Que Sera Sarah

The last post

2009-09-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm reliably informed that this post is long
overdue. Some readers have told me that I simply left them hanging in my last
post in Vietnam. You know who you are.

So here I am, home sweet home.

I thought that coming home would be the start of a new journey.

It is.

Like most journeys, there are plenty of surprises, plenty
of unforeseen disasters, accidents, and moments of serendipitous beauty (I like
these best of all).

It's been lovely to see everyone again, all the
people I missed while I was away. You know who you are. I feel like I appreciate
all of the friendships in my life much more for being away.

People will
tell you otherwise, and feel free to believe them, but you don't need to travel
the world to change your world view - it just helps. Travelling allowed me to
glimpse into the lives of people whose daily lives are nothing like my own. This
glimpse of difference helped me to see more clearly what I have. And I have a
lot.

Looking at my life after travelling, many of the things that
worried me or caused me such unhappiness in the past now seem inconsequential
(they are).

I
am less interested in judging the lives of others and more interested in what I
can achieve with my own. I am less interested in other people's opinions of me
and more interested in my own perceptions of myself. I am not so quick to anger
nor so quick to despair (which is not to say I am over anger and
despair.......!)

I like my own company more than I did before. I like
myself more than I did before.

Now the challenge is to see if I can
carry on the lessons I learned when I was away. The challenge is to see if I can
continue on a journey that continues to enlighten and enliven me.

And at
last I get to put down that bloody backpack. It was 32 kilos at the last count
when I left. I think that makes me a Royal Marine.

Join me back at The
Daily for my travels back home. And wish me luck! x

Great charity and mercy helps mankind

2009-08-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

How I will remember Ho Chi Minh City - the sound of motos in the morning and the screams of terrified tourists, running for their very lives....

So, here I am in Ho Chi Minh City but not for much longer. Tomorrow is my last day in Vietnam, and from here I will catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur before catching a flight the following day to Singapore and then to home. The time has gone so slowly in some ways: we've done so much in the three months I've been away, but it's gone so fast that it seems like only yesterday I was stepping on that plane......

The pioneers, altogether at their last stop, HCMC, the city of pagodas....
This picture is taken at the Vietnam Quoc Tu pagoda and that's Shakyamuni there behind us, waving his many arms.

Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as many people still refer to it by its former name, is the perfect place to end a trip like this, in an urban metropolis that is simply teeming with life, culture and history. But the first thing that hits you about Ho Chi Minh City isn’t any of these. It’s the traffic, hopefully not literally, but here there are no guarantees.....!

I don't know if you can see this, but those boxes say Longevity Mushroom. Priceless. Well, a few hundred thousand Vietnamese Dong (we have not sniggered at the name of the currency once, nor have we once said "Who's got the dong?", "Where's my dong?" "I've got a little dong" or any variations thereof. Not once. Apart from then.

Ho Chi Minh City has a population of over 6 and a half million people, and although many of them drive cars, over 5 million of them use motos. The streets are packed with more motos than the average moto factory on its yearly ‘What’s the maximum number of motos we can pack into one place’ day. Fact. Add into this mix buses, cyclos, bicycles and pedestrians and you have a recipe for the most amazing road-crossing experience you’ll ever have in your life. The stream (by which I mean tsunami) of traffic on the roads is constant, so in order to cross you just have to step into the traffic and walk. Oh yes.

And more traffic. That cyclo ahead has Kate and Ang in it. This is a very mild traffic moment, now try and picture taking on the most chaotic roundabout you can imagine in one of those. I had a truck of police in my face at one point, not the police in my face, they were just pointing and laughing, but actually the truck. It has to be experienced, especially as the government wants to phase out the cyclos as they slow down the traffic, not to mention shortening the drivers' lifespans.

Somehow, cars, buses and so many motos you couldn’t shake a big old moto shaped stick at them, just swerve round you, usually tooting at full volume but never actually hitting you. Which is nice. Our first day, we thought we would spend our whole trip here on one block unless we got taxis across the road, but it’s weird how quickly you get used to it, and I hope that I remember not to try the same trick at home. The only consolation is that it works the same way for the motos who just swerve in and out of each other’s way with a generally high level of success. We’ve seen a couple of riders come off since we arrived, and there are on average 3.5 fatalities each day here, so not always though. Extreme.

The Thien Hau Pagoda in Chinatown. Very beautiful.

My favourite thing about the motos though, is the helmets that the riders wear. It has only recently become compulsory to wear a helmet in Vietnam, and the helmets worn here are not like the ones at home. They are a cross between a baseball cap and a helmet and I am seriously considering bringing one home so that I can use it as a cycle helmet.

The incredibly beautiful Hotel de Ville. Not actually a hotel, but the headquarters for the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, which is what they call a local authority here. I'm quite liking the People's Committee of Portsmouth as an idea....

Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, which tells the story of the Vietnamese War, acting as both an important portal to the perspective of war from a Vietnamese perspective, and as a testament to the lasting, enduring damage of war to all sides. Harrowing, disturbing, and in many places very moving, the museum is a must visit destination to anyone with an interest in the history of Vietnam. But be prepared for an emotional experience, and in some places a shaky one. My overwhelming ignorance over the history of South East Asia (and thus my history of the world) has come to the forefront of my attention so clearly over this trip.

Waxwork Vietcong at the Cu Chin Tunnels. The waxworks weren't that impressive, but I took the picture because I thought the one in the hammock looked a bit like Paul McCartney.

Like many others, I suspect, I simply had no real idea of the details of world history, the complex machinations of man's incessant need to dominate land, people, ideas. At times this has filled me with a strong sense of humility and at points even shame during my time here, particularly in Vietnam and in Cambodia. Even more than this, my own lack of awareness of recent world history has made me even more aware of my ignorance of current world affairs, and the things that are happening right now.

