Malaysia is home now, so yes I was heading home from Cambodia. After hammering the partying and some bad experiences in Sihanoukville I decided that a couple of months detox in a safe comfortable place was in order so back to Cameron goes I...
Island time first though to top up the rather amazing and deep tan I had got before a couple of months of clouds and rain. The only island that I haven't done that would be open is Pulau Pangkor so that's where I headed without a clue where to go or what beaches to hit... Chinese New Year complicated matters, the queue for the boat was nuts, kids were fainting and everything and it took well over an hour to get on a ferry. Worth it. The island is the right side of developed, in the fact that it has roads and basic infrastructure but not too resorty and Western, it's mainly locals who go there so there isn't much catering to the white man's needs which I like.
Finding somewhere to stay was horrendous due to Chinese New Year but I struck gold with Nipah Guesthouse. The guys who run it are amazing, they have such pride in the place and want everyone to have a good time. Whilst I was there they got an email from Trip Adviser to say they had won an award for the top 25 places to stay in Malaysia and they were so happy. This place and the guys I met there really made my stay and it really helped start to restore my faith in travellers again.
There is something retorative yet tiring about hanging about on the beach. I love it, the sea breeze, jumping in the water when it gets too hot, trying sooo hard not to get sand on your beach towel and failing spectacularly, the strange mix of salt and sun lotion taste when you lick your lips, the sound of jet skis in the distance... I love all of it because it's so chilled, as much as I love doing stuff, I really love not doing stuff in the sun! I will go to some lengths for a good beach, not too much effort but enough! The dude at the guesthouse told us about a really quiet beach on the south of the island so me and seven guys I was hanging out with set out with a warning of a ten minute jungle trek to get there. As an regular readers will know, I hate the jungle and all that comes with it but to get to a beach I faced me fears! It was more like half an hour in the jungle, but this may have been because of my constant declarations of imminent death and irrational fear of any noise I didn't recognise, which is most of them...
The beach was stunning. There was a camp set up but no one there and we had the beach to ourselves. Jungle behind, left and right, sand at our feet and the ocean out in front, we all said how much it felt like the film 'The Beach', it really was paradise. We messed about in the sea with a Smurfs ball I had bought and made the Dutch dude carry, we lazed in the sun, lazed in the shade, lazed in the water, lazed on the beach some more then head back through the jungle after a good few hours of lazing. An absloute stunner of a beach and we kept saying how amazed we were that it was so undiscovered.
I feel this way about Malaysia in general, there is so much to see and do in this country. Beautiful islands, jungle if you're into that type of thing, the food is out of this world, yet people have never heard of it. Every knows the names of at least some of the Thai islands but I challenge anyone to name Malaysian islands, which I think are better because they are so unspoilt. Working in the tourism industry I tend to have this conversation quite a bit and the majority of people I speak to are really blown away with how great this country is, how easy it is to travel and stuff. I kind of want it to stay a little undiscovered, then I can be all expert on Malaysia when most people don't know what I'm on about!
After four, maybe five days on Pangkor (I love losing track of how long I've been places, sign I've had a good time) I headed back to the Highlands a few days earlier than planned when an opportunity to get back for free came up through the company I had worked for. A quick email to the boss and I had my job back and a minivan picking me up in the morning! It felt amazing to come up the mountain, kind of like the feeling you get on the motorway on the way back from the airport back home, kind of sad that it's back to the real world but happy to be home where things are normal. It does feel quite strange talking about Tanah Rata like this but I do love this place and feel so happy here, I really missed it when I was away.
So I get back to town and Karen hadn't told anyone I was coming so everyone at the Lodge was so shocked! Jue ran over to me to hug me, everyone wanted to know how long I was back for, where I had been, why I was here? Walking into town to see Bella and Deera I was stupidly excited, I needed a massive hug, the type only these girls can give me! It felt amazing, they were shocked at the colour of my skin because I was now darker than them, albeit in a different shade, they were shocked at how mch weight I had lost, the colour of my sun kissed hair, but they were so happy to see me which I really appreciated. I went back to see them in the evening and to get my make up done because I hadn't worn a scrap since I had last seen them and to generally hang out.
Then I saw my friend who I was hanging out with on Xmas day (see previous blogs), who has taken to wearing a cowboy hat which I can't quite decide if I like, and he started off by ignoring me. After such a raptuous reception I was not being ignored by such a good friend so I took him to task and by 1am I was in his catching up and hanging out. Next morning I needed some painkillers and he gave me some well strong ones and I went to get into bed with Deera for a few hours. Crazy dreams ensued for which he was duly thanked! The next night when I went round to watch a film he told me he was going to hide the painkillers, think he's got the measure of me by now! Hanging about town and at the Lodge was brilliant, so theraputic and relaxing and I was told I didn't have to start work until 1st Feb which gave me plenty of chill time.
