I barely choked down the need to put my fist through the monitor of the last computer I used. I also swallowed my indignation and paid for use of the fucking machine and tersely suggested to the guy in the shop that he scan his machines for viruses, because he had spyware installed on them all. I typed out a lengthy post, and just as I was about to hit the update button, my browser jumped to some random fucking locally hosted page full of pseudo demands by some virus writer. Pointless and frustrating.

In brief, as best I remember-

Got my bag back. It was broken. Vietnam Airlines gave me $70 to keep me happy. I am happy.
I’ve been feeling kind of sickly - stomach cramps and stuff. Nothing super bad, but still kinda whack.
We saw some sites in the capitol finally, it was good.

I did it all a lot more justice last time, I swear.

Anyway, moving on.

We are now in Vang Vien, if that’s how you spell it. A reasonably comfortable mini bus ride took us over some amazing landscapes. Laos is possibly the most beautiful country I have seen. Finally, after the little bus struggled to pull us up some mountains, we were deposited in what appears to be a massive valley, which I know to have a river in it near the town. The approach to the town was mindblowing. It stops abruptly, meeting a dusty expanse of tableland, there didn’t appear to be any “outskirts” in the typical sense of the word. Around us, on all sides, were amazingly green mountains, reaching into a perfect blue sky studded with one or two tiny, fluffy clouds.

The sun was beating down on us intensely as we waited for our bags to be thrown down to us from the roof of the vehicle, but good moods prevailed. We didn’t bother looking in the book, we just started walking down the nearest road, turned into the nearest guesthouse, were shown a really nice cool, clean room with hot and cold water, and nodded dumbly to the asking price of $4 USD per night.

Is this place for real?

I’ll try and snap some photos at some point tomorrow. Words dont describe what my eyes were seeing today. I hear the only downside to the place is that almost all the food is ‘tourist food’ which is, obviously.. boring.

Our plan for tomorrow is to get taken an hour or so out of town, up the river, by bus or tuktuk, and dropped off with a couple of big fucking tractor inner tubes, and left to float back to the middle of town. Awesome!

Looking forward to the river. I’mma take my dodgy little camera in a plastic bag in the hopese of taking some photos. I’ll probably lose or break the thing. We’ll see.

Off now to celebrate, as best we can, New Years Eve.

Happy New Year everyone.

Well, the unlikely has happened. I have found the fastest machine in South East Asia, in its poorest country. Okay, I doubt either of those is true, but this machine is bearable, so I’m taking care of a little bit of photo uploading, a lengthy process but necessary, beholden unto ye:

Photos of beautiful Angkor and its surrounds.

Someone was filming this temple from a balloon.

“Penis river” is perhaps the least appropriate name for this place, and so it shall be named.

A temple in Siem Riep (I’ve gotta be mis-spelling that, but what else is new eh?)

Cliched?

Mass graves at the killing fields.

A Stupa in memory of the people killed by the Khmer Rouge - 20,000 or so, in this cluster of mass graves alone, murdered by the brainwashed children working in prisons like S21 which we visited earlier that day. A very different Christmas experience.

Hundreds and hundreds of skulls, sorted by sex and approximate age.

One last parting shot from Cambodia?

My bag didn’t come off the plane when we landed in Laos. Nope. The baggage carrousel stopped with a clunk and about ten miserable looking people, and one Felix, were left scratching their heads.

We went over to the baggage service desk and started asking questions. One guy turned around and explained to the rest of us that apparently our bags never made it on to the plane in the first place! APPARENTLY, the bags were left off because the plane was full! OHHH, that makes sense then!

Unfortunately, the fault lies with Vietnam Airlines, which meant that the irrate among the group found noone in the airport to express their grievances to.

I was given a number to call “in the morning” when they would know what was happening. So I did, and was told to go to the airport tonight at 5:00 when the bags would arrive on the same flight as yesterday.

We saw a couple who were also missing a bag in the street today and we’ve arrange to meet them and split the cost of getting there and back between us. I doubt we will find any sympathy from Vietnam Airlines.. people in this part of the world dont seem to care about their public image so much, and situations like this are your own problem. Oh well. I dont really mind. So long as my shit DOES make it here from Cambodia tonight. Else there’ll be hell to pay.