For a real insight into the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese people, though, a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels is a must. The people of Cu Chi built a network of underground tunnels that were used by the Vietcong and run for some 200km. When we went down into the original tunnels, they are only large enough for me to crawl through. I lasted for about 25 feet before I hoofed it up and out the next exit into the fresh air. At points it was pitch black in there and ridiculously hot, and it was a real effort of the mind for me not to descend into panic (memories of being the wrong way round in a sleeping bag as a child.........Matthias.........?).

Goods for sale at the Chinese Medicine Market, Chinatown. I'm not sure what these are but they smelt funky.

Yet the Vietcong would stay in these tunnels for days on end, often living within them to avoid detection by the US. As well as the tunnels themselves there are a vast amount of hidden entrances and exits, and the Vietcong constructed a huge amount of ‘home-made’ weapons and traps, including a ‘bamboo trap’ previously used for hunting animals, which is a swinging trapdoor in the ground that, if stood upon, propels the victim down onto a bed of spikes.

This guy is climbing out of the tunnel system. That's a hidden exit. Look at the size of it. Now imagine how small the tunnels are. When that lid goes back on, you can't see it at all. Those Vietcong - who were mostly 'normal' civilians and farmers - were good. Like really good. And what have we got by comparison? Dad's Army.

The sheer determination of the Vietcong, who were often farmers by day and guerrillas by night, highlights why any offensive by foreign governments, no matter how devastating, could not succeed here.

A little sculptured dude outside the Fine Arts Museum - I would call this piece, Average Man Thinking.

At the Fine Arts Museum, where we saw work of many Vietnamese students who are using art to make sense of the legacy of the past, including many pieces that show concern about pollution, the changing urban environment, and about the continuing effect of Agent Orange and other toxins used in the Vietnam War, which continue to devastate the lives of many across Vietnam. This is also a recurring theme in the War Remnants Museum, where photographic collections document the multiple disabilities and often severe hereditary effects of these toxins on generations being born today. The Fine Arts Museum is one of my favourite places we’ve visited here, in part due to the contemplative atmosphere of the building, and due to the sheer range and amazing quality of pieces on show.

The Old Post Office - can you see Uncle Ho watching over proceedings at the back?

HCMC has some amazing architecture. A great example of 60’s architecture here is the Reunification Palace, where we have a guided tour with the hilariously charming Nghiem, who takes us around on his lunch hour. The reunification palace was like a step back in time and it was here that the North Vietnamese officially wrested power from the South after the US pulled out of Vietnam. The most surreal part of this visit was a dying scorpion on the floor in the basement, which no one seemed to have noticed and by which no one but us seemed alarmed.

Dying scorpion. Just there, on the ground. Was Ithe only one thinking, 'Where there's a dying scorpion.......' Possibly. Did I get the hell out of there? Immediately.

The Sixties have NOT left this building - The Reunification Palace, virtually untouched since its days as the former home of the government of South Vietnam, or the 'US puppet government' as they like to call it here.

After the Reunification Palace, we went for a walk into the centre of HCMC. Capitalism may only have been adopted by the government in the mid eighties, but Saigon was the previous home of entrepreneurialism before the Communist government took power and reunified the country, and it has returned here with a vengeance. Western nations have had a real problem with the lack of respect for copyright in Vietnam, and the photocopied books, pirated DVD’s, and rip off Playstations and iPods are on full and open display everywhere. This is a real novelty for me, and part of me really likes it! My photocopied books will be prized possessions when I get home.

Ho Chi Minh City even has its own Notre Dame Cathedral. It's blooming huge.

Religion has been one of the most interesting things about Vietnam, which is inherently multi-faith, with temples for Taoists, Confucianists, Buddhists, and Hindus, Islamic mosques and Catholic churches in abundance. The most fascinating religion we’ve encountered though is a Vietnam original and was only founded in 1926 – Cao Daism. This religion fuses aspects of all the above religions, especially Catholicism, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism and has very strong spiritualist aspects, as the religion was founded on messages received through mediums from the spirit world. Indeed, one of the saints of this religion is Victor Hugo, the French writer, who communicated many messages to the church!

The Great Eye of Cao Daism at its HQ Cathedral in Tay Ninh, some 100km outside HCMC and our first and only tourist coach trip. Never again. Hell is other tourists. Nuff said.

We met a follower of Cao Daism a few days ago, Mr Kim, who is a cyclo rider here in HCMC. He spent a couple of hours with us over coffee explaining some of the final details of Cao Daism, using a notebook stuffed with notes, diagrams and pictures that he has compiled over the years for just this purpose. There is something very beautiful in Cao Daism, a sincere attempt to bring together all the major religions of the world, that perfectly illustrates their similarities and highlights the inherent beauty in humankind’s attempts to understand and find meaning in the world around them. Cao Daism fuses elements of pure mathematics and even physics with its religious eclecticism and begins with a religious explanation for the Big Bang, which created Yin and Yang.

Mr Kim at the Thien Hau Pagoda. We were very fond of Mr Kim, and his ability to teach via repetition. The title of this last blog entry is one of his Cao Dai mantras.

Travelling has also made me aware of my good friends at home, who have kept in touch in lots of ways over the months, and how very important they are to me. One good friend recently reminded me of the importance of remembering the ‘big picture’ in my consideration and reaction to what I see here, and nowhere has the ‘big picture’ been as evident as here.

Talking to Mr Kim about Cao Daism, as well listening to Minh on our visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels, made me realise that the appreciation and profound desire for peace that both men so powerfully articulated to us can perhaps only come from a lived understanding of suffering and violence. Perhaps, I wonder, this is why things in the West are such a mess, where our every need has been met with such luxurious ease, we no longer understand the material or spiritual value of even the simplest things any more.