I did, however, find out one thing that kind of annoyed me. I really want to go and see the Rafflesia again since I have it tattoo'd and all, but the trek is really long now because the off road trail is so screwed it has to be walked up instead. I'm not ready to put myself through that quite yet so I've decided to do some walking evey day so no one can take the piss at my fitness on the trek, only the falling over will provide the entertainment! Third night in town I went to see my friend again but by the time I showed up he was fast alseep so I took advantage of the chance to get a good night's kip, he looked rather confused when we woke up in the morning but I had been invited, honest! Sleepy boy strikes again!
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Where to Start?!
Wow, it's been a hell of a long time since I wrote an update! A hell of a lot has happened and I'm not to sure how coherently I can communicate, and not sure what to actually put out there to the public as well. Here goes nothing...
So I left you with a hangover in Kuala Lumpur, suffering from servere liver abuse. Well that night I went back to the rooftop bar to finish off Jack, my theory being once Jack was finished I would try and catch the last bus to the airport. FAIL. I ended up getting smashed with Chris again and hailing a taxi, wasted off my cake at 4am in Chinatown and sleeping all the way to the airport. Those who have been to LCCT in KL will appreciate this is not the type of place to be halfway between drunk and hungover and I was a mess, slept all the way on the plane, had to get woken up by the steward (is this the politically correct term for them nowadays?) and got a well dodgy look off immigration in Cambodia with Jack on my breath getting my visa!
I've missed Cambodia, it's a healthy dose of crazy after so much realtive normality in Malaysia! As soon as I stepped out of the airport I felt my shoulders drop, my smile broaden and my eyes widen, the warmth, the tuk-tuk drivers hassling me, the car horns, all of this happens in Malaysia as well but in Cambodia it just feels more nuts, more intense and more Asian! So the first disaster of my trip within a trip happened when I got to my guesthouse, the handle on my bag broke! When I came travelling I made a concious decision to not have a backpack, a lot of the tattoos I want are going on my back and I have the studs in my back so I just don't think a backpack would work so I had a holdall on wheels but the pulling handle just snapped off. My most faithful travelling companion died and I had to bite the bullet and invest in a backpack. I wasn't impressed with where I was staying either, Top Banana Phnom Penh. When I stayed there a couple of years back on a very strong recommendation it was a proper chilled place playing the Stones and The Who and it was a load of hippies getting stoned and chatting, now it's all trendy dance music, flashpackers drinking cocktails and a bit too 'let's be really cool' for me. Cool should be effortless, the place had changed and I found this with everywhere I went back to in Cambodia.
After a couple of days chilling and wandering aimlessly around Phnom Penh (a great city for this, hard to get lost because the streets are all logically numbered, even if the houses on the street aren't) and then I got the bus to Kep. Hands down one of the worst bus journeys of my life. I was told the trip would be about four hours but I always take timings with a pinch of salt, 7 and half hours I was not expecting! First off, the air con leaked, all over me. And a few other people but it leaked on me! It was like Chinese water torture until the local girl sitting next to me had a genuis idea to bodge together a water catching thingy from a plastic bag and pure ingenuity. The journey was bumpy, crazy over taking, loud as fuck Khmer karaoke on the TV, locals demanding random toilet breaks but this is all par for the course. However, when the bus started to skid going round the corner and things felt a little out of control I panicked a little. Rightly so, when we came to a stop we all got off and the rear axel had snapped and the tire had blown out, we were lucky the bus was still upright and on the road! Loads of people started hitching lifts but as this was my first really disasterous bus journey I decided to stick it out and see what happened! Another bus turned up about 2 hours later half empty so those who had stayed jumped on and made it to Kep.
Kep is cute, small, quaint, full of locals... What I like in towns I go to and the added bonus of a beach! The first morning I went to some salt plains (pretty boring but a nice journey), a pepper plantation which was pretty interesting (the pepper industry was massive in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge pretty much wiped it out, it's slowly growing again now) and to some cave temples. These temples were the highlight, our guide was a 15 year old school kid with really good English and good local knowledge. The caves have some amazing shapes with them and after years of cloud gazing I'm pretty good at spotting random animals and shapes in the formations! The thing that touched me most was a shelf covered in Buddha heads. The Khmer Rouge wanted to wipe out religion, among many other things, so destroyed so many Buddha images and temples, so after their downfall the locals collected any remnants they could and stored them at these caves. Behind the shelf was a chamber where it is estimated over 200 locals and Vietnamese were slaughtered, including the uncle of our guide because he could say a few words in English. Heartbreaking.
