Battered and Bonged

The rest of Siem Reap was a blur of fried eggs, pizza and even more food that we didn't want but ate all the same, and then we got on the boat to Battambong. We had heard that the journey there would be fantastic. It simply wasn't.

Despite the fact that Helen and I had a storming row because I'd bought some overpriced mouldy cheese from a lady at the dock, the journey was nothing but dangerous, with tree branches whipping you across the face every two seconds and poisonous looking insects flying at you from every which way. More expensive than the fucking bus too. Not recommended.

In Battambong we went to the 'Killing Caves'. These were caves that the Khmer Rouge had herded hundreds and hundreds of people into and executed them in an industrial fashion. We went there, not knowing what to expect, and we were sort of shocked at how the place was treated.

I'm not sure if it was always that way, as we went on a big Cambodian holiday, but it was full of teenage Cambodian kids running about, smoking and laughing and joking around. This didn't really fit with my image of what it was to be a memorial site, or indeed how to act at one, and it weirded me out to the point that I no longer had any interest in what we were doing there.

I was expecting a strange place with a strange atmosphere, but not like that at all. Perhaps this is me being very British about my mourning, and perhaps too close-minded. But for a site kept to remind us of the depths that human brutality can reach, and for it to have happened such a relatively short time ago, it was slightly upsetting.

Our next stop was Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia and the smelliest place on the planet. We didn't do a great deal here apart from get in a fight with two wanker ex-pats who were throwing stuff at a street kid, uploaded A LOT of pictures of temples onto Spacebox and also go to S-21 - or Tuol Sleng as it is now called.

Tuol Sleng was the Khmer Rouge's number one prison - a dungeon, really - for 'political prisoners', and is now kept as a museum in memory of the atrocities that occurred at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Again, like the Killing Caves, this was pretty harassing, but it was also a very good museum.

The down-point was, again, seemingly thoughtless people. Tourists filming - filming - the graphic photos of the people that had died there in the most horrific circumstances. One man was videotaping the film about the prison and the crimes that went on there. Who the fuck are you going to show that to?

But perhaps, again, this was my own problem. But I found it hard to concentrate with those people there.

We had to stay in Phnom Penh longer than we wanted to as we needed to get our Vietnam visas organised. This took three days and as soon as we had them we shot down to a fantastic beach-side town called Sihanoukville, where it was cheaper to drink beer than water and everyone wanted to give you drugs. Everyone.

The annoying thing was our Visas took three days to come back because they had been sent to Sihanoukville to get processed!


Here we went on a really great snorkelling trip to three different islands, and I got the most sunburned I have ever been. The red was not so much a colour as a noise.

This scorching of my otherwise perfect body was due to the fact we are, or rather were, taking the cheapest anti-malarial tablets that we could find and they have suitably unstable side-effects. One of which is: 'You might as well be ginger'.

Speaking of gingers - we also, of course, met up with Ed and Nicky again and spent lots of time frolicking in the sea and eating curry and fish. We spent quite a fair bit of time in an Israeli run place that did really good curries, and would have spent our last day there, but when we walked in they were 'having a day off'. A day off from smoking weed and telling Cambodian people what to cook, presumably. Giant craziness.

It was here that we met an old guy that looked like Jesus and spent his time wearing minuscule shorts and smoking copious amounts of pot. Turned out his name was actually Moses. How we laughed.

Ed and I got into a little ruckus with some young children when we refused to buy yet more fucking bracelets. One girl went as far as saying she was going to 'kill and eat' us. Nice kids.


This place was a nice little spot to gather ourselves after the rather hard-hitting history of Phnom Penh had seeped into our pores. It's an odd feeling getting drunk and enjoying yourself in places like this. There's a lingering sense of guilt, but it's hard to put your finger on what it is that is making you feel guilty.

Anyway. Having relaxed for a few days, we did something I haven't done since '67.

Grease up my foxhole and head back into 'Nam.*

*This will be the last reference I make to 'being in 'Nam'' like I'm some sort of war veteran, it's utterly distasteful and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

A Pain Between the Temples

The first night we were in Siem Reap, we all went out for a meal in a huge open-plan tent style restaurant. The waiters and waitresses swarmed in and started putting all sorts of food on the table, mostly consisting of brown stringy meat and pretty much nothing that we had asked for. There weren't any menus, so it was pretty much guess work. 

