Mersey paradise

Monday, 12/11/2012 – 151 A.D.

Rise and shine, Hong Kong Phooeys! We both slept absolutely fine, neither of us waking once in the night. This may have been due to the tough two nights previous, or maybe this room in Chungking Mansions isn’t actually that bad? It’s difficult to move about first thing in the morning though, but even with the smallest bathroom ever constructed, we still managed to get some hand washing done and hung up to dry. We are British, after all.  

Unfortunately it was a bit of an admin morning – yawn! More time stuck in a miniscule room. We have three train journeys to book; Hong Kong to Shanghai; Shanghai to Beijing; and Beijing to…wait for it…Xi`an. We need to make sure we get the train numbers totally correct and, after the Nanning-Guangzhou experience, we never again want to spend the night sleeping in a seat. Once that was all sorted we headed somewhat apprehensively out into the Hong Kong weather…but it was perfect temperature, absolutely just right for shorts without getting a sweat on. Still, this is the best it will be for a while. As good as the climate is here in November, I already miss the Indochinese warmth, even though the sweating really annoyed me at the time. But I probably only miss it because it’s gone for good as far as this trip is concerned. Yes, and I know this is incredibly perverse of me to mention, given that most people back home are currently freezing their bits off! Don’t worry, I’ll have to buy a coat soon. Possibly a woolly hat as well.

At the main station ticket office we were told we could get all three of our fares from the China Railways stand nearby. They are essentially an agency that gets allocated a block of tickets – if they don’t sell them all then you get the situation we had on the Guangzhou train where people in the seats were upgrading to beds that had magically become available. The woman behind the desk who dealt with us was extremely abrupt and tried to answer several peoples’ queries at once – they really do not respect the system of the queue here! Plenty of times I have been standing in line and people try to sneak their way past as if I’m a hologramatic spectre. Now I know that I have to physically stand across them, but in the early days (i.e. err yesterday) my queuing quota was doubled, in some cases trebled. Anyway, back to the trains – our Hong Kong to Shanghai train was sold out for soft sleepers, so we decided to “risk-it-for-a-biscuit” (a popular phrase of ours) and opt for the hard sleepers. Next up, the Shanghai to Beijing sleeper train we wanted was completely sold out and only the snazzy high speed ones were left, the ones that cost the Earth, sun and moon for a ticket. We decided to try our luck at the Shanghai booking office with that one. And as for Beijing to Xi`an, well, that journey was over ten days away so the tickets weren’t yet available. As the popular song doesn’t go, “…now don’t be sad, coz one out of three ain’t bad.”

It wasn’t far to walk down to the waterline and this time get some great views of the Hong Kong skyline by daylight. Down here they have “The Avenue of Stars”, which is the Hong Kong film industry’s equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’m afraid that, despite the large size of the Hong Kong film industry, we only knew Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan! And Bruce had his statue displayed, but I wasn’t in the mood for posing next to him and giving it my best roundhouse kick or one inch punch.

As we were strutting around by the water, the following happened... 

...two middle-aged Japanese men approached Tim and wanted their picture taken with him, then with me as well. No sooner had that photo shoot finished and some Japanese women jumped on the bandwagon and got their own piccies posing with us. By now we’d realised that they didn’t mistake us for famous people, just wanted photos with us, for some bizarre reason. Do I stroll around Southport Pier looking for Japanese tourists to snap myself with? Nope! This continued for quite some time as we strolled along. Sometimes they were blatant about it and came up to us to ask permission, other times they took sneaky “guerrilla shots” from a distance, some of which we saw, but goodness knows how many we missed. The whole thing was a bit weird, but also kinda funny. For a while. Then it became a tad annoying.  I don’t know how Beckham stays so cheery all the time!    

The cheapest way to get across the water from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island is by the Star Ferry. We booked our passage over to the central ferry terminal for about 30 pence. Hong Kong is already a bit of an anomaly – pricey accommodation, yet cheap-as-chips public transport. The cost of food and drink seems to fall somewhere between the two. The crossing over the water was pretty choppy, but I’m too old `n` ugly to get seasick these days, especially as the journey lasted barely ten minutes. Altogether now, “Fe-rry…cross Victoria Harbour…coz this laaaaaand’s...the place I think is pretty cool to stay in for four nights…”

Hong Kong Island (the bit where the famous skyline is located) has skywalks and subways all over the place that make walking around a piece of cake. Gone are those days tentatively crossing treacherous Vietnamese roads with babysteps, here you just stride above or below it all. Around the central point of the island is the escalator up to the mid-levels, i.e. the buildings halfway up the hillside. This escalator, or rather series of escalators, holds the record for being the world’s longest covered walkway. And it was a leisurely ascent to the top, though we thought it might have been a bit steeper and, dare I say it, even a bit longer – never satisfied, are we?

The mid-levels were cool for a stroll, which developed into a bit of a rambly walk under the emerging November sunshine. If town planners mix enough greenery with their concrete then they’re always onto a winner. We both decided at this point that we quite like Hong Kong, and we prefer it to Singapore, that other famous Asian island city of similar size that has become vastly rich from being deliberately lax with its tax. Or maybe we just like sunny, hilly places a-la-San Francisco? We got a reasonable view of the harbour from up here, but thinking about it we probably should have gone a bit higher. 