Well, we’re on our last day in Cambodia.. in about three and a half hours we fly north to Laos to relax. That’s the plan as far as I’m concerned.

Having seen a bit more of Cambodia, I’m left with mixed impressions and odd feelings about the place.

All my observations of the previous post remain more or less true, though as we moved away from the big city, the wealth disparity grew less and less, and the people seemed a tiny bit more easy going. However, while people tend to have an aggressive, distrustful air about them, in my experience, that appears to be mostly a defensive front.. people, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the individual DO drop that front once you engage them in a bit of broken conversation and ask as to how they’re doing and stuff.

Once again, the human spirit shines through. My overall imression is that Cambodian people are, as a people, traumatised and impoverished.. but they are no more or less friendly than the people of most nations, once you actually connect with them on a personal level.

The countryside is beautiful. It seems mostly flat, from what I’ve seen.. savana-like grassy plains studded with tall, lone palm trees.

The cities are chaotic. Traffic is slightly more hair raising here than in the major cities of Vietnam. There are still lots of bikes, but also a decent percentage of cars, and in particular, 4WDs. If there are speed limits, they dont seem to necessarily be enforced, unlike in Vietnam where people in the cities do seem to adhere to the (I think) 30km limit. I’d say most of the vehicles are unregistered, which conjours up images of the middle east in my mind, and combined with the dusty rubbish strewn roads and lazy stares from youths sitting around out the front of shops really lends to the place a feeling of an untamed “wild west” town. This is what I imagine Columbia feels like.

The temples are amazing. Really breathtaking constructions. Most amazing is that, like the Pyramids USED to be, you can more or less climb around and explore them to your heart’s content, so long as you aren’t entering a restoration work area or whatever. Each of the individual temple sites we saw (on a total of four trips to the Angkor Wat area) had a distinct personality of its own, and if the weather was cooler we probably would have spent even more time exploring them. There was even a place (some 36kms from the main area) known to westerners as “the River of a Thousand Linga” where you hike up into the foothills of a mountain, past a waterfall, and in the creek at the top of the fall there are hundreds of Linga (penis worship!) and images of Vishnu carved into the rocky creek bed. Really amazing, when you think about how old this stuff is, and it’s survived time, errosion and assholes stealing bits of it.

I think I would return to Cambodia, when the time is right. I think the place deserves a longer stay and a greater immersion. I would stay away from PP though and enjoy the slower pace and more easy going nature of the people in Siem Riep and (presumably, though we didnt visit it) Battambang.

We must away now. I’ve got a load of photos to upload when the time is right (ie. when I’m not running to catch a plane) but unfortunately not a lot that captures the nature of the cities and stuff.. gross oversight and I’ll try to do better in Laos.

The kids here seem unsupervised, and generally they’re unwashed and playing violent games with each other.

The young men seem to be either bored, intoxicated, or both. They too see to play violent games with each other. I was watching a couple trying to burn each other with cigarettes outside.

The older people tend to have deep set frown lines and have difficulty cracking a smile.

Yesterday in the central market, a guy walked past wearing civilian clothes, carrying an AK47 assault rifle. Walking home in the dark we saw another riding shotgun on the back of a motorbike.

Youths travel in groups sitting in the backs of flat bed pickup trucks, often with their faces fully covered against the dust.

The wealthy areas are clean, green and well kept. The nice houses have high walls topped with razor wire and guards at the entrance.

The rest of the place is dusty, rubbish piled in the streets, invariably with people or rats picking through looking for food.

The beggars either hold up their children, or their mangled stumps when doing their thing.. and there are a hell of a lot of them.

The temples are beautiful, and on the whole the architecture seems to be a mix of french colonial, and modern.

Rich kids ride nicer BMX bikes than I own.

Sony billboards overshadow corrigated iron shantys, advertising the latest phone with more features than the computer I’m typing this from.

People offered to drive us anywhere in Siem Riep for 15 US cents.

I dont have an opinion yet. I havent been here long enough, but I suspect Cambodia is going to leave a lasting, dark, impression on me.

Somehow we ended up on the fast boat to Cambodia. After a whirlwind tour of some Mekong sites, we were hurridly, and unprofessionally (Haha!) paddled out to the waiting fiberglass boat. I had to make it very clear to our driver (Cap’n?) that our bags were on another boat. Its lucky I’m okay with jumping between boats cuz I had to do a bit of work to get them on.

