Despite us regularly being reminded on our trip that Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, it was actually one of the most expensive we visited with accommodation costs reaching a dazzling (I hope you’re sitting down) $8 each a night! But is not poor in all aspects, in fact, if ants were legal tender Cambodia would be a world economic superpower! There’d be Cambodians buying up mansions in Kensington left, right and centre, moving in four generations of their family, with photocopies of the Lonely Planet blowing everywhere in the London breeze. Its also incredibly hot, I got my first ever dose of heatstroke and had to buy a little communist hat to cover the patches of my head where once instead of anxiety, hair grew.
Anyway in this post I wanted to introduce you to some of the people we met in Cambodia. While I’d say it wasn’t either of our favourite countries, I did have the best conversations here. I think that’s because speaking English in Cambodia is the fastest way to jump out of poverty, there’s little economy beyond tourism unlike in countries like Vietnam or China with economies not dependent on Tourism. So Cambodians speak very good English and it was great to be able to interact more with the people we met, travellers are obsessed with finding the “real” people or places within a country. In reality if you can’t talk to the people you meet there and find out their story then whats the point? That wasn’t a problem in Cambodia and I was fortunate enough to spend the day with this guy:
Onon. He was my guide for the day around Battambang for which he earned with tip and after gas about $6, not a bad days wage. He’s 27, the oldest of six children who all live together with his parents in a village outside of Battambang. He spoke the best English of almost anybody non-European we met, because he studied it for two hours every morning at College. This along with the brand new scooter we spent the day riding, was paid for by an Englishman who he called his Godfather. He said that a few years back he had taken this man out for the day as he and his friend did for me and Annett. They bonded, which I didn’t find hard to imagine as we both spent the whole day laughing and playing around, Onon was really good fun. He said that before he met this man he didn’t really like his life, but that after the tour they stayed in touch the man who works as an English teacher in France set him up with an email address, and started to pay for him to study English and brought him this moped so he could go out and earn money for his family. As the eldest son he is party responsible to help feed his brothers and sisters. Now he said he can make decent money and he really enjoys his life.
He also told me lots of interesting things about Cambodian life:
Sex before marriage is still heavily frowned upon, with 60% of people still virgins until Marriage. After discussing it he seemed in favour of the the rather more liberal European system so that he could change girlfriend every few years and see what he liked, in Cambodia he gets only one choice and if he makes the wrong one he’s stuck (divorce is heavily frowned upon, as it brings shame to the family and is extremely expensive).
They have devised a brilliant system for stopping unwanted pregnancies and casual sex - once you’ve had sex with a woman you’re obliged to marry her. If not she can go to the police and report you. It doesn’t matter that it was consensual, now that you’ve sampled the product you are obliged to purchase marry it.
Wait, you must be joking right? Nope, whats the alternative?
Prison.
3 years of prison or a hefty bribe (Cambodia is totally corrupt, they don’t even have roads apparently because the airlines bribed the government not to build them so tourists have to fly between the major cities or take the pain of gruelling bumpy 10hr+ car rides). So I asked him what happens if the woman sees a man she wants to marry, but gets rejected because God made only the smallest deposit into her personality bank. He said she can just go the police and say they had sex and he is refusing to marry her. There is no way to prove or not that they did or didn’t have sex (they won’t do a physical check or anything), so they just assume they did have sex and the guy is screwed (regardless of whether or not he was the first time), with a prison sentence, marriage (some would say there’s little difference) or a hefty bribe (part of which the woman gets as well apparently, adding a nice extortion business opportunity angle for the Cambodian fairer sex).
This does happen apparently, women can trap men they want to marry and there’s not much they can do to get out of it. Not the best start to your married life I imagine, but skips all that unpleasant period of early happiness and jumps you nicely on to the bad times. Might cause a few problems at dinner parties:
Friend: So how did you too meet?
Wife: Ah that’s an interesting story isn’t it honey! I went to the police and pretended that we’d had sex and that he didn’t want to marry me. So the police arrested him, beat him up a bit, tried to bribe him but found out he had no money. Anyway, eventually they convinced him that it would be best for everybody if we just got married. He thought he was probably too pretty for prison and so eventually he relented and agreed to marry me didn’t you sweety?
Husband: (mumbling) I’m going to kill you in your sleep.