After a steep descent to the western suburb of Kennedy Town, we looked for the nearest tramlines. The website Wikitravel has become a bit like our online Bible for telling us all about every new place we arrive in. Yes, yes, so any fool can log on and edit the articles, but overall the info seems pretty trustworthy and reliable. One thing the website recommended doing was catching the tram from Kennedy Town right across the island from west to east, through the financial hub, and ending up in Shau Kei Wan – a more traditional area (read ‘working class’). That was fine by us, because we needed to rest our legs after all that climbing (whaddya mean we went up an escalator???) Took a while for our particular tram to arrive though, and of course we had to deal with more sneaky Chinese queue-jumpers, the little tinkers!

The journey was great to start with, the breeze blowing in my face through the open window, the people rushing about in all the hustle and bustle below. I didn’t care that every ten seconds or so the tram had to stop for traffic lights or pull up at another stop. It was only costing us 25 pence to get from one side of the island to the other. But after a while it got a bit samey and by the hour point every new district we entered had already blended into the previous one well before we left it. There were high rises everywhere, so many in fact that I’m surprised there are not more than seven million people living in the place.   

[Journey's end, the night market at Shau Kei Wan...80 minutes after first getting on the tram!]

We got the subway back to Kowloon. It was a pretty swift trip, but we timed it to coincide with late rush hour. When we changed lines at the station called Admiralty (Hong Kong's equivalent of London's Victoria), there were more people waiting on the platform than could physically get on the next train, maybe twice as many. But a new train seemed to come along every minute and there are young ladies holding big STOP signs who are employed to push the punters back once each train is full. They're a little like the underground's version of Lollipop Ladies, but with licence to use kung fu if you don't step back when told to. 

That night we went for a curry. I had a madras, as usual. It wasn’t that hot. In fact, the temperature was just right, which summed Hong Kong up to a tee.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

Tuesday, 06/11/2012 – 145 A.D.

This young man turned 32 today.

In my mind he will always be about four years old, but then again he is looking pretty well for his age. It’s strange having your birthday in a far off land, I still recall how weird it was in Sydney. Would being in Hanoi be any weirder for Our Kid? I was able to get him the obligatory card, though it hadn’t been easy to locate during our What Carcass Day back in Phnom Penh. I don’t think they really do birthday cards in Cambodia, let alone with the words in English! Unfortunately the hat was not a present, it belonged to the cleaning lady.

I am fast getting used to the above views. Give me music, a beer and a balcony and I am happy as can be. Spent quite a lot of time up there last night, watching the Old Quarter quieten down. Come 23:00 it’s pretty much deserted down there, but they certainly rise early in this country. It took us a while to get going today, maybe we’re just taking things slowly because we know we’ve got three nights still to go in this city. But later on we’d have a go at painting it red….if we ever got going, that is!

Eventually we did, and we ended up at the mausoleum of that great Vietnamese hero, Ho Chi Minh. Saigon in the south may have his name, but in Hanoi they still have the man himself, permanently laid out in state, Lenin-style. There are lots of visitors who come here from all over Vietnam and many rules that must be obeyed, such as no folding your arms when inside the mausoleum. However, we knew beforehand that we weren’t going to get inside to see HCM because during October and November every year he is taken away somewhere for “maintenance”. Quite what that involves kept us guessing over breakfast – they change the formaldehyde? Check the oil? Straighten his alloys? It was a shame really, because in a slightly macabre way I was quite keen to see a corpse, simply because I’ve never seen one before. If there comes a time in my life when I simply must see someone in a cadaverous state, I’d prefer to have forewarning, rather than it be a grisly surprise. Umm, sorry for the dark tone so early on in the post!

Above is the nearby One Pillar Pagoda, so named because… This is actually a reconstruction of the original - another building knocked over by the `orrible French as they moved on out of the Nam. The guidebook says you either love or hate the One Pillar Pagoda. I thought it was okay. And it was around this time that I realised I had broken my second pair of sunglasses on this trip. Oh well, they were only ever meant to be a cheap replacement, though I’ve only had them since Siem Reap. And despite what was written on the lens in gold writing, I don’t think they were genuine D & G shades.

This is West Lake, quite a large body of water, the far side of which is either shrouded in mist or smog. We were quite a way from the regular tourist haunts and it showed when we tried to find somewhere for lunch. Hardly any English was spoken and I regret that my attempts to learn get-by-in-Vietnamese have somewhat stalled. At one place when we asked to see the menu the waitress (with a face like a smacked arse) simply threw it onto the table behind her, expecting us to go fetch – needlessly to say, we kept moving. In fact, most of the places only did drinks, no food, so by the time we found somewhere even a quarter decent, we took our seats. After ordering a rice-based dish each, the waitress communicated to us that rice was currently off the menu – she wrote down “the end” on her notepad and thrust it under my nose. Therefore we played it safe and ordered a ham and pineapple pizza between us. Now, let me take you back to September of 1996…

[James is in his university halls and has grown sick of pot noodles. Therefore he phones the local pizza delivery place.]

