Zelma’s Trip

On the Thursday I was actually feeling much better.  And who said McDonalds isn’t good for you?  I got some breakfast, they do great fruit with yoghurt and muesli at the street stalls, and wandered around a few shops.  There are a lot of street stalls here selling weird and wonderful fare.  There’s the expected food, clothes and souvenir stalls and also some stalls with truly strange things like lighters the size of a small child.  There are also tribal women who sell hats, jewellery and these wooden frogs which, when you move a small piece of wood along their backs, make this sound like a toad.  At first they are quite sweet but after a few days the sound drives you mad.  It’s one of those sounds which you’re never quite sure whether you’re actually hearing or whether it has driven you that mad that it’s in your head.  Well, that or it is an actual toad!

One of the things I wanted to do in Bangkok was get some clothes and shoes made.  I went into one tailor and spent ages looking through pictures and materials.  I felt kind of obliged to look at at least one other in order to suss out the competition but, having had half the tailors in Bangkok try and imprison me in their premises whilst offering me lower and lower prices (to the extent that I wondered whether the prices quoted were actually for dolls clothes), I actually returned to the first tailor I went to.  Prior to this, when I was wandering around near Khao San Road I heard someone say my name and it was Renee, a guy from Holland who I met in Vang Viang, Laos.  It was cool to see him again and we went for a drink in a local cafe.  When we met in Vang Viang I had a really long chat to him and it transpired that he thought he was immune from hangovers.  When probed further it transpired that the immunity wasn’t so much immunity but lack of sobriety for long enough for anything resembling a hangover to take effect.  I offered him some advice about the best fruit juices etc to cleanse the system and suggested he have some time not drinking and actually eating.  It’s amazing how good I am at giving advice whilst drinking a bucket full of gin and tonic!  I did apologise for the irony on more than one occasion.  Anyway, the point of telling you this is that when I met him at the bowling alley in Luang Phabang he bounced up to me and was really excited to tell me that he had not had a drink for several days, had tried the juices I suggested and felt really good.  Then, when I met him here in Bangkok he said that he had been telling loads of people about the and I quote, “Dietician” he had met.  I swear at no point did I even insinuate I was a dietician, honsetly!  So, I’m left with this conundrum of whether to tell him the truth and perhaps either shatter his complete belief in my astounding knowledge or upset him, or just keep schtum and smile.  I possibly should have done the latter but, as always, the truth prevails.  Thankfully he had some distant drunken recollection of what I actually used to do so it was all okay.  I do wander how I get into these kind of conversations with people.  Well I guess as they say, you can take the girl out of Probation, but……………… 

So, after my caffeine fix with Renee I went back to the first tailors and decided on a horrendous number of items.  I plumped for two pairs of jeans (one cropped), a pair of black dress trousers, a pair of grey trousers, a white corset type top, a cream belt-up shirt, a brown sleeved going out type top, a silver halter-neck and a beautiful turquoise dress which I drew for them.  Hmmm, not sure how interested anyone is in that but it excites me!  After a lengthy process of going through each design, picking materials and being measured I actually managed to get out of the shop.

In the evening Elisha was at some Jewish do where they had a big barbeque and celebration.  I actually got a bit miffed that I wasn’t Jewish as they provide all these exciting free things.  Elisha said that I should come along but after having already made a complete plum of myself to the Rabbi the previous night I thought better of it.  I decided to head down Khao San road for some more obligatory shopping and people watching and as I was heading back to meet Elisha at the end of his do it started to hammer it down with rain.  Unless you have seen rain in places with proper wet seasons or monsoons it is truly hard to describe how hard the rain actually is.  This was actually a -very- long, very hard session as well.  It hasn’t rained as hard since.  All of the street sellers started busying about desperately pulling covers over their fare.  Everyone rushed for cover into bars with awnings and shops.  The rain was so heavy that the road turned into a river and at the end very nearly flowed over onto the pavements.  I was sat in the doorway of a shop (not to be confused with a shop doorway -hey I keep telling you, I’m a classy girl don’t ya know) along with several staff and one of their children.  The young boy was actually really cute and, when his mother made him a really rubbish boat to float down the road-river which promptly sank, I made him a much better one which he was delighted with.  He also kept doing this thing of nicking all the hairclips out of his mother’s hair and she was doing this thing where she pretended she hadn’t noticed and then feigning shock and concern when all her hair fell everywhere.  He found it hilarious and, in all fairness, so did I.  One thing which wasn’t quite so cute, or maybe it was, was the small boy when I had a cigarette.  I got up and went further out to smoke and he ran into the shop, grabbed several no smoking stickers and then started pointing at me smoking and then pointing at the sign and shaking his head.  What was worse was when he went and got a pile of anti-smoking leaflets.  He got one, brought it over and started showing me pictures of lovely smoking related illnesses.  You know, the really nice pictures of blackened lungs and lips which look more like bulbous vegetables than lips any more.  The best bit about his little crusade was that after showing me each picture he would then point and touch my various body part.  God, thank God smoking doesn’t give you STIs!  He thought this whole thing was hilarious, as did all the staff, and, in all fairness, it did make me put my cigarette out about half way down.