Friend: Ah, what a cute story you guys are adorable together.
are we. Yep we’ve arrived after a gruelling three stage flight, and 48hrs without anything more than a stolen moment or two of sleep. Aucklands nice, very very clean or that could be just after Asia, the whole city feels like a dentists surgery.
Its strange to be back in civilization. The real worlds sobering after Asia. Asia is so absurd, so mental that its hard to summarize, you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to be entertained, as Steve said last night “I like it ‘cos you don’t have to go anywhere to see a freak show, you can just sit outside and be entertained for hours and hours”. Now we’re doing normal people things like flat hunting (saw 6 or 7 today) and job hunting (applied to 6 or 7 today). The good news is that Steve and Bron (our hosts) have said that employment amongst skilled people is 0%, that employment agencies don’t even advertise jobs anymore as theres no-one to fill them, this place is suffering from serious brain drain as most people have run off to Australia or Europe. Neither of their jobs were ever advertised, the agencies just know people in the companies and when a good person comes along the CVs get sent in and hey presto, a job appears. So employment prospects look good, and hopefully a small or non-existent pay drop. Living wise its pretty cheap, more expensive than Leipzig, but some parts of Asia were more expensive than Leipzig, that place is in a special little bubble all of its own. Way cheaper than England though, and you can live on works doorstep in some real nice apartments with views out onto the harbour.
I guess thats about it, not much else to report because everything here is sort of like it is back in England, only nicer, so there isn’t that much to say about it. I guess I’ll be better at picker up the subtle differences in a few days when we get out of the whirl of flat and job hunting, can get down to enjoying our new home and I can get out of my overdraft
This is quite a serious post because I’m hungry and we’ve been running round the city all day. More interesting stuff to come later.
Asia’s old news, I mean who wants to live in a part of the world where its always sunny, there are empty beaches, you can rent a hotel room, buy three meals and alcohol a day, get a “special” massage and a tuk tuk home all for $20. Rubbish!
So we’ve made a decision, we’re going to emigrate for a year to New Zealand, Auckland to be more exact. Why New Zealand you might ask? Well we’ve researched extensively all the countries of the world and created a list of what we know and like about each country. Perhaps if I share with you, all we know about New Zealand you will understand why it was a clear winner in our minds.
Its not one, but two islands!
Its really far away.
I have a friend there, an old buddy from Microsoft.
Crowded House came from there.
Its not next to Indonesia (I know this because I thought it was, I was then disappointed when I couldn’t find a boat or some kind of asian channel tunnel across from Jakarta).
Need I go on? Yes? Hum, that would be tricky as thats all we know at this point. Armed with such rich detailed knowledge the following happened:
Adam: I’ll mail steve check about rent prices, unemployment, serial killers per capita.
(Steve replies - cheap, low, always room for one more)
Adam: Well I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about the place, so its a yes from me. How about you?
Annett: Yeah okay, lets give it a try. You can apply for a years visa online, pass me my credit card.
(48hrs later)
Annett: Woohoo my visa came through. You have to go online log in and check.
Adam: Oh wow that was quick (checking), oh I have mine too. So it looks like we’re moving to New Zealand then huh?
Annett: Yep seems that way.
Adam: You sure about this?
Annett: Nope. You?
Adam: Nope, but I’m sure it will work itself out, I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about that place and I mean Crowded House came from there right? How bad can it be. I’ll find us a flight
(an hour passes)
Adam: Okay theres one leaving on Sunday from Bangkok, ultra long, ultra cheap.
Annett: Okay lets take it.
Another extensively researched plan comes to fruition. We fly in 24hrs.
If New Zealands reading this we arrive on Tuesday, leave the door on the latch and hoover the red carpet.
I have a ton of posts that I keep meaning to write, but time escapes me. I’ve just spent the last 3hrs naming and sorting the photos from the trip so far. If you’ve been looking through going “thats nice, what is it” you can now look through and go “now i know what it is, its boring” and “why the hell did he take 17 photos of the same thing?”.
The end of the Vietnam had my favorite moments of the trip so far (Cu Chi tunnels and the Mekong Delta), the Mekong Delta turned out to be photo gold. Now I have photo folders and stuff you can jump directly to just those if you like:
Sihanoukville, Southern Cambodia. A beach town about 4.5hrs south of the capital Phnom Penh.
What am I doing?
As little as possible.
Why don’t I reply to mails?