Anyway, after fucking around for a while picking up some guy from some distant and definitely out of the way, unscheduled place, we were off into a strong headwind, heading up the river.

The chop was unbelievable, striking the boat on the port side and washing a fair spray of water up into the boat. The people on that side quickly pulled down and secured (as best they could) the flimsy canvas blinds. Lili’s.. and the girl in front of her’s… were broken.. didnt fix down properly, so.. boy scout time.

I was leaning over the side of the boat with a piece of rope I’d found sitting on the ground, and managed to tye the thing down. It wasnt until I was done that I realised how much spray there really was. The entire boat was sitting unevenly in the water, heavy on that side, and leaning out, watching us cut into the chop was insane. I was -soaked- in Mekong water by the time I was done.

We finally stopped at a visa / passport checking station along the river and, I thought, “Hmm.. what’s that burning plastic smell…” OHHH, my BAG, of COURSE! Yeah, that’s right. Where I’d put my bag, on an innocuous looking place between Lili and I, had it sitting against the engine housing at the back of the boat. Said housing gets hot enough that it has peeled and burnt the thick paint in one small spot. The small spot my bag happened to be touching. A hole about 6 cms in diametre was burned through the top two compartments of my bag, which I luckily dont store anything important in. Still, its a real pain in the ass.

When we finally arrived, I was immediately mobbed by tuktuk and taxi drivers. They were immediately asking where I was going. Book in hand, I sternly told them to give me five minutes to work that out for myself. They obligingly stepped back about 30 cms and stood there with that puppy dog look of expectation which is so unbecomming on a grown man.

Finally I sorted out the place we wanted to check. I was surrounded again. Everyone was offering to take us anywhere we wanted for a dollar. I looked at them each in turn. It was almost heartbreaking. They all had pleading in their eyes. I chose the only guy who wasnt trying to outshout the others. He took us to the car and another guy, a nice young driver who took us where we wanted to go, but warned us the place sucked. He was right. The only thing going for it was its apparent dope smoking culture. He took us somewhere nice near the river and that’s where we stayed.

We only spent one whole full day, doing a bit of a sight seeing tour. Markets, temples and all that shit. Impressive stuff. I finally found a cheap Gameboy Advance which I’ve been keeping an eye out for, and ended up buying it. Also found the best second hand bookshop I have EVER been in. I bought three of William Gibson’s works, and fought back a powerful urge to buy I Ching. Chinese yarrow stick divination will have to wait until another day.

That was yesterday. This morning we hopped on a bus and came to Siem Riep. We got off the bus and were nearly mobbed by a massive crowd of drivers. The only thing standing between us and certain dismemberment from being quarrelled over was an ugly, scarred police officer in a tan uniform whipping them into cowering submission with a long cane.

Minibus to a crappy hotel, then we found our own transport to a nice enough guest house.

This evening we went and watched the sun set on Angkor Wat. Photogs aplenty. I learned something new with my camera - using my popup flash to “fill” foreground objects when I’m under exposing to get a nice effect from the sky / background. I love that.

Tomorrow we get on a bus to the Mekong Delta.. we’re leaving at 7:30 in the morning and at the end of the 48 hour experience, we’ll be in Cambodia. That’s the plan anyway, future updates will indicate the level of success.. I’m sure it’ll be pretty straight forward.

Saigon has been interesting. It’s a bigger city, the streets are wider, the street food is sparser and it seems busier than anywhere else we’ve been.

We saw the Botanical Gardens today, and the zoo.. parts of, anyway. Gibbons are awesome. When I’m finally reincarnated, I want to be a monkey busting out awesome skillz all over the treetops. I’d rather be free though.

Anyway, this means that our stay in Vietnam is almost at a close. It’s a shame to be leaving, I feel as though I’m just getting the hang of this travelling lark, and of Vietnam. I’ll be interested to see what the next leg of our journey holds for us.

Haha, the screensaver on the computer next to me- which HAS been displaying photos of pretty girls one after another just flicked a couple of pictures of Sydney past, aww… home.. that brings me neatly to the place I intended to take this post.

Over the last week and a half I’ve finally let myself check Aussie current affairs on the Sydney Morning Herald site. Race riots? Rushed legislation? Laws allowing people to be detained without charge for two weeks? VSU? IR “reforms”?

