Ko Pha Ngan

Just spent the most relaxing three nights on the island of Ko Pha Ngan - the Thai island famous for its Full Moon parties. Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on what your opinion is on raves), the next one isn't until early July, so no partying for us.

Travelling to the island took 14 hours, but what a luxurious journey it was! We got a local bus from the bus station in Bangkok, as opposed to one of the tourist ones (as ranted about in Sam's previous post), and it was heavenly. Loads of snacks, so much leg room and huge, plush reclining seats. All amazing, until the idiot in the seat in front of you decides as soon as he gets on the bus that it's time for bed (it's 8pm) and pushes his seat right back into your lap without even glancing round to acknowledge what he was about to do...

The bus took us to the port of Donsak, from where we took a ferry out to Ko Pha Ngan. On arrival, we got a really uncomfortable taxi over to Thong Nai Pan Yai, a stunning beach on the north east side of the island. Then the beach bungalow hunt began...

There are a number of resorts spotted along the beach in this area, all offering beach-side bungalows with sea views. However, what Sam fails to recognise is that they aren't 'all the same'. The quality of bungalow differs massively from one to the next and details like bed linen, curtains, decoration, hammock or no hammock, etc. all matter. And so we spent a good 45 minutes or so trudging along the beach in the blistering midday heat looking for our idyllic beachfront bungalow, or at least my view of what this should be. This ended with us finding the most beautiful place on the bay (we stayed at The Longtail Beach Resort (http://www.longtailbeachresort.com/) and it was amazing - I am definitely going to write them a glowing review on Trip Advisor), but left us desperately trying not to lose it with each other (too much heat and too much fuss, do not a happy Sam make).  


Here we spent three nights doing nothing more than just lazing on the beach, eating lots of incredible Thai curries and salads and drinking cold beer and gin and tonics on our bungalow verandah. We also dragged our weary selves to a bar at 1.45am to watch the England/Italy match and what a waste of time that was. 


All in all, would highly recommend Ko Pha Ngan to anyone. Next stop Krabi and then Phuket for more beach time. 

Bangkok

And so we piled onto a bus with a lot of other tourists and left Siem Reap, bound for the modernity and neon of Bangkok, City of Angels. The journey was not the most pleasant - these days the roads from Siem Reap to the border are at least surfaced, but this advance merely means an opportunity for roadside toilet/snack stops to spring up, meaning every tourist bus needlessly stops at one for forty-five minutes (both on the Cambodian and the Thai portions of the journey) so that we can all buy things to eat and drink and generally compulsively CONSUME THINGS AT ALL TIMES as we're ferried from one "experience" to the next like the great pasty-white children we apparently are. It also means that there are more tourists making the crossing, which means a three hour queue at the border. Still, I made this trip some years ago (this is Sam writing should you not have realised) when the roads (on the Cambodian side) were a string of potholes, and frankly even with stops and queues and wasting of time this journey was way better, so one mustn't complain.


So, to Bangkok. We stayed on Sukhumvit Road, away from the "backpacker mecca" (or some such guidebook nonsense) of Khao San Road. Not so that we experienced the "real" Bangkok, you understand, just that I have as many Chang beer vests and Bob Marley sarongs as I need (that number: zero). Sukhumvit road is supposedly sex tourist area, but where we were there wasn't much sign of that, fortunately. We were staying in a Hostel International, which was a place that loved rules. No gathering together after midnight. If you break any furniture consider it sold (a good wheeze, this, as it means they get their own guests to pay for wear and tear). Etc etc. I had to go out into the Bangkok night to watch the England - Ukraine match, a thrilling game to watch between 1.45 and 3.45am. The washing machines on the roof could not have their settings changed - clothes filthy from cycling round Angkor Wat? You can only have standard wash. WE KNOW BEST. Still, there was no notice up saying we couldn't replenish our supply of detergent at their expense, so they hadn't thought of everything.

Bangkok is a cool place, especially having been in Cambodia. It's thrillingly modern, with 24 hour 7-11 shops (also Tesco Express type affairs, here called "Tesco Lotus", presumably in a cynical bid to appear more South-east Asian), and actual public mass transit systems: an underground and a monorail (perhaps the man who sold them the idea suggested that it was "more of a Phnom Penh" type of mass transit system). Sadly these public transport options don't go everywhere we wanted to go, meaning we still had to fight the traffic in buses or taxis (we could have got tuk-tuks, but the reputation they've now got is extraordinarily bad).