At the end of the meal, confused and not wholly satisfied, the bill arrived. It worked out at about 4 dollars a head, which we all thought was too much but paid it and got the hell out of there. (We didn't realise then, but this place was a nightmare if you weren't Cambodian. Helen and I would be charged $16 dollars for two plates of fried rice and a plate of soggy vegetables in a few days time, sparking a row that entertained the whole restaurant.)

That night we went with the Irish girls, Aidan, Gil and Zion the Israeli boys and Javier to try and find the All Ireland final. 

We thought our best bet was to head to the startlingly named 'Molly Malones' authentic Irish pub. On the way there, I was asking directions from a couple of other backtwatters. I was just saying thank you and turning around when I got hit on the forehead really hard, so I instinctively swung round and raised my fist, milliseconds away from landing a killer blow to my assailant. I realised that I had in fact walked into a two-foot-wide stone lamppost.

The feeling of embarrassment was, just about, outweighed at the utter relief that I hadn’t tried to knock out my 'mugger-to-be' and also broken my hand. This is, however, why I have a sickle shaped mark bang in the middle of my already too big forehead in all of the photos of us at the Temples. 

And a fear of lampposts.

Molly Malone’s did not have the Gaelic Football on, nor in fact did the poor Cambodian staff know what Gaelic Football was, but they did put the Chelsea match on, and whilst the Irish chappesses and chap trudged around the city in vain we played pool and watched a proper sport with rules and stuff.

I did not lose a game of pool in three hours that night. I was pulling off impossible shots, and I felt like Tom Cruise in The Colour of Money, but straight. That was until the Irish girls brought back some Irish boys who had been trying to find the game too.

One lad, having been regaled with stories of how good I was at pool, took it upon himself to destroy me. But after the ten minutes of silence and utmost concentration from him it turned out he was actually a really nice bloke. Just a really nice bloke with slightly too much testosterone.

The next day everyone else went and had a day at the temples whilst Helen and I scoped out Siem Reap. We both really liked it, and would actually suggest that anyone, young or old, could go there for a ten-day holiday and enjoy it. That night we met up with everyone in the drolly named Angkor What? bar, where we all got quite drunk and the Irish lad told me how shit I was at pool again.

The next three days were strictly business. We rented bicycles from the hotel and, after getting the best egg and bacon ('best' because I got Helen's bacon too) sandwiches in the world, we set off to Angkor Wat and the other temples. We had bought a three-day pass for them, and we realised after the first day that we were going to be absolutely knackered.

We cycled about 30km on the first day, soaking up the most famous temple of Angkor Wat (unimpressed) and the much cooler (and probably our favourite) Bayon, plus a shitload more. I could list them but nobody cares, do you, honestly? I don't even know why I'm writing this now. Then on the second day we ventured even further out, going to every other temple we could. We ended up cycling about 45km that day.

I will not bore you with history of the temples, because I don't know any of it. Here's some photos instead, none of which do the temples any justice. If you like the look of these and you're friends with me on Facebook, I literally took hundreds. More than I can go through to find the best...

[On reflection, cycling around Cambodian countryside - or essentially jungle, to us townies - looking at really quite magnificent and ancient temples was one of the best experiences of my whole life. The skill it must have taken to construct them, the intricacy of the design and sheer scale of them is impossible to convey. Which is perhaps why I didn't try. Or, perhaps, this is another case of my being utterly blasé at the time of writing.]

I will say though that at one temple we met a very special boy indeed. His name was Som, he was dressed as a girl and I think he may have been partially deaf as a child, as he spoke in a shouting, deep, moany voice. 

Som followed me around, pointing at fat tourists and laughing, and trying to grab Helen's boobs and giving me the thumbs up. He then gave me a picture of a flower that he said had drawn, and I gave him some money. This kid was a genius, he had the temple sewn up and people were literally lobbing money at him to try and get him to go away.

Here's Som. Nice lad.

The final day of Templage we got in a moto and drove the 60 kilometres on the world's worst 'road' out to Beng Melea, which is a huge temple like Bayon that the forest has been reclaiming for hundreds of years. This was impressive, but we'd sort of been a bit templed out, and by about three that day we just wanted to get home. But, as we wanted to complete the set, we also went to Bantay Srei.

The guidebooks say 'Although some visitors are disappointed in the comparatively smaller size of Bantay Srei, it is impossible not to stand in utter awe of the intricately detailed carvings.'