The one thing which was horrible about the rain shower was the animals – and I’m not talking pets here, more pests!  After a bit of rain cockroaches started to crawl out of all of the drains and other crevices which filled with water.  And I am not talking one or two cockroaches here.  It was like the biblical swarm of locusts or something.  Although obviously not flying, Thank GOD, oh my God can you imagine?  Anyway, it was disgusting and at one point, after getting annoyed at lots of women being all girly ranging from going “EEeeeew” to leaping about like their gucci thongs were on fire, I did exactly the same as one ran up my leg!

When the rain calmed down slightly (and I do mean slightly – it was still a hell of a lot heavier than any rain I’d seen in England) some people got bored, rolled their trousers up and traversed the river-road.  This added to my amusement in terms of watching as people lost flip flops, caught their shoes etc.  I was about to do the same thing (as in cross the river-road not lose my shoes – although that may have been an unwanted consequence) until, that is, a dead rat floated past and I thought better of it.  I was actually pretty repulsed by this, that is until it floated past another group of girls obviously wearing the aforementioned flaming Gucci thongs!

When the rain eventually lessened enough and the river began to drain and resemble a road once more I headed off to try and find Elisha.  It was actually quite a lot later than his event was meant to have finished and I don’t know if it was because it was shut but I couldn’t find the place for love nor money.  So I gave up and headed back to the guesthouse.  Elisha came back slightly later and, having convinced me for some time, we headed out for a few drinks on Khao San Road.

The journey from the Cambodian border to Bangkok was a long one but it was relatively comfortable, once in the minibus at least.  We stopped in Pattaya en route and, when I was informed by my fellow travelers that it was one of the sex capitals of Bangkok, I was pleased that I had decided to bypass it.  They were harsh actually labelling all the men (and it was only men) who got out of the minibus as sex tourists.  Two of the guys in the minibus were Israeli and one of them was a guy called Elisha whom I had met at the Garden Village guesthouse in Siem Reap.  When we drove into Pattaya there was one redeeming factor for the place…..it had McDonalds!  For some reason this was -really- exciting to me and I contemplating asking the driver if he could take a detour.  It was okay though as I was reliably informed that there were also McDonalds restaurants in Bangkok.  I know it sounds ridiculous but when I saw that glowing M my eyes lit up.  I think that I may have been craving the salt and sugar after being ill but boy did I want to get my chops round a tasty filet of fish! 

When we approached Bangkok I was playing cards with the two Israeli guys and then suddenly looked up to see this most amazing illuminated city scape.  I love cities at night but Bangkok is one of the most amazing and beautiful I have seen.  It was truly amazing and a sight I will never forget. 

Eventually we got to the centre and walked towards the Khao San Road area of the city.  Khao San Road itself was insane.  It was actually busier when we arrived than I have ever seen it since which was typical as people kept bouncing off of our bags.  I’m actually talking literally here.  Khao San Road has a bar about every centimetre and you see some very strange things and people there. 

After dropping our bags off Elisha took me to a Jewish centre in the city which had free internet access amongst other things.  Prior to going in I asked him if I could go in as a non-Jew.  He seemed to think it would be fine.  So we go in and he wanders off to talk to someone he knew.  I went to the toilet and when I came out some Rabbi dude comes over to me and starts talking to me in Hebrew.  In my slightly tired state I said, “Shalom, I’m with him” and kind of pointed in the vague direction of Elisha.  Needless to say no other Rabbis troubles me that evening!

