I have a feeling this is going to be a long one, hopefully it won’t bore you all too much. It’s been a busy time since the last post (with the majority of it seemingly spent on uncomfortable buses!). I have also noticed a pattern – the beard got a trim this morning, the last time that happened I wrote a blog – a sign of having time on my hands!

So after arriving back in Beijing I had a few spare days to kill before Jon and I headed down South, so I went to Qingdao for what I had hoped to be a chilled few days by the sea. As it turned out the sea breeze was freezing, and the booze was well a truly flowing. Qingdao is a quaint seaside resort, with a heavy German influence, which makes it somewhat bizarre given it’s full of Chinese people. Chinese people who absolutely love the sea, despite the ridiculous temperatures! I stayed in a hostel based in an old observatory on top of a hill, with wonderful views of the town and the bay, and a hibernating turtle in a plastic washing up bowl in the common room.

Anyhow, my last night turned into one of the most bizarre nights of my life. Accompanied by an Aussie from the hostel, I had a quick dinner in a rat infested restaurant, before hitting an extremely local bar which had no customers and about 8 non English speaking staff. Somehow we all managed to communicate, and the beer and Baijiu (an horrendous Chinese spirit) was flowing. A rather gay man was singing and dancing his way round. After a couple of hours, the front door abruptly opened, the place fell silent, a Chinese midget closely followed by the tallest Chinese man ever walked through the door, and each staff member walked out of their bar. Now, the midget was dressed in casual sports wear (with shit loads of jewelery on his hands and round his neck), whilst the big guy had a smart suit, long hair tied back and some trendy facial hair. He also looked mean as fuck, and I imagined there to be a gun in his pocket. They insisted they sat down with us, and insisted we kept on drinking at their ridiculous Chinese drinking rate. The midget was a Chinese gangster, and the big guy was his minder, and I’m guessing they’d caught wind of these foreigners in town, and felt it their duty to make sure we had a good time. After an hour or so, they finally left, and we relaxed. I cannot for the life of me remember what we talked about. Then the rather scared looking staff members came back in, and promptly closed the bar and we went home.

I then made the journey back to Beijing, and Jon and I flew down South to a city that stays sunny all year round, Kunming. I had a fun time there, and again it’s a city that left an impression on me as somewhere that would be great to live in. It has a modern feel to it, and also seemed to be the most open minded place I’ve been in, in China – with regards to foreigners and how they are treated (which was with nothing but friendliness – not that the rest of China is unfriendly, but it had a vibe).

Whilst in Kunming, we met an American fella called Friday (his surname) who was making the long journey down to Laos, so he came with us. We affectionately called him “Frido” in a scouse accent for the next week he spent traveling with us, and tried to teach him how to play pool (currently Jon is leading me 22 frames to 21). He was a good lad and certainly added to the fun we had in Laos.

The journey from Kunming to Luang Prabang was a beast, and didn’t get off to the best of starts. Before we had even got on the bus 2 things happened that confirmed my suspicions of Chinese people! (1) Their inability to successfully estimate how long something will take to do – the girls in the hostel said a taxi would take 30 minutes to get to the bus station, it actually took 1 hour. (2) When you ask directions and the person doesn’t know the direction they will just point in any direction – when we arrived at the bus station late (and luckily the bus hadn’t left) the first person we asked pointed the completely wrong direction, we asked someone else and they pointed back to where we had run from, so we went back and asked someone else and they pointed again back in the other direction! After several backwards and forwards, we found it in a completely different location.

And then the bus journey. We each had a “bed” (well, half a bed for someone of my height) as it was going to be overnight to the border town in China, arriving at 4.30am. The journey was made even more pleasant by the woman behind me, who highlighted another common Chinese trait, their love of spitting. But she was the most impressive I’ve come across in a month though, by far. A nice long, loud yak as she gathers as much phlegm as possible, then a little (but very loud) swish in the mouth, before launching the full load onto the floor (and occasionally bin) next to me. This is a process she repeated every 5 minutes or so for the next 12 hours. I thought the men on the trains were bad, but she beat them all.

Anyhow, we made our way onto another bus with beds, and crossed the border entering first the massive modern “hey we’re China” structure on the Chinese side, through to the wooden hut on the Laos side, paid our money, got our visa, and in Laos we were. Little did we realise that for the next 16 or so hours we would be clinging onto any handle going in an effort not to get battered a bruised from the ridiculously bumpy and insecure roads of Northern Laos. Still, the scenery was beautiful, and it really highlighted the fact we were entering a third world country, occasionally going through small clusters of straw huts on sticks, with little kids waving us as we went by.