What the fuck happened to you, Australia? I’m not really looking forward to going back. I’m glad I’m not there at the moment, I’d be so frustrated and angry. Right now I have a huge expanse of ocean to pacify me, and a reflective holiday mood to chill me out. I am frustrated though. Saddened perhaps.

Oh well. I’mma just go back to looking at the TINY head and forelegs of a little gecko on the wall sticking out from behind a paper sign saying “PRINTER SCANER BURN CD” taped to the wall. Geckos are awesome.

I mentioned a few posts ago that we found a cafe a while back with a backgammon set. We quickly became addicted to sitting around drinking blended mango drinks and playing the game.

When we left, we were forced to go cold turkey on our addiction, and thought that would be the end of it. However, as all you junkies know, it’s rarely that easy…

Within days we were jonesing for a fix, searching every shop we came across for something resembling a western board game, or even a set of dice, but.. no luck! The closest we came was Chinese chess, which neither of us play.

Gradually, in the back of my mind, the seed of a crazy idea started to sprout, eventually pushing itself to the forefront of my thoughts; I had to build my own board.

Within half an hour, I had found some bits and pieces - nails, washers and a hammer, and I’d spent about 18,000 dong. Buying hardware in a forgein country is an interesting experience.

I had almost everything I’d need.. except the actual board. Down the road from the hotel we were staying in, there was a shop which looked like it sold timber. In retrospect, it was probably a shop fitters, judging by the difficulty I had explaining what I wanted to them.

When I popped my head in on the way back to the hotel, the guy in there gave me a nervous look then ignored me. I figured he didnt want to deal with a stupid whitey, and i didnt want to deal with him, so I let it pass. Later, though, I realised that if my plan was going to come to fruition, I was going to have to swallow my anxiety and get on with it. It’s amazing what an addiction will do for your willpower and tenacity.

I drew the size and shape of what i wanted onto a piece of paper, and took it to the shop, which was now fitting a big mesh sign with lights- i realised at this point that they didnt sell timber, I was going to have a much harder time of it.

I got their attention and they quickly made it clear they didnt speak english, and that I wasn’t really wanted. You know how I mentioned tenacity? well, you’ve gotta be pretty pushy about keeping the attention of someone who doesnt want to talk to you and cant understand word you’re saying. Eventually I got what I wanted.. a piece of off cut wood which just happened to be the right width and cut to the length I wanted. Shitty particle board with a veneer on each size, but it would do.

I had my materials…

I measured what I was going to do… and got to work.

By the time I was done I’d got my black bits filled with marker, and had carved the veneer off for the white bits, nailed in some pegs for my pieces and marked up half the washers as black pieces. It was a masterpiece. Truely a work of art. A functional backgammon set that I could even play on the bus if I so desired.

I worked out how easy it would be to simulate the dice rolls with playing cards and we got to playing.

success! It’s a beautiful thing and will save us many hours of potential boredom as we move deeper into the darkness of the third world.

I’m done for now, but bask in the glory of this promo video I’ve shot in preparation for marketting this travelers backgammon set-

click here!

So we’ve just gone and obtained bits of information about the Mekong tour options, the ones which will end with us in Cambodia.. weary from the contant up-and-down stairs tour of the budget hotels in the area, we’re settled into a dodgy little internet cafe, digesting lunch and internetting it up. Restive.

After trying four other machines, I finally found a fast one which works with my camera, which doesnt have a buggered video card. Whee. So, you know, that means it’s time to post some pictures.

This museum seems typical of Vietnams rough-cut approach to things. You follow the arrows through the museum, looking at various artifacts with little or no description to give them context, and, upon reaching the last room, find an introduction to the whole exhibit. Somehow that made it more enjoyable for me though, in an bemused sort of way.

This is the so-called Ha Long Bay on the rice paddies, and an appropriate name at that. My crappy photos from that day dont do it justice.

A beautiful place, in my opinion. I was somewhat amazed when, after half an hour of boat travel, we came upon a village on the river, cut off except by the water. Awesome.