Whilst perhaps not completely comparable to the night city scape but almost as exciting to me at the time was the prospect of my McDonalds.  I found one and boy, that filet of fish was about the best thing I had ever tasted.  Ooooh they also do double filet of fish here which, as the more astute of you may have figured out, is like a normal filet of fish but with two fish filets.  They also still do Super Size meals here and I had so forgotten how damn mahusive they are.

After all that excitement we headed back to the guesthouse and I slept like a baby.  What is with that saying anyway?  I mean, I didn’t wake up screaming my lungs out every few hours.  Neither did I soil my nappy, suck a dummy or get transfixed by a Noddy mobile.  Although actually the latter sounds like it could be fun!

Having slept slightly better than the previous night I awoke to torrential rain. I got a motorbike to the area where the bus was to leave from. The motorbike driver gave me a really attractive, yellow macintosh to wear and then kept nearly crashing when trying to pull my hood up for me! One of the reasons for heading to Bangkok (other than my lack of time left in South East Asia) was to try and see a Doctor. When I lost my appetite in Siem Reap Dane was quite worried about this and, other than firstly telling me that I had a mammoth tapeworm so there was no room for food, secondly telling me that I may be having a personal crisis, finally told me an amusing anecdote which was something his mother used to say to him as a child. Okay, you have to read this in a strong Eastern Australian accent.

"If you don’t eat, you don’t shit and if you don’t shit you die Dane."

I found this hysterical particularly as advice. I mean, if someone said this to you would you go, "Oh yeah, I’d never thought of it like that" and instantly regain your appetite?

Anyway, so I’m ill and was informed that the Doctors in Sihanoukville were very expensive and not particularly good. Apparently they also have a habit of keeping you in for several nights when not entirely necessary in order to make more money. So, in view of this I headed for the bus for my twelve hour journey to Bangkok. I was sat at the back of the bus and initially thought that this would afford me greater comfort and leg room. What I wasn’t counting on was getting full wafts of acrid poo smell from the toilet every few mintues. One of the staff would then walk down to the toilet and douse the entire area with what seemed to be about a hot air balloon worth of pungent air freshener. I’ve never really known what’s worse, either disgusting smells or disgusting smells half masked by nearly equally disgusting synthetic ones. This didn’t make me feel much better and, in my state of ill-health, everything started to annoy me.

When we got on the bus they put ‘Notting Hill’ on. Admittedly not my favourite film but relatively amusing nonetheless. Until, that is, bouffant boy infront of me decides to bobble his huge hair from side to side about every twenty seconds. He also did that thing of answering his mobile and turning it on to loud speaker so that he could prove that he did, infact, have one friend! I bet they were comparing bouffant stories! The next film was King Kong (the new one not the original). If you’ve seen King Kong, one question, "WHY?" and if not, really don’t. I sooooo wanted the woman to die to the extent that I began sharing my thoughts with fellow passengers who laughed inanely and then looked the other way, probably in the hope that the crazy woman would either go away or start talking to the voices in her head again!

The Thai Border wasn’t too painful, somewhat miraculously in the mood I was in, although I did manage to do two things you are really not supposed to do at border points. Firstly I smiled for the photo they took and secondly I smoked a cigarette when walking over the border. I got quite sternly told off for the latter but honestly hadn’t really thought about it. I had other things on my mind like, how to avoid using the Oompah Loompah toilet, how to shave someone’s head without them noticing, who on Earth paid for King Kong to be re-made, who on Earth paid to go and watch the King Kong re-make etc………….

So, once we had all sorted out exit passes and entry visas we sat at a cafe next to a lovely channel of open sewage (which smelled nearly as bad as the bus, save the meadow fresh overtones) and waited for about two hours for them to manage to get all twelve of us into a minibus. Well it must have been tricky for them with that number of passengers! Fortunately at this point it started to improve. A nice Austrian man let me have the front seat as I sounded pathetic. Well, in my mind I sounded pathetic, but he may have taken one look at me and offered the seat out of sheer terror, or to keep me separate from the other passengers for their safety! I like riding in the front, although you do have to reconcile the cool views and comfort with the dodgy over-taking heart-in-mouth moments and knowing that, if something does come the other way round that blind bend, you’re the one who’s going to bow out first.

