Sin Chow from Hanoi! Me oh my, I have been very neglectful of this blog. I'll try and summerise the last month in as succinct and enjoyable way as possible, but please feel free to stop reading when overloaded with waffle.
After 3 weeks of travelling on my lonesome (although never actually being alone), I finally had a Bethan to keep me company! We started off our Cambodian adventures in Siem Reap, home of the Angkor temples. Exploring on bike and from the back of a tuk tuk, we were awe-inspired, astounded, amazed, and other adjectives beginning with "ahh". Siem Reap is also home to a bar with a half pipe on the roof, which is not quite as spectacular, but pretty exciting as bars go. After a week of temple going and floating village visiting, and a bit of frog eating and 50 cent beer drinking on the side, we headed on to Phnom Pehn.
We instantly disliked Phnom Pehn - Cambodia is hot as hell, but it seemed just about manageable in Siem Reap, which is quite chilled out and slow paced. Phnom Pehn is not. In addition to the 40 degree heat, its noise and proliferation of people on motorbikes who can't ride motorbikes made it completely overwhelming. Perhaps in reaction to our new situation, both mine and Bethan's guts declared mutiny and we spent the next three days holed up in a hotel room, being very very ill. So we actually barely saw Phnom Pehn. Dosed up on antibiotics, we escaped the city and headed to Sihnoukville on the coast of Cambodia. Here, we stayed in a bamboo shack mere metres from the waters edge and did absolutely nothing at all, apart from swinging in hammocks and playing with puppies. Our short break by the sea calmed us down and, with new found tolerance, we headed back to Phnom Pehn.
Our second go at the city was a mixed affair. We warmed to it much better, mostly thanks to the man who ran our hostel and not vomiting on arrival. But Phnom Pehn is also the main place to see the evidence of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime. We visited Tuol Sleng prison, a school which became a torture and incarceration camp for over 17,000 victims, and The Killing Fields, an area of land just outside the city that was used as a mass grave. It's impossible to describe the feeling of terror and desperation that still hangs in the air, but it permeates everything and is still evident - not only in these places, which have been preserved as a monument to the suffering inflicted by a few warped individuals on a desperate populous, but across the whole of Cambodia. Reflecting back on our time there, we've been a bit unable to work out how we feel. We had a great time making merry in Siem Reap and hammock hunting in Sihanoukville, but at the moment, the thing that has really stuck in our heads is how sad the country was - their history is painfully tragic, and the country is still a long way from recovery. We had some idea of the level of poverty that we'd see, but when it came down to it, it was worse than we had imagined. Throughout history, Cambodia has been royally screwed over by everyone, but the Khmer Rouge's indiscriminate and unfathomable brutality on its own people seems like the ultimate betrayal. And the Khmer people are still being screwed over - by fake NGOs, real NGOs, sex tourists, normal tourists, and each other. The worst part was not really being able to see how big changes can be made - without huge foreign investments in education, healthcare, industry and agriculture. That's not to downplay the people who are out there now, really trying to help out, or the Khmer population themselves, who were so friendly, welcoming and happy despite all the awfulness. I'll step down from my ill-informed and mildly ignorant soapbox and just say that I would love to go back, but I don't think I could be a tourist there again. Thus, it was with some measure of guilty relief that we moved on to Vietnam.