While there we saw the sights: the Royal Palace, a couple of Wats (like a Thai monastery/temple), the river, the exoticism of a McDonalds after being in two countries where the golden arches are not yet permitted.

We also did some shopping, buying some clothes from the hip young things (or whatever the guidebook would say) around Siam Square and in the MBK shopping centre. Plus we replenished a lot of medical supplies from one of the many Boots establishments found in Thailand's capital. All told, Bangkok has left a good impression with us, and is rated quite highly in our "list of cities we've been" list.

The moral of this post would seem to be that modernity and development come at a price. But then so does everything. And the price is usually worth paying.

Siem Reap: Saddle Sore

Hello lovelies! (Katie here)

It's been an action-packed four days in Siem Reap, the gateway city to the ancient home of the Khmer Empire - Angkor. On a pair of rickety bicycles we've been cycling between all of the main temples on the UNESCO World Heritage Site. As you know, I'm not a lover of exercise, in fact, I don't really do any at all, so cycling over 20 miles daily, has been hard going, especially in the blistering heat and high humidity. Also, Sam and I are both suffering from diarrhoea and have been for the last week (apologies, but you didn't think you were going to get away with not hearing about our bowel movements - after 7 days it's all we can think about at the moment, hence over-sharing with you all...) Hilariously, Sam and I have been discussing potentially going on a cycling holiday at some point in the future (Naomi, don't get too excited, it may never happen!), something neither of us have ever contemplated before - worried that this is a sign of encroaching middle age.

It's all been worth it though. The temples have been truly magnificent and definitely the best thing we have seen on this trip so far. It's been like being on the set of an Indiana Jones film (apart from the fact that I have looked no where near as glamorous as any of Indy's leading ladies) - exploring ancient ruins of temples constructed between the 9th and 15th centuries, set in the jungle. Angkor Wat, the principle temple said to be the world's largest single religious monument, is breathtaking.

When we were at this site, we also saw a 22° Halo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22%C2%B0_halo).

Another cool temple is Bayon - the king who had this one made ordered them to put images of his face everywhere, so it's got loads of faces carved into the towers.

Other temples worth a mention have to be Ta Prohm and Preah Khan. Both of these have been largely left unrestored which made for some great exploration and a chance to take some cool photos.

Aside from cycling out to discover all the temples, we've not really done a lot else in Siem Reap. Mainly just collapsing from exhaustion and moaning about being saddle sore. Siem Reap itself is very pleasant though - nice markets, bars and restaurants.

We will be departing Cambodia at the god-awful hour of 5.30am tomorrow morning, on route to Bangkok. Really excited about going to Thailand!

Phnom Penh

Hello all, this is Sam, for those that want to know right at the start rather than guess.

We're now in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, formerly known as the "Pearl of Asia", up until 1975. The capital of Cambodia (or its historical predecessors) since about 1865, it was a lovely French colonial town (much of the architecture is still around). Then the Vietnam War happened.

I'm not a historian by any means (this has a fuller account, as ever), but from what I can glean, the North Vietnamese forces used Cambodia as part of the famed Ho Chi Minh trail (as they did Laos), to move weapons and supplies to guerrillas fighting the US-backed dictator in South Vietnam. They were aided in these ventures by the communist party of Cambodia, and these practices were (to some extent unofficially) tolerated by the then King of Cambodia, Sihanouk. Eventually the Cambodian military got sick of this, and in 1970 a coup happened (possibly with the support of the CIA), putting General Lon Nol in charge. The Vietnamese then invaded Cambodia, driving back the Cambodian army. US President Nixon then authorised a 30-day invasion of Cambodia by US troops (without informing his supposed ally, and the President of Cambodia, Lon Nol). What followed was a civil war between the Khmer Rouge (the communist party of Cambodia) and the Cambodian army's regime, as the foreign allies of both sides gradually left the conflict (the Vietnamese to unify their country, the Americans to lick their wounds).

On April 17th 1975, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge (KR), and the civil war was over. The Republic of Cambodia was finished; a state known as Democratic Kampuchea was proclaimed. The KR immediately began marching the entire populations of cities out into the country to work 12 hour days in collective farms for a bowl of rice porridge a day. The extreme Maoism of Pol Pot (the KR leader) split the world into two types of people: the "old people" (rural peasants) and the "new people" (urban dwellers, intellectuals, people with soft hands, people who wore glasses). The idea was to transform Cambodia into a giant self-sustaining farm, free from outside influence, where everyone lived in peace and harmony etc etc. The reality was starvation, disease, and death on an astonishing scale. Some reports suggest that 3 million people died between April 1975 and January 1979, when the invading Vietnamese drove the KR out of Phnom Penh. The total population of Cambodia at this time was around 8 million. Half of the 3 million were executed. They were taken to prisons were they were tortured into confessions that they were CIA or KGB agents, or were stealing rice or some such. Then they were taken out to specific killing fields, beaten to death with farming implements, and buried in pits in the ground.

