Versive

Helloooo Southeast Asia! A very quick drop into Bangkok and the posh city streets that I saw in the brief, brief time I was there:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/092.jpg

The image of the king is sacred by the way, including the frequent, massive billboards and building-sized posters:

Ze flag en panoramae du citie:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/090.jpg

Yes I made that foreignesque up completely.

Littel bit of traffic, those great green-&-yellow taxis etc. :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/088.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/086.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/085.jpg

Have you ever - and I mean ever; look at the freakin' size of that compared to other stuff - seen a billboard quite so huge? :

And apart from that I mostly only got cityscapes I'm afraid, of Bangkok at least:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/062.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/063.jpg

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http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/069.jpg

The tallest building in Thailand, Bangkok, and possibly this whole part of the world, in varying degrees of proximity:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/071.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/072.jpg

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http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/070.jpg

Cool city architecture:

Oh and yes, check out the biggest freakin' fashion store you've probably ever seen. Note the scale of the blue lettering in relation to the people, then check THAT in relation to the rest of the pictures:

And I just had to check out this lush internet cafe - pretty sweet in any country but in a place, a continent where you have been used to an 18" by 24" cubicle in which to do all your work with people borrowing your elbow space every 0.25 seconds and an appaling speed of connection that makes you want to hunt down the network engineer and fit the keyboard somewhere it was never designed to enter - sideways.
This, with laz-e-boy chars and super-slick machines was pretty close to paradise to me:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/075.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/074.jpg

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And on to Laos, seeing as Thailand this forst time was only a 20-hour visit...

As you may have guessed, I don;t really have time for all the usual pre-amble. This is in part due to my exasperation with this process unitl I get up to date, and in part to the fact I'm a little woozy from more valium - once you got it it's hard to leave it alone but I do have my reasons as well. Some of them more valid than that I just wanna geta little bit high but
remember this is all totally legal here, so don't anyone try to tell I'm doing anything naughty

In Vientiane, the Laotian capital there are some great buildings thrown up mostly for the tourist trade, such as this great-looking restaurant designed largely with that favourite olde worlde element in English gardens; antique cartwheels:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/175.jpg

This more radionally styled hunk of architecture is the Laos Cultural Hall, actually built in 1998, by French money:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/173.jpg

An older town centre Wat

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/172.jpg

And this sign which, in a nutshell, sums up the difference between Laos and, say, Cambodia and India! :

A metalwork statuee of ... an ant ... cooking.... Yeah, I thought that too. Looks kinda funky though:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/123.jpg

Saw this huge ornate archway to nothing in particlar (as far as I could tell from a moving tuk-tuk) om the way in, fom just over the Thai/Laos border:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/094.jpg

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And the independence monument up the street from my first hotel, on the main drag. It is a copy of the Arc de Triumph back if gay Pareee only made larger by the Laos government, just to piss off the French :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/118.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/116.jpg

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Hehe, little sign on a gateway right next to the American embassy:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/115.jpg

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Couple of stupas around the city:

The royal palace:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/110.jpg

The ornamental fountain near the main backpacker area:

A little comparison of the confusing money - just a couple of the notes, please note (ho. ho.) the numbers in Laos at the beginning of the figures... :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/112.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/113.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/114.jpg

The side of the cultural hall again:

The mekong river, normally mighty as hell; just look at how much space there is now it has gone out at the end of the dry season! :

The black stupa; once the symbol of Laos, now a bit of a relic left in the middle of the city but amid nothing more than a club, a bar some crummy hotels and an electricity substation! :

Another cool pub building - I want THAT barrel of wine in my cellar :

And simply a reath fetching modern yet classically styled hotel:

And that, as I work through it all, is it for just now...

25.4.08
I sit; no, I recline here in the capital of Cambodia, in the opulence of the FCC (Foreign Correspondent's Club) amid a crowd of steadily more drunken jourmalists, news room slaves and assorted upmarket white folks who're busy readying themselves for a dramatic fall from their chairs and a brief conversation with God on the Great White Telephone.
I call it training, personally

I have to confess I've been hitting the sauce - well this is what journalists are supposed to do after all - and I find it all very agreeable here, with wonderful river views and overpriced food and very well mixed cocktails, all served by pleasant staff who are oh-so overly-eager to please. My burger clocked in at about 8 inches high - I shit you not even the tiniest little turdllet - and they do a mean Singapore Sling too, which isn't an easy drink to get right. What has happened so far only adds very much the agreeable nature of things, and is better than the pisspot little den of scabs and larceny down the street that had none of the charm, but all of the same ambitiously placed decimal places on its price list.
Mind you the FCC, with its WiFi internet at $2 an hour (which is really supposed to be free...) and the primal savaging of one's wallet every time you plump for another course or round of drinks, is a bit much for anyone with half a brain and a sensibly cheap streak; it's just lucky it's so amenable to me and my better nature. On the other hand, my drink (now a Mai Tai) has an orchid in it, so I guess you get what you pay for.
(But honestly, a fucking orchid??! Please. I'd settle for a geranium or, failing that, nothing in the way of flowering plants whatever. It does look quite pretty, mind you).

There was a point to all this before I had that Sling... oh yes, the nature of Cambodia and its peoples. Well, I haven't really started that yet, it was a bit of a red herring, or erroneously-coloured fish of any kind that you prefer. I never did quite understand that by the way - who the hell can tell between, say, a mullet and a herring anyway, and if they can, why would you invite them to a dinner party in the first place?
Ridiculous turn of phrase for the middle classes, honestly.

