It seems anyone with any skills leaves the land of the long white cloud as soon as they are old enough to get a passport. When I tell people I'm moving here they struggle with the concept and after I tell them I have some skills so getting a job should not be hard they assume I am insane. I am starting to wonder why I am here when everyone else is leaving. It feels like I missed a boat and now I'm a drowning rat on a sinking ship. I'm mixing analogies and seem to be on a boat having missed one - but Auckland is all about boats.
After just one week of looking around and going to quite a few interviews I get myself some employment at www.shift.co.nz - the premier web design company of NZ. It's a perfect set up for me and I start on monday. They are an interesting bunch of people. An international crowd with people from Israel, the UK, the US, France, Spain,China, Korea and of course NZ. It seems like they cherry pick the biggest geeks from around the world and then put them in an open plan ofice just to see how awkward it is. There are a lot of headphones and Burger king wrappers lying around and I don't mind it at all. I can walk to work in about ten minutes and my walk takes me through Albert park - a particularly beautiful public space that makes me feel a whole heap better about being here and knowing no one.
I get thrown in at the deepend at work since they are so busy. But the work is pretty easy given that it's all about two years out of date. That's the thing about New Zealand web design - since no one can get decent broadband there is no need to produce super-flash websites.
On wednesday evening I go to the Auckland web meetup with some of my new colleagues. It's basically a meeting for all of Aucklands web designers where they can talk about emerging technologies and showcase work. Auckland is a small town and their web industry, I assume, is small too, but about 150 people turn up and a bigger concentration of nerds you will not find. I actually forget for a few hours how super cool I am and laugh along at the jokes about the cool things flash 4 could do.
Friday night is drinks at work. Something I need to stay away from in future. And then the weekend turns up again for another 48 hours of alone time.
Plan for next week: Join gym, make friends. Or make friends first then join gym - don't want gym buddies.
Plan for following week: Cancel gym membership. Write book.
Saturday, 15 September 2007
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
Solitary confinement
It's been a week of solitary and rather than just sitting here bouncing my tennis ball against the floor and wall Steve McQueen style I have been settling in nicely.
I drop Amanda-Sue off at Auckland International on the wednesday, the same day I move into my new apartment in downtown Auckland. It's a weird feeling saying goodbye after two months in each others pockets. But that is the deal and you deal with the deal as best you can. So I head back into Auckland to drop the car off at Jucy - the bright green rental people with a stupid name - and walk to my new home. I have no broadband, so that's number one on the list of priorities. It gets installed the following day, but their idea of broadband is my idea of broadly crap. I don't really need super fast speeds until I get a job, but I feel I should have it out of principle being a digimon. But they tell me NZ isn't really set up for high speeds and that's definitely true. People will return your call after a couple of days with nothing more than a "Sorry, I've been a bit stacked" and the maximum speed in a built up area is 20kph - you can walk faster. I'm getting used to the pace though. I think I'll get a job in a couple of weeks.
Since I've stopped travelling and doing interesting things I have very little to write about. I have a drawer style dishwasher in my kitchenette. That's different. Not exactly interesting but I haven't spoken to anyone in seven days and it makes a noise when it's on so I consider it company. Television here is an interesting mix of all the worst tv from all over the world. They have Coronation St, but it's a year behind, and I haven't got that low yet. They have McLeod's Daughters from Oz and I know it's awful but that hasn't stopped me getting into it. They have a channel called Maori TV for the indigenous people that can actually afford a TV, but it's not in English and even if it were it would be a waste of airspace. Thursdays at 7.30 is "brand new Family Guy" according to the ads, but I definitely saw the one last week about a year ago. To sum up I am reading a lot.
In desperation I buy a couple of DVDs, but don't think about region coding at all. When I bought the mac it was region 1 which I changed to region 3 to watch a singaporean dvd. I then changed to region 2 to watch my own dvd and I have one change left. I'm not going to waste it just yet. So the dvds provide me just enough entertainment of reading their back covers.
The weekend in the center of Auckland is a quiet time. I walk around, but it's cold. I take a ferry across the bay to Devonport - a nice little village type place. I have a coffee on my own and climb a volcano on my own. It is grey and cold. Up at the summit of the volcano, through the drizzle I spot my ferry coming and try and race down to beat it. I lose. Half an hour later and soaked I do get a ferry and hole up in my apartment for the rest of the day. I'm working on my CV which is less appealing than working on my novel, but just as much fiction.
To get me out of the apartment I head up to Ponsonby for sunday breakfast to see my only existing kiwi friends - two fat cats. There are loads of kids there playing with the cats and they don't even see me come in or leave. Nothing else happens of note.
Monday turns up as you would expect and I head out to visit my old friend Wayne. It's great to see him, if only because it allows me to speak to someone other than the dishwasher. The rest of the week is job seeking and killing time waiting for people to return calls. Since no one else is unemployed they don't have the same urgency as I do so it's a frustrating week, but hey it's thursday and an episode of Family Guy that I saw last year will be on soon, so that's already twenty minutes of my evening taken care of.
I drop Amanda-Sue off at Auckland International on the wednesday, the same day I move into my new apartment in downtown Auckland. It's a weird feeling saying goodbye after two months in each others pockets. But that is the deal and you deal with the deal as best you can. So I head back into Auckland to drop the car off at Jucy - the bright green rental people with a stupid name - and walk to my new home. I have no broadband, so that's number one on the list of priorities. It gets installed the following day, but their idea of broadband is my idea of broadly crap. I don't really need super fast speeds until I get a job, but I feel I should have it out of principle being a digimon. But they tell me NZ isn't really set up for high speeds and that's definitely true. People will return your call after a couple of days with nothing more than a "Sorry, I've been a bit stacked" and the maximum speed in a built up area is 20kph - you can walk faster. I'm getting used to the pace though. I think I'll get a job in a couple of weeks.
Since I've stopped travelling and doing interesting things I have very little to write about. I have a drawer style dishwasher in my kitchenette. That's different. Not exactly interesting but I haven't spoken to anyone in seven days and it makes a noise when it's on so I consider it company. Television here is an interesting mix of all the worst tv from all over the world. They have Coronation St, but it's a year behind, and I haven't got that low yet. They have McLeod's Daughters from Oz and I know it's awful but that hasn't stopped me getting into it. They have a channel called Maori TV for the indigenous people that can actually afford a TV, but it's not in English and even if it were it would be a waste of airspace. Thursdays at 7.30 is "brand new Family Guy" according to the ads, but I definitely saw the one last week about a year ago. To sum up I am reading a lot.
In desperation I buy a couple of DVDs, but don't think about region coding at all. When I bought the mac it was region 1 which I changed to region 3 to watch a singaporean dvd. I then changed to region 2 to watch my own dvd and I have one change left. I'm not going to waste it just yet. So the dvds provide me just enough entertainment of reading their back covers.
The weekend in the center of Auckland is a quiet time. I walk around, but it's cold. I take a ferry across the bay to Devonport - a nice little village type place. I have a coffee on my own and climb a volcano on my own. It is grey and cold. Up at the summit of the volcano, through the drizzle I spot my ferry coming and try and race down to beat it. I lose. Half an hour later and soaked I do get a ferry and hole up in my apartment for the rest of the day. I'm working on my CV which is less appealing than working on my novel, but just as much fiction.
To get me out of the apartment I head up to Ponsonby for sunday breakfast to see my only existing kiwi friends - two fat cats. There are loads of kids there playing with the cats and they don't even see me come in or leave. Nothing else happens of note.
Monday turns up as you would expect and I head out to visit my old friend Wayne. It's great to see him, if only because it allows me to speak to someone other than the dishwasher. The rest of the week is job seeking and killing time waiting for people to return calls. Since no one else is unemployed they don't have the same urgency as I do so it's a frustrating week, but hey it's thursday and an episode of Family Guy that I saw last year will be on soon, so that's already twenty minutes of my evening taken care of.
Thursday, 30 August 2007
Final bunch of photos
So that's it. Journey's end. I've got an apartment in Auckland which looks very empty at the moment. I spend my days on the phone to my broadband provider because their service is so bad (and because I have no one else to talk to) and I've got myself an all blacks top for to wear for the next month.
Here are some photos of the last legs of my journey:
Angkor: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601516782118/
Koh Tao: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601517122816/
Sydney: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601646001758/
Melbourne: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601646094490/
Auckland (the first time): http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601652916549/
The rest of North Island: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601653228481/
Here are some photos of the last legs of my journey:
Angkor: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601516782118/
Koh Tao: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601517122816/
Sydney: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601646001758/
Melbourne: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601646094490/
Auckland (the first time): http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601652916549/
The rest of North Island: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157601653228481/
Sunday, 19 August 2007
Home Sweet North Island Home
Well it's taken a little while to get here and the journey has taken it's toll on occasion, but I've finally reached Auckland to start my new life as a Maori. So it's Kia ora from me, etc.