We've spent the last two days visiting two of the historical sites that are maintained here in Phnom Pen to remember this awful time. The first is Tuol Sleng prison, and the second is the Choeung Ek killing field. At the former there are photos of many of the poor victims who were tortured there, the vast majority of whom (all but 7 according to some reports) were then killed. I've been there before, and most of what I said before still seemed true this time.

I'd never been to Choeung Ek before, however, and I'm glad I went this time. The field itself seems fairly nondescript, the large memorial stupa in the centre aside. But with the entry fee you get one of those natty audio guides, and this is excellent. Suddenly the depressions in the grass at the sides of the path are revealed as previously excavated mass graves. You walk around the site and are told of horror after horror. So many bodies were buried here that they only excavated 86 out of 129 graves (or something like that), and even in the graves they excavated they could only remove the larger bones (skulls, thighs, arms, jaws). In the rainy season, bits of bone, teeth, and clothing still come to the surface every year (and indeed we saw some). Perhaps the most upsetting part of the whole site was the Killing Tree (viewers of a sensitive disposition scroll down now). This was where babies were murdered by having their heads dashed against a large tree before being thrown in the pits with the bodies of their mothers. The whole thing is extraordinarily horrifying and sad. The voice of a KR guard is heard; he joined the KR aged 16. He participated in the killings (including killing other KR soldiers suspected of being traitors) because otherwise it would be him in the pit. He will have to live with his deeds for the rest of his life.

The good news is that the site is very well maintained and seems a fitting memorial to the dead. In addition, four of the surviving leaders of the KR, after 30 plus years of being on the run (and, astonishingly, of being recognised by many international governments including that of the UK as the official government of Cambodia due (because the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia the government they put in place was not recognised for a long time)) are now on trial for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and the chap who had been in charge of Tuol Sleng has already been given a life imprisonment sentence for his crimes. Cambodia is a very young country: more than three quarters of the population are too young to remember the KR directly. Perhaps time will therefore heal these scars. What is certainly true is that horrendous crimes against humanity do still occur every day. Join Amnesty International.

Cambodia: Kampot & Kep

Hello!

As you will know from recent posts, we have arrived in Cambodia. Currently we're in Kampot, a riverside town in South Cambodia, famous for its black pepper, which I can confirm is delicious (Tim, this is a food reference, thus most definitely me speaking here, not Sam!).

On our first day here, we just checked into Sam's friend Dan's guesthouse - The Magic Sponge (http://www.magicspongekampot.com/) and enjoyed some fantastic food and a game of crazy golf. Well, Sam enjoyed the game, however, I was perhaps somewhat not quite at my best. Usually quite a good crazy golf player, I was a little incapacitated due to a few too many Cambodia lagers. Am hoping for a rematch tonight to be able to prove my skills.

Ventured out to explore the area on the complimentary bikes at the hotel and ended up getting lost on the way home in the pitch black (Cambodia has a lack of street light) and pouring rain (it's the rainy season). It wasn't a lot of fun wading through about 3 inches of water on pot-holed roads. You can imagine the exchanges of conversation between Sam and I.  At one point when we stopped to check the sodden map, we nearly got attacked by a guard dog. Fortunately we eventually made it home.

Yesterday we took a tuk tuk to Kep - one of the places I had earmarked in our Lonely Planet guide before we left the UK, mainly because I had read about the incredible, fresh, cheap crab you can eat. Our journey was certainly memorable. We were on the potholed roads again, and yet again, it was raining. Back of the tuk tuk was covered, so we didn't get too wet, fortunately. It was all worth it though. We ate masses of crab in pepper sauce and some huge grilled prawns, at a table in a restaurant on stilts, right on the sea.

(here's a movie of the journey to Kep)

(some pics of Kep and the seafood)

Apart from our seafood expedition, we have mainly been relaxing in Dan's wonderful guesthouse, drinking lots of beer, eating (had twenty oysters each for dinner last night), and chilling out in Kampot.

Off to Phnom Penh tomorrow, the capital of Cambodia.