PIZZA PERSON: Hello, Lucky’s Pizza?

JAMES: Hi, can I get a ham and pineapple pizza please. No onions.

PIZZA PERSON: Ham and pineapple don’t come with onions, mate.

…and ever since that day I have found that person’s words to be true. Until now. What was brought before my brother and I may have had pineapple, it may have had cheese, it did not have tomato, it didn’t appear to contain any ham, but my goodness was it stuffed FULL with bloody onions! It was like the chef had an obsession with sneaking them into every nook, crack and crevice within the dough! Obviously the Birthday Boy had no problem with this, but instead of enjoying a heavy lunch I ended up with a light snack. And stinky onion breath! Yuck!

We had wanted to have a game of Shuttlecock at some point, now re-christened by us as “licky-kicky” (don’t ask, long story), but we couldn’t find anywhere private enough. Not surprising really, given that we’re in the middle of a capital city! Besides, we had to be heading back to skype our parents at 4 p.m. our time (9 a.m. UK time). There was just time for Tim to approach a woman with a conical hat and ask if he could buy one, before turning away and running off in embarrassment upon being told only women wear them.

Not really. That said, we have seen some men wearing them – Western tourists who know no better. In those cases I rechristened them “comical hats” – geddit??? We got home, spoke to mum and dad, then prepared to go out for a few drinks….or rather a few more drinks than normal. We’d done our research online as to the best places to go in the city, but first we had to pose for the traditional pre-going-out-and-poncing-about photo.

As it was Tim’s birthday, it was Tim’s choice where we ate, drank…and whatever else we got up to. He’d picked out a small restaurant called Gecko a few buildings down from our hotel for an evening meal. I’m afraid that once I saw the menu I committed the cardinal sin and ordered a hot cheese, chicken and bacon baguette, i.e. Western food. But Ho Chi Minh did it taste GOOOOOOOD!!! Once it was down we headed for the corner of Loung Ngoc Quyen and Ta Hien in the heart of the Old Quarter. At first we didn’t find it so, with the twin pressures of bladder and thirst on the attack, we ducked into a nearby Irish bar. In fact, the only vaguely Irish thing in it was a tiny beermat behind the bar in the design of the Irish flag. Apart from that it could have been any other kind of bar in south east Asia. And, as you can see from the picture below, I was really firing up for a big night at this point:

We eventually found the road with all of Hanoi’s supposedly best bars on, or maybe just the most popular. Or maybe just those mostly frequented by tourists like us. The ones we visited were okay, but nothing fancy. Then again, this was no Khao San Road like in good old Bangkok. Things seemed a tad more civilised and there was no chance of being invited to a ping pong show, which was kind of a relief. By the time we reached the final bar at the end of this strip (we didn’t go in `em all!) we were feeling pretty merry and lost in 1,001 conversations about everything and nothing. Suddenly we heard a siren in the alley, followed by a loudspeaker. Glancing over our shoulders, we saw the police striding sternly into the establishment. Uh-oh! What is this – some kind of raid? Our passports are currently at the Indian embassy! How much are we going to have to bride them with? And what are we doing wrong in the first place? Play it cool, Grayboy, just be polite and give them no trouble. Suddenly the barmaid comes over and clarifies the situation – it’s simply gone midnight and all the bars in the Old Quarter have to close up at this time. Seems they’re quite strict at enforcing this rule. I worryingly grip the top of my bottle of barely touched Biere Larue and ask, “I can take this outside with me, can I?” She says I can (with the concealed subtext of “Just get going, English Boy!”)

[Danger lurks in dark shop doorways...]

I'd done my research and knew that there was one place in Hanoi that stays open past midnight - Bar Phuc Tan in the area known as...errr, Phuc Tan. Okay, so this place had a bit of a trashy reputation, but at this point I wasn't bothered by that, just fancied a nightcap. And I guess curiosity killed the cat (if only it would kill the rat as well!) We knew where the Phuc Tan area was on the map and had a semi-vague idea of where the bar was, and it wasn't too much of a walk. However, we had to cross a large flyover which acted like an unofficial divider between the Old Quarter and Phuc Tan. There were no footbridges across, so initially we were a bit stumped. Then we noticed a couple of shady characters, picking their way through various holes in the walls, so we did exactly the same, keeping our distance behind them.

I have no idea what Phuc Tan is like by day, but by night it was pretty damn grim. Gone was the warmth and charm of the Old Quarter, this place looked like it was still recovering from the war, make that a series of wars. The first streets were virtually deserted and eerily quiet, but also badly lit, so it was difficult to see what (if anything was lurking in the shadows). Obviously I’d had a few cheeky beers by this point, but it’s times like this that you suddenly find what alcoholics refer to as “a moment of clarity”. This was not a place for two foreigners to be wandering blindly around. The guidebook had described Hanoi as “a dangerous city by eastern and western standards”, but during the three days we’d been in town I hadn’t felt threatened at any moment. To be honest, since I’ve been travelling there have only been a few moments when I have been slightly concerned for my safety and all of those were way, way back in the USA. But Phuc Tan was different and I found myself striding more confidently than a drill sergeant, with shoulders held as high and wide as was physically possible, and my “come near me and I’ll smash your face in eyes” fixed firmly forward. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, people started taking an interest in our presence, calling out, “Hello!”, which they normally do, but now we would rather they didn’t. A dishevelled old woman sitting on the floor asked us where we were going and I replied, “Phuc Tan Club.” She turned and pointed down the alleyway beside her, intimating it was just down there. We both craned our necks around the corner and realised we couldn’t see the end of the alley, nor could we hear any music. “Yeah, cheers,” I said with big smile, not caring if she understood me or not, “we’re gonna walk around for a bit more and then we’ll go down there.”

