Koh Pagn Nagn

We're now off to that other island paradise, the Perhentians in Malaysia. Depending on how energetic we feel, its either the jungle railway followed by the Cameron Highlands, or another week on a beach.

Full Moon on Koh Pagn Nagn

One full moon, two miles of beach, 15 clubs with soundwalls pointed outwards and 20,000 people - its the Koh Pagn Nagn full moon party. Big. All pretty relaxed considering, you can just wander from club to club with your mood, with your Sang Sum "whiskey" bucket or beer of choice from the 7-11. That was yesterday. Today... ugh.

This island is a tropical paradise, we've rented a bike and rode round it to choose a beach for the next week and they were all pretty much perfect. There are a few signs that the monsoon season is coming though - we nearly outran a huge storm (the road doubled back into it, we were soaked to the bone). Internet all over these islands is slow, expensive, and the power keeps going out so if we're silent blame that.

We're now planning to meet up with Mike (Liz's brother) in Kuala Lumpur in a few weeks, via Bottle Beach and the Perhentians.

View from bungalow

View from bungalow, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

This is the life... hammocks, bungalows, insects and Thai food.

Elephants

Elephants, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Elephants are just so cool

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

More from overgrown Ta Prohm

Angkor Wat center

Angkor Wat center, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

This is the central temple of Angkor Wat.

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Ruined temple in Angkor Wat, jungle has completely overwhelmed it

Koh Tao

Ah, the island life. The choices. Beach or hammock? Happy hour cocktail or beer? Risk the sandy path with the coconut that might fall, or go through the crystal clear water.

We're on Koh Tao, a little island famous for its marine life. The local dive center celebrated their birthday with a free reef clean up dive, which was great - visibility 35+ meters, which is unheard of, a wreck and several reefs to dive around, and 2 bits of paper to pick up. The snorkelling is excellent with manta rays, thousands of fish (angel fish, flat fish, swordfish, marlins, far more types than I can identify), and even sharks.

(Unfortunately, I don't have an underwater camera but this shark is very similar).

Cambodia

Ugh. One 13 hour bus journey over potholes, caked in red road dust, been bounced out of our "seats" more times than we could count, we can inform our dear readers that the road to Poipet is not good. The road from there into Thailand, with VIP bus, air con, tarmac roads, reclining chairs is great. Bangkok's Khao San road is a post in itself, but I'll finish the Cambodian ones first.

Angkor Wat - amazing. We have an unofficial "wow" scale for the sights we've seen, my highest so far was the Moreno glacier at 8 (out of 10) wows. This is up there. Temples a mile wide. Fortified cities 2 miles wide, now deserted - wooden buildings don't last long in this climate. Remember the temples from Tomb Raider? That was shot in Ta Prohm, also here - really spooky, covered in jungle with great white trees growing on top of ruined gatehouses and stupas. More photos to come. As for seeing the temples, you pretty much need a tuk-tuk or motorbike, they're too far to cycle (we tried - it was hot). We only ate at one temple, so we can't say what Wats' wok's what.

Cambodia overall is a great country to visit. We were in the low season, which made the prices ludricously low ($6 for double room, private bath, satellite tv, 50m from beach etc). The food can be great, if you go up a bit in price (i.e. $5 not $2). There is hassle from the people, mainly the tuk tuk drivers - all the usual annoyances like driving their vehicle in front of you to get your attention and block your path. Quite a few commisions and kick backs - don't trust anything the guesthouse tells you, which is a shame. The $3/hour massages were great. Its quite a small country - 10m people- so there's not a lot to see. I'd certainly come back here.

I really hope Cambodia pulls itself up out of the mess of the Khmer Rouge. A bit more background - Pol Pot killed 1.5m people, 10% of the population. He got popularity by claiming he could stand up to the Americans - there was widespread fear that America would invade (the good old Vietnam war - the Viet Cong were using eastern Cambodia as a staging ground). One quick coup while the king was in Beijing, he cemented it by claiming imminent American air raids on Phnom Penh, and that the population had to be moved out to the country for their own safety. Of course, in this process, people and opponents got separated, dissapeared, and were completely reliant on his cronies to supply them. He also abolished banking and currency, as the state provided everything you needed. So come 1990 and the UN peace accord, they had no money, tons of unexploded bombs (mainly landmines), a completely displaced, fearful and ignorant people.

We think we have problems?

