Apologies in advance on this one, as I am aware that the covert purpose of travel blogs is to piss off the people who are stuck working at home. This is not the case here (I say, croaking from manflu picked up in work).
One of my resolutions earlier this year was to do more travelling. And so, I found myself ringing Trailfinders one gloomy morning in September asking them to sort out a holiday for me which had a tad more culture to it than the usual combination of sun, fun and...er...Heinek-un. So, with the limited time I had available, the guy at Trailfinders advised that a stay in Cambodia would fit the bill, bookended by short stints in Thailand and Vietnam. It all sounded good, but for one element which was new to me in the holiday stakes: namely that I'd be travelling solo.
You see, I've always secretly suspected that travelling was a bit like sex: infinitely less fun if you do it alone. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the other fourteen people in my tour group were all friendly, down to earth and up for a laugh. The group was quite multicultural, with people from France, Germany, New Zealand and Norway as well as Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, and varied nicely in age from 21 to 32. In fact, it was such a great tour group that I was tempted to jack in London life completely and just travel around aimlessly with them for a while.
So to begin. The first leg of my trip saw me fly to Bangkok in Thailand, infamous land of tuk-tuks, same-sames and he-she's. Like Murray Head however, I was fated to only spend one night there. The day I arrived, I spent the afternoon solitarily exploring the city's network of streets and temples (wats). In the evening, I met the group for the first time and we went for some food and drinks down near the Khao San Road. The Khao San Road is a notorious tourist trap, and once there I found myself bombarded with cries of 'PING PONG, PING PONG!' by various street hawkers, who were not, I suspected, merely challenging me to a game of table tennis. And as much as my curiosity would have led me to a ping pong show, I reasoned that it might not have created the best first impression of me to my fellow group members. Next time Bangkok, next time.
Siem Reap was our first stop once we crossed the border to Cambodia, and is home to arguably the country's most famous landmark, the Angkor Wat temple complex. De rigueur for any visitor to the temples is to try to catch Angkor Wat at sunrise. This unfortunately necessitates rising so early in the morning that it's still practically the night before. The group and I therefore dragged our weary carcasses out to the minibus at 4:45am, and grateful we were too, for it is quite a sight to behold. It's possible to spend a significant amount of time exploring the rest of the complex, but we only had the morning free, so went from Angkor Wat to Angkor Thom to Ta Prohm (the 'Jungle' or 'Tomb Raider' Temple). Personally, I was bit 'templed-out' after these three and was happy to leave the complex. But for for visitors who just can't get enough of that Khmer-templey stuff, week-long passes to the complex can be purchased.
After much reflection, one of my personal highlights of the overall tour was a boat trip to Tonlé Sap, which we visted after Angkor Wat. Tonlé Sap is the largest lake, not only in Cambodia, but in South East Asia overall. The lake is home to several floating villages, one of which we were fortunate to visit. The houses in the village are not floating per se, but are raised up above the water on stilts. The main activity carried out by the villagers is, unsurprisingly, fishing, and the villagers also participate in (and usually win) the boat race every year at the Water Festival in Phnom Penh. I think the reason the village made such an impact on me was the pace of life and the simplicity of everything, compared to say, London. The air of contentment emanating from the village was explained by our guide, Dara. "In Cambodia," Dara said, "the people are poor, but have rich smiles." It's amazing to think that, even though we all share the same planet, we live in such different worlds.
The next day we set off for Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh first became the capital of Cambodia in 1432, when the then King moved the capital from Angkor Thom which had been captured by Siam. The City only became the permanent seat of parliament in 1866, such has been Cambodia's turbulent history. When we arrived at Phnom Penh, the city was abuzz with preparations for the upcoming annual Water Festival (Bon Om Thook), which celebrates the strange annual phenomenon whereby the flow of the Tonlé Sap river changes direction. Unfortunately, my memory of Phnom Penh has been tainted with tragedy for two reasons. Firstly, a stampede occurred in the middle of the Water Festival , just a few days after we left the town, in which at least 345 people were killed. A terribly sad event. The second tragic element was the tour of the Killing Fields, which I had only previously heard about from Roland Joffé's 1984 film of the same name. I would try and explain fully what exactly happened there, but frankly there is no logical explanation for such carnage. Suffice to say, it involves Pol Pot and genocide and is a subject which, despite being glossed over in most history books in favour of the grander scale of the Vietnam War, is something that we in the west should definitely know more about.
The next destination on the trip was the beach town of Sihanoukville, a popular domestic holiday destination for Cambodians, which seemed pretty much like any other beach town I'v seen, to be honest. That said, I missed out on a bike tour of the town, which apparently shows that the town has a lot more to offer than mere beaches (I was meanwhile busy on such a beach, getting fried to the point where the only mean of identifying me would be through dental records). Snorkelling and sunbathing were generally the extent of our activities in Sihanoukville, though I did manage to squeeze in a 'Seeing Hands Massage'. These massages are given by the visually impaired, in the belief that their sense of touch has been in some way compensated by the loss of their sense of sight. Cue me, lying face down on a bench, with a small blind man walking up and down my back for thirty minutes. And I must say, it felt absolutely great. The masseur dude was no fool either: he miraculously regained his sight long enough to notice a satisfied customer about to slip away and immediately yelled at her to pay.
The next day we set out for Vietnam. Our first stop inside the border was Chau Doc, just inside the border, and was to prove an altogether calmer contrast to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) the following day. That said, it did seem generally busier than Cambodia, lending creedence to a loosely translated Cambodian adage, imparted to us by Dara: "In Vietnam, the people grow rice; in Cambodia, they watch the people grow rice", implying that the Cambodians are a tad more work-shy than their neighbours. Hey, my kinda country.
In the guise of Frank Drebin- arguably his most famous character- Leslie Nielsen (who sadly passed away last month) once said "you take a chance getting up in the morning, crossing the street or sticking your face in a fan." He was certainly right about crossing the street, and particularly in relation to Ho Chi Minh City. Over the holiday I had suffered sunstroke, chomped on bat, rat and snake , and had my feet nibbled by fish. But none of these experiences were as nerve wracking as trying to cross the road in Ho Chi Minh City: a gazillion motorbikes zooming around you, deceleration is clearly not in their dictionary. There really do not seem to be any rules of the road there, other than the simple law of physics which states that no two objects can occupy the same space at any given time.
To learn more about the Vietnam War, we visited the Cui Chi tunnels on the final day of the trip. This network of tunnels was used by the Viet Cong during the War, to hide and carry out guerilla warfare against the American forces. The most striking aspect of the tour through the tunnels is how the overall tone differs in relation to say the Killing Fields, which was altogether more sombre, despite the overwhelming shadow of death in both locations. At the Cui Chi tunnels in contrast, everything is interactive to a Disneylandesque degree: you can clamber into hiding spots, examine a gallery of death traps, eat what the Viet Cong ate, or even fire an AK47 rifle (which I...er..did). In fact, for a moment I almost forgot about the horror of war, until a trip to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City set me right. We walked through the museum courtyard and oohed and aahed at the impressive collection of tanks and aircraft, before entering the main hall and seeing photo after photo of atrocities and limbless victims. Then we remembered what havoc such machines can wreak.
That evening, I waved goodbye to the rest of the group, the majority of which were continuing on to explore the rest of Vietnam, Laos and North Thailand. All in all, a memorable, thoroughly enjoyable trip, but one which left me with a tinge of sadness that it had to end at all.
