AWOL Geordie - Steve’s global adventure

One year ago I was Shulin in Taipei City working as an English teacher. I had recently met Zi Ting from Jiali near Tainan City for the first time. Two years ago I was in Wuhan central China having just completed a 2 week bus trip through the Eastern Himalayas from Kunming to Chengdu. I remember the fantastic Tibetan culture along with the altitude sickness in Litang which is perched on a plain at 4700m. This site has had more than almost 51000 hits which feels like a bit of a landmark. Passing the half-century. I hope all readers have enjoyed my travel reports as much as I have writing them. My wanderlust shows no signs of abating even after all this time. In fact I feel it getting stronger. I had never known what I wanted to do but I think I know now.

Enough of that bollicks, on with the news:

As we drove into Phnom Penh it was difficult not to draw comparisons between the old PP and the new one. Don’t get me wrong, it is still a dirty cesspit of a city but some progress is being made. The amount of construction going on is bewildering. Massive new buildings being erected in the centre of town. New, immaculate car sale garages peppered along the airport road. It seems Cambodia is on the up. However, as in China, only the few at the top of the food chain appear to be benefitting. The vast majority of poor souls at the wrong end of the social heirarchy are as penniless and as desparate as ever. Same the World over I suppose.

The biggest difference for me is the way the moto and tuk-tuk drivers have eased off in their intensity to offer their services. Two years ago you couldn’t walk 5secs without someone giving it the old:

“Hello Sir, Where you go? You want motobike? Tuk-Tuk? Girls? Ganja?”

However, now you can walk about 1min between these verbal intrusions that seem to demand a response of some sort. I try to pre-empt them by asking them “Where you go?” first. They can’t seem to deal with being asked their own shite. Also last night at 0200 I answered one of the “Where you go?” questions with “Killing Fields”. He was excited about the prospect of overcharging a stupid foreigner and started preparing to leave when I pointed out that it is actually 2o’clock……in the morning! These people are crackers man!

Other advice when dealing with these jokers is to establish the price before you even get on the moto. This will avoid ludicrous demands at the other end.

Armin and I have booked flights from BKK-KL for 15th Jan. Then KL-Clark Air base in the Philippines for 1st Feb and back to KL on the 18th Feb. Three flights for 70gbp isn’t too bad.

So my sketchy itenary for the forseeable is:

Now - 18th Dec Cambodia

18th Dec - 15th Jan Thailand (Xmas and New Year in Thailand - cool).

15th Jan - 1st Feb Malaysia

1st Feb - 18th Feb Philippines

18th Feb - ??? Malaysia

I might go to India after Malaysia and then find a job since money is becoming a serious issue for me now. Like everyone else I am suffering from this Global credit crunch (fucking greedy bankers). I am thinking of perhaps teaching English again but this time in Japan. I fancy learning Japanese and it also appears to be quite lucrative out there. We will see. Somewhere in all this I will need to get a new passport, especially if I go to India since that is a full page visa job.

Oh yeah, just now as I was eating two plates of cold spicy Khmer noodles for $1 (or 4000reil if you prefer) there was an old guy crash into a young guy on their motorbikes. This happened in a filth strewn street maybe 3meters from me. I have become so immune to such things that I worry for my sanity. I can exist in this shit and see amazing things and think nothing of it. Armin is the same. I think I would be more shocked at home seeing an ordered, organised society functioning in a logical fashion. That must be called something like reverse culture shock.

Oh yeah, another Cambodian tip. I actually made $3 for free yesterday by converting $132 into 539,880 riel. I got an exchange rate of 4090 = $1. I pay everything in reil. All bars and shops quote usd but they consider $1 - 4000. So I got an extra 132 * 90riel = 11880riel. Almost 12000riel = $3. The only draw back is that I have a wedge of money that makes me look like a millionaire when in fact I am only worth about 85gbp.

It’s important to be a canny traveller. $3 could feed you for 1 day out here!

I think I am off to spend my free $3 on a couple of afternoon beers. One drawback to this is that some local (or Vietnamese) lass will sit near me and try to solicit herself. The slant here is that they speak no English beyond: “What name you” and “Where you from”. It just makes me very uncomfortable sitting so close to someone in silence. They actually bugger off when they realise (pretty quickly) that I am ‘keeniao’ (a cheap charlie) who would rather have a ‘chuckwow’ (wank) for free!

Jam rib lien - bye

brahm dola = 5 dollars

I attended the Krathong festival on the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok. Here you buy a small decorative basket of flowers and banana leaves and let it off into the water. It symbolises the release of all bad karmic things - I think. I understand that it means you can start afresh in your life from a blank canvas. The place was packed. There were also hundreds of white lanterns released into the Krungtep (Bangkok) night skies. Quite a beautiful sight - something the tourist people would stick on a ‘Visit Thailand’ TV commercial with the obligatory sexy people smiling.

After a further 5 nights in Bangkok I got off my fat arse and headed to Pattaya on Monday 17th November. I took the #2 shite bus from Khao San Road to Ekemai bus station in the east of the city. I noticed that nobody seemed to be paying the fare so I asked, in Thai, what was going on. Not only did the person not understand my amateurish Thai, I had no idea what she said back to me. So as we arrived at Emekai (a fact established by me shouting ‘Teenee Ekemai chai mai?’) I asked the conductor lady “Geebaht?”. To my astonishment she said the fare was free! Dumbfounded I thanked her and left the bus scratching my head.

After idle procrastination (it really is the thief of time) with Armin, we concluded it was because of the anniversary of the Princess of Thailands death. Could be wrong though. We aren’t 100%. It does show that some things are free in Thailand! A thing no Falang thought possible. An 8baht saving - cool eh?