Anyway - its much more cheerful than that. There's food, freedom and the chance to earn an entire dollar and that's enough to make the people happy.

Light a man a fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of the evening.
Set him alight, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Angkor Wat top level

Angkor Wat top level, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

The view from the top - 50m above the ground.

Bas Reliefs

Bas Reliefs, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

This is I think the epic Churning of the Milk scene from Angkor Wat, in which the gods fight the demons in a tug of war to untwist a great serpent thats coiled round the ocean and so churn out the Milk of Immortality so that the gods/demons can drink it and become immortal.

Of course.

Angkor Wat carving

Angkor Wat carving, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Nearly every single wall is full of meter high carvings like this.

Spiders for lunch

Spiders for lunch, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Elephant

Elephant, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Just walking along the streets of Phnom Penh, nobody batting an eyelid.

Sihanoukville sunset

Sihanoukville sunset 4, originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

The End

Well, this is it. We're now back at home in London. I'd certainly recommend travelling to anyone, its a completely different feel when you up sticks and actually pretend to be living somewhere. Its cost about £6000 each, which is a lot, except when compared to rent in England for the same time.

The things I remember most right now are the unexpected connections. After a while, your eyes glaze over temples, mountains, cities etc. Its striking how similar every city was, we went from Seattle to Kyoto to Hannoi and they all had exactly the same grey concrete buildings. Yes, there were different monuments, but 99% of the people lived in very similar places. The shops had the main differences, from the huge supermarkets of America to the identical pristine air conditioned Japanese 7-11's.
Bolivia had millions of individual stalls, e.g. one for watches, one for batteries, one for shampoo, one for conditioner that made it hopeless to try and find something but did employ lots of people.

No one, apart from the British, seem to have any sense of personnal space or queues. OK, maybe the Americans.

South America was different in that we could almost talk to the locals as locals - bit more suntan and spanish lessons would have helped. Watching a pirated copy of Star Wars 3 and hearing the Emperor say "Goooooood" in English and seeing the translated "Bieeeeen" was quite funny. Watching a BBC program on Che Guevara's influence in Burma while in Bolivia right next to where he was caught and executed. The clear mountain air in the Andes and Himalayas was great, there's a serenity there that is hard to find in super concentrated accelerated condensed London.

Geckos and elephants are cool.

The knack is definitely to see yourself as a local, well, as far as that is possible. So you too think that displaying anger is a hilarious loss of face, or that shrugging your shoulders and saying "what to do?" is a course of action, or siesta-ing every afternoon is how it should be. Air con is evil, it makes you believe the midday sun is ludricously hot when everyone else just thinks its normal; for a 2 week holiday, OK, but for longer periods people will just laugh (maybe silently) at that sweaty westerner.

We had some massive journeys like 24 solid hours of travel from Seattle to Kyoto (bus, bus, plane, wait, big plane, walk, bus, walk, collapse) and 30 hours on the train from Goa to Delhi. But if that's the reason why you're there - to travel- it doesn't seem so bad.

You have as much time as you like. We thought we'd read lots of classics, you know the big chunky doorsteps that you never have time for at home. But, after much delay, and procrastination, upon sampling some of the more erudite but susposedly good classics for whit Henry James may be considered by some a good example, we or at least myself, came to this conclusion; sentances should be built to carry points, not to stop elephants.

Anyway, this is it. It was great. Do it. Where's next? Well, we want to go to China but for now, its settle down and get money, jobs and house.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time ~T.S. Eliot

Nope, still same old Britain ~Me

Phnom Penh

Back in Phnom Penh, which means "the hill of Penh" - a woman who found 4 statues washed up on the river side and started a temple which grew into the city.

Perhaps I didn't forbode menacingly enough in my last post. We've just been to see the killing fields, its almost a shame its the major tourist attraction in the city. Pol Pot, the head of the Khmer Rouge, tried to kill everyone in Cambodia. At least, anyone who had education, glasses, spoke a foreign language, was foreign, looked the wrong way etc. It was an attempt at an agrarian revolution -you know, go back to the good old days when people simply farmed the land and loved their king. 17,000 statistics were bludgeoned to death (to save bullets) on the killing fields of Choeng Elk, men woman and children. As one Cambodian lady in Sihanoukville was saying, they're now happy if they have food for the day.

On to Siem Reap ("siam (thailand) defeated"- nice subtle name for a town near the border) for Angkor Wat.