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?
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