:: Saturday, September 21, 2002 ::

Overland to Rattanakiri Province

Last week we visited Banlung, capital of Rattanakiri Province, in the North-Eastern corner of Cambodia near the Lao and Vietnamese borders. By 'visited', we don't mean to imply that we just popped up there, and popped back again. Oh no. Rattanakiri is one of the remotest parts of Cambodia, and by extension one of the hardest to reach. Only a handful of tourists can be @rsed to make the journey overland. In the dry season, it is apparently possible to cover the 400km or so in one or two days. However, we are bang in the middle of the wet season, and our journey lasted a somewhat taxing four days.

First stop was Kampong Cham on the Mekong river. This is the third largest city, but it has the air of a small town. There was nothing to give the place any character and the food in the (unmarked) restaurants was bland and sparse. The only real attractions were a pair of hillocks outside the city. One was named the Man Hill and the other - wait for it - the Woman Hill. Both had pagodas at the top (yawn), but the Man Hill was spiced up a bit by the presence of some monkeys (hilariously described in the guidebook as 'cheeky'). After we watched some local tourists feeding and taunting the monkeys (and nearly losing limbs in the process), we took some photos and headed off.

Next stop was Kratie. The 'speed' boat from Kampong Cham took six hours, and owing to the abject lack of escape routes from inside the cabin, we opted to sit on the roof. Kratie is renowned as a place to see the rare 'Irrawaddy' species of dolphin. After an all-too-brief night's sleep, we took a motorbike ride out to a hilltribe village, and were escorted across the river in a rickety wooden boat with a stuttering outboard. After the 90-minute journey to the viewing point, we were rewarded with about 10-minutes of distant fin-spotting. The only thing worth saying about these freshwater dolphins is that they are smaller and blacker than their marine cousins, and very elusive in the wet season: we ended up paying nearly $2 for each fin spotted!

Later the same day we got back on the boat up to Stung Treng. Having herded us onto the boat with great urgency in time for the one oçlockl departure, the captain and crew then sat there for two hours doing nothing until another boat arrived, and offloaded its all-important cargo of motorbikes onto the roof of our boat. Exactly where we'd been sitting. After being cramped onto a corner of the roof with tens of other passengers (including one with a real-live 'chicken in a basket'), it began to rain. As we were crushed to within an inch of our lives by the tarpaulin, we noticed we were sitting right next to a policeman with a loaded gun on his beltloop, just inches from Claire's delicate head! The policeman kept poking a child sitting just under Barney's right buttock, and asking him to translate questions such as 'is she your husband?' to us. After six hours of such interrogation by armed police in the driving rain, we pulled up at Stung Treng, and literally lept off the boat onto the slippery muddy dockside below where we were pulled up by a sea of arms and escorted to a hotel.

We ate, slept and left for Banlung shortly before seven the next morning (no form of long-distance transport in Cambodia leaves after 7am). We paid extra to sit in the cab of the pick-up truck, but were crammed with two other people on the back seat. In the back of the pickup another 11 Cambodians (plus luggage and chickens) were packed like sardines. The road was so atrocious that the 120km journey took well over seven hours. If you don''t believe us, see the photo of the stranded truck in the Picture Gallery.

Once in Banlung, we took a well-earned rest and checked out what there was to do. Within the town, this turned out to be the thin end of b*gger all, but a few kms out of town were a whole host of charming little spots and memorable activities. We were treated to a 2hr elephant ride, guided by local hilltribe people (who didn't even speak Khmer but only their local dialect). The 60yr old elephant took us and our guide slap bang through the middle of the jungle and to secluded waterfalls. There was a path around the back of the falls, where you could experience the 'wow' factor of a huge amount of water gushing down a rock, as well as the 'wet' factor of all the splashback. The only downside of the elephant ride was that we've never had such sore botties in all our life! Next day, we swam all day in a volcanic crater lake, 55m deep with crystal clear waters - Mmmmm! It was here that some friendly village kids strolled up to us, with broad grins on their faces and proudly announced in perfect English: "Hello, we are indigenous people!". This is just about the funniest thing we've ever heard! The kids ended up being very entertaining company, even sharing their inner tube and backflip techniques with us. It turns out they learn their English from a Dutch teacher who works with many of the local minority tribes. Just goes to show how many do-gooders there are out there. Hmmm, maybe a future career in the offing there..?

After a thoroughly relaxing long weekend in Banlung, we decided we couldn't face the four-day trip back, so we flew back to Phnom Penh on a small propellor plane. After 'checking in' at the two-room wooden hut (complete with scales for weighing luggage, dontchaknow) which constitutes Rattanakiri airport, we set off shakily down the mud runway, with our extremely bald tyres, aircon spewing smoke out all over the cabin, and empty seats flying forwards on our TWO landings. We knew to expect the unexpected, but were nevertheless amused when we stopped off somewhere on the way to offload some cardboard boxes full of food and TV's, all made by such reputable multinational companies as Sanjyo and Toshida.