Was it fuck. Give me a massive temple with a tree growing out of the wall any day. Carving shmarving.

The temples conquered and at least 40-odd miles of cycling clocked up, we had a few days to let our hair down before my birthday. We went to a swimming pool ran by a friendly old ex-pat called John, the only one we've met apart from Harry that we haven't thought was a complete cunt, and played with a group of Cambodian kids. The best thing about this day, however, was the cups of tea that he made us, I nearly shed a tear.


The night of my birthday saw Hel and I, Bonfire Ed and Nicky - fresh from three days templing as well, Harry and Lekhina and Harry's business partner Phil go to a few bars and generally not do much. We did make the trip out to a Cambodian nightclub, but there were far too many guns on show to relax and no one wanted to give us a drink because - as Lekhina tried to explain - the barmaid had lost her phone and so everyone was looking for it. What a strange story to make up!

The night ended rather abruptly at 4am in a bit of a random argument when Phil, with his 'vast' knowledge of Cambodia, said that the street kids begging us for money at the stall's we were sitting at earned 'probably $500 a day'. I tried to laugh this off but an argument about beggars, politics and economics ensued. I just stared into the distance clutching my warm Black Panther (which is like Guinness but horrible). 

The conversation really should have stayed more along the lines of who our favourite character out of Grange Hill was, or rejoicing at the reintroduction of proper sized Monster Munch*, but alas it was not to be.

*If you're not reading James Cunningham's comments on my blog, you should be, you might learn something. But try to forget that his comments are much more entertaining than anything he's commenting on.

Next Stop: Cambodia (And you will stop, frequently and without warning.)

Next on the list was a little old place called Cambodia. Not to be confused with Cameroon, Cambridge or Camberley. Although saying that, all of those have a history of civil war too. Check it out.

The usual dramas ensued. On crossing the border we were subject to the, expected, few dollars 'administrative' [read: bribe] costs. This was actually fine, as the feller who took this off us on the Cambodian side was a nice enough chap.

The bloke immediately before him charged us $21 to stamp a form, even after we'd pointed out to him that his stamp actually said '$20 PAID'. This was cheeky, but forgivable. It was the fuckers on the Laos side, twenty minutes before we even got to the border that took two dollars a head just to look at our passports that took the proverbial biscuit and dumped it in a cup of hot, milky piss.

Once inside the rumbling box of lead dreams that was our 'minibus', the third different one so far that day, we set off across the border and into the wet and wild landscape of Northern Cambodia. 

On our freedom fighter bus, which randomly had a massive stencil of Che Guevara on the passenger door, were the three lovely Irish girls from Mayo that we'd met on the 4000 islands, two Israeli lads called Gil and Zion, and a host of other characters that we would be spending the next few days with.

After only another hour or so we stopped again to change buses in Stung Treng. We got out, had the fried egg sandwich that has become a staple part of our diets, and awaited our 54 seater luxury coach.

After an hour there were still only the two minivans that looked like toasters on wheels.

I made the fatal error of actually getting to the front of a queue, meaning that our luggage was put on top of one of the minivans first. Unfortunately, our bodies were on the other bus. This meant that the next six hours, on top of the physical grievance of having two people to each seat, was spent worrying if we'd ever see any of our worldly possessions ever again.

Some worldly possessions we wouldn't ever see again were Helen's 1.8kg book, my measly little book and note pad that I'd been jotting down notes in for this blog, and the life-saving pillow. All of these articles were left underneath the table when we set off and we only realised about 30 miles down the road. 

Helen was not too impressed - but she has got the same book at home in a more manageable paperback edition, which I believe is being flown out with her mother to meet us in Australia. Hoo-fucking-rah.

One thing to note was on top of the bus with our gear was also a moped, strapped in vertically, that was being ridden by a Cambodian man smoking a cigarette. I would give an arm to have a photo of it to prove it - and may be able to get one. Perhaps even without losing my arm. He went for six hours hanging on to the moped and the side of the van. Mentalistic. [Here we are! And no limbs lost. Ed.]

Getting out at our final destination of the day, a town called Krachi, Javier the Argentinean guy who had been sat behind us realised that his bag wasn't on the bus. I told him that ours were on the other bus too and not to worry, but he insisted that he'd got in the same bus as his bag. A bit of a kafuffle carried on and he stormed around looking for something - God knows what as the other bus was still 30 minutes away - and I waited patiently for our bags.