As it turns out the weather in Koh Tao is unseasonably bad. The rains move in and the sea on most of the dive sites is terrible so I fail to get my night dive and deep dive done. I'm disappointed not to be able to call myself advanced simply because no-one else ever will but there's no time to dwell as it's back to Samui and perpetually southwards now. Samui has great weather and we probably should have spent the last week here instead of persevering in Tao. With just the one day I embrace the opportunity to get a McDonald's. I assume a double cheeseburger, fries and diet coke would ease me back into civilization, but there is too much cheese on the burger, too much salt on the fries and the diet coke is a can, not a cup. It's a minor issue, but I've already up-sized for 15 baht and all I get for that is ten extra fries and a smaler than normal drink size. I can't enjoy the meal with this budgetary excess hanging over me but I return for a McFlurry to try and forget it (that's shit too but I am expecting it this time). Amanda sensibly opts for local food instead, but the restaurant is a lonely planet recommendation and of course is shit.
Our next morning is pure indulgence at a spa. I go for a two hour massage and Amanda gets facials, massages, steam things and god knows what else. A lovely old lady washes my feet in scented water and gives me some elastic underwear to protect my modesty, then proceeds to work every joint and pull me in every conceivable way until I'm all straightened out. The old lady is far less concerned about my modesty than I and exposes my pasty white ass to the entire beach on a number of occasions (the one-size its all elastic underwear fit no-one and do very little to shield me from prying local eyes. In reality the only eyes are hers and I'm sure she's seen enough white mans ass to last a lifetime).
The flight to Singapore is your normal crap service. But on the other side of immigration suddenly everything is different. Prices are high, the buildings are higher and litter doesn't exist. The hotel is everything we have been dreaming about since booking it. White sheets, fluffy towels, proper, hot hot-water, pay-tv, internet access in the room and room service 24 hours. We are in in time for dinner, but I choose a place again and now, true-to-form, I find the worst restaurant in the vicinity within twenty minutes. It's $5 for a pepsi, but I'm too excited about buying a laptop tomorrow and the potential hours of haggling to worry. It's Funan digital life mall we head to. There is a mall for everything in Singapore. There is very little else apart from shopping to be done and on every street corner there is another mall. The digital life one, according to our receptionist, is the one to get a computer. It's a Sunday so the whole of Singapore and their dogs (those not on the menu) are here. It means bargaining is good and sales assistants are frazzled. Apple fix Mac prices (something that is supposed to be illegal) so the haggling is done on what they can throw in for free on top of the Mac. I start with a nano, but I have one so change to the Airport Express, before realising I don't need one. I settle on a memory upgrade and a neoprene case. All for about $1500 less that the UK price. And then I get slightly mac obsessed and spend the next couple of days glued to my new toy. I take it to coffee houses on the pretense that we can look stuff up while we are out and about but we both know it's just so I can see how great it's wifi features are. I carry it everywhere until the novelty wears off and my back starts complaining about how heavy it is. I don't have any software so I'm limited in what I do, but it looks so pretty I can't help using it.
After dragging Amanda around a digital mall for an afternoon we swap around as Amanda goes clothes shopping. It's not as much fun as computer shopping and I'm sure my input of "it looks ok" or "yeah, it's alright" isn't the most helpful, but I'm carrying enough bags by the end of the day so I think she managed ok. She is now in charge of picking restaurants so our meals are better, local cuisine.
And then it's Sydney and suddenly the temperature drops 20 degrees. I'm used to the warmth and I have just one light jumper with me, so it's an unwelcome change, but I battle on without complaining. We have just one day here and we cram it with the Aquarium and Wildlife World, followed by a split - Amanda heading to the Art Gallery of New South Wales while I head to the harbour. Then we meet up with a couple of friends for beers and food. The aquarium and wildlife place are your typical snap happy tourist places where I manage to get through 500 shots. I can't really face editing them but at some point I'll upload a new set. The harbour is exactly as I remember it - there is a bridge and an opera house. The beers are australian so not worth talking about.
On a hangover we fly to Melbourne. Supposedly more arty and cultured than the beach-bum atmosphere of Sydney. It's definitely colder. We are staying with Luke and it's amazing to finally be in a home rather than a hotel. It's a flying visit and Luke, bless him, tries to fit a lot in while all we want is an early night. So the run-down is sunset in St Kilda, BYO Pizza restaurant round the corner with some of Lukes red collection. Then up early and onto the Met-rail to go see the National Gallery of Victoria, some aboriginal art in the Ian Potter centre, back to Lukes for a home-cooked Aussie beef rib roast followed by Aussie-rules on the tele with some more wine. The gallery is nice (but pricey if you want to go to the Guggenheim exhibition), the Aboriginal art is interesting up to a point. St Kilda's is a young sort of happening area, the roast was a little taste of home-cooked heaven after so long on the road and Aussie-rules is like rugby for retards.
We leave early for Auckland. Our cabin crew are kiwis and, as such, the nicest people we've met so far. The immigration woman wants to chat about our plans and recommends places to see as opposed to the UK attitude of assuming we are terrorists. There are free cups of tea while you wait for your bags to arrive and the beagle sniffing for drugs is frequently fed treats just for sniffing - paradise indeed.
This is my new home for the next couple of years so I'm apprehensive about it all. It's still a holiday for the next ten days while we travel around the North Island and see a few places, but on the horizon is the getting a job, getting a flat and which one do I get first dilemma. I'm nervous, but as it has been throughout this trip my attitude is to not think about anything until I can't not think about it.
As it turns out the weather in Koh Tao is unseasonably bad. The rains move in and the sea on most of the dive sites is terrible so I fail to get my night dive and deep dive done. I'm disappointed not to be able to call myself advanced simply because no-one else ever will but there's no time to dwell as it's back to Samui and perpetually southwards now. Samui has great weather and we probably should have spent the last week here instead of persevering in Tao. With just the one day I embrace the opportunity to get a McDonald's. I assume a double cheeseburger, fries and diet coke would ease me back into civilization, but there is too much cheese on the burger, too much salt on the fries and the diet coke is a can, not a cup. It's a minor issue, but I've already up-sized for 15 baht and all I get for that is ten extra fries and a smaler than normal drink size. I can't enjoy the meal with this budgetary excess hanging over me but I return for a McFlurry to try and forget it (that's shit too but I am expecting it this time). Amanda sensibly opts for local food instead, but the restaurant is a lonely planet recommendation and of course is shit.
Our next morning is pure indulgence at a spa. I go for a two hour massage and Amanda gets facials, massages, steam things and god knows what else. A lovely old lady washes my feet in scented water and gives me some elastic underwear to protect my modesty, then proceeds to work every joint and pull me in every conceivable way until I'm all straightened out. The old lady is far less concerned about my modesty than I and exposes my pasty white ass to the entire beach on a number of occasions (the one-size its all elastic underwear fit no-one and do very little to shield me from prying local eyes. In reality the only eyes are hers and I'm sure she's seen enough white mans ass to last a lifetime).
The flight to Singapore is your normal crap service. But on the other side of immigration suddenly everything is different. Prices are high, the buildings are higher and litter doesn't exist. The hotel is everything we have been dreaming about since booking it. White sheets, fluffy towels, proper, hot hot-water, pay-tv, internet access in the room and room service 24 hours. We are in in time for dinner, but I choose a place again and now, true-to-form, I find the worst restaurant in the vicinity within twenty minutes. It's $5 for a pepsi, but I'm too excited about buying a laptop tomorrow and the potential hours of haggling to worry. It's Funan digital life mall we head to. There is a mall for everything in Singapore. There is very little else apart from shopping to be done and on every street corner there is another mall. The digital life one, according to our receptionist, is the one to get a computer. It's a Sunday so the whole of Singapore and their dogs (those not on the menu) are here. It means bargaining is good and sales assistants are frazzled. Apple fix Mac prices (something that is supposed to be illegal) so the haggling is done on what they can throw in for free on top of the Mac. I start with a nano, but I have one so change to the Airport Express, before realising I don't need one. I settle on a memory upgrade and a neoprene case. All for about $1500 less that the UK price. And then I get slightly mac obsessed and spend the next couple of days glued to my new toy. I take it to coffee houses on the pretense that we can look stuff up while we are out and about but we both know it's just so I can see how great it's wifi features are. I carry it everywhere until the novelty wears off and my back starts complaining about how heavy it is. I don't have any software so I'm limited in what I do, but it looks so pretty I can't help using it.