The roads in Thailand seem to be of a different class to those in the rest of the places I have visited in Asia. For the majority of the journey we were on two or three lane motorways and we passed some comedy boy-racer cars (323s, a Ford I had never seen before etc). There were also some more exciting Lancers and the like. Some time after the first toilet stop I asked if we could stop again. When I walked into the toilet I was greeted by a sign which read, "Winner of toilet of the year 2006", at which point three things crossed me mind:

1. Wow, I am SOooooo lucky!

2. Woah, what happened in 2007 and 2008, this place must have gone downhill.

3. It won’t be winning any awards after I’ve visited it!

Sorry but I am ill. Or as I keep telling everyone, "I’m invalid"!

So after a slightly dodgy journey the previous day I decided that the best plan was to do very little and to chill out on the beach.  The beaches in Sihanoukville are beautiful and the sea was really warm.  Partly due to the events of the previous day and partly due to continued warnings I didn’t take any valuables to the beach with me.  This half explains why the only photo that I have from Sihanoukville is of me lying in bed!  That evening I managed to miss dinner at the guesthouse (the restaurant and bar shut at 10) and asked a motorbike rider to take me into town.  The place I wanted to go to was shut as were the next 8 or so places that he took me to.  The town centre was absolutely dead – well I guess it is off season.  Finally we headed to a backpacker’s area of town which was very much alive and I got some food from a Supermarket.

The following day I felt insanely ill.  I think I may not have mentioned the fact that I got really ill towards the end of my stay in Siem Reap.  I won’t elaborate too much on the details but it wasn’t nice and after over a week of not being able to eat and having serious trouble consuming any liquids I was starting to get dehydrated and struggle a bit.  One night when I was up bascially all night I managed to convince myself that I had cholera.  Although this was not entirely my fault.  If you’ve ever used a self-diagnosis site online you’ll know what I mean.  Those things are the easiest way to give yourself a proper illness (like a heart attack) that exist.  I remember using one for a really bad headache at home once and it said that I had a brain tumour and that I should go straight to Hospital.  So, on the basis of my symptoms, general hypochondria and the wonderful tinternet I managed to convince myself that I was going to die in my sleep, alone.

Whilst I lay in my self-pity I read a local paper which I found outside my room.  It was this kind of Worldwide news bulletin and, yes, it was in English – I am yet to master Cambodian!  Anyway so I’m flicking through this paper and there were two stories which really interested me.  The first was about two guys from the U.S. who were being investigated for grave offences.  I mean hole in the ground here and not serious, although I guess the first does not rule out the second.  Basically, they were accused of stealing a skull and then using it as a bong.  Two things struck me about this story.  Firstly, WHAT? And secondly, although this is by no means my specialist subject, would that even work?  The second story which caught my eye was about a bear which had attacked a boy in the Battambang Province of Cambodia.  Apparently there was a group of children as the bear approached.  The majority of them managed to run away and climb trees but one boy was not so lucky.  I thought you were meant to play dead and that bears could climb trees but hey.  The thing that struck me about this story was an interview woith a local man from the village who was quoted as saying the bear had, “lost his way”.  The implication here was not that he had literally taken a wrong turning when, say, searching for the honey tree, but that something had gone awry in his thinking.  It almost read like there should have been a follow up interview with Mama bear saying something like:

“He was such a good cub at primary school.  He went to Sunday school and loved cub scouts.  Then he started secondary school, started mixing with the wrong crowd, experimented with illegal grubs and as the man said, ‘lost his way'”.

Villagers heard the attack and chased the bear off with farming implements if you were wondering.  The boy is in Hospital and his condition was said to be, “unknown”, which instantly made me think that the reporter was a lazy git.

Sorry to back track but I realised that I had not put anything on my blog about the scorpion! 

