I am apologising straight away for the 185 photos in the last picture post, I had to `get them out of the way` plus I'm also I'm exploiting my lovely, generous, supremely talented and somewhat staggeringly wise parents here (grovel-grovel) to save everything I post here as a backup from the whole multi-year trip.
I naturally assume to get burgled in New Zealand, mugged in Columbia, and carjacked in the US. Naturally.
So, meticulously filtered and hand-selected, delicately carved nuggets of photographic glory now await you, and no more goddamn temples. Well, no more temples-ish.
-
Vietnam, I think this was HoChiMinh City, but it's a little hard to track what came from where - and I have nothing to really prove I even went to Nha Trang, because some cheeky bastards relieved me of my wallet and camera on the beach one night. So it goes; meh.
From what I recall, HoChiMinh had just about nothing to recommend it anyway, and I can't even remember where we stayed or how long before we got our arses on to the hop-on hop-off bus, and made our way to the beach at Nha Trang. It is rather a pity I have nothing from that place because the beach was stunning, and just a record of some of the bars and resort-style hangouts would have been cool.
Anyway a park in HoChiMinh yielded a couple of nice visual wossnames like cacti gardens and impressive topiary dragons, and particularly some of that great Vietnamese modern sculpture that they absolutely adore over there. Some of it is even quite good:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1221.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1220.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1218.jpg
And a few of those statues - there were a couple of hundred of the things in this park altogether;
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1210.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1211.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1206.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1209.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1199.jpg
Just the city views from the hotel window. `View` might be stretching the convenmtional use of the term here;
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1197.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1195.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1196.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1194.jpg
-
Okay, now I'm actually going to spare you the sick and sordid details of most of the next bit...the photographic side of it, anyway. I hope you will just read what little I can offer here though. This jumps back a bit to Cambodia, to the capital, Phnom Penh and the surroudning area, and the site of something you may just have heard of.
In 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a militarised revolutionary political group overthrew the already unpopular and oppresive government of that time and triumphantly swept through the country to the cheers of the people, overjoyed at the prospect of a new `people's government founded on Communist ideals. Less than a month later the Khmer Rouge deceived the entire nation into abandoning everything they had ever worked for, to leave their homes under threat of violence and humiliation, and evacuated this and many other cities, forcing the populace into the countryside at gunpoint where they were enslaved into a futile regime of horror and senselessness that had, quite incredibly, only just begun.
Over the next four years somewhere between 900,000 and 2,000,000 people were murdered, executed, tortured to death and crushed through sheer force of slavery by this group of politically-crazed tyrants.
There are a few less-than subtle reasons why I do not like communism, or the ideal of revolutions and especially stupid people and their policies. Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 pretty much exemplifies everything wrong with all of these ideas, and If I ever hear one more moronic comment from some dappy, hippy fool (usually a student, hippy, and/or moron) about anyone, anywhere needing a revolution or the wonder of a communist society or, especially, if anyone again extolls the virtues of anarchy then, well, just get a plastic sheet and a couple of shovels ready, and make sure you've got room in the boot of your car. Cheers. I owe you one.
Because this is what all that stupidity leads to:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1137.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1139.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1140.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1145.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1130.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1129.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1127.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1125.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1124.jpg
As it happens, the Khmer Rouge had a particular type of stupid. They went around killing people who might upset their little scheme by dint of being clever, or just someone they didn't like the look of, and they had a little system by which their little soldiers would take out out and slaughter certain `types` of people.
This is quite special, because the list of crimes punishable by genocide included being a civil servant (and thus guilty of helping the previous government, obviously); being gay, sadly hardly surprising given most world history and all that; being Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist (now I don't really appreciate most of what these guys think, but extermination? C'mon. There's got to be a better way than just fucking killing them all..); also a little something called `economic sabotage` was dreamed up by the KM (defined as being anyone who stayed in their homes after the evacuation. Yes, just staying there - the justification for which being that they were not farming rice ike everyone else; hardly an act of sabotage but there you go) anyone guilty of it or anything else being mentioned served with a swift death sentence; and last but definitely not least it was a crime punishable by death under the Khmer Rouge to have an education, be a professional of any kind, and, this is my personal favourite by the way, to wear glasses.
Yes, if you wore glasses in Cambodia in '75 to '79 you would be murdered by the state.
Wow. And to think I had my OWN personal grievance with the bloody things. Those guys really played hardball.
Of course there had to be a reason for this genocide. I mean, you can't go around and kill a million people without some kind of plan, and this was, believe it or not, theirs: They wanted the entire economy to be based on rice.
Rice is a worthy and almost benevolent plant; it supplies something like one quarter of the world's population with a staple food, third only to barley and a particular type of wheat that I can't remember the name of, but Pol Pot n' Pals wanted to base the ENTIRE country on wheat, and to this end the purpose of their evacuations was to make every person living in the city (known to the crazies with the pointed sticks as `new people`) to work as old-fashioned farmers, growing rice. These were deemed to be `old people` in the language of the regime and context of social order, and I guess all that time the crazies spent in France learning all about communism and how to be a psycho freakin' whackjob murderer still didn't manage to encompass a single mention of the word `progress`, let alone other such outlandish concepts as `human rights`, `humanity`, `empathy` or `intelligence`.
There was another place that was in use in the stages before victims were sent to the Killing Fields, many of them in fact each seemingly more horrifying than the last, but one has remained as an important and feared site known then as S21, and not just because of its barbaric history but because it has a sick little twist to it; while it was a site for torturing confessions out of the soon-to-be-guilty-of-something and, often, not even that but simply a site for wanton and despicable torture, it was already built and in proper use well before the time of the revolution.
When the Khmer Rouge took over and looked for places to inflict their own `truth` and cripple the Cambodian people into subjugation through fear, they chose to site this centre for death in a high school.
If anyone is interested, here are the details from inside S21, photographic prisoner records, stories of and sometimes from people who went missing, pictures of the cells and some of the equipment they used left inside. It's not really recommended, and it's certainly not pleasant, but I had to record it all while I was there. There is q uite a lot of it because there was very simply quite a lot of it to take note of.
If you like, it's here, most of the shots were taken the wrong way though so they need rotating to the right:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1189.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1188.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1187.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1186.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1185.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1184.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1182.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1179.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1180.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1177.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1176.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1175.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1174.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1172.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1170.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1168.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1167.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1164.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1163.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1162.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1160.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1158.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1157.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1156.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1154.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1153.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1152.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1155.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1151.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1149.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1147.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%203/IMG_1146.jpg
-
So, that's quite enough of that. Less serious topics will be discussed from now on, and after that I'm pretty confident I can be sure of that statement right up until the end of this trip.
I am only delivering the important, the amusing or the spectacular in photo posts from now on, it's just a shame we had to start with such a smbre topic.
At least, though, everything from now on is going to look damn good 