I then caught the 2hr bus to Pattaya, ate some noodle soup and walked about 1hr to Armin’s digs. I found his room and gave him a knock. It was great to see him again after last seeing him on the Perhentian Islands 3 months previously. He helped me find cheap digs and we met up later for another tour of Pattaya’s craziness. I have now seen most of what is on offer in the World’s sex capital.

On my 35th birthday (19th Nov) we sat in my cheap hostel boozing all afternoon before heading down to the beach in the evening. We drank beer among the freelance sex workers (is that the right PC term these days?) and I even danced with a crazy Armenian performer. He had long hair and was playing a tamborine and chanting some shite, dressed in a nappy! I was laughing and joined in. Smiling, he handed me a second tamborine and we became a double-act! The sizeable audience was laughing too. We both jumped around like daft twats chanting and shaking tamborines while his tips increased. Diasappointedly, once our performance had climaxed, he was reluctant to share his tips with me. He did say “Happy birthday” though so I suppose that is a bonus!

I saw Soi 6, 7 and 8 beer bars and the Walking Street gogo bars again. Awesome! Can’t really say much more about my second visit to Pattaya except little had changed since my last visit. I wouldn’t recommend Westerners to come here looking for love/wives. Why? Well, for example, I saw one naked beautiful woman wrapped around a chrome dance pole with a gorgeous tattoo just above her delightful arse. What did it say? Well in that ye olde English kind of script it said, rather elegantly, ’FUCK AND FORGET’. Class or what? Armin and I think this should be Pattaya’s slogan!

After 4 nights there and after coming to terms with being a scary 35yrs old we had to leave Thailand for visa reasons. Where to go? Well, Cambodia is the closest foreign country so we went there. We woke at 0500 Friday morning and caught a 5hr bus southeast to Trat. We then jumped a 1hr minivan to Hat Lek, the last Thai town on the Cambodian frontier. We exited Thailand and walked to Cambodia. Here all the pests start hassling you endlessly. A regular guy asked for my passport and I though ‘Who the hell are you like’? I gave him it and he started completing my immigration card. I bumped him out of the way and finished it myself since he would have wanted a tip for that - remember nothing is free in Asia (except some weird buses - sometimes). The same jokers then tried to con us for the 10km journey into Ko Kong, the closest Cambodian town. We didn’t get stung here since Armin’s excellent Khmer language skills prevailed. This is my second foray into Cambodia, the last been Mar ‘07.

I also used up the last remaining blank page of my passport. I am still OK for a while provided I don’t go to countries that use a whole page for visas. That leaves me with Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines until their stamps fill the remaining available space. Then I will be forced to buy a new passport - bollicks. Probably cost 200gbp these days knowing the UK govt.

Armin is quite a guy. I call him ‘Mr South East Asia’ since he can speak most of the lingo in most of the countries. His Thai is virtually fluent and he makes an excellent laid-back, great-laugh travel companion. I have thoroughly enjoyed my week with him. He likes to stay in nicer digs than me so we found separate accom and then ate and relaxed in Ko Kong.

As night came we decided we would visit a Ko Kong institution - The Chicken Farm. About 1-2km out of town is one of the strangest things I have ever seen. We arrived by moto to a group of humble minging shacks in pitch black. The driver stopped, indicating we were there. Where? we asked. What the hell is this place. We walked around and were quickly set upon by crazy prostitutes. I was naively expecting some kind of chicken farm but I think that name is a euphemism for whorehouses. We had a beer with the non-English speaking beauties then headed home. The rooms available for copulation would be graded minus-5-star in the hotel comparison charts. The girls flicked on the only light we could see and we were besieged by plagues of insects. Quite an interesting experience the old chicken farm. However, my description does not even come close to giving the place justice. It is better to see with your own eyes. I wish I’d had a camera.

The next morning we purchased tickets for the 0730 Ko Kong - Sihanoukville bus. We made good progress across the newly built road and four bridges (I wonder which foreign government payed for it?). However, as we arrived at a junction about 140km west of Phnom Penh and about 90km north east Sihanoukville, we turned left (east) towards Phnom Penh. Armin and I were wondering if they had forgotten we were going to SNV but they hadn’t. About 1hr or 40km later the bus stopped and told us we had to change buses. We told them to bollicks since we were now closer to PP (100km) than SNV(130km). This would require a pointless 1hr (40km) double-back journey! Crazy! We queried why they couldn’t do the bus exchange at the actual junction but they looked at us like we were mad! Asians in developing countries can be fantastically thick! If we’d gone to SNV our journey would have been 80km and 2hrs longer then it would have needed to be?????????????????????

Anyway, we stayed on the bus and that’s how I currently find myself sitting in an internet cafe in Phnom Penh. Last night I watched the sunset over Boeng Kak lake, the place I stayed the last time. I then went to a bar and watched NUFC scrape a draw against league leaders Chelsea. Not bad but the gap in quality is evident. We are a long way from top four quality!

I have checked out my bank and some news today and was amazed to see the UK base interest rate at 3%. It was 6.5% a couple of months ago. WTF is going on? Also 1gbp = 1.5usd! This was 1gbp=2usd a couple of months ago. Since I rely on savings, I prefer higher interest rates. I am buggered since this is not the case. My income has halved in 3 months! Compounding this is the gbp slide against every currency in the world. 1gbp = 1.18euro?????? WTF?

Ket Loi = How much

Or Gun = Thank you

I left Thong Sala in Ko Pha Ngan at 1400 on Friday 7th Nov after an impressive 35 days there. Remember, I originally only went there for 1 day! I caught the ferry to diminutive Ko Tao and then onto ... [Continue reading this entry]