My favourite of the temples and pagodas Mr Kim took us to, Quan Am Pagoda, dedicated to Quan Am, the boddisatva of compassion. This is a taoist pagoda, and so colourful, I hardly dared blink in case I missed something.

As well as introducing us to his faith, Mr Kim also took us around HCMC’s Chinatown with one of his friends on their cyclos. There is something inherently wrong about two elderly men cycling you around the city, but this is not how Mr Kim sees it. He has made his living this way for many years and in the process has learnt to both speak and to write English.

It's me, monkey! Ok, not actually me but Monkey as in magic, as in born from an egg on a mountaintop, as in blowing on your fingers for your magic cloud. Monkey. He's big in Vietnam. This was also at the Taoist pagoda.

It's me, the dragon! Well, not me. Another of the many finely detailed features of the Taoist temple. Beautiful.

I am not sad that my trip ends here. There was a point where I was nervous about it, but even this has abated. It is only South East Asia that I am leaving behind, and all that I have learnt comes back with me. My next adventure starts in England, and I feel more aware of a sense of adventure about this next part than my nerves would allow me to feel when I left England for Kuala Lumpur. In reverse, coming back to England, it is, as the South East Asian tourist mantra goes, ‘Same, same but different’. I have no way of knowing what awaits me in England and what I leave in South East Asia – my desire to anticipate every event in the false belief that I can somehow control it – I am more than happy to leave behind me.

Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be home in time for breakfast!

And, as ever, and for the last time in cyberworld, Peace Out x

Good Morning Vietnam!

2009-08-01T23:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, that means you.

Sorry, I couldn't help the title, it was either name it this or H would never forgive me (and yes, H, I have been saying it every day, when I remember, sometimes last thing at night, but I've said it!).

Shon told us that crossing the border on the Mekong River was the only way to leave Cambodia for Vietnam and she was absolutely right. It's a surreal experience and, on the Mekong, an incredibly beautiful one. We left Phnom Penh at Obscene O'Clock in the morning, took a taxi to the bus company, and then, oddly (but South East Asia kind of has you used to 'oddly' quite fast) a taxi to the jetty.

One of the many boats on the Cambodian side of the Mekong crossing

We had no idea what to expect from a Cambodian boat down the river experience, but our rickety blue old wooden boat was somehow perfect for our departure from Cambodia. I think I would have been sadder about leaving Cambodia were it not for the fact that I'm so certain I'll be back, so it was more 'A bientot' than 'Goodbye' to this beautiful country.

Once on the boat, we settled ourselves in along with a dozen other passengers, but after about 20 minutes, we began to wonder what we were waiting for. Then another dozen passengers arrived, and we realized that, true to form, the boat was really going to be full for this trip. We were lucky and snagged ourselves seats on the raised platform at the back, which, because the toilet was up here, no one wanted. No harm, no foul to us, though, because the boat was so crammed that almost no one had the nerve to make the trip to the bathroom during the trip, meaning that the three of us and two adventurous (also hilarious and permanently hungry) Tasmanians were the only ones up here and had room to spread out!

Our boat was just like this - when it rained there were flappy bits that came down the sides...

The journey along the Mekong was absolutely beautiful: blue skies, a low breeze, and the shining waters of the chocolate Mekong (they should film the CocoPops adverts here). The Mekong River has its origins high up in the mountains of Tibet and along its long, long journey across several countries to the sea, it carries a lot of silt, which gives the river its deep brown colour. I used to think brown was ugly, but not any more! Set against the green trees lining the banks, the blue sky, the boats on the river and the simple huts lining the banks in which the people of the Cambodian Mekong make their home, the river is simply stunning.

Logging (yes, I said logging) is big business in Cambodia and Vietnam, with many sawmills along the river

We reached the Cambodian border and clambered out of the boat, to queue in the blazing heat in a bizarre customs office, where officials lounged in hammocks, their guns by their sides, in front of a large Buddhist shrine. One officer on duty lazily stamped our passports while barely glancing at them. Then, back into the boat and off down the river again for twenty minutes down a patch of water that is effectively, a no man's river, as it belongs to no one, before you hit the Vietnam border checkpoint. Here we got off to swap boats and were taken firmly in hand by a wonderful Vietnamese woman called San, who shepherded us into a line, took our passports, waved us through a 'health check' - which looked suspiciously like a metal detector, was totally unsupervised and through which, despite the fact that it seemed to make a different sound for everyone who stepped through it, no one was stopped or examined further, and for which we paid the collective sum of $2 - then dumped us in the restaurant while our passports were being 'processed'. The fact that almost everyone then spent oodles of money there was mere coincidence.

A fishing boat on the Vietnam side of the border. San told us that the eyes on the local boats of the Mekong represent the spirit of the boat and are thought to bring good luck.

When it began to pour with rain, our passports magically reappeared instantly and we were informed it was time to go. San then shepherded us all into two boats and off we went for the rest of journey to the border town of Chau Doc - Welcome to Vietnam! Chau Doc is a great town, and most people don't stick around there to realise it. We were the only ones in a group of about 25 (apart from the Taz's) on our boat who didn't leave the same or the following day, and more fool them. Outside our hotel on our first day in Chau Doc, we met Long, a local moto driver and very sincere and gently Buddhist, who took us under his wing.

Our guide, Long, gazing at the distant mountains from the top of the Tra Su tower - he has the best moto helmet, ever and wears it everywhere. Even walking. Honest.

Moto is the most ubiquitous form of transport in Vietnam, and to see the environs of Chau Doc, it's either moto for about $5 or hire a bus for a lot more, so it was back on the motos the next day! With two of his friends, Long took us to Tra Su bird sanctuary, where we climbed a huge, and I'm not embarrassed to say, slightly frightening tower, though once we got to the top it was well worth it. The moto ride in Vietnam was very different. Although traffic in Siem Reap was crazy, we weren't in urban traffic very long, but in Chau Doc, we were, and it's really a case of 'Accept that you feel like you could die any second and enjoy it!" (Mum, it was perfectly safe, I was wearing the cutest helmet) - and we did! Once you get out into the countryside, it is a lot more relaxing and you can stop holding your breath while your driver decides to play chicken with a bus (Just kidding, Mum, that never happened, ha!ha!).