After a day or two bumming about on the beach I went west down the coast to Sihanoukville. Not going to say too much about this place, except that it's been destroyed by arsehole holiday makers who just want to get drunk in 'exotic' and 'dangerous' places. Quote from a backpacker 'so who were these Khmer Rouge dudes then?', she hadn't even bothered to read and absorb the Lonely Planet chapter on local history which to me is just plain ignorant. So many people like this in Sihanoukville, it felt like Khao San Road-by-the-sea and not in a good way. Last time I was there there was a chilled hippy vibe, not so now. The only positive thing about this place is the phenomenal tattooist who did my lotus flower last time and did a fantastic job of my Rafflesia this time.
Back to Phnom Penh where for reasons that need not be disclosed I holed myself up in a hotel room and sought solace in my friends, back home and those I've met on the road. I sorted my head out enough to move places (after realising I had got my flight dates wrong by a week!) so I head to Kratie which really made my trip. I met a girl on the bus who had stayed at Daniel's Lodge when I was working there and forgave me for not recognising her and we shared a room in Kratie and generally hung out. Dolphin spotting on the Mekong River is a highlight of my life, let alone this trip! They would surface and exhale through the blow hole like a 'pffft', as if to say 'for god's sake, we're here, take your pictures, we're only having a play in the river'. It was so beautiful to see them in their natural habitat, it's a massive conservation project as they are the last species of fresh water dolphins (Irrawaddy Dolphins, FYI) left in the world, they don't feed them to encourage them to the site and most of the boat men used to do grenade fishing and other harmful things before they got on board with the project. Amazing day topped off by a beautiful Mekong sunset eating barbecued pork by the river. My faith was once again restored in Cambodia.
So there we are, my whistle stop trip around Cambodia in a quick blog... Nearly up to date so I'll leave my return to Malaysia for next time. Cambodia is still the place I want to spend my life, after I go to Aus to fund the plans me and my friends have developed. The people are amazing, every person over the age of about 30 is a hero to me, they obviously went through so much and they have just picked up their lives and got on with it. No one really dwells on the horrors that happened and I think that is amazing, they believe that anyone who was truly bad will get their karma in the next life. A beautiful attitude and a massive contrast to the Western attitude to genocide that I found in the concentration camps I've visited in Europe.
Cambodia, I love you and I will be back... But let's pretend Sihanoukville doesn't exist, hey?
So I left you with a hangover in Kuala Lumpur, suffering from servere liver abuse. Well that night I went back to the rooftop bar to finish off Jack, my theory being once Jack was finished I would try and catch the last bus to the airport. FAIL. I ended up getting smashed with Chris again and hailing a taxi, wasted off my cake at 4am in Chinatown and sleeping all the way to the airport. Those who have been to LCCT in KL will appreciate this is not the type of place to be halfway between drunk and hungover and I was a mess, slept all the way on the plane, had to get woken up by the steward (is this the politically correct term for them nowadays?) and got a well dodgy look off immigration in Cambodia with Jack on my breath getting my visa!
I've missed Cambodia, it's a healthy dose of crazy after so much realtive normality in Malaysia! As soon as I stepped out of the airport I felt my shoulders drop, my smile broaden and my eyes widen, the warmth, the tuk-tuk drivers hassling me, the car horns, all of this happens in Malaysia as well but in Cambodia it just feels more nuts, more intense and more Asian! So the first disaster of my trip within a trip happened when I got to my guesthouse, the handle on my bag broke! When I came travelling I made a concious decision to not have a backpack, a lot of the tattoos I want are going on my back and I have the studs in my back so I just don't think a backpack would work so I had a holdall on wheels but the pulling handle just snapped off. My most faithful travelling companion died and I had to bite the bullet and invest in a backpack. I wasn't impressed with where I was staying either, Top Banana Phnom Penh. When I stayed there a couple of years back on a very strong recommendation it was a proper chilled place playing the Stones and The Who and it was a load of hippies getting stoned and chatting, now it's all trendy dance music, flashpackers drinking cocktails and a bit too 'let's be really cool' for me. Cool should be effortless, the place had changed and I found this with everywhere I went back to in Cambodia.