After dragging Amanda around a digital mall for an afternoon we swap around as Amanda goes clothes shopping. It's not as much fun as computer shopping and I'm sure my input of "it looks ok" or "yeah, it's alright" isn't the most helpful, but I'm carrying enough bags by the end of the day so I think she managed ok. She is now in charge of picking restaurants so our meals are better, local cuisine.
And then it's Sydney and suddenly the temperature drops 20 degrees. I'm used to the warmth and I have just one light jumper with me, so it's an unwelcome change, but I battle on without complaining. We have just one day here and we cram it with the Aquarium and Wildlife World, followed by a split - Amanda heading to the Art Gallery of New South Wales while I head to the harbour. Then we meet up with a couple of friends for beers and food. The aquarium and wildlife place are your typical snap happy tourist places where I manage to get through 500 shots. I can't really face editing them but at some point I'll upload a new set. The harbour is exactly as I remember it - there is a bridge and an opera house. The beers are australian so not worth talking about.
On a hangover we fly to Melbourne. Supposedly more arty and cultured than the beach-bum atmosphere of Sydney. It's definitely colder. We are staying with Luke and it's amazing to finally be in a home rather than a hotel. It's a flying visit and Luke, bless him, tries to fit a lot in while all we want is an early night. So the run-down is sunset in St Kilda, BYO Pizza restaurant round the corner with some of Lukes red collection. Then up early and onto the Met-rail to go see the National Gallery of Victoria, some aboriginal art in the Ian Potter centre, back to Lukes for a home-cooked Aussie beef rib roast followed by Aussie-rules on the tele with some more wine. The gallery is nice (but pricey if you want to go to the Guggenheim exhibition), the Aboriginal art is interesting up to a point. St Kilda's is a young sort of happening area, the roast was a little taste of home-cooked heaven after so long on the road and Aussie-rules is like rugby for retards.
We leave early for Auckland. Our cabin crew are kiwis and, as such, the nicest people we've met so far. The immigration woman wants to chat about our plans and recommends places to see as opposed to the UK attitude of assuming we are terrorists. There are free cups of tea while you wait for your bags to arrive and the beagle sniffing for drugs is frequently fed treats just for sniffing - paradise indeed.
This is my new home for the next couple of years so I'm apprehensive about it all. It's still a holiday for the next ten days while we travel around the North Island and see a few places, but on the horizon is the getting a job, getting a flat and which one do I get first dilemma. I'm nervous, but as it has been throughout this trip my attitude is to not think about anything until I can't not think about it.
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
Scooby doo, Scuba done
Just a week left in South East Asia now. It feels like I'm winding down as we step up the comfort level by leaving Cambodia, heading south to the tourist destinations of Southern Thailand and then following that up with the luxury of Singapore. So the hard bits done and now I can really enjoy myself - except I won't - you know me.
We leave Phnom Penh after just a couple of days. It's a nice place, but limited for things to actually see. We bump into Gianna from Halong bay just outside some school / extermination centre (it would seem in Pol Pots time getting shot was an education). I'm still feeling colonial urges so we heads to the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) for some G&T's and home comforts served by a local pauper. And the next morning we head to Siem Reap by luxury bus.
Six hours later (remember - it's always six hours) and we pull into SR to be met by a bunch of tuk-tuks and local "guides" who would love to take us to a hostel for just a dollar. It's a real scrap. Their business model revolves around the dollar loss leader. They know you are here to see Angkor Wat and they know that you will need a tuk-tuk and guide to see it, so if they take you to a hostel they have a twenty minute journey in which to persuade you to employ them for the next three days. We randomly pick a young guy called Te. And sure enough on the way to our elected hostel he asks if we need a guide. I normally don't like this secondary sell, but in his case his English is so good and he is such a nice guy we both figure we got lucky and should take him up on the offer.
I'm the one picking the hostel and in the end opt for a non-air con room without cold water for $7 a night. I'm too delicate for the lack of cold water and Amanda-Sue is too delicate for the lack of air-con so we aren't in an especially good mood when we have to return to this sauna every evening.
The Angkor Wat admission ticket is not actually controlled by the government but some local petrol company. There is no reason for this other than the petrol company giving a fat backhander to a government official and now making $20 off a day pass, $40 off a three day pass and $60 off a week pass from every tourist. That's a lot of money for doing nothing. The temples aren't even maintained by them (and I wouldn't trust a petrol company to maintain a 1000 year old relic anyway). The Angkor archaeological group which does try and stop these things falling down gets just 10% of the admission fee. The government finance body (a notorious Cambodian black hole when it comes to Riels) gets 40% and the petrol company gets 50%. In a country where corruption and scams are the norm this still seems like a disgusting abuse of a national treasure. But what do I care; if it falls down now at least I got to see it first.
The three day ticket is what we go for. If you buy it after 5pm it starts from the next day and you get the evening to see a sunset for free. You can see a sunset every evening for free, but not overlooking Angkor. So we head to Phnom Bakheng along with every other white man for views over Angkor Wat and the Western Baray. Apart from the large crowds it's a great introduction to the temples of Angkor. Built on a natural hill and supposedly the first temple here, it's great to get an overview of everything else in the area. Of course when you stay to watch the sunset you have to descend in complete darkness and because these temples are representations of the mythical Hindu Mount Meru the sides are steep and the steps are huge (and often broken) so getting down without breaking a leg takes an hour or so.
The town itself exists purely for Angkor. There is little in the way of local authenticity. We eat at a Khmer kitchen and I leave my camera in our tuk-tuk who is meeting us tomorrow morning. Te, our driver, stands to make about $60 from us over the three days. My camera is worth about $2000 so I assume we will never see him again and our evening is spent in quiet contemplation over the loss.
But the morning arrives and so does Te with my camera, thus ensuring a big tip from me. It's our first full day and I can enjoy it again now I can take photos. We are saving Angkor Wat until day three. Building up to it gradually. So today is Angkor Thom; the big walled city with some incredible temples inside. Bayan, Baphuon, Wall of elephants, leper king thing and Phimeanakas are all worth seeing and all take a good hour to see properly. It's sensory overload as each temple is built by a different king in a different era and exhibits some unique feature. Bass reliefs are the big thing in Bayon whereas Phimeanakas is all about the tower (with trees growing all over). Food out here is local shack variety and when all the tour groups head back to SR for lunch we eat right outside Bayon, saving us valuable time and getting a start on the coach loads of japanese. So the afternoon is for Ta Phrom - a massive structure that the French Indochine historical society decided to leave untouched when they decided to restore all the others. This means, for the purposes of films like Tomb Raider it is the perfect backdrop with massive tropical trees growing all over the temple buildings. Highly recommended but expect a crowd.
Day 2 is more of the same. I don't mean to say that it isn't worth seeing since each temple is unique in its own way. But the differences have to be seen rather than described here to sound worthy of a visit. Take, for example, East Mebon in the middle of the Eastern Baray. Today it looks like every other temple (a representation of Mount Meru) but when it was built a century after the Eastern Baray (or reservoir) its second level was at the water level and it could only be approached by boat. the reservoir was 3km by 1km and about 4m deep where they built it. Just trying to imagine how they built a temple underwater impresses me. In my head I see some Pharaoh with a big whip and lots of slaves dying. Then there is Banteay Srei; a not very big temple built at differing times depending on who you ask. It's unique because it's small, but the best preserved in terms of bass relief carvings and you can easily spend a couple of hours admiring it. I am hungover so don't but that's not the point. Then there is Amanda-Sue's favourite Banteay Samre - small but quiet. It's far enough away that the day trippers don't bother with it which makes it all the more special. Or Banteay Kdei with it's apparent Greek architecture. I could go on and on. The one dissapointing aspect is that the Khmers, for all the grandiose ideas, never mastered how to build an arch. So they set about building five tiered structures and then bodge together some roof or doorway and expect it to last forever. They've not done badly lasting a thousand years with the jungle constantly trying to take over but I feel if they'd got a couple of Romans over to just oversee the architecture then the temples would still be pristine now.
So day 3 is for Angkor Wat. The biggie. It's a 4.30am start so we can see the sun come up from the East gate. I can't do it justice in a blog. It's just one of those places that needs to be visited and seen first hand. Obviously going for sunrise means sharing it with a couple of hundred other tourists but in a temple this size two hundred can easily disappear. As it is most of them wait on the west gate looking at the temple with the sun behind, meaning all the shots will be silhouettes. We head straight through to the central tower and climb in the early morning light. And then we sit for half an hour as the sun makes it's ascent. There is just us up here at this time and the entire temple complex stretches around below. Suddenly, when I assume the sunrise is bad, we get a break in the cloud and the whole place is covered in a warm, red light. It's one of those moments that you try really hard to remember exactly because you don't get very many of them. And then it's another couple of hours looking around and taking it all in. Amanda-Sue draws, I take photos and we both quietly look around in awe of it all. I can't heap enough praise on it - go while it's still there.