So…. I was walking back to the Garden Village guesthouse (in Siem Reap if you didn’t guess from the title) one night after going to the shop.  It wasn’t crazily late but was late enough to be dark and the road was pebble-dashed with puddles from a heavy rain shower.  As I trundled along in my flip-flops I kicked something.  It felt slightly strange, like not really heavy enough to be a rock.  So, I looked down only to see a rather large black scorpion angrily holding its pincers up to me and arching its tail in a slightly concerningly confrontational fashion.  This scorpion, other than looking slightly perturbed to say the least, was about 5 inches long!  I took a very wide berth and decided to watch my step slightly more carfeully for the remainder of the journey.  When I got back to the guesthouse I told a few of the other residents about my ordeal.  Dane, being the ever-weird Australian, was quite upset that firstly, these things never seem to happen to him and that secondly, I had not picked the scorpion up and brought it back to show him!

I have this thing where if I start thinking about an animal then anything I kick or step on worries me as I think it’s that animal.  I do this a lot with snakes, like when you are walking along and kick a twig and it does that whole flying in a snake-like fashion for a split second thing before your brain says, “twig” and settles down.  In the scorpion case I was obviously paranoid about kicking another scorpion while I was walking back.  Oh, I didn’t mention that about 10 seconds after I managed to get past the scorpion a local man literally jumped out of a dark alley and shouted, “hello lady” at which point I screamed and did about five steps of run as he split his sides with laughter.  Anyway, going back to the whole mind association thing, I thought this was completely normal but everyone at the guesthouse assured me that it was infact not and that I was a freak.  I still don’t (want to) believe them!

I’ve often thought that I should consider wearing trainers more when walking around at night.  I thought this firstly when it rained and the roads were literally hopping with frogs.  Ewww I can’t think of much worse, although I guess they might have a greater chance of not getting squished by a flip-flop rather than a trainer.

While I’m on the subject of nature and backtracking to things I have remembered that I forgot (it made sense in my head) I’ll tell you about the sensitive plant story.  Actually I’m not entirely sure that I did forget this.  Maybe I actually remembered and have now forgotten remembering having only remembered recently that I had forgotten when I had infact remembered.  Wow, you could write philosophical logic about that one!  Actually, thinking about it I’m pretty sure that I did forget to put it on my blog and that my memory is of telling someone else about it in Siem Reap.  Anyway, the amazing story I want to tell you about, which you probably won’t find that amazing, is about sensitive plants.  When I was growing up my grandmother (Granny Green – my father’s mother) was a very keen gardener.  One of the plants she grew was a small plant with green leaves (yes I know most leaves are green) which kind or curled up/ pressed next to each other when you touched them.  She told us it was called “sensitive plant” and I remember being fascinated by it along with my brother Ben.  i.e. he was fascinated by it too, not that I was fascinated by him, although actually he did fascinate me; like the way he managed to do things like crack his head open all the time.  Okay, I think this is going to be my last entry today as my digressions are now even paining me!  So anyway, when I was in Laos there were these plants everywhere that looked just like sensitive plant.  I kept touching them but to no avail.  In hindsight I must have looked completely insane stroking plant leaves, watching them for a second and then looking all disappointed before slowly walking away.  Anyway, so I get to four thousand Islands and I’m on dolphin beach with Nora.   I spy another “sensitive plant” type plant and begin to tell her the story of how I had been touching endless plants in the small hope that they would curl their leaves up for me.  As I got part of the way through the story I touched a plant and it WAS a sensitive plant.  It was SOOOO cool and she was excited by it too.  After that point I have found a lot of sensitive plants, including at the temples in Angkor but the first time was the best, as they say!

On the Friday I had entrusted my precious laundry to the guesthouse who I hoped would return it immaculately washed and pressed and smelling of orchids.  What I didn’t bet on was them returning some of my laundry (i.e. with some items missing) and someone else’s laundry.  When I took the said items downstairs to explain they asked if I was sure they weren’t mine.  I promptly held the top up which was probably a size minus 2 and they conceded that the top in question was probably not mine!  I explained that I was missing two tops and that I would need them prior to leaving on the Sunday.  So, Sunday arrived, I trotted downstairs eagerly awaiting the return of my beautiful garments only to find the member of staff on duty who spoke approximately three and a half words of English.  After not understanding me for some time she telephoned another worker from the guesthouse.  The second worker helpfully explained that the laundry would not be open until the following day.  Slightly prior to this point the minibus arrived to take me to my bus for the next destination.  I tried to explain the situation and they didn’t understand.  Fortunately there was an American guy (I think) who spoke enough Cambodian to explain so the minibus went.  I gave up with the woman on the phone and the aforementioned American helpfully tried to bet $5 that if I waited until the following day my laundry would still not surface.  I decided to cut my losses and get a tuk tuk to the place that the American (unreliably) informed me that the bus left from.  When I got there they told me that the bus left from the market.  I got back on the tuk tuk and negotiated that I would only pay him if the bus had not left.  In hindsight this may not have been the wisest move in the World.  If any of you have seen the chases on similar vehicles in Ong Bak you will know why.  This guy was like a man possessed in order to get his fare.  I did get there in time for the bus but am still slightly miffed about my two tops.  One was a top that Olly gave me in Hanoi and the other was a top which I bought in Laos, both of which are irreplaceable.  Arguably I should have learnt about laundry by now.  When I was in Luang Phabang (Laos) the only branded item I gave them mysteriously disappeared and then, after much prompting on many occasions, the said item appeared from an area where it had been stashed in the hope its disappearance wasn’t noticed or forgotten.