Vietnam to Cambodia via the Mekong delta

As you probably are aware we are currently ensconced in Kampot in southern Cambodia. But what's that? You want to know how we got here from Vietnam? Well, here's how we did this trip, in 7 easy steps:

1. Get from central Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to the Mien Tay bus station in southern HCMC. We were going to get the bus from the central bus station to the southern bus station, but in the end we couldn't be arsed and we cheated and got a taxi, which was quicker and easier.

2. Get a bus from HCMC to Ha Tien. Ha Tien is a small town near the Vietnam-Cambodian border. The bus from HCMC takes anywhere between 8 and 12 hours depending on where you read the information. We actually managed to get the bus very easily as there were lots of genuinely helpful people at the bus station (and the Vietnamese use the Western alphabet so signs saying "Ha Tien" are readable). I was expecting the bus to be a bit gritty, but to my surprise it was a well air-conditioned sleeper bus - not only did we each have our own bed to stretch out on, but the staff made sure we were next to each other and comfortable, and the bus was clean and comfortable. It was, for example, much cleaner than any of the tourist night sleeper buses we've taken in our journey so far. Of course it being the day we didn't really need a sleeper bus, but it was a pleasant way to travel nonetheless (and Katie of course fell asleep for about 3 hours). The only down side was the loud Vietnamese videos that were shown on board.

The bus route went all through the Mekong delta, providing us with pleasant views of lots of rivers and streams, and lots of rice paddies. If you're interested, go here and you can follow our route: we went from HCMC to My Tho, from there along road 1A to Vinh Long, then 80 to Long Xuyen and then Rach Gia, and finally to Ha Tien. The journey started about 8, and we got to Ha Tien just gone 5, having stopped for a while for lunch on the way. It was dead good.

Alas, once we got near Ha Tien the heavens opened and it started chucking it down with rain. And Ha Tien bus station is outside of the town centre, where we needed to go... so we followed step 3:

3. Get a motorbike from Ha Tien bus station to the Oasis Bar in Ha Tien. There being two of us, with bags, we actually got two motorbikes, one each, with a driver each. It was still smashing it down with rain, so we got a bit wet at this point.

4. From the desk of a travel company handily located in the Oasis Bar, book a private bus ticket to Kampot in Cambodia for the next day (for US $15 each, which we later found out was waaaay more than the same journey would cost in the other direction, so we probably should have haggled it down, but there you go). Have a few beers. Check in to a hotel. Have dinner in the completely deserted one horse town of Ha Tien (horse not seen). Go to bed.
Apparently Ha Tien is a tourist spot for the Vietnamese. The hotel we stayed in was massive and completely deserted (a bit like a Chinese version of that place in The Shining except without a ballroom to send me mad), but other than that there weren't really any signs of the sort of infrastructure one might expect in a tourist town. There were a few cafes and bars but not that many. Still, it is off season, and maybe more open up when the time is right.

5. Next day, get a bus to the border. Actually we didn't do this. Our ticket was for a bus, but the vehicle we were transported in was in fact a taxi. The lady at the travel desk at the bar told us "get in the taxi it will take you to the bus", then it instead drove us to the border.

6. Get Cambodian visa. This was weird, even by the standards of borders. We left Vietnam no problem, with the man stamping us out fine. Then we filled in the form for a Cambodian visa and a man who wasn't a border guard tried to charge us $25 each (the visa should cost $20). Think he was part of the travel agency we'd booked the bus tickets through. In the end we gave him $20 each plus about $6 in the remaining Vietnamese dong we had. Which he then changed into dollars with a Vietnamese policeman (do the cops double as currency exchangers?). This man then took our passports, photos, money and forms, and we walked to no man's land, where our taxi was waiting for us. Then we drove in the cab across the border (sans our passports) and parked int he baking hot sun on the Cambodian side of the border. Technically I therefore believe we were at this point illegally in Cambodia. We then sat there for about 35 minutes, sweating our proverbials off, and thinking "where is that chap with our passports". Fortunately he did turn up, our passports were returned to us with swank new Cambodian visas in them, and we were on our way. Why we couldn't have just got the passports stamped etc ourselves I don't know, but I suppose when you pay for a bus ticket to Kampot the company wants to do it all for you (at some extra little cost). At no point were our bags checked, incidentally, but I guess there's not much smuggling done by Westerners across this border.

7. Continue with bus journey to Kampot. Again we actually were in the taxi.

All told, the whole journey took something like 32 hours door to door, and was not exactly replete with other tourists. It was easy, though, and we got to see the Mekong delta, which was cool.