25.4.08 - later that night
We've been awfully busy, depressed, and/or ill for the last two days. Greg got the sleeping sickness yesterday so I went to the museums and the royal palace here on my own, and very average they were too (I've seen a few too many Asian museums, temples and palaces lately ) and afterwards tried to hunt down some free WiFi with our evening meal, but found that such a phenomenon doesn't exist in this city.
As said above, we had to go to the F.C.C. and pay $2 an hour to get a connection, and then of course it was happy hour from the moment we sat down, switched on and logged in, even though we had planned not to drink... well we made our way steadily through the cocktail list, neither of us had that much (happy hour is only 2 hours, after all) and certainly weren't drunk when we left, but it put us in a very pleasantly merry frame of mind, and the staff there really do know their stuff. The food was superb and the drinks were professionally mixed, not just thrown into a glass like those you always get in regular bars.
It may cost a small fortune, but it seems the journalistic community appreciates real quality.
I could get used to a life like that

26.4.08
This morning we experienced things that made us both sick, to compound it I had a hangover out of all proportion to what drinks I'd actually had, and later it turned out I had the same bizarre sleeping disease - I was out from 2pm till 7pm and absolutely could not have done otherwise. I feel exhausted even now after a good night's rest before, and 5 hours in the afternoon - usually I would be oscillating somewhere between floor and ceiling by now; I have real trouble passing out at the best of times. Somewhat weird. But totally explicable.

I have put off writing this up for good reasons; firstly I didn't want to start off with the main events because they are too horrible to launch at you without warning, and secondly becaause it made me feel so godawfully upset. We went to the killing fields, and Tuol Sleng prison, better known as S21, the school that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot's "democaratic kampuchea" regime murdered one quarter or all people in the country.

Genocide isn't even the word for it; around 2 million people; men, women and children alike were rounded up under false pretences, taken by the truckload to a patch of rough ground a dozen kilometres from Phnom Penh and tortured, raped and executed. 1.7 million people - 1700000 human beings - were murdered by axe, club, blade, gunshot and torture, all in the name of a new society that was retarded in every detail.

The theory went, according to the murderes, that cities were evil, and that a whole society should be based on rice. Yes, that is about it. What they did was to end a war between Vietnam and Cambodia in 1970, the Democratic Kampuchea armed forces stormed the capital of Phnom Penh and tolf the population that the Americans were about to carpet bomb the city, and that they must all flee for the countryside, taking only clothing and food.
Those who refused were taken somewhere quiet and executed.

The rest came under heavy escort to the wasted farmlands and made to dig, plant and tend the rice crops. Those who refused were taken to S21, tortured, and executed.

As things progressed - all in the name of socialism by the way - those not already rounded up for the crime of being part of the previous government (and then being taken away, tortured and executed) were dying of starvation and deadly beatings for not working hard enough.

Heres's another little gem: there were certain crimes for which the punishment was death;
being clever
being a teacher
being a doctor
having an education
wearing glasses
being overweight
wearing anything other than the black pyjama uniform
being randomly accused of anything by party members
being accused by anyone at all so they could save themselves
and so on.

Anyway I wont say anything about the places themselves until the photos go us, and you wont need words from me.
It is the sickest, most intolerably demented thing I have ever seen.

27.4.08
Early start after making friends with Prince Valium the night before, having felt rather like being able to sleep after all the less than pleasant imaginings and rememberances. Bus at 8am to Vietnam and, as it happens, I was pretty damn happy to go. Siem Reap is a bit too much of a party town - yes, I said that, `too much` of a party town (the same kind of young, dumb travellers and middle aged old folk who think they're `seeing the real Cambodia`.
I may have gotten a whole lot more cynical in thee past 2 days - good news for you because the funniest things are always at someone else's expense - but honestly, the real Cambodia involves landmine victims, crippling poverty and despite a wonderful smiling populace, a place where everything is basically just a little bit lacking.
The real ANCIENT Cambodia is unbelievably wonderful to see, but in its day it would have been a temple to slavery as much as the gods (Angkow Wat was a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu, it only later became a Bhuddist place of worship) so really, I'm glad I came here, but it just isn't a patch on Laos or Thailand.

And so we leave...

28.4.08 - Vietnam

Anyway I am now in Hochiminh City, I have some sightseeing to do and then a LOT of internet work for you lovely folk - I've been hit by delays, a truly crippling thunderstorm (we couldn't leave the hotel, it was literally too dangerous) powercuts, incessant revisions of plans and delays, plus a reasonable bit of lengthy travelling, so I have been too busy to do much at all.

I don't much want to see Hochiminh really either; plans reclude is, I have seen too many Asian cities lately and they all offer the same old, same old trials and hazards, and too few novel distractions.
We catch a bus tomorrow for the beach; so far Vietnam seems really quite nice but we saw our first probably fatal road accident on the way in before even setting foot on Vietnamese land, we were ripped off for a drink by some wicked old cow in a bar, and the touts and panhandlers here are more numerous and aggressive than ever.
I don;t miind so much except when they grab you by the arm and try to force you to stay - I call that personal assault myself - and the taxi guys and other touts follow you down the street for whole minutes, blocking your path, and being very aggressive.

I will be glad to see some sun, sand and sea in a day or so