Cambodia Highlights

I’m leaving Cambodia, catching the boat tomorrow afternoon to Chau Doc in Vietnam. Internet access probably won’t be as easy and cheap in the Mekong Delta (it’s only half a dollar an hour here, cheapest so far in SE Asia!), and I’d like to be away from computers to take things in, so I’ll probably disappear for a bit. Some final thoughts on Cambodia.

Since Battambang, I’ve only been in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. They’re both highly touristy, so I feel more hassled by people rather than befriended. In Battambang, I’d managed to learn the Khmer numbers, and was starting to learn phrases like “How much is it?” and “Where is the toilet?”. Khmer is much easier for me than Thai and Burmese, as it isn’t tonal at all. Since then it’s been much harder to get support with Khmer, so I gave up. In Siem Reap people would laugh at me if I even said “Thank you!” in Khmer – I guess the thousands of tourists jetting in to see Angkor Wat don’t bother to learn it.

Lots of the moto drivers have second (third!) sources of income touting dubious businesses. More obviously these are cannabis (“I have high quality weed, very high quality!”) and prostitution (“You want lady?”). It’s also the only way to find the place where you can try out machine guns and grenades just outside Phnom Penh, as the guide books don’t mention it. Today a moto driver was so determined to sell follow on business to me, that after he’d checked I’d already been to the killing fields out of town, and that I didn’t want to go to the mountain pagoda, or to illegally try out guns (“English people like shooting!”, I turned out to be more French or German in this regard), that I’m somewhat unjustly sure he’d have offered to take me to Svay Pak if the brothels hadn’t finally been shut down by the government the night before I arrived.

Two highlights of Cambodia for me that are somewhat macabre – really lowlights, there to learn and understand what happened so recently, maybe to be better informed to stop it happening again: (Part of me says that this is still voyeuristic, which it is, but it is also learning about the truth)

  • Talking to an exhibition currator in Battambang about his personal experiences slave labouring as a child on the rice fields for the Khmer Rouge, and later as a refugee trapped between many armies and landmines on the Thai border. I am so lucky for my childhood… What should I do to make sure more people have happy childhoods?
  • Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, especially the photos of the people there. They looked so real, they are so real, it made it real. And some of the paperwork administering the prison, telling the soldiers to keep their uniforms properly on, that made it more real also.

And some positive things. I loved Lokesvara’s faces on the Bayon at Angkor. I enjoyed people being welcoming and friendly in Battambang. The rice porridge Bor Bor is fantastic for breakfast, if you can work out how to pronounce that O. Perhaps one day if in the right mood, I’ll come back here, and do the other route diagonally across the country – from Thailand, go round the coast to Sihanoukville, then up across through Phnom Penh and to the NE and Rattanakiri, then on to Laos.

Now, Vietnam.

(Argument still goes on at Conrad’s blog – thanks to everyone who’s given me a bit of support. I’ve learnt quite a bit. It’s always good to understand other peoples opnions better, especially those which are quite different from yours (or appear to be quite different)…)

English, World Language

English really is a global second language. At least, in SE Asia, in every country it is the lingua franca. It’s assumed that if you’re a tourist, actually if you’re white, then you’ll speak English. And fluently. If you’re a French or a German independent traveller then you really have no choice; learning even basic English is such good value that you’d be foolish not to.

In Cambodia, the local people are desperate to learn the language. This wasn’t as obvious in Myanmar, but it was still the case. In Thailand the whole process is formalised as in France, so you don’t know that people are learning English, they’re kind of shy about it. It’s only that all people working in the tourist industry speak it which reveals the truth. In Cambodia on every street corner, on the steps of every ancient temple, in monastries, at the tables of exhibitions… Everywhere, people are lurking to practice their English on you. “Where do you come from?” “How old are you?” “Are you married?” It’s their ticket to wealth, to knowledge.

I feel like a strange, itinerant English teacher, wondering aimlessly round Cambodia talking to anyone who’ll listen. An intelligent monk asked me back later in the day to give a lesson to his English class. A tuk-tuk (motorbike powered trishaw thing) driver on a street corner engaged me in conversation, and asked complex details about vocabulary. What is the difference between “fit” and “enough”, they are the same word in Khmer? (It takes a while – think about it – to realise what a similar meaning they have, that they could be one word). When is it a “hill” and when a “mountain”? (Tricky, as the abrupt lumps of earth sticking out of the Cambodian plains aren’t tall enough to be mountains or anonymous enough to be hills) By going round casually teaching people English, am I just expanding the American empire?