We never went down there. Instead we decided to knock the nightcap on the head and went back across the flyover to the Old Quarter. Sense of adventure is one thing, but I believe the reason we’ve got so far on this trip without being too badly scathed is because we do know when it’s time strap on the old sensible head. The hard partying until dawn would have to wait until another time. Besides, Tim had enjoyed his birthday sufficiently, even though it wasn’t technically his birthday anymore so it didn’t matter what he thought - normal service resumed!

Phuc tan? Phuc that!

Hit the north

Sunday, 04/11/2012 – 143 A.D.

By the time I had finished watching the second half of Apocalypse Now on the night train, I’d had to eject three cockroaches from our sleeping berth. Or maybe it was the same one that kept finding its way back in. Mercifully, it/they were only half the size of the adults, but they have a knack of crawling halfway up your leg before you realise they are there. When it came to lights out time, I gave up worrying about who I was sharing the sleeping quarters with. Double mercifully we had not been joined by any people in the top bunks, but down on the bottom it was pretty hot and to begin with it was too warm even to get into my sleep sheet. And, as I went to switch out the light, I saw some kind of beetle making its way up the other side of the curtain, a little crawling silhouette just a few inches from where my head would lie against the pillow. But like I said, I’d given up worrying which kind of insects crawled across my naked upper torso as I slept, so I give the little blighter free rite of passage.

Sleep came here and there, but only in brief bursts to begin with. At one point the door to the berth was opened and someone looked inside – couldn’t be sure if it was a railway employee checking who was inside, or a member of the public gone to the wrong berth. Or the right one, if you know what I mean. It suddenly occurred to me that probably anything goes on this train at night, such as light-fingered people sneaking into berths to lift what goods they can from the deeper sleepers. Therefore I placed a plastic bottle of water on top of the door handle, so every time the door was pulled back, the bottle would fall, make a noise, and wake us if we were in slumbers. Thing is, I didn’t really need the bottle there, as no matter how quietly that door was slid open, my eyes were suddenly open as well. In fact, after a while it became extremely annoying having to pick up the bottle each time and place it back on the handle. At one point we stopped at a station for about 15 minutes and there was all kinds of noise in the corridor. The door to our berth must have been opened at least four times, in almost every case by a railway employee. On the final occasion I actually shouted out, “Will you stop opening the f***ing door!”

After that it was alright `til morning. At about 09:00 we both spluttered awake as yet another railway employee slid open the door with a couple of locals behind him. Guess he was trying to get them to fill up the berth, but they took one look at us and walked away – can’t blame `em really. A couple of hours later and we were pulling into Hanoi, capital city of Vietnam. In my mind I’d imagined it wouldn’t be much different to Saigon, i.e. large urban sprawl of motorbikes, small plastic chairs on the street and dodgy-looking fruit sold on every corner. The dialect in the north is very different to that of the south, but that wasn’t something that would trouble us any more than usual!

We’re staying at the Hanoi Eclipse Hotel. As we’re here for five nights we figured we’d go for a deluxe room, though it’s not the best we’ve had by any standards, but you have to make exceptions when you’re in the bigger cities. It has a small balcony, and Tim is already concerned about the tweeting birds in the cages on the next balcony along. Surely he likes the sounds of birds tweeting first thing in the morning? “Yeah,” he replied, “but it’s at all other hours of the day and night that I’m worried about.”

It could be because we had slept on a night train, or could be long-term travellers’ fatigue catching up with us, but after a pretty unmemorable lunch at the café on the corner, we camped out for the latter part of the afternoon in the hotel, supposedly researching where to go in Hanoi, but really just sitting still for a bit. The hotel’s location is excellent – right in the centre of the Old Quarter area of the city - and most of the things to see are easily walkable from our base. But even without going anywhere, I have always been a fan of leaning over the edge of balconies and watching the world pass by beneath me. As night came down, I went out and stuck my neck over the edge to take in the sights and sounds and before I knew it 20 minutes had flashed by. Tim was pleased to know that the bird cages next door have been covered over to keep their occupants quiet.

Hoan Kiem Lake is a short walk and it’s the type of place where people go to stroll on a pleasant evening. It was a pleasant evening, not warm enough to build up a walking glow, but a few degrees lower and the word “chilly” may enter the vocabulary…the first time since Melbourne. Sorry to speak like that when I know the readers from the UK are currently reaching for the electric blankets of an evening!

By the time we’d walked around for a bit, our appetites arrived, and we found a small place with quite a range of dishes on offer. It’s good to try new things, but even with healthy appetites, there are some dishes that will never, ever be sampled...