When the other bus did turn up, with his bag, I got it off for him and told him I'd found it. Did he say thank you? Did he balls. I told him it was that kind of attitude that has previously allowed the British Government to fire bombs at random vessels without any kind of international reprisal.

The hotel that we had been deliberately dropped off outside of was charging extortionate amounts for smelly little rooms, and Helen and I organised some sort of consumer power by saying they have to drop their prices or we'd all go somewhere else, better to have a full hotel at half the price than an empty one.


Despite this logic there was a German or Dutch or something girl that refused to get in on our mass veto and nearly ruined it for everyone. So I gave her my most 'what the fuckpiece are you playing at?' look and turned away, shaking my head and holding my face like my dad used to do when I was playing shit on a Sunday.

Makes Cambodia look like Kansas

That evening we had a walk round Krachi, which was a really interesting place. The view across the Mekong River was incredible and it was one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. Gay. 

We sat on the bank of the river watching fishermen come and go. This was another one of those moments that I realised I was moaning and worrying too much. There are pressures when you're backpacking, and it occasionally gets a bit hairy. But look at this and imagine that you've got another nine months of travelling the planet trying to find places as pretty.

Later on we went to a restaurant on the corner of the market. It was funny as it was run by a Kiwi, had Vietnamese staff, served western food and played Cuban salsa in the middle of Cambodia. Globalisationalismistic.

Once we got into Siem Reap the next afternoon, about a day later than expected, and after having been left in a random service station without a bus and without being told what we were meant to do for an hour and a half, we were set upon by the usual horde of tuktuk drivers. 

One lad grabbed my attention, and my arm, braying that he would take four of us ANYWHERE we wanted for just three dollars. Smelling a rat the size of Roland and not half as witty, I agreed wholeheartedly.

We told him the name of a hostel that we had read about in the bible and, like a rat up a drain pipe, we were off. (Sorry, I think I have rats on the brain - I'm writing this in Nha Trang in Vietnam - the rats here are so big that Splinter from the Turtles is on the computer next to me.)

At this point I must stop to apologise to Bai, our driver, as he'll obviously be reading my blog...

This lad couldn't have been much older than fourteen. We were following the Irish girls in convoy when he pulled over to the side of the road to fill up his tank with a bottle of sprite filled with petrol. He asked me for the money for the petrol. I told him to fuck off and that was his job to fill it. He failed to explain that the money for the petrol would be our fare, but at this point my thoughts were still that we might wake up in Belgium with our kidneys chopped out.

Despite our fellow passenger Aidan, a black toenail-varnished Irish weirdo, saying that 'In dees toipes of siduations I usually juss pay dem', I didn't give him any money and instead told him to hurry up and catch up with the tuktuk in front. Aidan had, despite his wisdom, also failed to mention that I'd be paying his fare anyway.

When we arrived safely at our destination, we found it fully booked. The tuktuk drivers suggested a place, and, with an 'Oh yeah, you know somewhere do you? What a surprise...' tone of voice we agreed to go and look at it.

In some kind of rubbish 80's American sitcom style moment it actually turned out to be literally the nicest place we've stayed in since we've been away. Plus it was cheap as fuck, had the incredible name 'Aroma Daily' and the best part of all - there were about 45 huge alligators in the back garden. 

(Not many cats for Helen to rescue around here...)

I'm going to try and embed a video too - but not sure if it'll work. Tap this. If you've got sound, whack it up. It's only about five seconds long.

Sorry if it doesn't work.

Four Thousand Islands - Well, Three... (as in 3.)

Our trip down to the Four Thousand Islands (a misnomer if there ever was one) was, erm, who knows? It was about five weeks ago and nothing of any note really happened. Suffice to say we arrived, despite there being 26 of us in a 14 man minibus. Cosy.

What I do remember is that once we had squeezed our increasingly sore rears out of the bus and onto the rickety long boat out to the islands, the boatman dropped us off at a spot where there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING apart from his cafe and hostel. Which were shite. After a repugnant lemon ice tea, Helen set off in the direction of the rest of civilisation, only to return an hour later, sweaty, angry and a little bit confused.

There was simply nothing to do here. These islands were meant to be a place where you can sit back, think of nothing and meet like-minded people. But I suppose that's also how you could describe Purgatory.