That's the end of Cambodia for us. We fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok and then plan to bus down to Koh tao. But I messed up the bus reservation assuming it is for 9am when it's actually 9pm so we fly again, this time to Samui. From there it's a 2 hour ferry ride to Koh Tao where we have no reservations, but with typical luck stumble into a nice looking dive centre and get a room. This is supposed to be a mini-holiday for us; staying in one place for a few days, unpacking and enjoying a bit of luxury. But luxury is difficult to find on our budget and this place has been full every day since so we feel pretty lucky to get anywhere.
I sign up to the PADI open water course and get diving. I'm not naturally buoyant and feel like I'm pushing my luck every time I get in the water, but it's about the only thing to do here and occasionally I forget I'm moments away from death when I see a pretty fish. Four dives later and I'm a certified diver, but I'm hooked now and like every man I want to go deeper and for longer. So I sign up on the Advanced course. It's deep dives, night dives, propulsion vehicles and navigation. I'm diving with two dutch guys and they buddy up for the first navigation task - swim away from us for a bit and then find your way back. So away they swim and ten minutes later when they don't return we give up waiting. Without them I have to do the nav tasks on my own and the visibility is down to 4m. It's disorientating as soon as I get midwater and can see nothing, but I've been trained well, rely on my compass and find my way back. I'm a proper diver now: tonight is my first night dive and tomorrow we drop to 34m to induce a bit of nitrogen narcosis. Apparently the nitrogen dissolved in your blood is narcotic and can lead you to do certain things like take out your regulator (not recommended) so before you are an advanced diver you need to know what this feels like in order to avoid it.
After that it's straight to Singapore. We are booked into a nice hotel and it's time for me to buy a macbook so I can gradually get back into the world of workers (or at least avoid internet cafes).
We leave Phnom Penh after just a couple of days. It's a nice place, but limited for things to actually see. We bump into Gianna from Halong bay just outside some school / extermination centre (it would seem in Pol Pots time getting shot was an education). I'm still feeling colonial urges so we heads to the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) for some G&T's and home comforts served by a local pauper. And the next morning we head to Siem Reap by luxury bus.
Six hours later (remember - it's always six hours) and we pull into SR to be met by a bunch of tuk-tuks and local "guides" who would love to take us to a hostel for just a dollar. It's a real scrap. Their business model revolves around the dollar loss leader. They know you are here to see Angkor Wat and they know that you will need a tuk-tuk and guide to see it, so if they take you to a hostel they have a twenty minute journey in which to persuade you to employ them for the next three days. We randomly pick a young guy called Te. And sure enough on the way to our elected hostel he asks if we need a guide. I normally don't like this secondary sell, but in his case his English is so good and he is such a nice guy we both figure we got lucky and should take him up on the offer.
I'm the one picking the hostel and in the end opt for a non-air con room without cold water for $7 a night. I'm too delicate for the lack of cold water and Amanda-Sue is too delicate for the lack of air-con so we aren't in an especially good mood when we have to return to this sauna every evening.
The Angkor Wat admission ticket is not actually controlled by the government but some local petrol company. There is no reason for this other than the petrol company giving a fat backhander to a government official and now making $20 off a day pass, $40 off a three day pass and $60 off a week pass from every tourist. That's a lot of money for doing nothing. The temples aren't even maintained by them (and I wouldn't trust a petrol company to maintain a 1000 year old relic anyway). The Angkor archaeological group which does try and stop these things falling down gets just 10% of the admission fee. The government finance body (a notorious Cambodian black hole when it comes to Riels) gets 40% and the petrol company gets 50%. In a country where corruption and scams are the norm this still seems like a disgusting abuse of a national treasure. But what do I care; if it falls down now at least I got to see it first.
The three day ticket is what we go for. If you buy it after 5pm it starts from the next day and you get the evening to see a sunset for free. You can see a sunset every evening for free, but not overlooking Angkor. So we head to Phnom Bakheng along with every other white man for views over Angkor Wat and the Western Baray. Apart from the large crowds it's a great introduction to the temples of Angkor. Built on a natural hill and supposedly the first temple here, it's great to get an overview of everything else in the area. Of course when you stay to watch the sunset you have to descend in complete darkness and because these temples are representations of the mythical Hindu Mount Meru the sides are steep and the steps are huge (and often broken) so getting down without breaking a leg takes an hour or so.
The town itself exists purely for Angkor. There is little in the way of local authenticity. We eat at a Khmer kitchen and I leave my camera in our tuk-tuk who is meeting us tomorrow morning. Te, our driver, stands to make about $60 from us over the three days. My camera is worth about $2000 so I assume we will never see him again and our evening is spent in quiet contemplation over the loss.
But the morning arrives and so does Te with my camera, thus ensuring a big tip from me. It's our first full day and I can enjoy it again now I can take photos. We are saving Angkor Wat until day three. Building up to it gradually. So today is Angkor Thom; the big walled city with some incredible temples inside. Bayan, Baphuon, Wall of elephants, leper king thing and Phimeanakas are all worth seeing and all take a good hour to see properly. It's sensory overload as each temple is built by a different king in a different era and exhibits some unique feature. Bass reliefs are the big thing in Bayon whereas Phimeanakas is all about the tower (with trees growing all over). Food out here is local shack variety and when all the tour groups head back to SR for lunch we eat right outside Bayon, saving us valuable time and getting a start on the coach loads of japanese. So the afternoon is for Ta Phrom - a massive structure that the French Indochine historical society decided to leave untouched when they decided to restore all the others. This means, for the purposes of films like Tomb Raider it is the perfect backdrop with massive tropical trees growing all over the temple buildings. Highly recommended but expect a crowd.
Day 2 is more of the same. I don't mean to say that it isn't worth seeing since each temple is unique in its own way. But the differences have to be seen rather than described here to sound worthy of a visit. Take, for example, East Mebon in the middle of the Eastern Baray. Today it looks like every other temple (a representation of Mount Meru) but when it was built a century after the Eastern Baray (or reservoir) its second level was at the water level and it could only be approached by boat. the reservoir was 3km by 1km and about 4m deep where they built it. Just trying to imagine how they built a temple underwater impresses me. In my head I see some Pharaoh with a big whip and lots of slaves dying. Then there is Banteay Srei; a not very big temple built at differing times depending on who you ask. It's unique because it's small, but the best preserved in terms of bass relief carvings and you can easily spend a couple of hours admiring it. I am hungover so don't but that's not the point. Then there is Amanda-Sue's favourite Banteay Samre - small but quiet. It's far enough away that the day trippers don't bother with it which makes it all the more special. Or Banteay Kdei with it's apparent Greek architecture. I could go on and on. The one dissapointing aspect is that the Khmers, for all the grandiose ideas, never mastered how to build an arch. So they set about building five tiered structures and then bodge together some roof or doorway and expect it to last forever. They've not done badly lasting a thousand years with the jungle constantly trying to take over but I feel if they'd got a couple of Romans over to just oversee the architecture then the temples would still be pristine now.
So day 3 is for Angkor Wat. The biggie. It's a 4.30am start so we can see the sun come up from the East gate. I can't do it justice in a blog. It's just one of those places that needs to be visited and seen first hand. Obviously going for sunrise means sharing it with a couple of hundred other tourists but in a temple this size two hundred can easily disappear. As it is most of them wait on the west gate looking at the temple with the sun behind, meaning all the shots will be silhouettes. We head straight through to the central tower and climb in the early morning light. And then we sit for half an hour as the sun makes it's ascent. There is just us up here at this time and the entire temple complex stretches around below. Suddenly, when I assume the sunrise is bad, we get a break in the cloud and the whole place is covered in a warm, red light. It's one of those moments that you try really hard to remember exactly because you don't get very many of them. And then it's another couple of hours looking around and taking it all in. Amanda-Sue draws, I take photos and we both quietly look around in awe of it all. I can't heap enough praise on it - go while it's still there.
That's the end of Cambodia for us. We fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok and then plan to bus down to Koh tao. But I messed up the bus reservation assuming it is for 9am when it's actually 9pm so we fly again, this time to Samui. From there it's a 2 hour ferry ride to Koh Tao where we have no reservations, but with typical luck stumble into a nice looking dive centre and get a room. This is supposed to be a mini-holiday for us; staying in one place for a few days, unpacking and enjoying a bit of luxury. But luxury is difficult to find on our budget and this place has been full every day since so we feel pretty lucky to get anywhere.