So, we're back in Phnom Penh now having a lazy Sunday off from travelling and after a long lie-in, catching up on our email. Tomorrow, we're off to the beach for a couple of days in Sihanoukville before heading back to Bangkok, crossing the border on yet another speedboat, via the coastal town of Koh Chang. Our route will take us past the site of the refugee camp, just over the Thailand border, where the author of Stay Alive, My Son - about a man's escape from the Khmer Rouge and the loss of 16 family members - ended up after a daring against-the-odds escape over the Cardamom Mountain Range. We highly recommend the book to anyone remotely interested in autobiographical history/human rights, by the way. The author is Pin Yathay.

:: Barney 11:27 AM [+] ::
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Holiday in Cambodia

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh must be unique as a capital city - as far as either of us know, it is the only one in recent history to have lain abandoned and all-but-empty for 4 years. For those whose history is a bit rusty (ahem!), the Khmer Rouge entered the city on April 17th 1975, overthrew the CIA-sponsored government, and then ordered the entire population to evacuate the city on the same day. Children were driven out of schools and off the streets, in-patients were wheeled out of the hospital still attached to their drips, and families were shooed out of their houses on pain of summary execution in the street. Anyone who admitted any connection to the previous government was taken away and shot or bludgeoned to death. During the next four years, the Khmer Rouge restructured the whole country into a collectivised agrarian economy, with forced labour camps and all the usual instruments of terror and repression to back them up. Anyone who voiced any opposition to the regime or failed to comply with the backbreaking workload and dizzying array of arbitrary rules, was branded a parasitic enemy and taken into the forest to be bludgeoned to death with hoes (bullets were too precious to waste on ordinary people). As we have found out from people who experienced this first hand, children were often instructed to kill their own parents. Those who refused were asked: 'Why do you refuse to kill the enemy. Are you one of them?' shortly before receiving the same punishment. And these were the lucky ones. In Phnom Penh we visited S-21 (aka Tuol Sleng) - a former secondary school converted into a detention centre where ordinary men, women and children were brought in their thousands and tortured into confessing to crimes such as collusion with the CIA. Yes, children. Once people had been detained and tortured for a few months, they were photographed and then led to Choeung Ek - 20km south of the city - where they were made to kneel in front of a pit full of corpses and they were bludgeoned and thrown unconscious or dead into the mass-grave. As many as 100 people per day died like this, and many of the pre-slaughter photos are up on the walls for visitors to see. The terror is visible in all their eyes, especially the children, and there were even a few Western faces, to remind us that this sort of thing doesn't just happen to someone else. At Choeng Ek, there is a memorial pagoda, with 8,000 preserved skulls arranged according to sex and age. One pile is for girls aged 15-25, another for men aged 40+ and so on. Truly horrifying. These scenes (including the skulls, as we discovered in Battambang) are repeated all over the country. Two million people were executed, starved or worked to death in the 3 years, 9 months the regime lasted. The first to go were politicians and soldiers of the former Lon Nol regime, together with their extended families. Later, doctors, teachers, intellectuals / imperialists (the definition included anyone who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language) and anyone with too much connection to city life, were systematically rooted out and killed. The result was that Cambodia went from being the most developed and wealthiest South-East Asian nation in the 1960s back to the stone age. For example, after all the doctors were killed, it has taken 20+ years of foreign aid and training to establish even a rudimentary network of health centres.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that the people who suffered so much under the Khmer Rouge are still suffering: not only did they have to endure the harsh regime of the Vietnamese troops who liberated them from the Khmer Rouge in 1979, but they have also continued to be killed and maimed by the landmines which littered the countryside. Many villagers who believe in black magic think that having a certain tattoo can protect them from landmines - another problem which has been partially addressed through educational posters in village centres and teams of de-miners. A further nightmare which the people endured was enforced conscription into the government's army. They were taken away, often for years at a time, to fight the Khmer Rouge. This lot - who make the Taliban look like choirboys - were only defeated in 1998, when the death of Pol Pot and a mass-defection of high-ranking officers left them powerless.

OK, history lecture over. We only include this because it is still so evident in everyday life here, and as a tourist you are constantly reminded. The flipside of the coin is that the strength of spirit of the Cambodian people is truly inspirational. Not once have we heard anyone complain about their lot, and their will to get on with life despite extreme ongoing poverty and the weight of their loss is truly incredible.