This puny isle of nada was called Don Det, and it had one, and only one, interesting character on it. Namely the lady that ran the 'Reggae Bar'. She spent her days screaming and shouting at everyone, albeit in an unaggressive tone, and dancing round to three Bob Marley songs on repeat - seemingly not noticing that the CD had more scratches on it than Sheer Kahn's scratch post and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.

I'm going to completely skip the nothingness of this island - apart from to tell you that it didn't stop raining (the torrential downpours came on the hour every hour, like some kind of prostitute alarm clock) - as I have another 3999 to go through. (Is he kidding? Let's read on...)

The next island, Don Khon, was on the whole a lot more exciting. Mr Sun had his hat on for a little bit, and we booked into a nice hut thing in a hostel that contained both the healthiest, excruciatingly fun puppy and the smelliest, rankest dog that has ever had the misfortune to survive it's abortion.

Needless to say, Muttley the Wonder Stink ate better than I did for the next few days, courtesy of Ms Helen Doolittle.

Here we went on a bike ride and a half around the island, which included riding up to the banks of the biggest (in volume of water) 'waterfalls' in South East Asia.

These are probably better described for your mind's eye as a huge fuck off river spreading as far as you can see, ripping across and down the landscape in a sort of ordered chaos that would happily sweep you off into oblivion at the drop of your hat or, as we nearly experienced, a failing of your brakes.

This was pretty amazing, which makes it all the more of a shame that the camera really couldn't capture the scale of them. Or indeed the noise, which was thunderous (although that could have been actual thunder).

This island was still just a pile of mud with people and huts on, but it also had the remnants of an attempt at making a road, meaning that we could actually walk around and see a bit of it without losing our newly brazen legs to the brown gooslop of Laos.

After our mammoth bike ride we went back to our surprisingly comfortable little cabin and lay out the hammock, which I got to swing in first because I am the boy. It's the law.

Our nextdoor neighbours, the incredibly Australian Ross and Deirdre, came out and joined us on the veranda and we had a good old chinwag about our travels so far. A self-confessed gadget-freak, Ross kept trying to show me his GPS radar system thing - casually dropping in - 'It's a sort of smaller version of what I've got on the boat back home, on the boat. Did I mention I have a boat and that I like boats? Boats.'

Next to join the party were the dastardly duo of Harry (real name Paul - fuck knows, don't ask) and Lekhina. Harry was, and by all accounts still is, a lovely bloke in his late thirties from Southshields. He's been over in Cambodia for a good few years, with his fingers in a few pies with his other Geordie mate Phil, selling ice-creams at temples and setting up websites about hostels. Lekhina is his unflappable girlfriend of a few years, from Siem Reap in Cambodia. They were in Laos for a two-week holiday, and had the cabin a few doors up from us.

These two were comedy gold, mostly because Harry would often (as characteristically, as we've now realised, as any ex-pat), slag off Cambodia and Lekhina would tell him in a thick Khmer/Geordie accent to 'Pisz off man! Why you live there then?!' Although we didn't know it then, Harry and Lekhina would pepper our next few weeks with a fair few cameos.

We also met three lovely Irish girls called Martina, Caroline and Sarah, who were travelling with another Irish chap called Brian. They were very nice indeed but it wasn't until we left the 4000 islands to go to Cambodia that we got to know them properly.

The last island that we visited was called Don Khong. This sounded a bit like Donkey Kong. This was almost the best thing about it. Donkey Kong Island was another step up in built up-edness, with big old hotels, and rather fancy riverside restaurants selling fried rice at eight times the recommended retail price.

It also had electricity twenty-four hours a day! Coming from the other islands, this was like stepping into a scene from Blade Runner filmed in the Industrial Zone of the Crystal Maze!

On the boat there the rain was coming down so hard that it was bouncing off the river and back into the boat. Kids on the shore were running along shouting 'BYE BYE!' and waving at us, and I started the game that whoever stops waving first loses. They didn't realise we were playing that game, but it didn't matter. If you waved at them they would wave back. Ad infinitum.

One lad was so busy shouting 'BYE BYE', sprinting as fast as he could and waving that he fell on his face. He didn’t get up either. It was horrific. Yet absolutely hilarious.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that as we got off the boat onto Donkey Kong, who should we bump into as soon as we jump off the boat but Edward Wellard of Ginger Hair fame. Coincidence? No, everyone does the same trip round here, I've explained this before.

We're all just fucking time-wasters.