Cambodia - Singapore, overland...

The High Road - Sihanoukville to KohKong, 120km of adrenaline!



A minivan took us the 120 miles or so to the Thai border; 30 or so miles from Sihanoukville we turned onto an unmade road - gravel, rock and hard places which we slid and bumped over through constant drizzle, sliding in the mud and down the hills sideways on. Four times we all disembarked to be ferried over rivers on wooden rafts - the bridges do not exist or are only half finished. I sat by the driver in the front, we enjoyed the drive but had to endure 90 miles of moans and groans from the back! So to Koh-Kong, bye-bye Cambodia, hello Thailand!
Immediately, tarmac roads, road signs, cars, lamp-posts, a Shell petrol station full of sweets (haven't noticed them for weeks!), snacks, and we eat a Cornetto...! 13 hours from Sihanoukville we arrive in Bangkok - back in the heart of the first world. 2 nights we take in a disappointingly smart hotel, using the city for necessary phone-calls, internet, a little shopping and a little sightseeing - Jim Thompson's house. Bangkok is useful but too hectic and massive a city for us, not as seedy as we thought it might be, and lost its charm that Jac found 15 years ago. We took one stop through Thailand, near Krabi at Railet, and beautiful it is - towering limestone rocks jut out of the sea, walks thru stalagtites and mites lead you to white sands and turquoise waters, and every need is catered for by laid-back locals who chug supplies into this otherwise inaccessible area on old timber longboats. Unfortunately only a minivan can provide our escape, so another 12 hours with knees to chins down to Songaikolok, a border town in deepest southern Thailand.
The area is poorer, and Muslim, and with its own insurgency at the moment, so plenty of roadblocks to swerve around and bus loads of Thai soldiers to protect us at our 4 minute pit-stops! The whole journey is conducted in absolute silence, until all the other passengers break into laughter when they realise that the 2 westerners at the back haven't made any arrangements for staying here! No probs tho, the driver leaves us at the only hotel in town which charges per night and not by the hour, and whose staff seem genuinely pleased to feed and help a couple of lesser-spotted Euros! Next day, dried mango and sesame snaps providing breakfast and lunch, a motorbike drops us to the border - enter Malaysia!
So hot and sultry, a taxi takes us to Kuala Besut, and a speedboat to the Perhentian Islands. Five cool dudes man this boat, a half hour white-knuckle ride to Kecil, island paradise and grand justification for carting our snorkels all the way from the UK! And its worth it - glorious coral and reef in all its technicolour variety.
Offshore and from boats, we swim with black-tipped reef sharks, turtles 4' wide, barracuda, clown fish, and all of Nemo's friends and family - and learn a lot about coral...We watch jumping fish and even a flying fish which can fly for up to 100 meters, and heading back to shore after our final swim there, we come across a group of ten or so large, bumphead parrotfish, 50 yards from the beach - a lucky find and perfect finish to a few days of heaven!
From Perhentian we trained down to KL, as its known, to stay a couple of nights with one of Jess' old schoolmates. For the first time in nearly five months I opened a fridge door!, we enjoyed her hospitalities, the amazing views from her 17th floor apartment, and the modern swishness of Kuala Lumpar. We were heading back to the first world again!
Then Singapore for one night! Strange place, stepped out of the hotel to see policeman shooting crows out of the trees by the main shopping centres - full on rifles!, spent ages trying to find somewhere that did a gin and tonic, then found an excellent Indian restaurant specialising in Keralan fare - delicious, and spent the next couple of hours with the boss, Joseph, and his friend, Joe, putting the world to rights, talking India, drinking Tiger, talking Asia, drinking Tiger, putting Asia in its place! By chance, a fitting end to our last night here- Asia!
Oz tomorrow - catch up with us again in a while...bye for now!

Cambodia...