I sign up to the PADI open water course and get diving. I'm not naturally buoyant and feel like I'm pushing my luck every time I get in the water, but it's about the only thing to do here and occasionally I forget I'm moments away from death when I see a pretty fish. Four dives later and I'm a certified diver, but I'm hooked now and like every man I want to go deeper and for longer. So I sign up on the Advanced course. It's deep dives, night dives, propulsion vehicles and navigation. I'm diving with two dutch guys and they buddy up for the first navigation task - swim away from us for a bit and then find your way back. So away they swim and ten minutes later when they don't return we give up waiting. Without them I have to do the nav tasks on my own and the visibility is down to 4m. It's disorientating as soon as I get midwater and can see nothing, but I've been trained well, rely on my compass and find my way back. I'm a proper diver now: tonight is my first night dive and tomorrow we drop to 34m to induce a bit of nitrogen narcosis. Apparently the nitrogen dissolved in your blood is narcotic and can lead you to do certain things like take out your regulator (not recommended) so before you are an advanced diver you need to know what this feels like in order to avoid it.
After that it's straight to Singapore. We are booked into a nice hotel and it's time for me to buy a macbook so I can gradually get back into the world of workers (or at least avoid internet cafes).
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Kampuchia
It's the country I spent most time in so far, but finally I'm out of Vietnam and into Kampuchia (Cambodia for those unfamiliar with Khmer transliteration). Up to Hoi An I was loving Vietnam. It's got a bit of french va-va-voom thrown into the already exciting SE Asian hotpot. But the further south you head the more the gloss fades and the less tolerant I become. By the time we fast-boated over the mekong border I had a bitter taste in my mouth. Not from the huge amounts of coriander the Vietnam chefs put in every dish, but more, the apathy and occasional hostility from the locals and the open desire to fleece you as much as possible.
Overall though I fell in love with Vietnam. The food is some of the best in Asia, the climate varies from UK temperate stuff in the north to desert hot in the south and the things to see, on the whole, are the most interesting and varied in this region. When you combine the usual pagoda/wat stuff with a war museum and shooting range I say you are onto a tourism winner.
It is from Mui Ne that I pick up the recap then. We reach Saigon in a not unreasonable 6 hours. Every bus journey is six hours, whatever they advertise it as. It's late and Saigon is big an scary after the weeks in coastal villages. We have agreed not to make our usual mistake and settle for the first hotel we find so we walk all over looking at rooms to find almost all hotels are full. So we return to the first hotel we found and take their (now rate inflated) room. The first signs of tension are beginning to show between Amanda-Sue and me. We are equally annoyed with each other for no good reason. I think my non-stop juvenile joking is wearing thin and Amanda has assumed my Mum's responsibilities in telling me off for not cleaning my teeth twice a day. A good meal and everything would be forgotten but I pick the restaurant and according to my new Mum I was wreckless in my choice and the food is awful (the food hasn't arrived at this point, but that is just me being pedantic).
It's time for some emergency action on my part to salvage the situation and the next morning I get up early to find an improved luxury hotel room for the lowest price possible. With my finely honed haggling skills I get a room half the size for about twice as much but it doesn't smell of mould and the sheets aren't made of highly flammable synthetics so all of a sudden everyone is happy.
A bowl of Pho for breakfast and we are happier still - 50 pence for a bowl of noodles with beef brisket in a soup and you are set for the day. But it's late by now and half the day is gone. I go for a haircut and shave (the first in a few years) and then we are off to the five star majestic for some cocktails to celebrate that we haven't gone our separate ways.
Ever since we reached Vietnam my debit card hasn't worked and I finally decide to do something about it along with sorting my insurance claim out now that I'm through the worst of it and won't need to readmit myself to a hospital. So we trek to the Saigon branch of HSBC (the world's local bank) where I enquire about my card. The manager doesn't know and says I need to contact HSBC UK. I ask if I can use his phone and apparently no, while HSBC in the UK is the worlds local bank, HSBC Vietnam is the worlds worst bank. He tells me to try the Post Office for international calls. So I do and I buy an international calling card with 15 minutes of talk time. 9 minutes later and I've put in my sort code, account number, date of birth, second digit of my security number and fifth digit of my security number. They have retrieved my balance of all four of my accounts and now I am holding for a customer service representative. The clock is ticking and at 10 minutes I finally get through to the recorded message informing me the call centre is closed (it is 7.30am in the UK). I am wrong about HSBC Vietnam; HSBC UK is the worlds worst bank... by far. When I do finally get through to someone (someone in India - where it's only 3 hours behind Vietnam and a not unreasonable noon) I am transferred to Fraud prevention and told my card has been blocked because I've used it abroad. I explain that I've been using it abroad for a full three months and if they actually want to stop fraud they should try to react a smidgen quicker than that. But the line is bad and the wit it lost somewhere over the indian ocean. She does at least remove the block before my second phonecard runs out.
Everything is sorted but I'm still close to losing it. If a tuc-tuc driver approaches me now I'm scared of what I might do (and more scared of what he might do in return when I fail in what I was trying to do). So we walk through a park towards the reunification palace giving me the opportunity to take some deep breaths. At this point I am aware that I would normally brush over or slag off the tourist attraction that we are visiting, but for almost the first time I am impressed with an attraction and would recommend the palace to anyone that is anywhere near Saigon. It's been left exactly as it was when the Viet Cong marched into Saigon in 1975. The retro 70's feeling of the architecture and interior is intoxicating for someone who loves to feel like colonial times are here again. I imagine myself sitting in the games room demanding some kaffer gets me another G&T. Admittedly wrong race, wrong time and wrong colour, but that's just what comes into my head.
There is a great video in the basement all about how the Vietnamese struggled against the Americans and embraced the Viet Cong, how the Americans killed thousands and the Viet Cong saved thousands, how the vietnamese women were still firing their AK-47's at American soldiers while giving birth to the next generation of anti-imperialist troops. A complete work of fiction, but entertaining for it.
We follow this up with a morning visit to the Cu-Chi tunnels. On the outskirts of Saigon this is where thousands of Viet Cong troops could remain hidden from the Americans and conduct raids at night. It's been disneyfied with some poor mannequins sitting in reconstructed tents. The reconstructed tunnel itself is about 150m. After putting up with all the disney crap first (which includes firing my AK - sadly no kids around) we are finally allowed to enter the tunnel. Our guide tells us there are exits at 50m intervals. The map we are shown by our guide shows kitchens, medical centres and bedrooms all connected on three levels by this tunnel. So after the first exit at 50m, with everyone else getting out, I persuade Amanda-Sue to carry on expecting to come across something more interesting than a 3 foot high tunnel at some point. By the end of it and having given up on finding a room we leave the tunnel to find our group and guide have left us and gone on. It takes us a fair while to find them in the jungle and we have missed a lot of what our guide was saying. But since he couldn't speak English, the entire site is one big tourist pile of fictional shit and that I've been stuck in a tunnel crouched and sweating like crazy I couldn't give a shit about anything except where our bus with A/C currently is and how long it will take to take me back to something approaching reality. So if you get the chance don't go to Cu-Chi. But if you do and you have a guide called Suwe, please, please, please take your AK-47 off it's stand turn it to his face, tell him this is from Robin and pull the trigger. He is good enough to drop us at the war remnants museum on our way back to Saigon which is a seriously depressing place full of pictures of Agent Orange and napalm victims. There are a couple of feotuses in jars with two heads and the like just in case you were thinking of having supper. Whilst they have an understandable dislike for the Americans they actually hate the french far more from the 1940's and 50's Indochine fighting. There are a few rooms here dedicated to pictures and stories of purely french atrocities... and I didn't think I could dislike the french any more than I already do.
It's time to leave Saigon, take the malaria tablets again and head into the Mekong Delta. It's a three day trip that ends in Phnom Penh and rather than the small group sizes we have had on tours up to now this is a full size coach load of tourists who have all paid just $25 to do this. I've always said you get what you pay for and in this case we didn't even get that. Day 1 is spent bussing to a boat stop taking a quick boat journey either to a factory where they make some local tat or to a random point in the river where we turn and sail back. The vast majority of the time is spent on the coach and at one point we are supposed to get a ferry over a large part of the Mekong in our coach. But the queue is long and our guide, Moon, decides it makes more sense to offload us and walk to a passenger ferry. On the other side we can then wait at dusk by the river and sewers for our bus to catch us up. You can probably see where this is going, but just to spell it out so I can vent some of the plenitude of frustration built up from this tour: the bus obviously goes no faster in the queue with us off it and we wait for about 45 minutes for it to catch us up. In all that time we are completely surrounded by mossies deep in malaria country. There is no A/C on the side of the road but plenty of it on the bus so I'm not alone in asking Moon why in Buddhas sweet name he decided this was a sensible course of action. As is typical he explains nothing but puts on a big toothy Vietnamese smile just asking for his teeth to be smacked all over the road.