Returning to the city, it is slowly but surely getting back on its feet. The riverfront area is beautiful, and some of the buildings which weren't destroyed by the Khmer Rouge are still stunning; the Silver-floored pagoda in the Royal Palace springs to mind. This was also where we saw the most amazing sunset. Click onto the Cambodia section of the Picture Gallery for the evidence!

Outside the city are several army bases, which earn extra cash by doubling up as shooting ranges. The situation is exactly the same as the rumours I heard before I left: You get off the motorbike, sit down at a table and are presented with a menu. On the menu is a list of guns, the number of rounds you can shoot, and the price for each option. To cut a long story short, my (Barney's) curiosity got the better of me, and I opted for a modest Colt '45 revolver. With no safety training whatsoever, I was presented with a pair of earmuffs and a gun. I stood at a booth and fired off 7 live rounds into what seemed to be a drawing of George Michael in a string vest. Still buzzing from the adrenaline rush, my new-found soldiers pals rushed me back to the menu and - bypassing the Uzi 9mm and the Kalashnikov - convinced me that what I really wanted to do was fire an AK47. To be brutally honest, at that moment, it was all I wanted to do, and when the price started to fall, I was quickly sold! So, yes, I have now fired 15 rounds from an AK47, some on single-burst and some on automatic fire, and it was extremely loud and extremely satisfying. (Check out the photos in the gallery.) But I will never do it again - promise. (Now at least you will all understand when you see my neighbours on News at Ten describe me as seeming 'like such a normal lad. He kept himself to himself, really'.) The other rumour surrounding these shooting galleries is that one can select farm animals of differing sizes (for differing prices) and use these for target practice. These range from a chicken at a 'poultry' $20, to a cow at a more 'beefy' $200. The cow, I was assured, is best dealt with by a rocket launcher (also $200). However, I soon realised the animal bit was a hoax... until this morning, that is, when the hostel owner informed me that there is no need to pay $20 for a chicken when one can take one's own from the market for only $3. Even one as sick as I am happy to take his word for that.

:: Barney 10:36 AM [+] ::
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Dalat and the Mekong Delta

While we waited for our gleaming new visa extensions, we took a 'luxury' minibus to the former French hill station of Dalat. This was the only truly inland town we visited in Viet Nam, with not a trace of brine to be found. The weather was hot with a cooling breeze in the mornings and rainy in the afternoons. The evenings were crisp and starry. So much like an English Summer was it in fact, that we even had to crack open our raincoats and fleeces. We felt even more at home on our first night, which we spent in the bars and pool halls of Dalat with Siobhan and Steve from West Norwood, who shared our predilection for beer-drinking and 'yo mamma' jokes. Unbeatable!

With the exception of the beaches at Nha Trang, Dalat was the only place we saw any Vietnamese tourists. They were out in their hordes, and as our guide explained to us, it is the number one honeymoon destination in Viet Nam. We saw lots of newlyweds competing for that idyllic lakeside photo, and the stress of it all was obviously getting to them. Although they were dressed up to the nines, they all looked absolutely miserable! On second thoughts, maybe it was the expense that was bringing them down. We were told that the average family saves for two or three years just to afford a weekend in Dalat. And when they get there, they certainly do things in style: Family photos beside the charming concrete statue of a musical stave (next to the 'Valley of Love' lake-and-tat-resort-complex) were apparently a must-do.

We took a day-long tour of the surrounding area in a jeep. First stop was a stunning meditation centre, where the monks keep a pristine garden full of orchids and dragon-shaped topiaries. Our guide assured us that - once the day's meditations are over and the tourists have gone home - the monks nip over to the nunnery across the hill to 'make disco' all night. Next stop was the 'Chicken' Minority village. Like many minority hill tribes, these people weave silk scarves and sarongs for sale to tourists, and apart from that sit around smoking pipes all day. However, unlike most tribes, they have an 10-metre high concrete chicken at the entrance to the village. Neither the (normally so reliable) Lonely Planet, nor or guide could provide a satisfactory explanation as to why, nevertheless we were assured that it had great historical significance to the locals. The chicken villagers are Christians, and there is even a snazzy new Cathedral a few kms down the road. However, there is a lone Buddhist Nun who lives in the village and serves as doctor and pharmacist. She sells home-made incense sticks to tourists to pay for medicines, and since her arrival the death rate during the wet season has fallen dramatically. Even better than that, she let us make our own cinnamon incense sticks, which later blew off the back of the jeep as we 'dried' them. On the road near the village, we stopped at a mushroom farm and a silkworm farm. The guide even sliced open a silkworm coccoon so we could all stare at the poor worm dude who was trying to get some kip inside.