Picture - Ta Phroum (Angkor Wat) Guest House garden, Siem Reap


Two wooden long-boats, a pick-up truck and two MPV's take us 15 miles through forest dirt-trackand across two rivers to the border post, where our driver negotiates a half price deal on the bribe for the border guards, (worth a free lunch!), and drives us another 80 miles or so down un tarmacced roads into Cambodia.
Now a flat, smouldering, baked heathland, slowly being flattened for agriculture, with occasional bamboo huts and few people. No flowers, no decoration, a hard poverty all the way to nearly to Kratie , where after completing 160 km.s in 8 hours we stop.
Kratie is actually a pleasant little town, with a bustling market stocking goods not seen for a week or so - such as fruit! We stay 2 nights, going off on motorbikes the next day to see the freshwater Irawaddy dolphins in the Mekong - the tourist attraction everyone is taken to.
We see enough dolphins, but the ride is just as rewarding: through roadside villages where all of daily life is conducted within 100 metres of the road - cooking, bathing, sleeping, playing, with the paddy or the Mekong stretching out behind.
People in Laos are young, but more so here. The manager of our hotel, Ou Dom, is 21 years old. We give our laundry to girls who can only giggle, and the cafe over the road is run by a boy and girl who the same. Maybe its just our noses or something! But they work hard, keep a clean hotel and cook well. A lot of our generation are dead. Many are maimed. The war killed 20% of Cambodians, mainly killed by Cambodians, but now they are really trying to pick themselves back up, dependent on aid and tourism. I buy a book in Kratie, and read a lot of it on the bus to Siem Reap, by Loung Ung it is a child's story of life under Pol Pot. It makes me cry and I finish it quickly, three days later.

Siem Reap is a bustling city, with a hecticness not seen for a while: tuktuks everywhere, buses and people, motorbikes and potholes, swish hotels and an occasional open sewer. We moved out of our disappointing, Lonely Planet recommended hotel to a friendly, simple, family-run guesthouse, with the family and guests all gathering to chill together from time to time - main feature though was 35 or so adult crocodiles basking in the back garden! Reared for the Chinese market and the kitchen, I spent many an hour in vain trying to re-design the garden!
Siem Reap is the gateway to Angkor Wat, definitely one of the Seven Wonders of the world, a monumental area of temples and palaces, some 1000 years old or more, and deserving of 3 hard days of tourism...
Check out 'Angkor Wat', 'Bayon', 'Ta Prohm' on Google...(images).
We see some of the main sites on Day One, with our guide from 7am till 6pm. Angkor Wat itself, enormous with a staggering amount of detail to comprehend, the Bayon with its enormous faces built into its structures, with sculpted figures leading to its walls, and Ta Prohm, a half collapsed temple built of 1/2 ton sandstone blocks, intricately carved, with 40 metre high 'Spung' trees (Tetrameles nudiflora) stretching their roots over the walls: a haunting atmosphere, the setting for movie 'Tomb Raider' - do check out those images and someone tell us which famous album cover it was...
Day Two Jac returns here to paint while I walk and clamber over other temples, and Day 3 we tuk-tuk 35 kms away with a friend, Carla, to Banteay Srei - home of the most amazingly preserved stone carvings of them all.
The sheer size of Angkor Wat is staggering - sometimes you hear of visits to other famous monuments, (pyramids?) , where people actually find them to be a bit smaller than they imagine, but this is the opposite: Vast! Like a massive Jenga of the gods! Construction details dwarf Stonehenge! But also defacement and destruction by all religions and politics over the years - yet somehow this can add to the moods and feelings it all evokes - and what is still there is immaculately preserved in this unpolluted corner of the world. Awesome.

Recovered from Angkor, its down to Phonm Penh. PP is a must-do, sometimes lively, happy and colourful, other times shocking and sad. We stayed in a 50 room travellers guest-house, and did some tourist spots for a couple of days - the Palace, National Museum, but also the horrific, i.e.
the S21 torture camp, scenes which Cambodians are eager to show and face up to. There is so much charity and aidwork here - from large UNICEF projects, sponsored by all the largest countries, to individuals such as Roger who we met over a drink at the Foreign Correspondents Club, an English artist who set up a painting workshop on the beach for local kids, the paintings are sold and money goes direct to their families, keeping the children from becoming full-time beach hustlers...
We'll also remember Phnom Penh, and Cambodia, as a place where girls can and do wear pyjamas all day (fashion item!), roasted spiders are a must-have snack for the bus, baby birds are grilled on the street, and 3 generations of one family can all fit on a Honda 90 moped!
So we left PP and the Mekong River, finally, for a few days at Sihanoukville - Cambodia's Bournemouth. And very pleasant it was too! - a small place, very spread out, but we whizzed about on our Honda 110 step-thru, enjoyed the beaches, bookshops, the English caff where I found pie, chips, beans & gravy, and the open air cinema where we watched Willy Wonka and Brokeback Mountain. (Now that would be a movie!) - oh, and bought lots of childrens paintings, all for a good cause.
Days are now being counted down to Oz and Jessie, so we spent a day investigating flying direct to Malaysia and even going early, but original plans held, so we geared up for the overland haul - round the whole Gulf of Thailand to Singapore...