My head's in Mississippi

Monday, 29/10/2012 – 137 A.D.

Really not the best day at all, dear readers. We found ourselves camped out in the windowless room this morning, mainly doing admin, but there was also an underlying lack of motivation for getting out and about. We both felt reasonably okay, but not quite 100%. Suddenly I noticed a weird shimmery-kaleidoscope-type thing going on in the corner of my right eye. It wasn’t directly in front of where I looked, more off to the right, but I couldn’t tell if it was growing larger. Possibly it had developed form staring too hard at a white-backed computer screen, I don’t know. This was quite a disturbing sensation, especially as I didn’t know if the shimmery-blur was going to get much larger, but then I remembered that it happened some time in America and faded away soon enough.

Twenty minutes later and I was back to normal, at least so I thought. Then I noticed I had a headache coming on the left side of my head, which became stronger and more focused just behind my eyeball. I dropped a couple of paracetemols, but it wasn’t getting any better and - shock horror – I didn’t have an appetite for lunch…and this was coming up to 14:00! And I had a strange sweat on, despite the aircon whirring away. I wondered if things would improve if we went for a walk, so we headed two minutes down the road to the nearby STA Travel to get a quote on the flight we wanted out of China. While the woman waited for the results to come back, I realised that I definitely was not feeling good and needed to get back to a horizontal position asap. And so we ignored the inflated quote we received and walked the two minutes back to the hotel, at which point mood lighting came on, I got my head down and Tim had a snack, then found himself falling asleep as well. Way to spend an afternoon, guys!

A couple of hours later and I awoke, seemingly feeling better. Appetite had returned, which was fab, and I munched on a few nearby Pringles, or rather the brand of crisps known as ‘Mister Potato’ and its own version of Pringles. Just to check one was on an even keel again, I went for a walk around the block with the iPod, then headed down to the nearby park to test something out. I’d read in the guidebook that if you go and sit on your own in this park around late afternoon, you will be approached by local students wanting to practice their English. So I found a bench to myself, put away the Ipod and waited. Five minutes later and a girl came and sat next to me. Then another girl and a guy arrived and started speaking to me. Next thing I knew, I was swarmed upon by students from all sides, forming a big crowd around me to listen to my supposed words of wisdom! There must have been at least 12 of them, plus one middle-aged tour guide who probably spoke better English than I did. It was a really good experience speaking to these fresh-faced youngsters, telling them all about my travelling, explaining some of the idiosyncrasies of intermediate English grammar, and trying not to make my job sound too boring. In fact, if there is one thing that I taught these future workers of Vietnam then it’s that a good manager does not need to shout at their staff to get them to work. If these kids come to have staff  working under them down the line then those staff will thank me for that one!

I didn’t have my camera, and I’d stayed out longer than planned, so I headed back in case Tim worried that I’d fallen in a gutter and lain there prone (like a lot of the locals, coincidentally). Like I said at the start of the post, the day was a bit of a write-off, but at least the “mini migraine”, if one can call it that, was over. And to celebrate that evening we went out and took pictures of me in the middle of a load of traffic:

Everybody loves a long exposure, don't they?

Civil war

Sunday, 28/10/2012 – 136 A.D.

Things I have noticed from being in Saigon so far:

·         There is a small supermarket close to our hotel. When you walk inside a member of staff immediately comes up to you, picks up a (pink) basket, and follows you around the store. If you’re like me and wave away the need for a basket, they do put it back, but still insist on following you around as you browse. Must be store policy, but it freaked us out. We left without spending a single dong.

·         There are slightly more hawkers here than anywhere else we’ve experienced, the big difference being that they constantly hassle you when you’re eating your meals. Fair enough, when I smile and say, “Thank you, no,” they rarely persist in their efforts to sell me something. However, I noticed that the local clientele are far more rude. When the hawkers come to them they completely blank them, either remaining silent and refusing to look their way, or continuing their conversations with their dining companions without pausing for a refusal. It just looks plain rude and makes me feel a bit sorry for the hawkers, who are obviously poorer than the punters they’re pushing the goods upon. So if I feel so sorry, surely I should go ahead and buy something? 1. I don’t smoke anymore. 2. I don’t like bananas. 3. I already have the regulation two backpacker wristbands on my arm, can’t go for more. 4. Isn’t that enough?

·         Certain internet sites are banned here. No, not those kind of sites! But very popular ones nonetheless. The odd TV channel too (alas none showing historical soap operas or playing karaoke!) Being able to walk the streets so freely is one thing, but when I go to log on I have to remind myself that this is technically a Communist country. Which sites are banned? Not telling you – I’ve already said too much!

·         There is a storm coming. You know that big one that hit the Philippines recently? Well apparently it’s heading the way of Vietnam. I would tune into an English-speaking channel to check the weather forecast, but guess what? They’re banned.

Anyway, enough crappy observations, back to today…

The Grayboys woke up feeling reasonably okay this morning. Symptoms still exist, but they’re on the way out. And there were fortunately no roaches kicking around beneath the pillows, sheets or eyelids, so that’s a result. Guess the maid must have sprayed her spray a bit harder when she attacked the room yesterday.