The Kampot Classic

Hello there, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Kampot Classic, Cambodia's premier mini golf challenge, hosted by the wonderful Magic Sponge Guest House, Kampot. The weather is warm if slightly overcast, the challenge is over 9 holes, and the competitors are Katie "the Cobra" Tazzyman and Sam "the Stork" Tazzyman. Katie's won the toss, and Sam thus has to tee off first.

First hole: Sam holes in 2, good approach work, then a solid short putt. Katie also starts with a good approach shot, but her short game goes to hell, and she end with 5.

Second hole: both down in 2.
Sam: 4; Katie: 7

Third hole: Sam with a poor opening shot, leaving him a tricky 6 footer. And he just misses it! But he taps home the resulting short shot for a 3. Katie takes advantage, too - a 2 pulls her back to just 2 hots down.
Sam: 7; Katie: 9

Fourth hole: Katie starts now, having done better on the previous hole. Two apiece. Good quality
Sam: 9; Katie: 11

Fifth hole: Past half way now. Katie blunders, taking a three... but Sam fails to capitalise, also scoring three.
Sam: 12; Katie: 14

Sixth hole: Disaster for Katie, as she goes out of bounds several times, and cards a 6, then looks on with clear annoyance as Sam negotiates the tricky approach shot to drop in 2.
Sam: 14; Katie: 20

Seventh hole: With Sam again starting, he doesn't let the pressure get to him, and nails another 2. Katie follows suit. She's 6 shots down with two to play.
Sam: 16; Katie: 24

Eighth hole: Again two apiece.
Sam: 18; Katie: 26

Final hole: Sam keeps his cool and scores his fourth two on the spin. Katie, already defeated, shows some dissent out there, and eventually scores a four.

Final scores:
Sam: 20; Katie: 28

Sam the winner, then, and Katie will be disappointed - usually she leads early then falls away, but on this occasion she never got going out there. She can do better than that, and she knows it.

See you next time for more crazy golf...

Ho Chi Minh City

*Note: we're actually currently in Kampot, Cambodia, having crossed the border earlier today. But this post is about Ho Chi Minh City.

HCMC used to be called Saigon, when it was the capital of capitalist South Vietnam (boo, hiss), ruled by the iron fist of a couple of CIA puppets. The first of these villains, President Diem, was assassinated in a CIA-backed coup when he got too big for his boots. The second, President Thieu, fled to Taiwan and then the US at the end of the Vietnam war. It's Thieu whose palace, now named the Reunification Palace, is now one of the main sights to see in HCMC, along with the War Remnants Museum, showcasing the horrors committed by the US-backed forces in this part of the world.


The Palace is slightly disappointing - one expects a CIA-baked ruler of a developing country to live in much more pomp and circumstance than Thieu seems to have. Probably much of his stuff was pinched when Saigon fell. But if the wages of sin are this low (what's that you say? death?) I wonder what the point of it all is. At least Gaddaffi had solid gold statues and so on (though he didn't get to die aged 78 in a medical institution in Boston). Still, Thieu did have his own nightclub a few floors above his living quarters, and it's still standing, which is more than Noriega can say. He also had his own cinema at a time when there weren't too many in Vietnam.

The War Remnants Museum is shocking stuff. What Agent Orange did and continues to do to the people, water supply, and ecosystems of Vietnam is completely appalling. The companies responsible for manufacturing this chemical paid out-of-court settlements to the poor US soldiers whose health has been destroyed by handling their toxic products, but I rather suspect that the people it was used on will not be quite so lucky. All's fair in war, you might say, but the contamination is ongoing, and still causes numerous congenital diseases today. The museum is propagandist in tone, but then history is written by the victors. Stirring stuff.

Apart from that, Saigon had another major attraction: our good friend Miss Shalinee Singh, coincidentally also in Vietnam, with whom we shared a lovely couple of days. A highlight being the consumption of a lot of snails in the market. Yum yum.

Right, must be off, got to relax in Kampot. Ta ta.

How to eat Vietnamese rice pancakes

In a change of pace from normal posts, here is a guide to eating banh xeo, hand-rolled Vietnamese rice pancakes.

Step 1: Assemble the required stuff

Step 2: Pick up a piece of rice paper

Step 3: Add some omelette-and-bean-sprout stuff

Step 4: Add some greens

Step 5: Roll it up

Step 6: Dip

Step 7: Eat

Lovely.