Quan Am Nbhin Mat Nghin Tay
(or for those of you not yet fluent in Vietnamese, The Buddha with 1000 hands and 1000 eyes)

After Tra Su, Long took us on a tour of local pagodas and temples. We had already had a long chat about Buddhism, which has a big influence on Long's life, and is the reason why he gets so angry about local hotels and tour companies overcharging tourists with what he calls 'commission'.

Lions (yes, I'm sure) outside the Du Hang or Cave Temple

"Bus ticket is $3, they charge you $6. Moto ride is $2, they charge you $4. They do no work for this money. I take commission before, long time ago, when I start working on moto, but it bad luck."

"Bad luck?" I asked him, intrigued, "What do you mean?"

"Every time I take commission, something bad happen on moto. Something break. Flat tyre. I pay the money I make on commission to fix bike! No, I no like commission. Now I no do that. Now I take tourist to bus station, ticket $3, they pay $3. They want to give me money for thank you, up to them, but no commission."

A monk and a bonsai tree at the Du Hang or Cave temple

We visited several temples with Long, including the Lady Temple, Ba Chua Xu Nui Sam, which Long says brings good luck to all who pray there.

"I no married, no wife before," he tells me, "I pray there, now I have wife, have a son. Very lucky there."

View from the top of the breath taking tower in Tra Su

More commonly, the Lady Temple is linked with business and prosperity, so I await the luck of the Ba Chua Xu Temple with interest, but my favourite pagoda that day was The Cave Temple, where we met several boys of various ages who learn from the monks and work around the temple. Although they spoke no English, their friendly, cheeky grins and gentle, affectionate curiosity for us was a real highlight.

After the temples, we took the motos up the Sam Mountain for sunset, where the views were spectacular and the ride up equally breathtaking - every one should climb a mountain on a motorbike and back down again at least once in their lives, if only for the bends......!

View of the floating village

We spent the next morning on a boat tour of the local fish farms, floating village and the Cham village, where Vietnamese who previously lived in Cambodia and were exiled in the seventies now make their home. Although 70% of the Mekong Delta is now in Vietnam, it has not always been so and we could see Cambodia from Sam Mountain. As such, the people of the Mekong Delta are diverse, including various Chinese communities, Cambodians, and Vietnamese on both sides of the border. The fish farms were a real highlight for me. The fish are kept in huge tanks beneath the floor of the floating farms, and go crazy when you feed them - honestly, it's like something from 007.....

Me feeding the fish at the fish farm - look at that tail poking up!

"No, Mr Bond, I expect you to diiiiiiiiiie......"

We spent the afternoon after our tour sitting around in the square drinking coffee and chatting with Long. After a while, I wandered over to a bookshop and got talking to the owner Mr Long, and ended up sitting chatting with him for over an hour, talking about Cambodia, Vietnam, and my ambitions to be a writer. Mr Long used to live in Cambodia and was himself a fisherman on the Tonle Sap lake. He explained to me about how when the dry season comes and the lake shrinks (if you don't know anything about the Tonle Sap River and Lake then look it up, now), he used to catch fish in his bare hands and that there are so many fish, the boats can hardly make it through.

Mr Long - if you visit Chau Doc, be sure to pay him a visit!

"Can you imagine this?" he asks me.

Just about, I tell him, but I'm determined to come back and see it for myself.

"Here on the Mekong, not so easy now, harder for fisherman because of the pollution of the factories along the river. Now, fisherman start to move to the rice fields and to fish there when they flood."

Mr Long is a rich source of information on all things Mekong River, as well as on Cambodia and Vietnam. When the Vietnamese were ordered to leave Cambodia in the seventies, before the Pol Pot Time, Mr Long and his Cambodian wife left for Vietnam and settled in Chau Doc, where they spent many years in the fishing villages we had visited that morning themselves. Mr Long began to have contact with many of the Westerners coming to Vietnam for tourism, and he began to collect books in English, first running a swapping service and finally opening his own bookshop and running tours of the local area himself. When I come back to South Vietnam, I fully intend to take one of his tours!

Up the Noi Sam, or Sam Mountain and a sunset over both Vietnam and Cambodia, showing the flood plains.

Long took us to the bus station the next day and true to his convictions, helped us to avoid the $4 commission charged by our hotel selling the same tickets. He waved us off at the station and I told him I hoped that the Lady continued to bring him luck.

Yesterday, we arrived in Can Tho, a Mekong delta town further South.

This morning we were up at 5am to see the sunrise on the Mekong and spent the next six hours on a river boat with Ko, our lovely, fatherlike guide, who despite having almost no English other than Hallo, somehow managed to communicate with us throughout. He seemed to take quite a shine to us and made us grasshoppers, windmills and flowers out of bamboo leaves (while driving the boat!), picked us fruit and flowers and taught us how to climb across a monkey bridge. These last are famous in the Mekong Delta and basically consist of very thin planks of wood or bamboo poles across the river, usually with one low balustrade on only one side. To be frank, I flat out refused until Ko came back for me and said with more sincerity than I could possibly refuse, "Ok lady, is ok," and then showed me how to do it again.

The view from our six hour boat trip today. This is down one of the quieter canals of the Mekong Delta rather than the river itself. The Mekong River Delta is called Cuu Long in Vietnam, or Nine Dragons, due to the nine 'fingers' or strands of the delta itself.

So I did. My heart was beating like a jackhammer, and I didn't dare allow my brain to think for a second what it was doing, but I did it, and that's what counts! Mum, it was perfectly safe, I promise.