This morning we went to the War Remnants Museum. Sounds a bit naff, doesn’t it? It’s not actually, it’s a very popular tourist destination. Sounds a bit grim, doesn’t it? And you’d be right. This is a museum on several floors detailing all that went on, not just during the Vietnam War involving the Americans, but also the 1950s conflicts where the Vietnamese booted out their French colonial masters, which effectively led to the chaos that followed until reunification was complete (which you heard enough about in yesterday’s blog!)

What immediately hit me was how everything was from the Vietnamese perspective – there were no direct accusations that the U.S. should never have got involved, but massive undertones suggesting that the fault was well and truly with them. And, when I saw the countless photos and souvenirs from the village massacres of the early days, I found myself struggling to remain neutral, though I knew that I wasn’t getting the full picture. But so what? Atrocities are still atrocities, no matter who is wrong or who is right.

Some of the photographs on display really gripped me, to the point that for a few brief minutes I thought of myself in a new career as a foreign correspondent covering wars in far off parts. Then I remembered Smedley, and I came to my senses again. But while viewing the exhibits I was transported far away. However, the most harrowing part was the section showing some of the results of the U.S. dropping Agent Orange – chemical warfare – on the rural population. I had to move quickly through that and took no photos.

In fact, I didn’t take many photos of the whole museum. I hate to say it, but Tim and I agreed that we’re getting a bit “warred-out” at the moment, first with the horrors of Cambodia, now those of Vietnam. We commented as we left that there must be some nicer, happier exports that this part of south east Asia can be proud of, but if there are (and I’m sure there are), then they’re all overshadowed by these damn bloody wars. It’s partly because we are warred-out (terrible expression, I know) that we won’t be going to the Chu Chi Tunnels 40 kilometres outside of town. This is an underground network used by the town’s citizens to escape the bombing and most travellers who come to these parts end up there at some point. Maybe it’s because we’re still a tiny bit under the weather, because we don’t want to get up at 06:30 to drive 1.5 hours out of town, because we’ve had enough of war and all that it’s not good for, or maybe because we just can’t be arsed. Go figure!

The early part of the afternoon was spent in the room at the hotel. This is a room without a window. We had to get out to go…somewhere! Anywhere!

We took a walk west to “District 5”, AKA Chinatown. The plan was to find a Chinese travel agent. We still have to book our flight from Xi`an to Kathmandu at the end of November and the guidebook reckons we might get a better deal if we do it through a Chinese travel agent, i.e. one who handles regular bulk bookings through China. And after a long, sweaty walk, we found what the map said to be Chinatown, though it looked just like the rest of the city. Time to find a travel agent? No – it’s Sunday. They’re all closed. Bugger!

Later that evening, while over dinner in a back alley restaurant, a conversation we were having led me to ask Tim the following question:

“Do you do surreal?”

He laughed the laugh of a man who is feeling the strain but fighting it, and replied with the following.

“Do you do serious?”

I said that I did, then repeated my original question. He said that he did do surreal, but he’s had four solid months of surreal, so it may not look like he does it anymore. Poor lad! But I appreciated his honesty. That may not seem like much of an exchange to you, dear readers, but when you’ve shared a bedroom with someone for 135 nights, you need to know if they do or don’t do surreal. Otherwise you won’t sleep for the 136^th night.

After dinner we went to a place we’d earmarked earlier, name of the Boston Sports Bar. They were advertising the Merseyside Derby at 20:30 and there was no way we were going to miss that. Shame the linesman missed the fact that our third goal was CLEARLY ONSIDE  - DO YOU NEED GLASSES OR WHAT, MATE????

And relax…

Money talks

Wednesday, 24/10/2012 – 132 A.D.

Now then, if you loved yesterday’s post at the Genocide Museum then you’re just gonna be oh-so-enamoured by our trip this morning to The Killings Fields! The two sort of go hand-in-hand, with most tourists visiting both in the same day, but we’re not like most tourists. First off we had to find a travel agent who could book us onto the Mekong Express to Saigon at the end of the week. That wasn’t too hard at all. Then we needed to find a tuk-tuk driver who would take us the 15 or so kilometres out of town to The Killings Fields. That was even easier. A $13 round trip was a pretty good price as well.  

The Killing Fields outside of Pnhom Penh are called Choeung Ek and they are the most famous, but there were hundreds of such sites all over the country. Victims were brought here by the lorry-load for swift executions and then buried in mass graves. When you buy your ticket you get the audio tour as standard, which is fine because it allows you to walk around the site at your leisure, listening to the commentary from survivors. And I had thought that the stories of bones, teeth and clothing seeping up out of the ground after heavy rains was a little far-fetched...not at all, as it happens. 

[The main "stupa" or monument to the victims. More on this later, particularly what's inside it.]

[There are pits like this all over the place.]

[You wouldn't think a sign like this would be necessary, but unbelievably I saw one bloke do it without realising what he was walking on.]

[Mass grave in which 450 bodies were found - the largest at Choeung Ek.]

[The lake at the far end of the site. There are more mass graves beneath it, but the decision has been taken to leave them undisturbed. It's a strange sensation to sit besides such a quiet, tranquil body of water and then suddenly remember what it contains.]