We decided to travel by boat along the Mekong, which was a big relief after the sweaty buses we'd been carted across Cambodia in. The best bit of the journey was heading into the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, as the river was full of boats, buffalo, children, ducklings and, quite curiously, lots of turnips. A tasty soup indeed. Bridges, that can barely be called bridges, cross over the delta, and Vietnamese people very gallantly (or is it stupidly?) try and use them as major roadways. Our journey finished in a little port town called Chau Doc, which had some lovely mangoes. The next morning, we journeyed to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (I'm still not sure of the difference - I'll refer to it as S/HCMC from now on, to keep everyone happy). Our bus was driven by one of the biggest douche bags I have encountered in on my travels. His partner in douche was the conductor of the bus, who was also a spectacular idiot. They treated Bethan and I as if we were completely backward - at one point, demonstrating very aggressively how to sit down on a coach seat. Apparently, it's the same as sitting on any normal seat. Man, what I wouldn't have given to boot him up the behind, but I don't think that would've gone down very well. First impressions of S/HCMC were, again, not all together positive. To describe it as hectic doesn't quite do it justice. But after we had been enticed into a guesthouse and set out to explore the city, we quickly decided otherwise. We were taught how to play 4 square (a playground game that every American kid knows - I guess like British bulldog, but without the violence) by some lovely Americans, ate pork fillet with spoons and sesame buns on street corners, and spent ages just watching the traffic, mouths agape.
Due to our tardiness in leaving Cambodia, we were running a bit behind on our very loose plans, so hopped on a bus the next day to Dalat, a town in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This place has everything going for it. It's located in a beautiful valley, guarded by green hills and lush with every kind of fruit and vegetable that they feel like growing. Tiny, colourful houses are piled on top of each other amidst the hills, and the bakery had a beautiful banana cake. But absolutely best of all, it was actually cool. A UK March day temperature, but without the mizzle (that's misty drizzle for those who don't live at 145 Fort road!). In celebration, Bethan and I put on our jeans and strutted around, not sweating. I even got a few goose bumps! Dalat is also home to a group of Vietnamese motorcyclists called the Easy Riders. They and their Hondas take tourists across Vietnam for a not so small price, and in as many days as you can spare/afford. So as to keep this short, I'll not describe how we found ourselves departing on a three day tour, with our bags strapped to the back of their hogs and helmets squeezed over copious amounts of hair (in my case). But depart we did...and I'll leave it there for the moment, in a very Lost-esque cliffhanger. I promise it won't be another month before you get the final, thrilling installment!
x
Saturday 29 May 2010
Friday 7 May 2010
Farewell Borneo, I think I love you
Blog fans, Bea fans, unfortunate internet wanderers who have stumbled upon this by accident, I do apologise, but I am about to get poetic on your collective behinds. This place, this wonderful wonderful place, has stolen my heart and is holding it ransom. I think it's somewhere in an underground cave system. Or perhaps deep in the jungle, being manhandled by a harem of proboscis monkeys. Actually, it could be on the barbecue next to a massive red snapper. Wherever it may be, or whatever is being done to it, I don't really care - it's very happy where it is, tarima kasih (that's thank you in Malay).
I'll take my beret off and put my quill away now, and turn the poetry down a notch before I make you all sick. After my last post, I headed into the jungles of Sabah to the Kinabatangan nature camp to trek my face off. As Bethan and Charlotte will recall with horror, our last foray into jungle trekking did not go very well. However, this was a resort holiday in comparison. We had actual huts, beds, and electricity! A miracle. It was still quite basic, with added massive bugs, but very nice nonetheless. We did two boat trips down the Kinabatangan river, where we managed to spot proboscis monkeys (ridiculous looking animals), crocodiles, hornbills, lizards and many other things that I forget now, as I managed to take such awful photos that they all look like bits of tree or bits of blur. I did take a nice picture of the sky though.