Our night is home-stay - some little bungalow on the river. The food is typical of home-stay food: authentic but inedible. I'm on a table with French people and images from the Indochine rooms of the war remnants museum keep popping into my head. But I hate our guide so much at this point I've lost interest in hating the French. Plus these guys all seem quite nice and cheerful (they could easily have been laughing at me though - I've no idea).
Day 2 and it's the same formula. Bus, boat, factory, market. No explanation of anything and no enthusiasm from anybody. I'm ready to go straight to Cambodia but we have to put up with one more night in this hell-hole they call the delta. Because of our home-stay night we get an upgrade tonight to an air-con room in Chao-Doc. It does indeed have air-con, but nothing else. The door is frosted glass and at the top of the stairs that every other guest has to come up to go to bed. Above the door is a gap three bricks high and about five foot long which ensures the air-con is completely wasted. At 3am the kitchen (at the base of the stairs) puts on a CD of the little mermaid soundtrack (on repeat) and that is the end of any possibility of sleep on the nylon sheets that give you static shocks should you just roll over.
There are some more markets and villages to see before our boat leaves the next morning, but we skip all that and jump on a fast boat at 8am. Sadly by skipping the mornings sights I miss the opportunity to not tip our guide. I obviously don't tip him, but I wanted to do it very obviously so he'd know that I found him a completely useless human being.
The Cambodia/Vietnam border is your typical inefficient SE Asia experience. The border guard soldier is actually lying in a hammock smoking a cigarette while we wait. There is an x-ray machine which is employed in what must be the most pointless security operation in the world and then we're in. The Mekong is boring by this point - wide and flat - and so I read Harry Potter all the way to Phnom Penh.
As is now expected on a tourist route we are met by about ten to twenty touts for tuc-tucs, hostels, motos and some who can't even be bothered to tout but just ask for money. This is the part of the world that gave us that incredibly annoying Motorola sign off phrase of "Hello Moto". Every moped driver will stop and say it to you in the hope you will jump on the back and pay him 1000 Riels for a journey. But apart from that negative they all seem a bit nicer than Vietnamese. We eventually take a tuk-tuk for $1 to a hostel of our choice. The driver tells us our hostel doesn't exist anymore and being the wisened traveler I tell him I've heard that one before and let me guess, you know another hostel that is similar and close but will give you a fat commission. He doesn't understand me and continues driving. When he pulls up to our hostel we discover that it really doesn't exist anymore and I blame the lonely planet and all it's scam warnings for ever making me doubt our poor tuk-tuk driver.
Since we took the fast boat we are in early enough to kick start the Cambodia leg of our trip with a journey out to the killing fields where just 20 years ago anyone and, it would seem, nearly everyone was exterminated and buried. It's a cheery way to say hello to a country but essential viewing that brings it home that something like that has happened in my lifetime.
We're still in Phnom Penh. It's not the prettiest town and it has precious few sites, something I think will be repeated throughout Cambodia. Everything here is about Angkor Wat. It's on their flag and it's their national beer. There really is little else to keep the tourists here. So tomorrow we head up to Angkor for what I firmly expect to be the absolute highlight of my trip. Fingers crossed.
Overall though I fell in love with Vietnam. The food is some of the best in Asia, the climate varies from UK temperate stuff in the north to desert hot in the south and the things to see, on the whole, are the most interesting and varied in this region. When you combine the usual pagoda/wat stuff with a war museum and shooting range I say you are onto a tourism winner.
It is from Mui Ne that I pick up the recap then. We reach Saigon in a not unreasonable 6 hours. Every bus journey is six hours, whatever they advertise it as. It's late and Saigon is big an scary after the weeks in coastal villages. We have agreed not to make our usual mistake and settle for the first hotel we find so we walk all over looking at rooms to find almost all hotels are full. So we return to the first hotel we found and take their (now rate inflated) room. The first signs of tension are beginning to show between Amanda-Sue and me. We are equally annoyed with each other for no good reason. I think my non-stop juvenile joking is wearing thin and Amanda has assumed my Mum's responsibilities in telling me off for not cleaning my teeth twice a day. A good meal and everything would be forgotten but I pick the restaurant and according to my new Mum I was wreckless in my choice and the food is awful (the food hasn't arrived at this point, but that is just me being pedantic).
It's time for some emergency action on my part to salvage the situation and the next morning I get up early to find an improved luxury hotel room for the lowest price possible. With my finely honed haggling skills I get a room half the size for about twice as much but it doesn't smell of mould and the sheets aren't made of highly flammable synthetics so all of a sudden everyone is happy.
A bowl of Pho for breakfast and we are happier still - 50 pence for a bowl of noodles with beef brisket in a soup and you are set for the day. But it's late by now and half the day is gone. I go for a haircut and shave (the first in a few years) and then we are off to the five star majestic for some cocktails to celebrate that we haven't gone our separate ways.
Ever since we reached Vietnam my debit card hasn't worked and I finally decide to do something about it along with sorting my insurance claim out now that I'm through the worst of it and won't need to readmit myself to a hospital. So we trek to the Saigon branch of HSBC (the world's local bank) where I enquire about my card. The manager doesn't know and says I need to contact HSBC UK. I ask if I can use his phone and apparently no, while HSBC in the UK is the worlds local bank, HSBC Vietnam is the worlds worst bank. He tells me to try the Post Office for international calls. So I do and I buy an international calling card with 15 minutes of talk time. 9 minutes later and I've put in my sort code, account number, date of birth, second digit of my security number and fifth digit of my security number. They have retrieved my balance of all four of my accounts and now I am holding for a customer service representative. The clock is ticking and at 10 minutes I finally get through to the recorded message informing me the call centre is closed (it is 7.30am in the UK). I am wrong about HSBC Vietnam; HSBC UK is the worlds worst bank... by far. When I do finally get through to someone (someone in India - where it's only 3 hours behind Vietnam and a not unreasonable noon) I am transferred to Fraud prevention and told my card has been blocked because I've used it abroad. I explain that I've been using it abroad for a full three months and if they actually want to stop fraud they should try to react a smidgen quicker than that. But the line is bad and the wit it lost somewhere over the indian ocean. She does at least remove the block before my second phonecard runs out.
Everything is sorted but I'm still close to losing it. If a tuc-tuc driver approaches me now I'm scared of what I might do (and more scared of what he might do in return when I fail in what I was trying to do). So we walk through a park towards the reunification palace giving me the opportunity to take some deep breaths. At this point I am aware that I would normally brush over or slag off the tourist attraction that we are visiting, but for almost the first time I am impressed with an attraction and would recommend the palace to anyone that is anywhere near Saigon. It's been left exactly as it was when the Viet Cong marched into Saigon in 1975. The retro 70's feeling of the architecture and interior is intoxicating for someone who loves to feel like colonial times are here again. I imagine myself sitting in the games room demanding some kaffer gets me another G&T. Admittedly wrong race, wrong time and wrong colour, but that's just what comes into my head.
There is a great video in the basement all about how the Vietnamese struggled against the Americans and embraced the Viet Cong, how the Americans killed thousands and the Viet Cong saved thousands, how the vietnamese women were still firing their AK-47's at American soldiers while giving birth to the next generation of anti-imperialist troops. A complete work of fiction, but entertaining for it.