The internet here SUCKS……..It takes me 45mins just to check my commissions during which the internet dies 3 or 4 times and I slip into the fringes of insanity. Theres usually also a naked Cambodian child running around singing and dancing next to my ear, barking dogs, no usb, broken mouses, disabled copy and pastes, blocked skype or all of the above.
New plan might be to buy a laptop so I can actually get some work done as quite a few hotels and wifi. Also we’re thinking more and more about what to do after the trip which means preparing- cv’s, applications, job hunts (at least for Annett, I’m still not sure if I want to be employed) and other boring work tasks that usually end up taking priority.
But I’ll catchup eventually and can find out from you whats happening in the real world
When you’re in an amusement Park, you, like me, probably often fantasize about rounding up the parks fellow visitors and drowning them in the Log Flume. Having an Amusement park to just you is a futile little, adrenaline filled dream though right? Nope, not if you fly the oh so short hop and skip over to Nha Trang, Vietnam, nestled firmly up in the backside of nowhere. There you can find Vinpearl Land an amusement park on its own island, think Tracy Island minus the strings. Like we did you’ll probably find that once you do have the whole place to yourself and you’re free to wander and explore the rides, waterpark and arcades where everything is set to freeplay and the only downside is that you have to hit your imaginary friends on the dodgems you can have a lot of fun.
Oh no actually it was six monkeys, all in Halong Bay on a little island. Not only were there six monkeys sitting in the trees staring at us in our kayak with a look of complete indifference. I felt like shaking my opposable thumbs in an extravagant display of my genetic evolutionary superiority over their little monkey asses, but then I decided these monkeys were just too cool for school, so I let them off with a warning.
Even better the six included two Baby Monkeys! Baby Monkeys are the Monkey equivalent of a 8 letter Triple Word Score.
I also saw a Monkey in the street here in Nha Trang with a chain round its neck in a shop window, but that made me sad so I’m going to forget about it and put it in my mental recycle bin. Sick Monkey abusing bastards.
2 weeks no posts huh? Time flies when you’re having funoodpoisioning, yep I got struck down, way down again from a dodgy mexican pizza that rendered me useless on the bathroom floor for 48hrs or so. But its okay, I’m sort of getting used to it and I have Annett to nurse me. Her nurse skills are a little one dimensional though, limited purely to saying “maybe you should eat a banana” every 5 minutes (she read somewhere about bananas being good for the stomach) even while I’m incapable of not throwing up water. Banana’s are her one size fits all get well cure. If my leg fell off she’d rush up bananas in hand, mashing them into the wound and covering, waiting patiently for the miracle fruit to help sprout me a new limb. For someone so anti-marriage she’d manage an excellent “old wife” of the “old wives tale” fame, she collects them like trophies “you should drink at least 12 liters of water a day” “you should never drink water when eating hot foods, it only makes it worse” “I’ve read that you shouldn’t walk and eat, it puts un-necessary strain on your stomach” “you should sleep at least 16hrs a day” etc etc, the conclusion being that we’d have all been better off staying back in the safety of the womb. Anyway enough of me poking fun at my lovable, and long suffering german comrade. What else have we been up to?
- Well we’re in Vietnam now. Its pretty nice, and pretty pretty, I guess. That sentence sums up my sum what lukewarm reaction to it. We’re trying to keep open minds, we’ve heard so many bad stories about Vietnam, but so far, touch wood, not to tempt fate, throw salt over my shoulder, hang a horseshoe round my neck its been a-okay. The Vietnamese really like to haggle, their good in the deal and whipsmart when it comes to taking money off tourists. You have to be really on your game, but its cheap here so even if you get the bad end of a deal it will only cost ya a $ or 2, so its no biggie.
- We’ve been to moped haven Hanoi, the royal tombs of Hue and now we’re at the Beach and ancient architecture home of Hoi An.