The highlights of the day were the 'crazy' house and the 'crazy' monk. The former was a Gaudi-esque house based around two giant concrete giraffes. It was financed and designed by one of the only architects wealthy enough to get away with such a project - the former president's eldest daughter. Each of the bubble-like pods inside is fashioned into a bedroom (available for a very reasonable nightly fee), and each bedroom had an animal 'theme' (if by 'theme' you understand a concrete sculpture of an animal). Much like the Sagrada Familia, this house is still growing organically. Even if it isn't entirely original it is still an intriguingly incongrous sight in such an otherwise conservative country. As to the 'crazy' monk, well... I know that crazy is an over-used word at the best of times, but this was the biggest misnomer of the lot. The crazy monk is at best mildly eccentric, living in a temple with seven pet dogs and spending his days selling forged works of art to Dutch tourists at inflated prices. He claims to be a Zen monk, and to this end there were endless slogans around his tranquil bamboo garden about how wonderful it is to live for the moment. Nevertheless we discovered that his intentions are somewhere wide of zen: as soon as he makes enough from his forgeries, he intends to get on the first plane to America and live in a slightly more affluent 'moment' there.

We were brought down to Earth, when we discovered that the tour guide himself earned just US$50 per month. He was very good at separating the tourists from their cash, but received no commission for his troubles. Only the threat of instant dismissal kept his motivation levels up for the 362 working days of the year.

Dalat is also famous as a centre of learning - with its mild climate study is much more pleasant. However, hey need to work on their maths-teaching a little. We were chased out of a restaurant by the owner who was adamant that our bill of 293,000 (minus 25,000 already paid) was in fact 278,000 Dong. Only when our high-tech pal David whipped out his palm pilot (easy!) did the owner agree that it was 268,000 and mathematical justice was finally served.

After a couple of days in Dalat we jumped back on the luxury bus, and headed back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was at this point we decided we couldn't survive another day without any 'Western' music for comfort. In the space of a few hours, we had a CD Walkman with carry-case, 2 sets of headphones, and 25 CDs (all genuine originals of course). All for the princely sum of 50 quid. We later added a set of speakers (at a bank-breaking US$4) and now our lives are complete.

We splashed away the next couple of days at Saigon's various swimming pools, including the famous water-park, with its death-defying blacked-out waterslides and lethal wave pools. We met a 14-year old boy in a park, who treated us to a rendition of his favourite Westlife songs. Later that evening, Barney was attacked in the street by a ruthless masseur, who indulged his obsession with 'cupping' (where the oxygen is burnt out of several upturned glasses, which are then placed on the back where the vacuum sucks the skin out. The 'beneficiary' is left with giant purple welts for the next week).

Then we booked ourselves on a three-day trip through the Mekong Delta and into the wilds of Cambodia. The boat trip took us to some fascinating places, including the floating villages of the Cham minority (descendents of the Indonesians who practise Islam and even have their own mosque, albeit not a floating one). We saw a rice refinery, with ingenious shelling and polishing machines straight out of the 19th Century and covered in spiders' webs. We also visited a coconut candy factory and a rice-noodle (vermicelli) factory, where all the work was carried out by hand by the most patient and uncomplaining workers imaginable. One of the more memorable stops was an impromptu one. Our 'luxurious' pleasure cruiser (again, their words not ours) got caught in the underwater foliage and bust a propeller. While we waited for the replacement speed-boat to whisk us to safety, we were treated to a warm welcome by the inhabitants of a nearby floating hut. It was a tiny place, with apparent Tardis-like qualities. Something like 30 kids (as well as a white-faced Geisha-type woman nursing a fine pair of puppies) streamed out and began leaping off boats and shouting 'hello' over and over again. Even after two hours (and a couple of beers with a French guy who had taken four rolls of film in two days flat) we were not tired of the kids, and when the speedboat arrived we waved them goodbye and shot off up the Mekong towards Chau Doc and the border. At one dinner stop, we were treated to a glass of finest Vietnamese snake wine. The snake's venom is extracted and mixed into the wine, and the cobra's corpse is then inserted into the bottle to stare at you (and aid your fertility of course) as you drink it. Fired up by the testosterone-enhancing effects of the wine, Barney decided to try the local speciality: Snake and mushroom curry. I'm not prepared to say it tasted like chicken, that would be way too obvious. Although, to be honest, it did taste like a stringier version of our feathered friends. The following morning we got back on the speed-boat and began the four-hour journey into Phnom Penh. More of that later...

For those of you that are still conscious after reading this installment, we present a little opinion poll. We are racked with indecision about which of the following words would sound best in a Scouse accent:

• Catechism


• Cathedral


• Murky


• Perpetrator


• Trivialities


• Turpentine

Cast your votes or come up with something better NOW on the message board!

:: Barney 7:04 AM [+] ::
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