Nice, eh? You don't see sky very often. We also did a trek into the jungle, which was fantastic - wrought with excitement, danger and a lot of sweat. It had been raining the night before (not uncommon in the rainforest [clue is in the title], or in Borneo for that matter. In almost all of Borneo, it rains on cue at around 4 every day. And not just a casual shower - a soaked to the skin, drench you and everything your have about your personage, bucket-down) so we had to be extra careful of leeches and big pools of water. I had 3 or 4 leeches crawl up my clothes in search of blood. Thankfully, my lightening quick reactions saved me from becoming a leech snack, but Carolina (also on my trek) had a couple of sneaky ones that crawled up her back and latched on. They're very clean and painless, but they're so creepy looking that it can be quite a shock. Kai, our toothless tour guide, very casually rolled them up into balls and flicked them back into the jungle while we frantically checked for more beasties. We didn't see too much in the way of wildlife, but Kai knew the jungle like the back of his hand so gave us lots of interesting tit bits about uses of plants and things. Which of course I have now forgotten. We did get urinated on by a silver leak monkey though! Cheeky bugger. Just moments before the business occurred, I had been gawping, open mouthed (of course), at the canopy above. The Batten-Harbour quick reactions saved me once again. Thanks mum and dad.
From Kota Kinabatangan, I headed back to Kota Kinabalu before heading off to Gunung Mulu national park. Mulu is in Sarawak, the other region of Malaysian Borneo, and is only reachable by plane or 4 boats. I, very un-greenly, opted for the plane. Flying in, the park is laid out below you and is absolutely beautiful - thick forest, unspoiled by palm tree plantations or deforestation, with huge limestone cliffs around its boundaries and juts of rock rising up from the trees. A highlight of the park is its caves. It has one of the worlds longest cave systems in the world (175 km i think) and also, until recently, the worlds largest cave mouth. This belongs to the Deer cave - the nature enthusiasts amongst you will have seen it in Planet Earth, as it is also home to 2 million bats and the largest pile of bat business (guano) in the world. I'm going to try and avoid getting poetical again, but standing in the Deer Cave was one of the greatest moments of my life. I'm not even going to apologise for that - it truly was. I've never felt so small, and so happy feeling so small. The sheer size and beauty of it was breath-taking. Outside the cave, you can sit on bleachers and watch the BAT EXODUS (I felt that deserved capitalisation!). Around 6 every day, the bats all leave the cave to feed, and lots of tourists can sit and watch them. They swirl out in big snake formations, a few thousand at a time. We lay there, eating snacks and watching synchronised bat ballet, and I felt very at peace with the world.
After my Mulu adventure, I came back to Kota Kinabalu and have been pottering around here in preparation for my BEA EXODUS to Cambodia to meet the lovely Stacey Facey, which I am very excited about. I have spent most of my time here eating. Quelle surprise! The night food market is lush - they have long rows of barbecues, where you can choose your fish/sea food of choice and they cook it up a treat and then you stuff it in your gob, covered in chilli and lime. Very messy and very tasty. Also a lot of sweet nut pancakes and fresh mango. Om nom nom.
Before I go, here are some photos! Really bad ones.
Me with a robot from Laputa at Studio Ghibli musueum in Tokyo (way back!)
People crossing the road with umbrellas in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Sunset on the bay at Kota Kinabalu.
A Jaws moment on the Kinabatangan river.
Who knows what this is?! One of my terrible, terrible nature shots.
Entrance of the Deer Cave from the Bat bleachers, Mulu.
Some stalactites (I had to wiki that one) in the Clearwater cave, Mulu.
Peace from Kota Kinabalu!
Lots of love, and I'll have some better photos soon!
Beazie xxxxx
CORRECTION - this stupid computer won't let me upload the pictures! I'll do it soon. Just imagine in the mean time. But don't imagine them good - they're not.
I'll take my beret off and put my quill away now, and turn the poetry down a notch before I make you all sick. After my last post, I headed into the jungles of Sabah to the Kinabatangan nature camp to trek my face off. As Bethan and Charlotte will recall with horror, our last foray into jungle trekking did not go very well. However, this was a resort holiday in comparison. We had actual huts, beds, and electricity! A miracle. It was still quite basic, with added massive bugs, but very nice nonetheless. We did two boat trips down the Kinabatangan river, where we managed to spot proboscis monkeys (ridiculous looking animals), crocodiles, hornbills, lizards and many other things that I forget now, as I managed to take such awful photos that they all look like bits of tree or bits of blur. I did take a nice picture of the sky though.