Ko, in the process of making one of his many palm leaf creations - it's a kind of magic.

And the finished version - is this man a genius, or what?

Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, we will be off to Ho Chi Minh City, which will be my last stop in Vietnam and the place from which I'll fly back to KL for my long journey home in a couple of weeks. I'm so looking forward to seeing you all, and so very sad to leave, but I know this will be the start of a whole new journey for me and I can't wait for it to start.

Love to all and good morning Vietnam, wherever you are.......

And here's the fish farm live and unleashed........!

The moon's upside down

2009-07-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

Cambodia gave us a rainbow when we arrived and we got one just before leaving Kampot, too!

First of all, (so long and) thanks for all the comments - it's great to hear from you all again and glad to hear your techno difficulty has been solved Dad!

So, Kampot town. Well, like nowhere we’ve been so far. I wrote to someone yesterday that it feels as though we’ve travelled Cambodia in chronological order: the ancient Khmer empire at Siem Reap, the terrible history of the Khmer Rouge at Phnon Penh, and now the contemporary complexity of Cambodia in Kampot.

Staying a while in each place that we travel is like making love to a beautiful woman, no, sorry, that’s a whole other show. It’s a bit like meeting people, first impressions are interesting and parts of them are absolutely correct, but other parts are way off.

As with Phnom Penh, I wasn’t sure about Kampot when we first arrived. This is a small town, smaller than Siem Reap, but it has a very tight knit community, and a large number of expats, both living here and running businesses, and working at the NGO’s and projects that exist everywhere here. In fact, it seems sometimes as if many businesses only manage to exist because of the westerners here, who can afford to spend at least triple what a local would pay for a cup of coffee, and, one should argue, rightly so.

The fishing village - very zen, and also very hard work, but then so is zen!

There’s something surreal about Kampot though, where an approximate 200 expats live and make a living, according to Steve, the owner of a local and highly recommended watering, feeding and sleeping spot, Bar Red, which specialises in the most amazing Indian food. It is second only to our own guest house, Blissful, which wins it for the sheer brilliance and friendliness of our international staff here, but more of that later. Steve is the founder and central contributor to The Kampot Survival Guide, an indispensible and highly tongue in cheek guide to the local environs. He is also familiar with Portsmouth, having lived there for a good few years in nearby Beach Road, spookily close to The Loft.

The beach at Kep - just like home, huh?

“Living in Beach Road and watching the local tourist trade there was what convinced me to never run a guest house,” he grinned wryly.

Everyone knows everyone in Kampot, it seems, and it has the feel of a more exotic international village as you might find in the English countryside somewhere. In the middle of the wet season as we are, we have only just missed 4 days continuous rain and accompanying flooding when we arrive, and the weather has been highly unpredictable during our visit. This was disconcerting at first, but soon grows on you, as you realise that everything you do or plan is entirely left to providence, which is actually the same as life back home, but without the illusion of control.

Professional rice farmers at work - and this is very hard, hot, arduous work. In the mud.

Maybe in part because of the weather, maybe because we love Cambodia and don’t want to leave so have slowed our pace to a crawl, we spend our time in Kampot leisurely, getting to know the international crew who run the guest house – A Dutch owner, a French barman who personifies cool as smoke pours slowly from his nose and a cigarette hangs elegantly from his mouth (it’s enough to make me want to smoke again. Almost.), English and Khmer staff – and exploring the wide range of bars and cafes that make up the town. Our new local best friend though rapidly becomes Kate, a beautifully laid back woman who has also spent some days in Portsmouth and is a Hampshire girl herself.

“It’s nice to hear the Pompey accent again,” she tells us, with calm, half-lidded eyes, “I was at uni there actually and got to know it quite well. Actually someone the other day told me he went to college in Southampton and my first reaction was to call him a scummer.....”

Sunset on the Sunset Boat Tour

We’ve also spent a good few hours in Sisters II, a sister cafe to Sisters Cafe in Phnom Penh, both of which are run by women who were raised in the same orphanage in Cambodia’s own Portsmouth, Sihanoukville. The owner tells us the inspiring and hard to listen to story of how she came to be in Kampot from a childhood growing rice in Vietnam, and Kate and I are rapt.

A few days ago, we climbed – and I mean climbed – Bakor Mountain, one of the Elephant Mountains, which are so named because they look like, er, elephants really. I don’t know what I thought two and a half hours walking on the sign referred to when we booked our places on the bus – which turned out to be an open backed trunk – or why they might call it the wet season, but the walk referred to a two and a half hour CLIMB, and I mean CLIMB, which almost had me in tears halfway up demanding to be airlifted out, but again, Kate, Steve Hender’s positivity training and a Vietnamese traveller I met in Phnom Penh who taught to me to chant as a Pure Land Buddhist (a long, beautiful story and one that inspired my first fiction piece written travelling – how exciting) got me to the top...

The pepper plantation, very peaceful and peppery.

....where we took another and very bumpy open truck ride – seriously, I didn’t know what hanging on for dear life meant until this ride. Mark, a 25 year old civil engineer from Norwich, who reminded me of Howard with his “Oh really?” - who is also out for his first trip round SE Asia, but he’s been out since January and only goes home briefly next March for his brother’s wedding - laughed a lot at my constant stream of giggles on the truck.

“How can you find this funny?” he said as I bounced along, squeezed behind a French family and ridiculously close to the back and perched on the edge of a tyre, my position so tenuous that each time I bounced, I thought I was going to fly off the back.

And this is what a pepper plant actually looks like. Really!!

I told him about a discovery I made riding the moto cross country with Pisith.

“Because when I’m really afraid, I seem to laugh a lot,” I cackled.

“Attagirl!” he replied.

“Although I think I’m also enjoying this way more than I should be,” I pointed out.