After a couple of days chilling and wandering aimlessly around Phnom Penh (a great city for this, hard to get lost because the streets are all logically numbered, even if the houses on the street aren't) and then I got the bus to Kep. Hands down one of the worst bus journeys of my life. I was told the trip would be about four hours but I always take timings with a pinch of salt, 7 and half hours I was not expecting! First off, the air con leaked, all over me. And a few other people but it leaked on me! It was like Chinese water torture until the local girl sitting next to me had a genuis idea to bodge together a water catching thingy from a plastic bag and pure ingenuity. The journey was bumpy, crazy over taking, loud as fuck Khmer karaoke on the TV, locals demanding random toilet breaks but this is all par for the course. However, when the bus started to skid going round the corner and things felt a little out of control I panicked a little. Rightly so, when we came to a stop we all got off and the rear axel had snapped and the tire had blown out, we were lucky the bus was still upright and on the road! Loads of people started hitching lifts but as this was my first really disasterous bus journey I decided to stick it out and see what happened! Another bus turned up about 2 hours later half empty so those who had stayed jumped on and made it to Kep.
Kep is cute, small, quaint, full of locals... What I like in towns I go to and the added bonus of a beach! The first morning I went to some salt plains (pretty boring but a nice journey), a pepper plantation which was pretty interesting (the pepper industry was massive in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge pretty much wiped it out, it's slowly growing again now) and to some cave temples. These temples were the highlight, our guide was a 15 year old school kid with really good English and good local knowledge. The caves have some amazing shapes with them and after years of cloud gazing I'm pretty good at spotting random animals and shapes in the formations! The thing that touched me most was a shelf covered in Buddha heads. The Khmer Rouge wanted to wipe out religion, among many other things, so destroyed so many Buddha images and temples, so after their downfall the locals collected any remnants they could and stored them at these caves. Behind the shelf was a chamber where it is estimated over 200 locals and Vietnamese were slaughtered, including the uncle of our guide because he could say a few words in English. Heartbreaking.
After a day or two bumming about on the beach I went west down the coast to Sihanoukville. Not going to say too much about this place, except that it's been destroyed by arsehole holiday makers who just want to get drunk in 'exotic' and 'dangerous' places. Quote from a backpacker 'so who were these Khmer Rouge dudes then?', she hadn't even bothered to read and absorb the Lonely Planet chapter on local history which to me is just plain ignorant. So many people like this in Sihanoukville, it felt like Khao San Road-by-the-sea and not in a good way. Last time I was there there was a chilled hippy vibe, not so now. The only positive thing about this place is the phenomenal tattooist who did my lotus flower last time and did a fantastic job of my Rafflesia this time.
Back to Phnom Penh where for reasons that need not be disclosed I holed myself up in a hotel room and sought solace in my friends, back home and those I've met on the road. I sorted my head out enough to move places (after realising I had got my flight dates wrong by a week!) so I head to Kratie which really made my trip. I met a girl on the bus who had stayed at Daniel's Lodge when I was working there and forgave me for not recognising her and we shared a room in Kratie and generally hung out. Dolphin spotting on the Mekong River is a highlight of my life, let alone this trip! They would surface and exhale through the blow hole like a 'pffft', as if to say 'for god's sake, we're here, take your pictures, we're only having a play in the river'. It was so beautiful to see them in their natural habitat, it's a massive conservation project as they are the last species of fresh water dolphins (Irrawaddy Dolphins, FYI) left in the world, they don't feed them to encourage them to the site and most of the boat men used to do grenade fishing and other harmful things before they got on board with the project. Amazing day topped off by a beautiful Mekong sunset eating barbecued pork by the river. My faith was once again restored in Cambodia.
So there we are, my whistle stop trip around Cambodia in a quick blog... Nearly up to date so I'll leave my return to Malaysia for next time. Cambodia is still the place I want to spend my life, after I go to Aus to fund the plans me and my friends have developed. The people are amazing, every person over the age of about 30 is a hero to me, they obviously went through so much and they have just picked up their lives and got on with it. No one really dwells on the horrors that happened and I think that is amazing, they believe that anyone who was truly bad will get their karma in the next life. A beautiful attitude and a massive contrast to the Western attitude to genocide that I found in the concentration camps I've visited in Europe.
Cambodia, I love you and I will be back... But let's pretend Sihanoukville doesn't exist, hey?
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Jack and Stanley, How I've Missed Thee...
After a night in Penang and indulging in some amazing food (the best food in Malaysia by far, maybe even in Asia?) I got the ferry to Langkawi, a tropical, duty free island. This equated to more sun and alcohol than I had in months! I was going to spend New Years Eve here and have a great time whether my liver liked it or not.