Nice, eh? You don't see sky very often. We also did a trek into the jungle, which was fantastic - wrought with excitement, danger and a lot of sweat. It had been raining the night before (not uncommon in the rainforest [clue is in the title], or in Borneo for that matter. In almost all of Borneo, it rains on cue at around 4 every day. And not just a casual shower - a soaked to the skin, drench you and everything your have about your personage, bucket-down) so we had to be extra careful of leeches and big pools of water. I had 3 or 4 leeches crawl up my clothes in search of blood. Thankfully, my lightening quick reactions saved me from becoming a leech snack, but Carolina (also on my trek) had a couple of sneaky ones that crawled up her back and latched on. They're very clean and painless, but they're so creepy looking that it can be quite a shock. Kai, our toothless tour guide, very casually rolled them up into balls and flicked them back into the jungle while we frantically checked for more beasties. We didn't see too much in the way of wildlife, but Kai knew the jungle like the back of his hand so gave us lots of interesting tit bits about uses of plants and things. Which of course I have now forgotten. We did get urinated on by a silver leak monkey though! Cheeky bugger. Just moments before the business occurred, I had been gawping, open mouthed (of course), at the canopy above. The Batten-Harbour quick reactions saved me once again. Thanks mum and dad.
From Kota Kinabatangan, I headed back to Kota Kinabalu before heading off to Gunung Mulu national park. Mulu is in Sarawak, the other region of Malaysian Borneo, and is only reachable by plane or 4 boats. I, very un-greenly, opted for the plane. Flying in, the park is laid out below you and is absolutely beautiful - thick forest, unspoiled by palm tree plantations or deforestation, with huge limestone cliffs around its boundaries and juts of rock rising up from the trees. A highlight of the park is its caves. It has one of the worlds longest cave systems in the world (175 km i think) and also, until recently, the worlds largest cave mouth. This belongs to the Deer cave - the nature enthusiasts amongst you will have seen it in Planet Earth, as it is also home to 2 million bats and the largest pile of bat business (guano) in the world. I'm going to try and avoid getting poetical again, but standing in the Deer Cave was one of the greatest moments of my life. I'm not even going to apologise for that - it truly was. I've never felt so small, and so happy feeling so small. The sheer size and beauty of it was breath-taking. Outside the cave, you can sit on bleachers and watch the BAT EXODUS (I felt that deserved capitalisation!). Around 6 every day, the bats all leave the cave to feed, and lots of tourists can sit and watch them. They swirl out in big snake formations, a few thousand at a time. We lay there, eating snacks and watching synchronised bat ballet, and I felt very at peace with the world.
After my Mulu adventure, I came back to Kota Kinabalu and have been pottering around here in preparation for my BEA EXODUS to Cambodia to meet the lovely Stacey Facey, which I am very excited about. I have spent most of my time here eating. Quelle surprise! The night food market is lush - they have long rows of barbecues, where you can choose your fish/sea food of choice and they cook it up a treat and then you stuff it in your gob, covered in chilli and lime. Very messy and very tasty. Also a lot of sweet nut pancakes and fresh mango. Om nom nom.
Before I go, here are some photos! Really bad ones.
Me with a robot from Laputa at Studio Ghibli musueum in Tokyo (way back!)
People crossing the road with umbrellas in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Sunset on the bay at Kota Kinabalu.
A Jaws moment on the Kinabatangan river.
Who knows what this is?! One of my terrible, terrible nature shots.
Entrance of the Deer Cave from the Bat bleachers, Mulu.
Some stalactites (I had to wiki that one) in the Clearwater cave, Mulu.
Peace from Kota Kinabalu!
Lots of love, and I'll have some better photos soon!
Beazie xxxxx
CORRECTION - this stupid computer won't let me upload the pictures! I'll do it soon. Just imagine in the mean time. But don't imagine them good - they're not.
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