Part of me had hoped to need to speak a bit of French when in Cambodia, as it was a French colony – make me feel less guilty for not knowing foreign languages. But only a lucky few here speak French, the old people who were taught it at school. Once there were many, but as they were also the intelligentsia, the Khmer Rouge murdered them. The new young educated all learn English.

Two final pieces of evidence clinched it for English being a global language. ASEAN, the SE Asian equivalent of the EU, speaks English as its working language. Thinking about it this makes sense, how else could Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indonesian and Malaysian people talk to each other? Secondly, an independent tourist who has just been in China told me the other day that even there everyone is learning English. I had thought Chinese stood up alone, but it appears not. They even have a national TV quiz show to find the best speaking English student in the country – that you’d like to see!

I’m not ashamed any more that I don’t speak a second language fluently. What would be the point? It’s easy if your native language is anything other than English, you learn English. If I’d known that at every tourist place in the world I could talk in French then I’d have been motivated to take evening classes, and the yearly practice on holiday would have at least kept me in reasonably good shape. Instead of guilt, I have a more hostile feeling. My native tongue, my ethnic language, is stolen away from me. English is no longer mine. I have no language, my first language is a second language. The only recourse to rescue would be by using lots of those infuriating English phrasal verbs which contain a preposition – “to put up with”, “to crack down on”, or perhaps lapse into cockney rhyming slang or a Scottish accent.

Even that isn’t safe. My moto driver the other day was a hoot, as he showed off American, Australian, and even Cockney imitations and phrases that I couldn’t understand…

Friendly Cambodia

I arrived here in Cambodia on Tuesday, travelling overland from Thailand. Within eight hours of crossing the border, eight people or groups of people had made warm and friendly contact with me. This left me deeply moved, and in love with Cambodia. Completely different from Thailand where, as in Europe, everyone is too rich, too congested with people, and ignores you.

  1. A hassling, fluent English, border truck tout. OK, not the best start and not the most friendly of people, as he hassled and lied about having a pick-up to Battambang. However, he was friendly, and helped me across the border. When I then refused his father’s pick-up, which had no other passengers yet, he was helpful and found me another one. And he taught me the essential first two phrases of Khmer, “Hello!” and “Thank you!”.
  2. People on the back of the first pickup truck. The most fun and cheapest, and if you don’t book the only, way to get from the Thai border town of Poipet to Battambang is on the back a pickup truck. They fill the thing to bursting, you never quite believe what small space, and precariously balanced cargo another will sit on. An old man sitting next to me held my knee in the kindest, warmest, most unconscious way possible, as he couldn’t reach part of the truck to hold onto. A very young boy fell asleep with his head on my lap. Innocent, friendly, spirited togetherness.
  3. People on the back of the second pickup truck (had to change truck at Sisophon). Three friendly smiley young women, an older guy with two children and two dogs, who tried chatting with me in English.
  4. Sombat (aka Bat) at the transport stop in Battambang. Fed up after the tout at the border, I was first of all rude to him, but he turned out to be a great moto driver and guide who took me out to surrounding sites for the next two days.
  5. NGO man in restaurant. He was sitting at the next table to me, working for an educational charity in the villages, and just started talking to me. He was Christian, and told me a bit about their work.
  6. Group of friends at the dessert stall. Cambodia has great fun night markets where you can buy food after 4pm, including Khmer dessert stalls. Sickly concoctions, of jelly or rice sweets with condensed milk, ice, or a strange almost potato-like fruit. More fun to eat than delicious. I sat a dark and candle lit stall. The young people who ran it and their friends, were chatty, jokey, and warm.
  7. Hotel staff playing cards outside. They invited me to join as I went in to go to bed, although I declined.
  8. Receptionist. Amusingly, after giving me my key, he then changed the television channels to show me which one was the (best?) local porn channel. This is some kind of level of service that I’m not used to!

Since then I’ve been giving English lessons to Buddhist monks, having teenagers teach me to count, and being offered to join a group of people at the next table in a restaurant (Cambodian saying: “The more people at a meal, the tastier it is!”). On the country roads all the children wave to foreigners.