- We took a 3 day cruise to Halong Bay, Vietnam’s premier attraction. Halong bay is hundreds of beautiful small islands off the northern coast. This was are first organized excursion, so we were a little concerned. We went for the most expensive and highest rated agent handspan. The trip turned out to be a real beauty. I was apprehensive on the way there as the bus seemed to be full largely of homosexuals and germans, neither of which I am and I thought I might be a trip outsider. But on arrival we split into two (figuratively) and boarded a cracking boat (photos on flickr soon). Homosexuals and Germans only have limited time it seems as they were all on the 2 day cruise, leaving just 7 of us with the whole boat to ourselves for the rest of the cruise which consisted of……cruising (shock, shock horror), exploring caves, swimming, kayaking, eating and drinking a lot, lounging on the sun deck, going to Cat Ba island and staying in the best hotel I’ve ever been to with its own private beach, and travel to and from Hanoi (7hrs total) for $170, expensive by Vietnamese standards, laughable by ours. With us was an American couple, an American girl traveling alone, and a couple from Switzerland (the german speaking part). They all turned out to be very nice, bar the American man who drove me mental as he kept trying to give me advice the whole time. Anyone who knows me well will know just how little I like advice, I get angry if someone even tells me the genre of the movie we’re about to watch. Its my way or the highway. This guy was pulling out maps and showing us exactly where the bus would drop us in hypothetical future cities we may or may not visit later down the coast and all in this american deadpan style
“Well the bus is going to drop you about here. Most of the action is around here. We stayed here, you don’t have too but it was a very nice hotel, you know you can always bargain with the hotels, or I have a good tip for you, ask how much the price is without breakfast. We’ve saved a lot of money that way, and you can always get a better breakfast for your money.”
I’ve got a tip for you, shut up.
3 days of this started to grate. My favourite being the last day during the breakfast buffet at the hotel on Cat Ba Island. Here he had the audacity to reccomend something he’d seen a girl do, which was to
“take some bread, take some cheese, take some ham and made a, sandwich! Now thats smart!”
He’s recommending making a sandwich to the English! Unbelievable, we’re the Olympians of the Sandwich. Its like recommending that Eskimos look under the ice to find fish, or advising the Americans how to get fat (he was very fat, something working to his advantage in Vietnam. He said everywhere he goes people shout “happy budda” at him and come and pat his belly (for luck)).
The American girl travelling alone was having the most ambigious trip you can imagine. She didn’t know where she was going to visit, how long she was going for, everything was just “until the money runs out”. If that happens too soon she was going to revert to the traveller fail safe - teaching english.
Call me an asshole, but I do chuckle sometimes when I hear Americans talking about teaching English. Despite my inability to spell or punctuate I am proud to speak “the Queens English”. Americans speak diet, sugar free, no added fat, melts in your mouth not in your hand, frickin’ how y’all doin’ American English. Here’s what I imagine learning English, American style looks like
Day 1 - The Basics
Gutterball, Super Size, Data and Aluminum, Have a nice day etc etc
Days 2-5 - Like Etiquette.
When is the appropriate time to use the word like. Like Americans like really like using the word like. You may have noticed.
Day 6 - Turkey dinner, Prom, finish.
Okay thats horribly stereotypical and I’m a big American culture junkie but there you go. I would make a terrible English teacher and I don’t pretend otherwise.
- We’ve both gotten very unsettled. Usually people do this type of trip as a break from real life, you know its a break and things will return to normal when you get back. For us there is no back to return to, as there is no home as such. I’m an English quasi German suffering a serious dose of nationality crisis. Annett’s as German as Wurst but has lived in the same city basically all her life and has no plans to return there,and wage wise its probably more lucrative to work outside of Germany and translate into German. So we don’t know even which country, no actually which continent we’ll move to next assuming we don’t kill one another in our sleep first (naturally we’re spending an unhealthy amount of time together on the trip). The more time we spend in Asia the less sense it seems to me to return to Europe. Its so cheap out here, the coupon sites already make enough to live and I haven’t spent one minute on them in the past fortnight. If I spent some real time on them I think I could live very comfortably on 2hrs of work a day. Annett could easily be a freelance translator or English, German or Spanish teacher (she has a staggeringly huge knowledge of how languages work, I think she’d be excellent at this, especially if she can acquire that little thing called patience). So the trip feels like it’s sort of turned into more of a future place to live reconnaissance rather than just bumming around. Things might change but thats the current thinking. I’d be okay with settling down now somewhere here and then exploring Asia slowly from a local base (I guess Thailand makes the most sense), as after a while its harder to appreciate the beauty of a beach, temple, night market, museum each time you see one (nearly every day). I don’t want to lose my wonder for the sights and sounds, or for them to all blur into one and you just can’t get under the skin of a place like when you live there for a few months. So lets see if we can find somewhere to match the charms of East Germany.