I treated my time here like a holiday, I think I had about 10 days off work in the four and a half months I was in Cameron so I bloody deserved it. I decided not to be a tourist so no sight seeing, just beach and beer for a week. Met some great people in the hostel, everyone was there purposely for new year and were up for a party and we were a rather international crowd, Americans, Scots, Welsh, Hungarian, Dutch, Irish, the usual suspects of the travelling community minus the token Aussie which was strange, and I class Hungarians as 'the usual suspects' because you always have to have a random nationality in any group!
The drinking here was ridiculously cheap, a litre of Morgan's Spiced, Jack, Absolut, any decent spirit you could think of for a tenner or less. I can't think of anywhere in the world drink is this cheap when it's not knock off. After a few days of bumming about on the beach my tan was developing nicely, I'd nearly returned to my UK colour after so long in Cameron so to get the sun on my shoulders was pretty amazing! I won't bore you with drunken stories, but New Years Eve was pretty special. A load of people from the hostel went to the beach to watch the last sunset of the new year, armed with copious amounts of alcohol including some bottles of sparking wine for midnight, how very posh! We sat on the beach and attracted an ever increasing and diverse group of people and every hour we would toast to midnight somewhere else in the world until it was our turn. People were launching Chinese lanterns on the beach and the sky was full of them by midnight which looked beautiful and there were fireworks aplenty, this being Asia and all...
We counted down and popped our corks and went into the sea for midnight which was so cool. Last year I was dancing up and down Harebell Street in Liverpool, freezing my tits off with a car burning across the road and one year on I was on a tropical island with people I'd know for only a few days. Amazing. I tried to make it to sunrise but alas, it started raining and me and the Welsh girl I was with had attracted the attention of some locals who I wasn't getting a good vibe off so we went home about 7am after a great night on Pantai Cenang. A great way to see in the new year.
On the 3rd I hightailed it to KL and the journey was horrible, 7.45am I left my hostel, only arriving in KL and 9pm. After that nastiness I went straight up to the Rooftop Bar at Backpackers Travellers Inn, armed with a bottle of Jack and a desire to get it drunk before I left for Cambodia. I got absolutely twatted with the bar owner, Chris, and woke up in the dorm, on a top bunk (I wish there was a video of me climbing up there, the state I was in!) and seemed to be using my computer as a pillow. Good times...
I treated my time here like a holiday, I think I had about 10 days off work in the four and a half months I was in Cameron so I bloody deserved it. I decided not to be a tourist so no sight seeing, just beach and beer for a week. Met some great people in the hostel, everyone was there purposely for new year and were up for a party and we were a rather international crowd, Americans, Scots, Welsh, Hungarian, Dutch, Irish, the usual suspects of the travelling community minus the token Aussie which was strange, and I class Hungarians as 'the usual suspects' because you always have to have a random nationality in any group!
The drinking here was ridiculously cheap, a litre of Morgan's Spiced, Jack, Absolut, any decent spirit you could think of for a tenner or less. I can't think of anywhere in the world drink is this cheap when it's not knock off. After a few days of bumming about on the beach my tan was developing nicely, I'd nearly returned to my UK colour after so long in Cameron so to get the sun on my shoulders was pretty amazing! I won't bore you with drunken stories, but New Years Eve was pretty special. A load of people from the hostel went to the beach to watch the last sunset of the new year, armed with copious amounts of alcohol including some bottles of sparking wine for midnight, how very posh! We sat on the beach and attracted an ever increasing and diverse group of people and every hour we would toast to midnight somewhere else in the world until it was our turn. People were launching Chinese lanterns on the beach and the sky was full of them by midnight which looked beautiful and there were fireworks aplenty, this being Asia and all...
We counted down and popped our corks and went into the sea for midnight which was so cool. Last year I was dancing up and down Harebell Street in Liverpool, freezing my tits off with a car burning across the road and one year on I was on a tropical island with people I'd know for only a few days. Amazing. I tried to make it to sunrise but alas, it started raining and me and the Welsh girl I was with had attracted the attention of some locals who I wasn't getting a good vibe off so we went home about 7am after a great night on Pantai Cenang. A great way to see in the new year.
On the 3rd I hightailed it to KL and the journey was horrible, 7.45am I left my hostel, only arriving in KL and 9pm. After that nastiness I went straight up to the Rooftop Bar at Backpackers Travellers Inn, armed with a bottle of Jack and a desire to get it drunk before I left for Cambodia. I got absolutely twatted with the bar owner, Chris, and woke up in the dorm, on a top bunk (I wish there was a video of me climbing up there, the state I was in!) and seemed to be using my computer as a pillow. Good times...
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