Upon arriving at Luang Prabang, we soon realised what Laos is all about – tourism! Having only been open to tourists for 10 years or so, they’re still learning, and it’s certainly crushing chances of really experiencing what Laos culture is all about (admittedly, I can only speak for the more tourist focused places we went). Having now spent time in Cambodia, it has shown that the fact they have been exposed to tourism for longer (and perhaps because it’s a more interesting country!), the locals aren’t so gung-ho with their approach. Luang Probang, whilst being picturesque was quite boring. There are organised adventure activities to be done, but other than that not much else! The highlight apparently of the nightlife is to head to the bowling alley, which was gash, and full of dicks on their booze cruise tour of Thailand and Australasia (I’m not generalising, honest!). We had fun wandering round the local areas though, seeing the massively positive effect tourism has had on the Laos people.

Next stop was Vang Vieng, a place that is pretty much all about getting fucked up. It’s famous for it’s “tubing”. A process where you hire an inner tube, get a tuk tuk several km away, and float down a river buying drinks along the way, and arriving a wreck back in town (and unable to handle a night out), with random illuminous insults painted on you, and strangely, bits of clothing ripped up and wrapped round your head. I’m sure it was fun, but what was more fun is hiring a motorbike (well, scooter) for the day and riding off road into the impressive countryside. It’s the first time I’ve ever done it, and I can’t wait to do it again. Given the high density of landmines in Laos, I think we probably went as far as we should have, but we found lagoons and caves in amongst the stunning landscape.

The evenings in Vang Vieng were spent generally doing what the tubers do during the day (minus the tube, body paint and ripped clothes), and getting intoxicated. It’s fair to say it’s a fairly liberal place when it comes to intoxication and ways of doing it! The bars were pretty cool as well, especially with their hammocks for end of night chilling. I vaguely remember us watching Liverpool v Bolton one night.

One thing that really got to me was the shit Western music they were playing! Constantly! (And apologies if I offend anyone’s music tastes here). Whether it’s chillout boring crap like Jack Johnson or Jason Mraz, or indie pop wank like Kings of Leon (stadium rock version) or Killers (if i find myself asking life’s eternal question “are we humans, or are we dancers?” one more time, I’m going to go insane!), they just had the same playlists on repeat. Even the most hardened Killers fans must have been getting pissed off. That said, “Rock Bar” had some right tunes on, “Limbo Bar” played some great electro, and even the most popular “Bucket Bar” ended it’s night on Pixies “Where is my mind?”.

Laos was fun, but we were eager to get to Cambodia, which as it turns out has the mix of culture and intoxication pretty much perfect (not to mention, in general, a better kind of traveler to meet). So we left Vang Vieng at 13:30pm and arrived 36 hours, 4 buses, and 0 hours sleep later in Siem Reap.

Siem Reap is probably the most touristy place in Cambodia, simply due to it’s proximity to Angkar Wat and the surrounding temples. Arriving late, we stayed in the first place we came across, which also happened to have 2 massive crocodile farms just out the back, with a total of may be 60 crocodiles between them. Anyhow, we spent most of the time in “Happy Guesthouse” which lived up to it’s name with the lovliest staff you will meet. And as it happens, this is just replicated across the country, a really friendly bunch of people who aren’t too “in your face” with the tourism thing. Given the atrocities that have happened so recently in this country (more on that to come later), it makes it even nicer to see. The kids in particular are so sweet and friendly, and tourism is clearly benefiting them with their excellent grasps of English, even the younger ones.

So, Angkar Wat. I’d really had this built up in my head, and whilst I wouldn’t say it was a disappointment, I’ve just realised I really can’t get too excited about temples. The temples are magnificent (particularly the more wrecked ones), but you just don’t get any sort of experience from them. Perhaps if there were no other tourists around it’d have been more fun! It was a fun day though, which involved lots of cycling round to each temple through wonderful countryside. The most entertaining moment was when we found a group of cheeky monkeys, one of which tried to steal our lunch from our bikes! One of them had clearly had too much tourist lunches, as he was a right fat bastard. And the kids along the way were great, so happy and friendly, I even found myself buying a flute (!) off one of them. It’s also amazing how many Cambodian girls are called Spider Girl…

I’m glad I’ve been to see the temples, but they don’t match up to what we’ve seen since in terms of culture, and modern history you can really empathise with.

The next day in Siem Reap we went with our friend Tay from Happy Guesthouse (pronounced Tea – although we affectionately named him Teyo in a scouse accent), to a floating village. When we got out of the tuk tuk, I wrongly thought we’d arrived. I’m not afraid to say that what happened next made me fear for my life (well, a limb or 2!). A little boy (who claimed to be 14, which I seriously doubt, perhaps 12 at the most) pulled up on his motorised scooter, and with no helmet for either of us asked me to get on the back and off we went, for what I thought was a short distance, but turned out to be a good 15ish minutes of off road bumpiness. He liked to go fucking fast, and has also mastered the zig zag technique along the extremely bumpy roads. The spedo on the bike was broken, but I imagine it was probably going at about 3 million km/h. Given I’d never been a passenger on a motorbike before, this was a bit of a shock! Still, I survived, and fair play to the kid, he knew what he was doing.