Lots more happened, but I wrote tons already and I’ve been rambling for paragraphs now, so i’ll stop. I guess it lunchtime where you are now, so may I reccomend you
“Take some bread, take some cheese, take some ham and put them together to make a sandwich”.
Sitting here could be relaxing, but instead I’m forced to listen to a full moon beach party on the next island. The English music you hear when traveling is passport burning worthy.
Sometimes the obscurity of the staggeringly bad 80’s song flaws you and you have to laugh, if only to stop your ears crying. I think maybe in the same way that we used to banish criminals to Australia, we now forceably export all the copies of the shittiest music we’ve ever produced to be played in beach bars in places like Laos. There they are left to slowly die without the dignity they never deserved. More worrying their played here to attract people. I though in the same way I cover myself in Mosquito repellent, bands like Wham could only be described as people repellent! Or maybe they know that hearing “Give me hope Joanna..hope Joanna” will drive you to drink. Bob Marley would turn in his grave he knew how his muscial legacy was being tarnished by beach bars, they are Marley crazy here.
Hmm I’ve wondered off the point.
Ah yes no rules. So here in Vang Vieng the most touristy town in Vientiane you can see the effect of these non-rules everywhere. Sorrounded by beautiful moutains, caves, rivers and lush green terrain its perfect for tourism and its arrived with a thud. The main past time here is tubing - floating down the river on giant tractor wheel inner tubes. Along the way all the riverbanks are filled with ramshackle bars, all the bars are filled with (usually) english men, who are all filled with alcohol, filling me with nothing but concern.
Theres no building regulations, no planning permissions, no health and safety requirements. So as long as you can buy, steal or claim ownership over a piece of land you can build whatever you want. All the bars are wooden, look like they were built in the dark, possibly by the intoxicated English men who now reside in them. They’ll cram a bar in anywhere. If theres a bridge crossing the river (wooden) then they’ll build a tiny mini bar coming off the middle of the bridge in the center of the river. This will consist of two or three slats of wood where a boy will sit and hand out beers to the people floating by saving them the huge inconvenience of trip to the bank. Most of the bars are so badly constructed you’d be more likely to get a splinter than a beer. Floating down the river in my kayak yesterday, you have to wonder about the effect of tourism on beautiful natural places like Vang Vieng.
But on the positive side people at least here are at least getting out of poverty, something that still threatens a great number of people here. Laos is also not Thailand, if you stop outside of the 5 or 6 biggest towns you’ll find no Guesthouse or Restaurant as no one could afford to use them.
So things like Tolls spring up all over the show on bridges & at the entrance to caves as the guide book says “everyones out to make a buck in Vang Vieng”. All you have to do is show somehow that you are providing an invaluable maintenance to the public for said attraction or service and you can start charging people for using it. In some cases like the cave we went to today that invaluable maintenance needs to be nothing more than planting some flags in the ground that guide people from the main path (tourists that get lost are harder to toll, you see).
Sportsmanship/Social Responsibility/Fair Play/Class - I’m struggling to find the right word for this trait lacking slightly in Laos culture, and often in people back home. You know the people I’m talking about they steal your parking space as you starting your reverse, they lend you money in Monopoly when they’re clearly going to beat you, just to stop you going bankrupt before they’ve extracted all the possible fun from their long drawn out victory. In Laos, anything is fair game. So if theres one successful fruit shake business, don’t be suprised if someone else opens up an indentical one next door. In Vientiane there were three Internet Cafes next door to each other, the second and third clones of the first maybe one is “fast net”, the second “faster net and the third “superfast net”. They actively fight to do each other out of business rather than just moving a street away. I expect a Lao fight is a nice fight, big smiles, friendly handshakes, complete copying of each others moves ending with a tuk tuk ride to the hospital.
At the moment we’re in Luang Prabang working out what to do next, its looking like heading north jumping right to Vietnam, heading south, jumping left to Cambodia and left again to Thailand describing it like that makes our trip sound like a big version of Dance Dance Revolution but there you go. Now I’m going to go wander around some sacred templey stuff and have dinner.
I might do some more this is where we’ve been, this is what we’ve done, ooh isnt everything pretty, this is where we’re going next, look at our hotel type stuff later as at the moment the posts are so sporadic its probably making no sense and unless I write it all down i’ll probably forget it.