So why are they so friendly, as they were in Burma? The cynical side of me says that people who are poor, people who have lived disconnected to the world, or at war, are happier and more excited to see “farang”. Foreign visitors are both a sign of stability, and a source of local wealth. My moto driver said that the children and visitors are so friendly to me because most white people in the area work for NGOs. The villagers believe the NGOs have done actual valuable work in mine clearance, education and healthcare. This is great to hear, and very sweet, but not really a privileged welcome that a tourist is deserving off.

The other side of the coin to this cold explanation is simply that the people are warm and friendly. They live more in communities, and haven’t had their soul sucked away by television, and by more wealth than they know how to organise as a society in a sensible way. All the travellers seem to like the countries which aren’t developed more than those that are, because of this warmth and friendliness. What are we developing?

I’m now in Siem Reap, jumping off point to visit the temples of Angkor, one of the wonders of the world. So, it’s overflowing with tourists, many of whom fly here and don’t see anything more of Cambodia. Not that I’m much better, rushing on next week to Vietnam.

Bangkok Public Transport

Bangkok has some excellent public transport, at least great fun if you’re a tourist. There are several canals with super-fast water buses on them, you quickly leap on, pay them 5 baht (about 7 pence) and they zoom much faster than the jammed traffic. There are canvas shields which raise and lower along the side to reduce splashing, although you still get a bit wet with all the wakes it causes. Under some bridges they have to lower the entire roof, and the young lads clinging to the outside who collect your fare duck down.

More hightech, like something from a manga movie are the sky trains. Vastly healthier than an underground would be, if a bit pricey compared to water and land buses (more like 30 baht a trip). The picture is of the start of one of the sky rails, they zoom along several stories in the air usually in the middle of a dual carriageway. They work exactly like the underground, you buy a ticket which gets used in an automatic barrier, and there are similar maps. You just go up an escalator before getting on rather than down, and it’s sunny and light on the station platform. Very clean and well managed, I wasn’t allowed to take an ice cream in, had to finish it first. Between stations you get beautiful views of the city, and feel like you are flying.

Despite already having this system straight from a futuristic Japanese city, for some reason a Bangkok underground is being built as well. There are only two sky train lines, and they don’t cover the city comprehensively, but nor will the initial underground. I’d much rather they built sky trains everywhere.

The picture? Oh yes, I found a shop which converted my digital camera pictures into a CD, which I can now use in internet cafes, and post back to the UK for backup. I’m not sure if the picture will work if you’re reading this by email subscription, you might have to go to the web site to see it.

More technical details for those who are interested: I found an internet cafe with Windows XP, so that I can easily look at the jpegs using the built in slideshow, and resize them with the built in Paint. I upload the pictures using Blogger Pro (the version of blogger which you pay for) – it gives a browser interface for file uploads to your blog.

Myanmar Impressions

Before I forget them, I’m going to post some general impressions of Myanmar/Burma, since I spent the last month there. I spent most of the time being a proper tourist, so I don’t have any real insights into the political situation that you can’t get elsewhere. However, I did talk to an interesting Wa monk (from Shan “state”) in a monastry in Mandalay – I’ll post up some of the stuff he said another day.

It’s hard for me to think about Burma without making comparisons, to either Ghana or Cuba, being the most similar places that I’ve been to. Relatively speaking, Burma felt quite prosperous. The people had a lot of dignity, a real strength and depth behind them as a people, that they will succeed and maintain who they are. They also had reasonable resources, lots of standard consumer products either manufactured locally, or imported from China, and there wasn’t much overt poverty. However, I suspect the worst poverty in the country is in more remote and rural, or even war-torn, areas, exactly where the government doesn’t let tourists go.

Saying that, the country has low quality facilities by Western standards – the roads are atrocious, and you can’t buy many European/US products, particularly outside Yangon. This has a very good side to it. People still wear their traditional clothing, and I was soon used to seeing men in longys (a sort of skirt, a sewn up sarong – they nearly all wore them), and everyone in nice bright coloured shirts. People still eat traditional food, cooked by the road side, produce bought from markets. Here in Thailand people do that too, and the best and cheapest food seems to come like that, but there are also pointlessly expensive restaurants and fast food chains. In the UK you can’t buy cheap traditional food many places, and our food culture has vanished such that you probably wouldn’t want to.