He then proceeded to drive our motorised narrow boat around the village (another thing he was apparently very skilled at). It was a really special moment going around this village, barely a tourist in sight, watching the locals go about their every day life – fishing, cleaning, talking, smiling, laughing, playing. Everyone there seemed in really high spirits. The tide was low at this time of year, so the buildings just appeared to be on sticks, but during rainy season the tide gets another 3m higher covering the whole area, meaning boats or swimming are the only way to get from building to building. At the end of the village the river goes out onto a vast lake (where most of the fishing takes place), which must look spectacular at sunset, that stretches over a large area of the country to the capital Phnom Penh. Apparently it’d take 6 hours to sail there. Anyhow, it was time to leave, and realised I had to get on the back of that damn bike again! This time, the little fella decided he wanted to go about 6 million km/h, and we arrived back at the tuk tuk a full 5 minutes before Jon and Tay. Scary, but once you relax, a lot of fun!

The next day, we took a leisurely 6 hour bus to Phnom Penh, for what we knew would be difficult and highly educational time (as well as very chilled out), as we learnt more and more about the recent history of Cambodia. I won’t turn this into a history lesson, but I think it’s well worth reading up about the atrocities that took place here led by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge only 35 years ago. I guess it’s close proximity to all that happened in Vietnam around the same time, means that we rarely get exposed to what happened.

On the day of our arrival in Phnom Penh, we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum, located in the former Phnom Penh High School that was turned into an interrogation centre for city people, educated people, those that wore glasses, spoke languages, women, kids etc etc to be tortured before being taken to the killing fields for mass execution. I have previously visited Auschwitz, a particularly harrowing place – but this somehow seemed worse, perhaps it was because of the shocking images of torture there. As well as seeing all the torture equipment (old physical education bars) and torture rooms, there were mugshots of all the men, women and children who were taken there. There were fear in some of their eyes, yet the majority of them were naively smiling, as if they didn’t know what was in store for them. When the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, the public were celebrating. Within days, the educated people were taken to interrogation and ultimately execution, and the peasants were taken to the countryside to farm (where a large amount of them died through overworking and starvation).

And to yesterday, where we went to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre – the killing fields where those tortured at Tuol Sleng were taken to be murdered. I don’t think I was really prepared for it – the Cambodian people want to make sure people know that everything the Khmer Rouge did was bad, and the best way of doing that is to be completely transparent with what happened. An approach I admire. Upon arrival, there is a monument to those that died. A tall but narrow see through building, displaying skull after skull, bone after bone and clothing of those bodies dug up from the mass graves. Immediately we both choked, seeing so many human skulls piled up, right in front of you, looking at you, you just can’t help but have tears in your eyes. Unless you’re a fat American cunt (apologies for the language, but I can’t think of a more suitable word!) doing your tick-box tourism coach tours of course. 3 ladies, approximately 60 years of age, walking around this monument laughing and taking pictures. It was absolutely disrespectful. They didn’t remove their shoes or hats, they didn’t have respect for those clearly shaken up by it, and above all they had absolutely no respect for the thousands of dead bodies a foot away from them. Needless to say I was shaking with anger for the rest of the time I was there!

Anyhow, that’s not the point, idiots like that will appear in all walks of life. Walking around the small ditches where the graves were, you could see bones sticking out of the ground still, and even weapons left by the side. I couldn’t really bring myself to photograph it, it was all so real I don’t think those mental images will leave me! I think visiting things like this is something people have to do – it’s all very well doing the booze cruise tour of Thailand, or visiting temples like Ankar Wat, but this is just so recent, and happened to everyday people, that we just have to be aware of it. Knowing what has happened, makes it even more heartwarming to see how happy the majority of the Cambodians seem. It’s like they’ve come to terms with what happened, and are now enjoying life to the max!

Anyway, that’s enough depressing stuff! Phnom Penh is a great city, I imagine it’s a smaller scale Bangkok. Very chilled out, yet with the buzz of a capital city. And lots and lots of bikes. We’re staying in another “Happy Guesthouse” literally on a lake. It’s a backpacker area, but so chilled and nothing like the antics of Vang Vieng! Our Cambodian friend here, called Robin (or Robbo as we’ve affectionately named him in a scouse accent), has been taking us to see all the sites. But now has returned to his village to see his wife and kids.

Tomorrow we’re heading to a place called Sihanoukville, on the South coast, for some chilled out, motorbiking, sandy beach action! Before heading into Thailand to Bangkok for a few days, and then flying to Guangzhou in Southern China.

Posted on Saturday February 6th 2010 at 6:45 am