The Moped Diaries

After one of the shortest flights in my life (they appeared to start serving the in-flight meal during take-off) we have arrived safely in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I didn’t realise this was so close to Bangkok – only a 35 minute flight!

We were met at the airport by a nice Cambodian chap who led us outside to our transport. A large, gleaming new SUV pulled up in front of us; Dulcie was a little horrified. “How could a charity in such a poor country afford this?” Good news and bad news. Good news – the SUV wasn’t for us. Bad news – we walked round the SUV to where our tuk-tuk awaited us. The most exciting airport transfer we’ve ever had!

I’ve just read one of the guide books for the area and it lists 54 ancient temples to visit in addition to Angkor Wat. We may need to extend our stay and buy some more memory cards for the camera.

I picked up a brilliant bargain here in Bangkok from a very nice gentleman with a stall on the street – a REAL Tag Heuer watch at an amazing discount of 99% (I knocked him down from only 98%). The titanium strap and casing look more like plastic and it appears to have a nasty habit of not telling the right time, but apart from that, it’s a bargain!

Dulcie’s Great Uncle Jack was held as a PoW in Burma during WWII so it seemed only fitting for us to take a pilgrimage toward the Burmese border before leaving Thailand to visit the Bridge on the River Kwai and the infamous “Death Railway”. We took a ride on the train but just before reaching the last station the train stopped due to some rocks on the line. We leaned out of the window to take a look just in time to see trees disappearing down the embankment ahead as a disturbingly large landslide rolled across the tracks blocking the way completely! The local staff said the recent heavy monsoon rains were the cause but I think Great Uncle Jack and his buddies had done some clever sabotage that had only just taken effect. So, sixty four years after the allied bombings blocked the railway, it’s closed again. Here’s Dulcie on the famous bridge…

We have now finished our three weeks of hard labour in the animal rescue centre and are now enjoying some well earned luxury in Bangkok for a few days before moving on to Cambodia. The time we spent with the animals was an extremely rewarding experience and we learnt several very interesting things:-

1. The alarm clock needs to be positioned INSIDE the mosquito net (learnt on the first morning).
2. NEVER trust a monkey.
3. Whoever said “hard work never hurt anybody” was telling fibs (after shovelling the poo from numerous animals, climbing in and out of cages, scrubbing pools clean and various other tortures, we ache in places you couldn’t imagine).
4. The animal with the smelliest poo by a long way (and also the cutest, most playful and most intelligent animal we encountered) was Ollie the otter.

After dealing with the long armed gibbons and killer bears the landmines in Cambodia should be a doddle!

We took a day off today to do some sight-seeing and visiting of Budhist temples.

Approaching one entrance a helpful Thai guide pointed at the carrier bag of snacks we had and then at a sign which read “do not take food to the temple as wild monkeys will…” and before we could read any further a wild monkey lept over my shoulder and attacked Dulcie’s bag. Unfortunately for the monkey, Dulcie had a Magnum icecream in the bag and a white knuckle death grip on the handle. Short of taking Dulcie’s arm off at the shoulder there was no way she’d give up the icecream and after a short tug-of-war with lots of screeching (both Dulcie and the monkey) Dulcie won. So much for all the help we’re giving to their cousins!

Gibbons have VERY long arms (as you can see in the photo).

This means we don’t normally go within three feet of the gibbon cages as they like to reach out and grab things. Unfortunately we have to top up their water buckets which are attached to the fronts of the cages using a watering can. Much to the amusement of a cage full of gibbons, one of them managed to grab the watering can off Dulcie and give her a soaking.

We also have to prepare all the food for all the primates and there’s over 150 of them – that’s a lot of bananas!

If you want more info on this Wildlife Rescue Centre or the other volunteer work we’re doing I’ve added a couple of links to this site (on the right under “My Links”).

No, all twenty of them poop in their enclosure and as our first job here at the wildlilfe rescue centre we had to scoop it up with the giant pooper scoopers modelled here by Dulcie…

It’s not all shovelling poop though. We get to prepare their food and then hide it around their enclosure to make them forage and exercise. Four of the bears are suffering from extreme obesity as they have just been resuced from a bile farm (for traditional chinese medicine) where they were kept in a tiny cage and fed all the wrong foods, so we are providing “bearobics”. Here’s a cute sun bear that could easily bite your leg off…

Tomorrow we’re on gibbon duty!!

After two weeks in Canada I think I’m going to enjoy living here (providing the immigration people eventually let us in). The weather has been warm and sunny (the locals say it is freak weather but I’m optimisitc), they’re not ashamed to play 80’s rock on the radio (every other song is Brian Adams), they grow LOTS of blueberries (Dulcie has developed a slight purple hue) and I have discovered they have a burgeoning wine industry (they have chosen to concentrate on only two types of wine; red and white).

Tomorrow we fly out to Asia and will cross the international date line so we will probably land there yesterday. We have been warned about a new danger when weeing outside in Cambodia – land mines! I think we’ll take a bucket.

After recovering in Miami for a few days (which was full of breast implants and Paris Hilton look-a-likes….and that was just the men!) we now feel ready to be reintroduced to modern society and hopefully will remember not to wee in the garden. So we find ourselves in Canada living with two problems; our immigration isn’t complete and neither is our apartment; both look like they are two to three months away. We are currently living in someone’s basement and driving a car from Rent-a-Wreck which isn’t as bad a situation as it sounds. The basement is 1500sqft, three bedrooms, fully furnished with cable TV, garage parking and a hot tub and the car – no one will steal that (it even has a cassette player!).

As we are unable to legally get jobs here we have decided the only thing to do is carry on travelling, so on Sunday we will fly off to Thailand for a month to do volunteer work at an animal refuge, then on to Cambodia for a month to do volunteer work building water filters and helping at an orphanage. We have equipped ourselves with mosquito nets and had yet another injection (apparently we’re not indestrucable enough!) and will be repacking our bags for the tropics instead of the antarctic. This also means I will have to continue this blog even if the title is a bit misleading.

We have reached our final destinantion for South America and are now in Rio de Janeiro. We have strutted our stuff along Copacabanna beach whilst singing the Barry Manilow classic and realised that Rio is probably not the place for us as we don´t have the right bodies or the right swimming cozies. Major surgery would probably be required to get the bodies and additional surgery would definitely be needed to get the swim suit off afterwards. We also went to see the second of the seven wonders of the world for this trip (Corcovado) and were suitable underimpressed, the most amazing thing being the coach ride up there which ranks as one of the many white knuckle rides on this holiday. They probably drive this fast to make a more difficult target for the drug gangs to shoot at.

Tomorrow we will be in Miami (more drug gangs!) and I suppose the blog will have to end or get renamed.