You’ll notice that I’m saying Burma again, when before I was so picky about saying Myanmar. This is an interesting one. Really, to my mind, Burma is a subpart of the Union of Myanmar. It’s forms the bulk of it, and consists of the people who are ethnically Burmese. Now, before hand I thought that saying Myanmar was a bit like saying the United Kingdom – Myanmar includes the other parts such as Shan state, as well as Burma, just as the United Kingdom includes Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England. I think this is how the Myanmar government sees things. However, it isn’t how people in Shan state see things. They refer to the Burmese areas as Myanmar, and their own areas as if another country (albeit not internationally or UN recognised) – almost deliberately subverting the word Myanmar, so it can’t be used for the political inclusiveness the government is trying to achieve.

The Burmese smile all the time. A cynical part of me says this is the laughing smile in the face of adversity. However, I think it is genuinely that they care. They aren’t worn down by tourists (like people here in Bangkok, where the land has considerably fewer than a thousand smiles), and they are calm, compassionate, friendly and warm to each other as well. I miss being able to smile at anyone and get a smile back.

Religion – it was lovely to travel in a Buddhist country for a change. There are stupas and wats everywhere, as much as there are churches in Europe. I had lots of lovely experiences in the early evening visiting a stupa, and watching the generic pious paying their respects to a Buddha. If you are Christian and have never been to a Buddhist country, come and try it out. The two are similar in lots of ways:

Both spread from one man having a new, positive, ethical way of looking at the world. Both Jesus and Buddha lived a similar amount of time ago, and both the religions have spread a long way (one mainly West from the Middle East, one mainly East from India). Both have diversified into sects with different doctrines. Both created and still create incredible religious buildings, amazing texts and statues. Seeing these similarities makes it even harder for me to believe that strong Christianity could be “right”. Not that I’m about to become Buddhist either, it is often to me cosmologically suspect, and also I think some of the people do worship Buddha as a God, rather than celebrate his achievements as a person. Both religions have spot on ethical messages.

Phil (who I was travelling with in Burma) is addicted to Buddha images, so we went to see lots of them, and look at how they vary. I can imagine a mirror world where a Japanese tourists gets obsessed with images of Jesus being crucified, and tours the cathedrals and museums of Europe hunting out obscure ones. If you look at a Buddha sculpture hard, kneel down and stare into his eyes, it is easy to get entranced by the enigmatic smile, or the strong face, and wonder what character he had to have to achieve whatever state of mind he achieved.

On a lighter note, Asian toilets are fantastic. There are lots of combinations, and I’m not too fond of squatting – most guesthouse toilets were sit-down though. However, the trigger hoses which you use to spray and clean yourself instead of toilet paper are fantastic. Bidets, eat your heart out.

Yangon (Rangoon). It’s a very green city, from the plane even in the dark all the lights twinkled, and it took me a few seconds to work out that the effect could only be caused by trees. I kept thinking I was in a Tintin novel there, I think because of the type of green jeep that was often in the streets, and also because it still had the feel of colonial times before cultural imperialism of Coca-Cola, Shell and McDonalds – a real foreign city.

A thought on being annoyed by people overly-persistently trying to sell you tourist tat (not too bad a problem in Burma – I’ve heard stories elsewhere of people being followed by a hawker for an hour): That people are annoyingly persistent in trying to sell you stuff is a symmetrical consequence of you (the tourist) being able to visit the place so casually and easily.

Bus to Bangkok

Wow! I just had the most luxurious bus journey I could ever imagine. Sometimes people who like cars have a lack of imagination about how good public transport could potentially be these days. To inspire you, here are the highlights of todays trip:

