ek 14km from Phnom Penh, some no doubt, still undiscovered. This is the site of a huge stupa filled with over 8000 skulls representing a fraction of those killed at this site alone. Walking around, reading the signs identifying long gone buildings and their gruesome functions is a sobering experience.
skulls inside the memorial…
evidence of what happened here is everywhere
clothing litters the ground popping up amid bones and teeth that you can’t help but walk on.
some has been placed in the stupa along with some leg irons here
43 of the 129 mass graves have been excavated.
Nuts! I didn’t get a picture of these, also Nuts because that’s what they taste of apparently.. nutty chicken. The local delicacy of this truck stop (frankly rank place) on the road between Kratie and Siem Reap is deep fried spiders. And a Cambodian favorite in general would appear to be bus karaoke as can almost be seen here in this man’s rather tastefully decorated bus. The story for each karaoke video I think it’s fair to say was was pretty similar; boy meets girl, falls in love, meets family, happily ever after… At the risk of alienating an audience that appears to know what it likes, some do vear right off and branch out into such taboo topics as car mechanics and food preparation. Risky business for sure.
“The local Road Chef had gone down hill in recent times”
If there are ghosts anywhere, then surely it is here in the complex of buildings named S21. April 1975 Pol Pot emptied Phnom Penh and turned the capital of Cambodia into a ghost town. The inhabitants were either sent to the fields or executed. Their fate depended on their usefulness as laborers and their degree of education. Almost all elderly, sick or educated people were killed. Those who conspired or otherwise resisted the regime were sent to S21. An ex school, S21 was the detention and torture capital of Pol Pot’s reign of terror. Maintained as it was found when the regime collapsed, the place is frightening even now.
On the wall of each cell is a black and white photo of what was found when people first came to this place after the terror.
As well as the bigger cells there are smaller holding cells
some with the chains that held the people here
blood spatters are everywhere
Exhibitions show a fraction of the people sent here from children to pensioners
barbed wire to stop people committing suicide, escape wasn’t an option.
Sticking my camera through a hole in a boarded up door this image emerged. Piles of leg irons and a Buddha with it’s head smashed in.
Penultimate country in our world marathon. We’re meeting friends here who have been setting up a Kayak business for the last few months. We’ll travel around together then end up at their place and hopefully check out the Kayaks ourselves.
Itinary: Phenom Pen (killing fields, S21, city madness, Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda) – Kratie (river dolphins and countryside villages) – Siem Reap (Angkor Wat, Massage, Ed’s Birthday) – Bhatambang (Kayaking) – Thailand
The end of our Vietnam trip in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and we thought we wouldn’t be able fit in a visit to the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi. It was our last day and all the organised tours had gone in the morning. Private tours were stupidly expensive. The site is only 30km from Saigon so we asked a taxi driver. No problem, we hired him to take us there, wait and bring us back for a fraction of the price of a “tour”. We were whisked through the countryside to the banging sounds of Euro Disco which I guess he thought we’d like. I did quite like it even on the second play on the way back.
Parts of the Viet Cong tunnels have been preserved here including a typical entrance hatch here…
and tunnels below… best not to be too (or even slightly) claustrophobic here!
mock ups of some of the improvised traps and weapons are on display too
along with other buildings all studded with eary B52 bomb craters
Then you can fire a gun. It’s not big and it’s not clever, all right! We went for the AK47 of course.