[As mentioned earlier, bits of bone, teeth and clothing that have risen up from the earth.]

[The grisly contents of the  stupa.]

[The contents just go on and on and on.]

I'll spare you the descriptions of some of the even more extreme behaviour that went on at Choeung Ek, because I think you've had enough. While standing in the stupa and quietly lost in thought, I had to do a double take at the guy standing next to me. It was Duncan, a fellow traveller who we'd met on the train from Surat Thani to Bangkok. I didn't know that he was planning on coming to Cambodia - small world. Well, sort of - if you come to Phnom Penh, chances are you'll end up at Choeung Ek at some point. In fact, I like the way that there isn't a massive amount of things to do here - you leave feeling satisfied that you've really experienced as much of the city as you could, rather than with regret for those things you never had time to see.

Come the afternoon we had some free time, so it was decided we should have a What Carcass Moment. I realised that previous What Carcass Moments often involved Tim going off to do something and me staying back at the hotel to chill. Therefore I decreed that today I would be the one to go off and leave him to...chill, I guess. Thing is, I didn't really have anywhere definite to go! But What Carcass Moments are always a great excuse to wander round the city to some top tunes on the Ipod. And whereas many people may not regard it as a top tune, there's something enjoyably surreal to witness the dusty chaotic Phnom Penh hustle and bustle while listening to Unchained melody. Strange choice, I know, but in this context it somehow worked. 

I went to the travel agents to pick up our bus tickets, then headed off to the large Central Market. There was plenty of stuff on offer, but it's not the same without a wingman to distract the stall owners and give you a bit more peace as you browse. One thing I did pick up was some apples - been a while since I've had `em, don't think they grow `em around here because they're not the cheapest fruits on offer. To round out the afternoon I headed to the north of the city to check out Wat Phnom, i.e. big temple on the city's only hillock, then went to meditate beside the river, which is quite a pleasant strolling spot late in the afternoon when it's out of the direct sunlight.

It was our fourth out of five nights in Phnom Penh...time to go out and party! It had been far too long since Bangkok, but ping pong shows were definitely not on the agenda tonight. In fact, we didn't really know what was - at the end of the day we may well just go out for tea as normal and have a couple extra beers before going back to the hotel to watch the karaoke channel with milk and cookies. But first it was time for something a bit stronger, and I was overjoyed to find a place doing Indian cuisine, in particular my favourite dish, chicken madras. And it wasn't bad, though nowhere near as hot as I've had in Southport. 

We moved north beside the river, stopping off at a couple of the places that are frequented by the few Western tourists in the city. I wouldn't really call them bars, more like restaurants with a bar-like feel. However, come 10:30 and we found ourselves wandering back towards the centre of the city. Here all of the places had flashy neon lights outside and women squeezed into dresses three sizes too small shouting across the road at us to enter. To enter the bar, I should clarify that. Plus they all seemed to offer rooms for the night. Yep, these were the so-called "hostess bars" where the single male punter is made to feel extremely welcome. Don't get me wrong, there's a sliding scale here, ranging from bar girls paid to serve drinks and talk to customers (and nothing more), all the way to those girls who'll give everything to a paying customer. The problem is, it's difficult to tell from the outside of these places if they're the okay kind where you can have a drink and a laugh, or the ultra-seedy sort where you'll be dragged upstairs before you can say "Cheque, please!" 

It was getting to the point where we'd walked past the same venues several times, much to bemusement of the tuk-tuk drivers hanging around, and an early night was beckoning (without the milk and cookies). But we're English, and we're up for an adventure, so we figured we'd minimise the risk and go back to the place we ended up eating at the first night. This was the Golden Sorya Mall where there were all kinds of bars scattered around an open warehouse-type setting. We'd had a bite to eat at the safest spot near the pavement, but now we ventured deeper into the complex.

It was a hostess at the Sorya Beergarden bar who attracted our custom. Why? Can't really remember, but probably something to do with happy hour prices. We took our seats at the bar, which was more like a long, bendy, neon-lit table. In general, the punters sat one side, the hostesses on the other. Oddly enough, once we'd ordered our jug of beer, a chap who worked there was the first to strike up conversation. We really weren't fussed about talking to him, especially as it seemed a little strained. When we asked him which football teams he liked, he said Barcelona and Chelsea. Upon looking round the mall a little later, we saw that the two TV screens were coincidentally showing the Barcelona and the Chelsea games. Good job they weren't showing  Yeovil against Darlington as we wouldn't have believed him for a moment!

Anyway, the dude soon departed and a young hostess called Thavy took his place. She at least seemed genuinely interested in what we were talking about, but at the back of my mind I still couldn't be sure if it was just all part of the service. I should point out that Thavy was was wearing the white T-shirt which is standard regalia of the bar staff, whereas those girls who I got the feeling were the hostesses-who-go-where-most-other-hostesses-won't, if you'll pardon the expression, were dressed in mufti. Very tight mufti, in most cases. Anyway, Thavy came and went as the night went on and we learnt a lot about why she worked there, the hours she did, the scary place she worked at before, how she wanted to go to Canada to visit family, how she wanted us to teach her the minimal French and Spanish we knew, etc. Just a nice girl, at the end of the day, nothing more than that.