This car, shown in a Buddist temple in Hue is prized for once belonging to a monk who became famous for being the first of his kind to make it onto a Rage Against The Machine album cover. His, later, lesser known acheivements included driving this car to Saigon and setting himself on fire to protest the pro-Catholic American Puppet Regime. Or so I assume the sequence of events occured. Once again my Modern History education comes in handy..

A couple of nice shots from the Citadel in the heart of Hue. I love the way Hue has grown as a modern city around an original walled Imperial city. Like zee European cities that have grown around castles.

Also inside the citadel. Attempting to prove something artistic to myself.

Evidence that Lili, for one, has partaken in motorbike tours. Snapping this shot, I too am perched on the back of a bike hurtling down a semi rural road.

Cham tembles at My Son, where the Hindu Chams worshipped Shiva, the god of war. More awesome.

Would you eat here? We did, in the mezzanine level of the Da Lat market. The nice lady here ran off and found us some Chao from another stall and put bits of meat in it for us.

On the night of the Da Lat flower festival there were women making these awesome ricey snacks by the side of the road. Thick rice-papery rounds, spread with a herbalicious paste and toasted over the fire, folded over with a squirt of chilli sauce. These are the best snack ever, and if you dont believe me? I’ll put a Jihad on yew.

The so called flower festival seemed to be being performed for the gods or something. Either way the flower and campy bee costumed kids doing the dancing off in the distance behind a police enforced out of bounds area were facing away from the amassed crowed which disappated after they did their weird arse-wiggling dance.
We found another hive of activity elsewhere, which just seemed to be some kind of weird agricultural trade show. Either way, we had trouble finding anything of entertainment and, evidently, so did these kids, who just started to gather around, laughing at me. More and more gathered and it started to freak me out, so I did the only sensible thing, started taking photos as evidence at the future trial of my Children of the Corn-esque murder.

At long last, we found a flower. Ella, this one’s for you.

We got in at around 7:30 last night. Had a look at a couple of hotels before being accosted by a rather large young woman in the street.

The warning bells went off the moment she told us, without actually hearing anything about where we were staying, that she had a cheaper room for us. For some strange reason (maybe my arse cramps from the bus ride were impeding rational judgement…) we decided to check out the place.

We took a room for the night, $10USD, air con and TV.. and nothing else worthy of mention. They hadn’t cleaned the room since the last person left.. and it showed. We kind of chose to ignore that for the moment and headed out for dinner. Ran into a couple of people we’ve seen in just about every city we’ve stopped in, before finally settling down to a bowl of spicy beef noodle soup and a tiger beer.

Dinner was good, so long as you just didn’t look at the big lumps of beef too closely. We finished up and went for a wander. This section of town is backpackerville. Interestingly there were a lot of gangsta-looking young men of African descent around. You know, corn rows and “diamond” encrusted “gold” watches.. and Lakers basket ball singlets. Anyway we had icecream cocktail things in some cafe before heading back to our hotel.

We slept on the bed in our sleeping sheets.. purchased so wisely weeks ago in Hanoi.

The air conditioners here vent into the hallway outside the room, and most of that heat comes straight back into the room.. it’s amusing, but the combination of the AC and fan make it comfortable enough. We “bounced” out of bed this morning, raring to go. Packed our bags and investigated the included breakfast, which sucked.. no surprise there.. and then headed out to find a nicer hotel. I think we checked out about 5 places, before stumbling on a place which was clean, cheap and close by.

We’re back at the first hotel now, making use of the free internet in order to squeeze our money’s worth out of this place before checking out. Hence, the blow by blow account of the last 24 hours.

Still having fun here. Saigon is hot and humid, which is pretty much the first encounter we’ve had with tropical weather since arriving in Vietnam. First impressions of the city include the wide streets, which seem to be much more open than Hanoi, its closest counterpart. Much more like an Australian city in that regard, but busy busy busy. Somehow even MORE motorbikes than Hanoi.

I think I’m gonna like it here, but I’m already looking keenly forward to our border crossing into Cambodia. I’m interested to see the difference between two countries in the region, to get a feel for the similarities and to see what the slightly less tourist-oriented (sorry, “touristic”) places are like.

Anyway, enough of this drivel, I’m going to read up on the latest in gang warfare in Australia. Fu-uhn. (Oh! And when are we going to inject some democracy back into the senate?! Reading Aussie news is making me so angry at the moment… grrr *shakes fist*)