We follow this up with a morning visit to the Cu-Chi tunnels. On the outskirts of Saigon this is where thousands of Viet Cong troops could remain hidden from the Americans and conduct raids at night. It's been disneyfied with some poor mannequins sitting in reconstructed tents. The reconstructed tunnel itself is about 150m. After putting up with all the disney crap first (which includes firing my AK - sadly no kids around) we are finally allowed to enter the tunnel. Our guide tells us there are exits at 50m intervals. The map we are shown by our guide shows kitchens, medical centres and bedrooms all connected on three levels by this tunnel. So after the first exit at 50m, with everyone else getting out, I persuade Amanda-Sue to carry on expecting to come across something more interesting than a 3 foot high tunnel at some point. By the end of it and having given up on finding a room we leave the tunnel to find our group and guide have left us and gone on. It takes us a fair while to find them in the jungle and we have missed a lot of what our guide was saying. But since he couldn't speak English, the entire site is one big tourist pile of fictional shit and that I've been stuck in a tunnel crouched and sweating like crazy I couldn't give a shit about anything except where our bus with A/C currently is and how long it will take to take me back to something approaching reality. So if you get the chance don't go to Cu-Chi. But if you do and you have a guide called Suwe, please, please, please take your AK-47 off it's stand turn it to his face, tell him this is from Robin and pull the trigger. He is good enough to drop us at the war remnants museum on our way back to Saigon which is a seriously depressing place full of pictures of Agent Orange and napalm victims. There are a couple of feotuses in jars with two heads and the like just in case you were thinking of having supper. Whilst they have an understandable dislike for the Americans they actually hate the french far more from the 1940's and 50's Indochine fighting. There are a few rooms here dedicated to pictures and stories of purely french atrocities... and I didn't think I could dislike the french any more than I already do.
It's time to leave Saigon, take the malaria tablets again and head into the Mekong Delta. It's a three day trip that ends in Phnom Penh and rather than the small group sizes we have had on tours up to now this is a full size coach load of tourists who have all paid just $25 to do this. I've always said you get what you pay for and in this case we didn't even get that. Day 1 is spent bussing to a boat stop taking a quick boat journey either to a factory where they make some local tat or to a random point in the river where we turn and sail back. The vast majority of the time is spent on the coach and at one point we are supposed to get a ferry over a large part of the Mekong in our coach. But the queue is long and our guide, Moon, decides it makes more sense to offload us and walk to a passenger ferry. On the other side we can then wait at dusk by the river and sewers for our bus to catch us up. You can probably see where this is going, but just to spell it out so I can vent some of the plenitude of frustration built up from this tour: the bus obviously goes no faster in the queue with us off it and we wait for about 45 minutes for it to catch us up. In all that time we are completely surrounded by mossies deep in malaria country. There is no A/C on the side of the road but plenty of it on the bus so I'm not alone in asking Moon why in Buddhas sweet name he decided this was a sensible course of action. As is typical he explains nothing but puts on a big toothy Vietnamese smile just asking for his teeth to be smacked all over the road.
Our night is home-stay - some little bungalow on the river. The food is typical of home-stay food: authentic but inedible. I'm on a table with French people and images from the Indochine rooms of the war remnants museum keep popping into my head. But I hate our guide so much at this point I've lost interest in hating the French. Plus these guys all seem quite nice and cheerful (they could easily have been laughing at me though - I've no idea).
Day 2 and it's the same formula. Bus, boat, factory, market. No explanation of anything and no enthusiasm from anybody. I'm ready to go straight to Cambodia but we have to put up with one more night in this hell-hole they call the delta. Because of our home-stay night we get an upgrade tonight to an air-con room in Chao-Doc. It does indeed have air-con, but nothing else. The door is frosted glass and at the top of the stairs that every other guest has to come up to go to bed. Above the door is a gap three bricks high and about five foot long which ensures the air-con is completely wasted. At 3am the kitchen (at the base of the stairs) puts on a CD of the little mermaid soundtrack (on repeat) and that is the end of any possibility of sleep on the nylon sheets that give you static shocks should you just roll over.
There are some more markets and villages to see before our boat leaves the next morning, but we skip all that and jump on a fast boat at 8am. Sadly by skipping the mornings sights I miss the opportunity to not tip our guide. I obviously don't tip him, but I wanted to do it very obviously so he'd know that I found him a completely useless human being.
The Cambodia/Vietnam border is your typical inefficient SE Asia experience. The border guard soldier is actually lying in a hammock smoking a cigarette while we wait. There is an x-ray machine which is employed in what must be the most pointless security operation in the world and then we're in. The Mekong is boring by this point - wide and flat - and so I read Harry Potter all the way to Phnom Penh.
As is now expected on a tourist route we are met by about ten to twenty touts for tuc-tucs, hostels, motos and some who can't even be bothered to tout but just ask for money. This is the part of the world that gave us that incredibly annoying Motorola sign off phrase of "Hello Moto". Every moped driver will stop and say it to you in the hope you will jump on the back and pay him 1000 Riels for a journey. But apart from that negative they all seem a bit nicer than Vietnamese. We eventually take a tuk-tuk for $1 to a hostel of our choice. The driver tells us our hostel doesn't exist anymore and being the wisened traveler I tell him I've heard that one before and let me guess, you know another hostel that is similar and close but will give you a fat commission. He doesn't understand me and continues driving. When he pulls up to our hostel we discover that it really doesn't exist anymore and I blame the lonely planet and all it's scam warnings for ever making me doubt our poor tuk-tuk driver.
Since we took the fast boat we are in early enough to kick start the Cambodia leg of our trip with a journey out to the killing fields where just 20 years ago anyone and, it would seem, nearly everyone was exterminated and buried. It's a cheery way to say hello to a country but essential viewing that brings it home that something like that has happened in my lifetime.
We're still in Phnom Penh. It's not the prettiest town and it has precious few sites, something I think will be repeated throughout Cambodia. Everything here is about Angkor Wat. It's on their flag and it's their national beer. There really is little else to keep the tourists here. So tomorrow we head up to Angkor for what I firmly expect to be the absolute highlight of my trip. Fingers crossed.
Friday, 20 July 2007
Here today, Saigon tomorrow
I should have written this post yesterday for the headline to be true, but I only came up with it this morning and, in a George Dubbya war report type way, decided it was too brilliant not to use because of a thing like accuracy. I'm in Mui Ne on the south coast about 3 hours from Saigon, but I'm jumping on a bus in a few hours and will be there by 5pm. So I pick up the story leaving Hanoi a week ago.
It's a one hour flight down to Hue; about half way down the east coast. We catch the local bus number 17 from Hanoi to Noi Bai (the airport). Every hotelier and tour person we speak to says this will be very busy and take too long and ordinarily I'd listen, follow their advice and blow $10 on a taxi. But having had no problems with the number 17 last week when I met Amanda-Sue I adopt my traditional, arrogant position and do what I do best - ignore local advice and go with my own opinion. As it turns out they are all wrong and the bus journey is easier than any taxi journey(and you know I'll be using that little victory for weeks). The flight is an Airbus A321. Without me even asking the check-in girl puts me next to the emergency exit in an extended leg-room seat. She can only be about 5' so I must look freakishly tall. But the emergency exits in an A321 don't have windows and I'm forced to fly blind for the hour journey. I realise I'm not the one doing the flying and therefore, strictly speaking, don't require a window, but without one the plane seems even more like a coffin than normal. To add to my woes the captain is obviously a junior and a bit nervy. As the stewards and stewardesses start sorting drinks he shouts over the intercom for them to sit back down and buckle up as we are in the middle of a typhoon and everyone might die. I'm paraphrasing. But I could hear the sentiment in his voice.
Against Allah's will we land without incident. Hue is an old town that once was the capital of Vietnam. It has limited sights. The big draw is a citadel with the countries biggest flagpole. We can't get down to Hoi An until the morning so we have to go see this. It's much hotter than the North and we walk (and sweat) all the way. The inside of the citadel is very much like the outside. Roads, houses and shops continue as if an historic, ancient wall is just a hindrance to progress. There is, though, a museum with some rusty tanks and APVs in the courtyard. In front of every one is a sign telling of it's capture from the puppet soldiers in 1975. If they really were operated by puppets I think I could have captured them too.
The flagpole is reinforced concrete. I'd say it's not the most authentic or interesting thing to see in Hue, but it probably is.
A quick bus to Hoi An in the morning and it's like another world. This place is old french colonial and they have managed to preserve it's atmosphere. There isn't a great deal more to do, but just ambling around is nice enough. We organise a tour to My Son, an ancient temple complex a couple of hours away, but in my apathy at 8am I let Amanda-Sue experience that on her own. Apparently it's a lovely place, frequently referred to as the little brother of Angkor, Sukhothai and Bagan. But I've been to Bagan and Sukhothai and will be in Angkor next week so I can happily ignore their little brother.