It was all worth it when we arrived though.....

The weather on the boat tour really cheered up, which allowed us to really take in the sheer beauty of the countryside rolling by.

...and found an abandoned ghost city, the abandoned summer palace of Sihanouk, the Cambodian king and the abandoned casino resort (including post office, casino and hotel) of the French occupation, which was later used by the Khmer Rouge as a hideout, prison and then execution spot. We got soaked. Royally soaked. Although Larry's huge poncho put a valiant fight! But the atmosphere of the abandoned mountain in the mist and the rain, the kind generosity of our soaked through the skin 21 year old Khmer guide, Bunner, and the laughter of the rangers when we dripped into the station, all combined to make it worthwhile.

We sat, dripping and gently steaming in the comparative warmth of the rangers’ station listening to the Khmer ranger whip through a history of the Bokor mountain at great speed.

“Of course, you know when Khmer Rouge use casino as a prison, it not really a prison,” he asked our blank faces.

“No, I don’t know,” I answer.

“Because when Khmer Rouge in power, all of Cambodia a prison,” he tells us sombrely.

The surf and shingle at Kep

But the ranger is saving the best for last.

“You not walking back down the mountain,” he announces.

I feign disappointment, although the prospect of doing some of the steep climbs I slid down twice on the way up has had my stomach churning for most of our visit to the top. He smiles at me in broad disbelief.

“No, it is better, I not happy you climb down because of rain. Too heavy. Maybe landslides.”

Oh good, let’s leave that then, I think, looking around me and trying to picture myself living here until the dry season kicks in in a few months.

“I arrange a truck for you, instead. Bumpy and a long way down, but better.”

“Are you sure?” I think, looking wistfully at a hook in the corner, where I think Larry’s poncho will look splendid until the return of the sun, and waving goodbye to my Sound of Music fantasy once more.

An elephant mountain - see the resemblance? It's asleep......

He is sure. And of course when the truck arrives, it is, yes, an open backed truck. In the pouring rain, we climb over tarpaulin covered sand and tools, to find the shallowest puddle on the back of the truck. Within seconds of sitting down, the three of us are laughing hysterically, while I try to sing “Wouldn’t it be lovely” from My Fair Lady while keeping a straight face. From his snug spot inside the truck, the driver glances nervously at us from time to time as if we might attack at any moment.

There is a strange zen about being soaking wet and freezing cold and bumping along in a hard floored truck down a mountain at speed for over two hours. Believe it or not, we all slept for about an hour, rain pouring down our already wet faces (and into various crevices). I fell into an odd state somewhere between meditation and sleep, which was a bit like being stoned, except I could remember it afterwards. In short, I found a place in my heart and mind where everything was absolutely ok and always will be, no matter what happens.

Here’s Tom with the weather.

As well as our day trip to the mountain and national park, we have taken the opportunity to venture into the Kampot countryside and nearby beach resort of Kep.

Much to the amusement of local farmers, Kate and I tried our hand at planting rice in a rice field. You would not believe how muddy an endeavour this is, although I got a strangely kinky thrill from the feel of the mud between my feet. I am not sure what the locals thought we were doing exactly, but I think we may have formed the basis for many a dinnertime anecdote that night.

The not so professional rice farmers. And that man in the background? Five minutes later, he was accompanied by the village.

We were guided around the local caves by a gaggle of young men who practised their English on us and their French on me (though all I taught them was “a little bit, very slowly”, which is my usual answer to ‘Can you speak French?’ and I’m not sure how they’re ever going to use that phrase....). The highlights of these caves were stalagmites and stalactites shaped like elephants and one shaped like a special lady bit.

“This one my favourite,” he told me sincerely.

“Really, gosh, well, that’s lovely isn’t it,” I murmured.

Our guide for the day, Dat, took us to a local fishing village, which I was enchanted by. The fishing village is predominantly Muslim, which is unusual in this area, and each afternoon, at around 4pm, the fishermen head out in their boats down the river and out to sea. They head about 30km out to sea, where they cast wide nets and drag them along behind for about 1km, stopping every so often to haul in their catch or to move to a different spot and they don’t return home until the early hours of each morning. When we visit in the mid morning the place is deserted as everyone is sleeping. The fishing village has an atmosphere and a beauty all its own and lines the river down to the sea.

Naked lady on Kep Beach. It wasn't me.

We went to a pepper plantation before taking in a few hours in Kep. We ate fresh peppers from the vine (is it a pepper vine? Answers on a comment slip or email please....), which taste, well, just like pepper actually, and bought some to bring home.

“Rick Stein recommends Kampot pepper,” says Kate with great authority.

Kep is not to everyone’s taste, but it is popular with local Khmer who use it as a weekend beach resort and I rather like the slim, brown and marbled beaches and the women who line the promenade with food stalls, putting their fingers to their lips as we pass and calling, “Madame, Yum-Yum?” as they offer food to us.

Our entirely unflappable boat driver

But the highlight of our Kampot holiday has to be the Sunset Boat Tour we take on a tiny wooden boat with a thin bamboo roof down the river to watch the sun do exactly what it says on the tin. Although we start off in typical rainy season downpour, wondering what the hell we are doing – again – within ten minutes we are in blazing sunset downriver for some of the most amazing views of the Elephant Mountains, and the communities that live beside and make their living from the river.

Sights I will never forget? Two men in a boat, dragging an utterly forlorn looking cow behind them – if he couldn’t swim at the start, he soon learnt; a man still sat on his motorbike being ferried across the river in canoe; a sad dog that howled from one bank as his master crossed to the other; more smiling and laughing children and a sunset that left my heart and soul, for such a long, unforgettable moment, at peace.

Kampot River, wider than a mile......

Roger that.

And here’s some Fiona Apple for you. Don’t say I didn’t send you something from Cambodia.