  • The bus was due to leave Chang Rai in the far north of Thailand at 8am. It was ten minutes late leaving, the only flaw in the whole journey. It arrived at 7:30pm this evening (11.5 hrs later) in Bangkok. The journey is a distance of 785km, slightly shorter but roughly equivalent to travelling from Aberdeen to London.
  • I travelled VIP class, at a cost of 700 Baht, about 14 US dollars or 10 pounds. Admittedly everything is a bit cheaper in Thailand, but even allowing for that, this seems excellent value (National express charge 35 pounds for the economy class trip from Aberdeen to London, which curiously takes about the same amount of time).
  • The coach had only three seats across, two on one side of the aisle, one on the other. There were only 24 seats in the whole coach, half the number of economy class seats that could have been squeezed in. I had lots of space and leg room, and I’m very tall.
  • Not only was it air conditioned, but they gave you a blanket in case this made you cold. Or to huggle under to help you sleep.
  • Like an airplane, refreshments were servered at your seat. At the start, a bottle of chilled water. In the morning, coffee and some excellent pastries. In the late afternoon a can of cool coke, and a refreshing perfumed napkin thing. We stopped for lunch (included in the price), which was rice and a Thai curry. Yum.
  • There was a film in the afternoon. Admittedly it was a ludicrously silly Chinese movie for kids, about the God of Cooking who would use marshal arts maneuvers to slice vegetables, mix sauces and create excellent food, and compete with similarly talented rivals. Dubbed in Thai with no subtitles, so perhaps I just didn’t understand what was going on.
  • Most importantly, there was a toilet at the back of the coach. This is a great luxury, not featured in even the most upmarket executive cars. Thai roads are very straight and very good quality, so the bus hardly had to turn a short corner, which meant the toilet was usable.
  • You could walk round and read books and write and look at the scenary and sleep and think.

If private cars were to be banned, the free market would make all journeys this good within months. Of course, in the new high tech economy these vehicles would also feature:

  • Screens on adjustable arms that come out the seat in front, and feature: video on demand (streamed from a hard disk), music on demand (from a massive licensed library), computer games (multiplayer with other passengers), internet access (web and email). All with headphones, of course.
  • Sockets for recharging your mobile phone, or any other common electrical device (adapters available from the stewardess).
  • Wireless ethernet / wired ethernet / infrared for internet access from your laptop computer or PDA.
  • Full at-your-seat bar and snack service (i.e. you can pay for extra food/drinks/sweets/fresh fruit…).
  • Full through ticketing between all forms of public transport, including luggage, door to door. In other words, when the bus stops, a licensed taxi driver would automatically meet you, collect your luggage, and take you to your exact final destination, all included in one ticket price. Similar help would appear when you set off. There would be pre-paid porters at every major station to help people with luggage when changing between buses/trains/boats, or to provide other services at a supplement (please could you get me such-and-such a novel from the bookshop across the road…). Also you could send a trunk ahead, like in the Good Old Days.

Repeat after me… We will help save the world from the destructive weather patterns caused by global warming, whilst simultaneously improving service, building community, and creating jobs, by making truly excellent public transport.

Hello, and Happy New Year! I’m in Chiang Rai, a town in northern Thailand. Phil and I came overland this morning from Kengtung, which is in Shan state to the east of Myanmar. Thailand is a civilised rest stop; with everything from English language bookshops and internet cafes, to Walls ice cream and first class bus transport. They even drive on the left to make me feel that extra bit at home. It really does feel like a European country, albeit with its own Asian culture, stumbled upon in SE Asia.

So this is just to quickly say that I’m well, Myanmar was interesting, friendly and safe, although after a month I’m glad to leave and move on. I’m staying here for a couple of days, then getting a bus to Bangkok, where I’ll spend a few days while getting a visa for Cambodia, then travel overland through Cambodia (via Angkor) to Vietnam.

Some stuff about Kengtung, which I left this morning: It’s the heart of the infamous Golden Triangle, where much of the world’s opium, and now metamphetamine, is grown. However this wasn’t the most evident or interesting thing about the place. What was interesting is that it doesn’t belong to a country. Really this part of Shan state should be (is!) a separate country, not part of the Union of Myanmar. Much of it is under control of local armies (the Wa, or the Shan), and those parts (like Kengtung) which are government controlled are only so because of deals with the armies. It’s a very peaceful town, richer than the rest of Burma, because of excellent trade links with China and Thailand, as well as trickle down from drugs money. I think the use of drugs locally must be prohibited, as there was no sign of social unrest caused by them.

A sign of it pseudo-country status is the language and currencies that people use. They speak Shan, Burmese, Chinese and Thai, as well as various hill tribe languages. The currencies in general use are the Myanmar Kyat, the Thai Baht and the Chinese Yuan, as well as the ubiquitous US dollar. Seeing somewhere that isn’t quite a country gives a good perspective on things.

The countryside was beatiful, and on Saturday we went on a day trek to some hill tribe villages. Yesterday we looked around the local Wats (Buddhist temples), one was a fantastic wodoen building about 300 years old, with an amazing range of Buddha images.

More about Myanmar later. Hope you’re enjoying the new year. Right, now to check my email…