It's then an overnight bus journey down to Nha Trang and on to Mui Ne. I've become soft with my many flights for long distances and as soon as I get on the bus I swear not to do another overnight. It's packed so we get two seats at the back. My chair is broken so doesn't recline, but the seat in front definitely isn't and reclines right into my lap (if I manage to get my legs out of the way in time - otherwise I just get brusied knees). It's a 6pm departure and so we assume there will be a stop for dinner a couple of hours into the journey. I'm not sure you could call it supper but we do pull into a petrol station where a corn seller is dispensing corn cobs that have been boiled for enough hours that all the flavour and nutrition has been leached out. It's valet service so the lady dispensing petrol puts the pump into the fuel tank and walks away. The majority of the passengers are standing around this pump smoking cheroot or cigarettes (it doesn't matter which, they can both ignite petrol). Since the petrol pump is unmanned when the pump drops out of the tank and starts spraying petrol over the side of the coach, the floor all around the coach and the people standing around nearby no one can work out how to turn it off. It is only by the grace of Vishnu that it seems to miss those smoking and only sprays those non-smokers munching their corn. It would perhaps been Vishnu's divine sense of irony had the non-smokers all gone up in flames. Although with a full tank of fuel and in a petrol station I guess if anyone had gone up we all would have suffered the consequences. Back on board I spend a sleepless night with my head millimetres away from the dandruff of the man in front. Amanda-Sue suffers with me, since I considerately check to see if she can sleep every half hour. So we roll into Nha Trang at 6.30am with a two hour break before we need to be on another coach to Mui Ne. The good spirit that has taken us this far seems to be absent along with our sleep and concious that my sarcasm and cynisicm aren't welcome I head to the beach to give Amanda-Sue some time to find it. Nha Trang is a big resort town and every step along the beach I'm relieved we aren't staying here. Big casinos, discos and high-rise hotels blot what would have been a beautiful beach. The vietnamese seem to love it though. This is the number one destination for internal tourism.
The 3 hour bus to Mui Ne turns into 6 hours. No one says why and there are no obvious delays en-route. I think it is just a 6 hour trip advertised as 3 to make foreigners more comfortable for the first 3 hours.
Mui Ne is a more desolate beach resort. It's a single road running along the coast for about 12km. The hotels and restaurants are spread out all the way along the road making it very difficult to walk around and check out where you want to stay. Not impossible though so as I settle down for a diet coke in a cafe in the middle with the bags I send Amanda-Sue off to find the best deal she can. I have been giving her haggling lessons and see this as the perfect chance for her to practice. She is under instructions to find an air-con room with en-suite, minibar, free internet and cable TV for no more than $2. We end up paying $20 but get everything bar the free internet. I'm obviously not a good teacher.
There is nothing in Mui Ne apart from a nice beach but that doesn't stop them setting up tours of local attractions. We sign up to a sunrise tour to go see the red sand-dunes, the white sand-dunes, the red canyon and the waterfall (I love waterfalls). The red and white sand-dunes are what you would expect. The red canyon is a miniature version of what you might expect if they used the word gully and the waterfall is just not even worth talking about.
So it's time to move on and get back to city life in Saigon. There is plenty there to look forward to. The war museum promises plenty of photos of American atrocities and at the CuChi tunnels I can shoot an AK-47. They have it fixed on a rotating pole though so I doubt I'll get any gooks. But $200 is a lot to these kids - I may be able to persuade one of them to take a bullet.
It's a one hour flight down to Hue; about half way down the east coast. We catch the local bus number 17 from Hanoi to Noi Bai (the airport). Every hotelier and tour person we speak to says this will be very busy and take too long and ordinarily I'd listen, follow their advice and blow $10 on a taxi. But having had no problems with the number 17 last week when I met Amanda-Sue I adopt my traditional, arrogant position and do what I do best - ignore local advice and go with my own opinion. As it turns out they are all wrong and the bus journey is easier than any taxi journey(and you know I'll be using that little victory for weeks). The flight is an Airbus A321. Without me even asking the check-in girl puts me next to the emergency exit in an extended leg-room seat. She can only be about 5' so I must look freakishly tall. But the emergency exits in an A321 don't have windows and I'm forced to fly blind for the hour journey. I realise I'm not the one doing the flying and therefore, strictly speaking, don't require a window, but without one the plane seems even more like a coffin than normal. To add to my woes the captain is obviously a junior and a bit nervy. As the stewards and stewardesses start sorting drinks he shouts over the intercom for them to sit back down and buckle up as we are in the middle of a typhoon and everyone might die. I'm paraphrasing. But I could hear the sentiment in his voice.
Against Allah's will we land without incident. Hue is an old town that once was the capital of Vietnam. It has limited sights. The big draw is a citadel with the countries biggest flagpole. We can't get down to Hoi An until the morning so we have to go see this. It's much hotter than the North and we walk (and sweat) all the way. The inside of the citadel is very much like the outside. Roads, houses and shops continue as if an historic, ancient wall is just a hindrance to progress. There is, though, a museum with some rusty tanks and APVs in the courtyard. In front of every one is a sign telling of it's capture from the puppet soldiers in 1975. If they really were operated by puppets I think I could have captured them too.
The flagpole is reinforced concrete. I'd say it's not the most authentic or interesting thing to see in Hue, but it probably is.
A quick bus to Hoi An in the morning and it's like another world. This place is old french colonial and they have managed to preserve it's atmosphere. There isn't a great deal more to do, but just ambling around is nice enough. We organise a tour to My Son, an ancient temple complex a couple of hours away, but in my apathy at 8am I let Amanda-Sue experience that on her own. Apparently it's a lovely place, frequently referred to as the little brother of Angkor, Sukhothai and Bagan. But I've been to Bagan and Sukhothai and will be in Angkor next week so I can happily ignore their little brother.
It's then an overnight bus journey down to Nha Trang and on to Mui Ne. I've become soft with my many flights for long distances and as soon as I get on the bus I swear not to do another overnight. It's packed so we get two seats at the back. My chair is broken so doesn't recline, but the seat in front definitely isn't and reclines right into my lap (if I manage to get my legs out of the way in time - otherwise I just get brusied knees). It's a 6pm departure and so we assume there will be a stop for dinner a couple of hours into the journey. I'm not sure you could call it supper but we do pull into a petrol station where a corn seller is dispensing corn cobs that have been boiled for enough hours that all the flavour and nutrition has been leached out. It's valet service so the lady dispensing petrol puts the pump into the fuel tank and walks away. The majority of the passengers are standing around this pump smoking cheroot or cigarettes (it doesn't matter which, they can both ignite petrol). Since the petrol pump is unmanned when the pump drops out of the tank and starts spraying petrol over the side of the coach, the floor all around the coach and the people standing around nearby no one can work out how to turn it off. It is only by the grace of Vishnu that it seems to miss those smoking and only sprays those non-smokers munching their corn. It would perhaps been Vishnu's divine sense of irony had the non-smokers all gone up in flames. Although with a full tank of fuel and in a petrol station I guess if anyone had gone up we all would have suffered the consequences. Back on board I spend a sleepless night with my head millimetres away from the dandruff of the man in front. Amanda-Sue suffers with me, since I considerately check to see if she can sleep every half hour. So we roll into Nha Trang at 6.30am with a two hour break before we need to be on another coach to Mui Ne. The good spirit that has taken us this far seems to be absent along with our sleep and concious that my sarcasm and cynisicm aren't welcome I head to the beach to give Amanda-Sue some time to find it. Nha Trang is a big resort town and every step along the beach I'm relieved we aren't staying here. Big casinos, discos and high-rise hotels blot what would have been a beautiful beach. The vietnamese seem to love it though. This is the number one destination for internal tourism.
The 3 hour bus to Mui Ne turns into 6 hours. No one says why and there are no obvious delays en-route. I think it is just a 6 hour trip advertised as 3 to make foreigners more comfortable for the first 3 hours.
Mui Ne is a more desolate beach resort. It's a single road running along the coast for about 12km. The hotels and restaurants are spread out all the way along the road making it very difficult to walk around and check out where you want to stay. Not impossible though so as I settle down for a diet coke in a cafe in the middle with the bags I send Amanda-Sue off to find the best deal she can. I have been giving her haggling lessons and see this as the perfect chance for her to practice. She is under instructions to find an air-con room with en-suite, minibar, free internet and cable TV for no more than $2. We end up paying $20 but get everything bar the free internet. I'm obviously not a good teacher.
There is nothing in Mui Ne apart from a nice beach but that doesn't stop them setting up tours of local attractions. We sign up to a sunrise tour to go see the red sand-dunes, the white sand-dunes, the red canyon and the waterfall (I love waterfalls). The red and white sand-dunes are what you would expect. The red canyon is a miniature version of what you might expect if they used the word gully and the waterfall is just not even worth talking about.
So it's time to move on and get back to city life in Saigon. There is plenty there to look forward to. The war museum promises plenty of photos of American atrocities and at the CuChi tunnels I can shoot an AK-47. They have it fixed on a rotating pole though so I doubt I'll get any gooks. But $200 is a lot to these kids - I may be able to persuade one of them to take a bullet.
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