Of horrible histories and happy herbs

2009-07-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

Incense burning at a shrine atop Wat Phnom.

A big hello to my readers at Cope Allman, who are never, ever reading this blog at work, I'm sure, because they are all far too busy working.......!!! Thanks for reading and keeping up with my travels!

Phnom Penh summed up in one picture, where history collides with the modern world, with some delightful consequences

We're off to Kampot tomorrow (also confusingly known locally as Kompot here - but you can search for both online) and I might not be online for a few days, so I thought I'd update you on our busy, emotional week.

Taken at the Royal Palace. This is a bit behind the scenes. I'd set myself the challenge of filling my pictures with colour on this day as the sky was so overcast. This is where some of the ceremonial kit is stored, and the gardeners have used the space in front to stack some of their plants. Those pink flowers are everywhere in Cambodia and are really beautiful.

After Siem Reap, Cambodia's capital city was a bit of an urban awakening. Everything about Siem Reap is chilled, the temples are peaceful and still, everyone seems to know everyone else. Phnom Penh is to Siem Reap as London is to Chipping Tinyville back home. It's a busy city that never sleeps and like Medan, our fave city in Sumatra, you need balls of steel and eyes in the back of your head just to cross the road. You get over your fear of stepping out in front of cars here fast, and you become accustomed to sharing roads, pavements and gutters with rapidly speeding motos and rickshaws.

This building in the heart of Phnom Penh opposite the National Museum has intrigued us for the entirety of our visit. It is entirely abandoned and just falling down, but looks like a throwback to the colonial French days. Why doesn't anyone want it? It doesn't even look as though anyone squats there!

Less exciting and more heartbreaking in Phnom Penh is Cambodia's still huge problem with poverty and the ever global problem of the gap between the rich and poor. Street children line the pavements and as with Siem Reap and Medan, we have been told not to give money to children as they rarely, if ever, get to keep it. The problems with landmines are also visible here and you see amputees outside every tourist attraction selling pirate books (yes, I'm still buying them, I'm carrying the equivalent of a local bloody library, but I'm still buying them - I'm a book whore). Cambodia is a Buddhist country, so with people begging or selling, if you can give a couple of thousand riel, do. The only time we don't is if we have run out. For this reason, and for my love of books, I have been befriended by two booksellers on the waterfront in particular, who now stop to say hi and shoot the breeze. There is still a social stigma attached to amputees in some parts of Cambodia, and many booksellers carry signs telling you that they are not begging, they are working.

The National Museum, where this very brave young man was atop a beam fixing something or other. If you can zoom in you'll see one of the best smiles in Cambodia - this guy and I chattered away in different languages for a while before he thanked me for taking his picture and got back to work!

I had read a lot about Cambodia's troubled past back in Siem Reap, but if you want to find out about it in detail, then Phnom Penh is the place to visit, but be warned, this is no casual history lesson, and be prepared to shed a few tears. On our second day, we visited S21 or Tuol Sleng, a primary school before the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, then a torture camp for those who the KR deemed 'enemies of the Revolution'. The KR (or DK as they are sometimes known) wanted to herald in a new era that returned the former glory of Cambodia to its Angkor empire days (the period in which the famous Wat was built), and thought the best way to do this was to create a nation of peasant agriculture workers, living only from the land and rejecting the material inequalities of capitalism.

Sarun, our driver for our first two days in Phnom Penh. Sarun explained to us that like many tuk tuk drivers, he rents his bike for $5 a day and has to make at least this to make ends meet. His home is in the rural villages several dozen kilometres outside Phnom Penh, so the tuk tuk he rents is also his main home.

Whether this began as a good idea amongst the small group of intellectuals who first came up with it - including the most famous leader Saloth Sar or Pol Pot as he called himself, who was an intellectual educated in France - is a moot point. Somewhere along the way, perhaps as a result of the Khmer Rouge being forced into exile when Cambodia became a US pawn in the Vietnam War, the KR became an extreme, heavily factionalised and paranoid despotic regime, responsible for the deaths and suffering of a vast number of people.

A long gallery next to the Palace buildings, I fell in love with this gallery and wrote a hundred story scenes in my mind just standing looking at it.

Tuol Sleng was where people were sent prior to being driven out to their deaths a few kilometres away at a place called Cheong Ek, or The Killing Fields, as they were christened by Dith Pran (the subject of the now famous film on Cambodia during this time). It is now run by the government as a museum and its chief exhibit is row after row of photographs taken in the camp. Each prisoner was photographed on arrival and extensive documents were kept on each one, including their biography and details of their 'confessions'. These documents are now used by both historians and as a part of the ongoing trial of the man who ran S21, Duch.

Visnu at the National Museum. In his original pose, he is lying on the primal cosmic ocean that brought forth all life. As in the Angkor temples, Cambodia's religious history reflects both its Buddhist and Hindu influences.

The victims brought here were primarily officials of the previous government and their families and associates, intellectuals and later, even many members of the KR themselves, as the leaders became increasingly paranoid of an uprising from within their ranks. The methods of torture were outrageously cruel and of the 20,000 people brought here, only a small number are known to have survived. Walking through row after row of the images of people killed gives you only a small sense of the sheer scale of the genocide in Cambodia and the terrible cruelty that was inflicted on the country as a result. Almost no one in the country was unaffected, as the KR routinely separated families and made chief amongst its methods the routine brainwashing of children, which meant that children were often responsible for sending their own parents to their deaths.

The intersection between Sisowath and Sothea Ros Boulevards on the waterfront, this is one of the Wats or pagodas here where monks live, teach, study and worship. We pass this almost every day, at least once, on foot or in a tuk tuk!