I eventually arrived in Sihanoukville at around six that evening.  When I got off the bus I chatted to a motorbike driver about where I wanted to stay in the town.  When he asked how I was I said that I was fine apart from the fact that I had “lost” some of my clothes.  He promptly took it upon himself to explain how dangerous Phnom Penh was and how safe Sihanoukville was in comparison.  He took me to one guesthouse which had a disgusting smell of bonfires.  I kept joking that I didn’t want to stay there as it was clearly on fire which seemed to go straight over his head.  The guesthouse was full and, as we drove to the next one, he helpfully pointed out the bonfire on the other side of the road to demonstrate that the guesthouse was not in fact on fire. 

On the way to the next guesthouse I became aware of a motorbike coming strangely close to us, as I turned to look one of the three men onboard reached over and grabbed hold of my bag strap.  I grabbed hold of it too and there was a crazy wrestling match with both bikes wobbling all over the road.  Fortunately the other guy gave up, let go and their bike sped off down the road.  My rider tried to assure me that it was all okay but I did make him stop briefly to gather my thoughts.  I was actually in a strangely cheerful mood prior to that point to the extent that I was singing on the back of his bike, that’ll teach me eh?!

On Saturday I decided to visit the above, which are two of the main toursit draws of Phnom Penh.  They were set in immaculate grounds and polished gardens.  The Palace was quite amazing with gold everywhere.  There were various, relatively uninteresting artefacts in display cabinets and enough Buddhas to start a veritable Buddha colony.  The Silver Pagoda was equally gaudy.  As you walked through the complex there were numerous places that you couldn’t go into.  Some of this was due to the King being in residence and I think the rest was just them being mean, or alternatively so that you couldn’t see what the King gets up to in his spare time!  Okay, I’ll stop being facetious now.  Can you tell that I wasn’t overly enamoured by either?  I’m not really sure why I was so non-plussed.  The whole place just felt really artificial, ostentatious and in a slightly obnoxious way.  That’s probably slightly harsh, I think that following on from my previous day at S21 and the killing fields my mindset was in the wrong place and I found the whole richness of the area slightly wrong given the abject poverty of a lot of the locals, many of whom had been directly affected by the Khmer Rouge.  Granted this wasn’t the fault of either the Royal Palace or the Silver Pagoda but it didn’t make me any more sympathetic to either.  I guess they were kind of spectacular in their own Elton John type ways.  You can decide for yourselves when the photos appear on the site.

After my disillusionment at the Palace and Pagoda (hey they’ve even lost their titles now) I decided that the only thing for it was another manicure (no, I’m not joking sadly enough) and to get my hair cut.  I went into a relatively upmarket salon, like it cost $12 US for a haircut and manicure!  They took me out to the back which initially had me slightly worried as brothels often masquerade as salons – or is that the other way round?  Anyway, it turned out to be fine and all the lovely lady wanted to do was wash my hair, scrape half my scalp off with a “head massage” and do this thing where she smacked her hands against my head which made a cracking noise which I only hoped was her fingers and not my skull!  The thing they made me lie on had an electronic massage mat on.  I don’t know if you have ever used one of these things but they are seriouisly weird.  For quite some time I was trying desperately hard not to burst into fits of giggles.  I was trying to think of really serious and horrible things (think Austin Powers trying not to get excited) but it lasted for some time.  I then had visions of being the next person in the Darwin Awards by being electrocuted to death by a massage mat whilst some crazy Cambodian woman beat the crap out of my head pretending that she was giving me a nice massage.  This is not as far-fetched as it sounds, if you’d seen the state of the electrics in South-East Asia you’d have been thinking exactly the same thing – or maybe not!