During a moment when it was just The James and The Tim left to their own devices to talk among themselves, I suddenly felt an elbow in my back, followed by a couple of hands squeezing my shoulder blades. Upon turning round I saw a middle-aged woman who, I'll tactfully say, may have had a hard life. My initial reaction was that she wanted me to buy her a drink and etc., etc., etc., until we get into extremely censored territory. Well that wasn't going to happen! So as I politely said, "Thank you, no," a thousand and one times, she eventually got the message, feigned a sulk, and walked away. A few minutes later we saw her across the bar giving a massage to a zonked-out bloke who'd barely been able to hold his drink. Turned out she was just a masseuse, nothing more, giving on-the-spot massages to the patrons for a buck. And I have to say that she may have only done my back and shoulders for a few seconds, but she certainly knew what she was doing! Back in Thailand, Longtip had advised us that if we do go for massages we should go for the older, experienced masseuses. We'll have to see about that one another time!

[James is relieved to have escaped the dodgy massage...]

[...but this guy wasn't so lucky.]

Things were rocking in the Sorya Beergarden and the Grayboys were in good moods, with enough entertainment around to keep us going for a few hours. When we initially arrived there had been a decent mix of clientele, but as the night wore on it was basically just us and the blokes-of-a-certain-kind. These guys were mostly smashed out of their heads and the drool on their faces was visible as the girls pretended to flirt with them and tried to look touched when they were bought a rose from the passing child selling flowers. I got the feeling that, with so much inebriation around, things could turn ugly at any moment, not that we had anything to worry about - we're English and we're well `ard. Besides, there were some black-shirted security guards hanging around near the entrance, although most of them looked about 15 and barely taller than the hostesses in their heels. At one point trouble did break out. We didn't understand why at the time, but Thavy told us later that one of the blokes-of-a-certain-kind who was with a hostess-of-a-certain-type went and kissed the sister of said hostess. And hostess went ballistic. Heels came off, fists came out, and the two of them went at it like wild beasts. The security guards piled in to help separate them, but they only succeeded in getting them to either end of the bar, where they still shouted at each other and traded insults. A few minutes later, one girl grabbed a glass and prepared to launch it (thankfully her friend grabbed her arm) and the other grabbed a glass ashtray to lob (thankfully her friend held onto the ashtray). We were sitting halfway between the two of them and if either missile was launched inaccurately then we may have got our drinks paid for free (but not our hospital bill!) The fracas ended when bloke-of-a-certain-kind picked up his hostess, put her under his arm and walked out of the mall with her!

[The long and lonely walk to the Gents - keep your eyes open and your pockets closed!]

One thing all of these hostess bars have is a pool table - the old-fashioned kind where you can simply take the balls out of the pockets for a new game without having to stick any money in. Judging by some of the skillful shots these ladies were playing, they've obviously got quite a few games under their designer belts. It's  one of the ways for the customers and the girls to break the ice - have a light-hearted game of pool (and keep it light-hearted when you get beaten by the girl!) I'd been talked at by one of the more louder mufti girls, called Bowpar [SIC], who demanded I get my name down on the board for a game. Okay, what the heck, I may not have my specs with me, but I've got enough Angkor inside me to feel competent. And so I took to the table and took on a hostess whose name I did not catch for the England versus Cambodia international classic. And England won! Get in!

Unfortunately Cambodia struck back when Bowpar came to the table and beat me. But only just. And she got quite lucky with some shots. And I was distracted by something shiny in the distance when I potted the white. 

The evening was rounded out with a couple of games of doubles - me and Bowpar against Tim and Thavy (my team wins) and then me and Bowpar against Tim and unknown hostess (again my team wins, much to younger brother's chagrin). There was a bit of confusion over the rules, especially the one where you're supposed to nominate which pocket you pot the black in and you lose if it goes in another one, but who cares, it's only a game. Which my team won. And, if you're reading this months down the line, Tim...MY TEAM WON!!!

By now it was gone 02:30, and the place closed at 03:00. Not only did we not want to be around to see what happened at that point, we also had to get up early to get down the Chinese embassy next morning. And so we went to pay our bill and get going. As we were leaving, Thavy came over (no sign of Bowpar and the others) and asked if we could keep in touch via Facebook. It surprised me, but pleasantly, and we were only too happy to. It's good to have made a friend who's a local and not another fellow traveller. She's going to Ho Chi Minh City at some point soon - I forget when exactly - but no doubt we'll have moved on from there by then. We're always moving on from somewhere!

Walking back through the streets of Phom Penh in the early hours was very strange; they were absolutely  deserted, bar the odd tuk-tuk driver offering us things I should not repeat. Such a contrast to the daytime when everywhere is teeming with people and vehicles. And such contrasting experiences today - The Killing Fields in the morning, the hostess bars in the evening.When we reached our hotel the shutter had been pulled across the door. For a brief moment we thought we'd have to return to the Sorya Beergarden and find a hostess with her own place to stay the night with. Then one of the staff who'd been sleeping behind the desk poked his head up and let us in. Damn!