So, I survived the near electrocution and beating and then the Manager cut my hair.  Why is it that in the majority of hairdressers all the people who wash your hair, sweep the floor etc are women and then the Manager is a man who cuts your hair and then points in a very annoying way for the minions to dry and style your hair?  Or is that just me again?  The haircut was actually really good and definitely worth the money so I’ll let him off his accusative pointing; well slightly at least.

And that leads me onto the manicure!  It was all going fine until she got out this tool which reselmbled a pair of wire strippers.  It turned out this torture device was to remove my cuticles.  Having not really had manicures in England (actually I had one when I was 18 which my awesome friends bought for me as a package at a beauty salon for my Birthday) I wasn’t sure whether this was normal procedure.  Actually, I remember them using the meagre orange stick in England but Oh No.  It was all fine until she removed a bit too much cuticle and my finger started squirting blood at her.  She promptly grabbed a piece of tissue, rammed it against the cut and later proceeded to paint straight over it with nail varnish…..so it all worked out in the end!

On the Friday the tuk tuk driver I had arranged to collect me in the morning failed to do so. This wasn’t a problem as it’s basically the low season here and they are all desperate for business so it was easy enough to find another. I think I explained the background behind S21 very briefly in a previous entry and am not going to elaborate to a great extent here, largely as I think I won’t do the subject justice. Here’s a very basic background but I would strongly advise reading about the subject, it’s very interesting, if harrowing, and one of these things I think we all have a duty to be aware of…:

S21 was the former Khmer Rouge prison which is known as Tuol Sleng in the Khmer language. The area is now open as a museum showing the atrocities that people went through. The place remains almost exactly as it did down to the visible holes where people were attached to torture equipment and blood stains on the walls. In the Khmer language Toul Sleng has an interesting meaning. When functioning as an adjective “sleng”means “supplying guilt” or “bearing posion”or “enemy of disease”. As a noun it means the two kinds of indigenous Khmer poisonous trees. So the literal translation of Tuol Sleng is poisonous hill or a place on a mound to keep those who bear or supply guilt. Tuol Sleng was reportedly established in 1976 (May). It was specifically designed for the interrogation and extermination of anti-Angkar elements. Prior to the Khmer Rouge adopting Tuol Sleng for their own purposes it was a high school. The area (600 by 400 metres) was enclosed by two folds of corrugated iron sheets, all covered with dense, electrified barbed wire, to prevent escapes. Houses surrounding the four school buildings were used for administration, interrogation and torture offices.

As you walk into the compound you are confronted by a group of large buildings. The first that you come to houses cells, relatively large ones but they are eerily empty yet with horrific reminders of what occurred inside them. The cells were horrible, particularly those in the later buildings which were tiny with barely enough room to lie down. There were pictures on the walls of the prisoners who were found dead in their respective cells. It was horrendous as I had expected but parts of it were more poignant and disturbing than I had imagined. There were thousands of mugshots, depicting those who came into S21 and were then executed. Amongst them were men, women and children. In some pictures women were holding their babies.

After S21 I went to the “killing fields” which, as the name suggests, is the place where those from S21 were taken to be executed. There were many mass graves but perhaps the most difficult part for me was a huge stupa which had been erected in memory of those killed. It also housed all of the recovered skulls from the victims, stacked one on top of the other. There was music playing which was supposed to mimic the voices of the deceased and, although it was entirely instrumental it went straight through me.

On the way back I asked my driver to take me to the supermarket which turned out to be this insane shopping mall. It was really strange, very Western but still very different. I really wanted to take pictures but there were big signs everywhere forbidding me from doing so!

It’s been a strange day but I am really glad that I did go to both places even if the images will stay in my head for some time. I have some photographs, although I didn’t think it appropriate to photograph some things. The pictures of the skulls have almost this symmetry like beauty to them but with the horrific paradox that each represents a tortured soul.

In the evening I decided to go and get some dinner and then went for a couple of drinks.  I went to a bar with a couple of groups of locals sat having their dinner.  They left shortly after I arrived – they had finished eating before you start getting any ideas!  I got talking to the waitress who was really shy at first.  It later transpired that she was an only child and an orphan as both of her parents were intellectuals killed by the Khmer Rouge.  We only got to this point as I asked how old she was and she didn’t know!  Apparently she is in her late twenties as a friend was born at around the same time as her.  She also had no idea when her Birthday was.  I suggested that she pick a day when she had a really good day and decide that should be her Birthday.  She seemed to think that this was a good idea.

Whilst I was talking to the waitress a tuk tuk driver asked if he could join us.  I agreed and he proceeded to sit and chat with us.  As I left he asked if I needed a tuk tuk.  in spite of my protests he took it upon himself to follow me in his tuk tuk.  The waitress had formerly asked me if I knew martial arts so I lied infront of him, when I said this she said, "Oh, that’s good!".  So, when this guy decided to trail me I was slightly concerned.  In all fairness it wasn’t really that dodgy as there were loads of people about and I was on the main strip.  It was more disconcerting and amusing, a bit like the movie duel, except every time I turned around it was some comedy guy in a tuk tuk rather than a huge tanker!  I started to get slightly annoyed by it and, much to my amusement, realised just how big tuk tuk’s turning circles are.  After a couple of manouvres I was safely in a bar hidden from the tuk tuk man.

Once in a different bar for my final drink the waitress came over and said, "Excuse me lady (they all call you lady here) can I ask you a question?".  I said she could and she asked if my necklace was gold.  When I said it was silver and asked why she had asked she said that it would be a problem if it was gold.  I asked someone about this the following evening and they said that it would be very likely to be snatched if it was gold.

So after getting (probably unfairly) disillusioned with my previous guesthouse I decided to move to a different area of town.  Having previously been at the lake side area I decided to move closer to the town centre and found a place by the river side

Phnom Penh is very different from Siem Reap.  It’s a lot less touristy and abject poverty is horrendously apparent everywhere.  I was aiming to go to the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace today but spent way too long in a cafe where all the proceeds go to the orphanage behind the restaurant.  I spoke to one of the waitresses for ages and she gave me a folder to read about the orphanage.  It was horrendous and heart-warming in almost equal measure.  There was a page for each child which they had done themselves (there are 28 children at the orphanage).  On each page their name was listed along with familial details which ranged from parents both being killed by aids and landmines to grandparents being so poor they were unable to feed their children.  When I went into the cafe they were singing to a tiny baby who was apparently deserted on their doorstep in December.  Some of the children are from the countryside and others are found in the dumps collecting enough usable rubbish to sell in order to feed themselves.  The children’s own pages had an interests section.  Most of them listed football, learning English and the like.  One of them though listed "smiling" as an interest which touched me.  Another said his interest was "being a joker".  They also had a section about what they wanted to be.  My favourites included one who said that he wanted to own the restaurant and also one who said, "I want to be veterinarian"….he followed this by saying, "..because I love animals.  I once tried to help a bird, I saved him and then a dog ate him.  I was very sad".  I asked the waitress if it was possible to visit the orphanage and she said that the best time to go was in the morning as the children attend school in the afternoons.  Before you get suspicious there were also signed charity declarations etc in the back of the folder.  I’m not entirely sure about the orphanage as I am going to S21 – the main place the Khmer Rouge detained and killed its "opposition" – and the killing fields tomorrow.  When I went on the Battlefields trip at secondary school I was profoundly affected and am not sure if I can managed all three in two days without plunging myself into emotional turmoil.  I am also reading a book about S-21 at the moment just to compound this.

I think I may have given up on my idea of being in Thailand for the full moon on the 20th.  I’ll see but I don’t want to rush to get through Cambodia on that basis alone.  I’ve also spoken to a lot of people who have said that the full moon parties are crazy and very mainstream whereas there are far better parties to be found around the full moon.  We’ll see.

Other than exploring the city today I also got another manicure!  It cost me around 75 cents (US).  I think I’m addicted, it’s my third in Cambodia.  Although it’s honestly a brilliant way to people watch.  You can watch the locals properly without standing there like a gawping tourist.  I got today’s in a market where I didn’t see another Westerner.  I was next to one woman having her hair done and another peeling prawns!