The following day we visited Cheong Ek itself, The Killing Fields where the inmates of S21 were, almost without exception, killed and their bodies piled in huge mass graves. Today Cheong Ek - one of over 340 sites like it in the country - has not been completely excavated, and the 8000 skulls that lie within the huge, 17 level stupa on the site is only a small reflection of the vast number of dead who rest there. Today the site seems peaceful and at first glance, a beautiful open landscape where people walk in silent reflection, apart from the low voices of the guides who steer groups around the site. We hired a guide for our visit, who was very kind in helping us to understand the sheer scale and complexity of the devastation brought down on Cambodia during the four years in which the KR were in power.

" I think that the genocide in Cambodia is worse than the Nazis in some ways," our guide told us, "Because it was Cambodian killing Cambodian, not about race, not about anything. Sometimes children brainwashed to kill their own families, brother against brother. There was no reason, no understanding why. Just what I think, but I think is worse. Many of those who killed people here were children, you understand, children who killed people. Now they are maybe forty, fifty. Most of the old Khmer Rouge, they live in the north west of Cambodia now, still apart from others, but all still alive. Most never brought to trial."

The regal beauty of the Royal Palace. Although it was overcast on the day we visited, the splendour of these buildings shines through - in stark contrast to the children begging outside and the amputees who are selling you books on the street.

This is the real complexity of the KR and of Cambodian history, that those who joined the KR often had no choice themselves, a situation our guide describes as 'kill or be killed.' It is not easy to find someone to blame, an ambiguity that sits at the heart of Cambodian culture now. It is impossible to know how a nation recovers from this kind of tragedy in its recent past.

The Dance Pavilion at the Royal Palace on a very grey day.

We have spent our remaining days in Phnom Penh in much lighter pursuits, as primarily Cambodia is a country of hope and of great hopefulness. We have found its people to be friendly and most of all, incredibly good humoured and this is the first country in which I have bought a phrase book, because everyone is so eager to help you when you try to speak Cambodian, although many of its sounds simply do not exist in our language. I am hopeful yet that I may pick it up one day!

Even more of the Royal Palace buildings. The public are only allowed into one quadrant of the whole site, still officially the residence of the King, so this is just a small percentage of the whole.
The grey building in front is the Napoleon III pavilion, a gift from Napoleon III to King Norodom in 1876 and made entirely of iron!

The National Museum offered a full afternoon's pleasure as we wandered amongst Buddhist and Hindu statues. It is customary here to make an offering to the chief Buddha's on display, which also act as shrines for those visiting, so we stopped every so often to collect from an attendant some garlands of jasmine and to offer them to the Buddha along with the standard few thousand riel or a dollar. The smell of jasmine in the museum was beautiful, and one attendant insisted I take a garland for myself after I also offered one to the Buddha, which I'm hoping was a compliment and not a sign that I smell.

The inner courtyard and gardens at the National Museum. As well as being a really peaceful and interesting place to burn some hours, the gardens are really beautiful in their own right and at the centre sits a red stone Buddha statue. For 500 riel, you can get two bags of fish food to feed the fish in the four lily ponds, too!

We visited the Royal Palace a couple of days ago, which was beautiful and breath-taking in equal measure, with its gold roofed buildings, murals, shrines, landscaped gardens and statues. Unfortunately, the day was cloudy when we went, but there was still a vast array of colour to be seen everywhere, including in the murals on the courtyard walls of the Reamker, Cambodian's epic poem which is based on the Ramayana, or tales of Rama and which we also saw at Angkor Wat.

Wat Phnom and Cambodia's largest clock. Yes, I said clock.

Yesterday we stopped off at Wat Phnom, the hill after which the city takes its name, and on which a huge stupa stands and several shrines to the Buddha. It is also home to the largest clock in Cambodia. Yes, I said clock. Despite these fantastic tourist draws, I went because I had read that for a dollar you could set free a sparrow that the sellers catch in large numbers and keep in cages at the top, and when the seller handed me the tiny trembling bird and showed me how to throw him into the sky, I did so with a great sense of relief for this tiny life. I wrote to my friend Lynda today that I wish I could throw my emotional baggage into the sky with the same gusto. The seller, sensing my now Cambodia-famous soft touch, told me that for $10 I could free the entire cage. I was tempted until I looked around and saw how many cages there were and realised that I could blow my entire budget on Wat Phnom.

And from the top.....Looking down Norodom Boulevard. The road names in Phnom Penh are subject to change, most back streets are numbered rather than names and there is often no order to the number. In addition, the same number is often given to more than one house on a street. Being a postman here must suck.

In addition to our touristy delights we have also frequented almost every market in Phnom Penh, including the Russian, Central and Night markets. Sometimes, when I look back on the days, I'm not sure how we find the time to eat, especially as for the first time we are also managing to lie in each day (our room doesn't have a window). But eat we have and do, and well. Our favourite place so far has been the discovery of Happy Herb Pizza, where, if you ask, the cook will throw some extra 'happy herb' on your pizza as topping, if you catch my drift...........

Happy Herb Pizza in the middle, and our other favourite haunt, The Pink Elephant, which has a great selection of veggie Khmer food (often a rarity - Cambodia's main diet is rice and fish. So much fish.....). This is Sisowith Boulevard, the waterfront overlooking the Tonle Sap river. Just down the road is a shop that sells pirate movies for a dollar. We watched Wolverine, it was great, though how one body can sustain the muscles Hugh Jackman is wearing in that movie is far beyond me. Not that I'm complaining......

I'll write soon with more news, but until then, my love to all. Peace and Happy Pizza out.

And it's goodbye from them. Monkeys on Wat Phnom.

Motorcycle Diary

2009-07-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

That's me on the back of a bloody moto! Me! And our friend Pisith, the best moto driver in Cambodia!

Another big thank you to Kate for letting me use her pictures on this post. We haven't worked out the wifi situation in Phnom Penh yet and I'm at an internet cafe and don't want to risk sticking my hard drive into a foreign body - there are viruses out here, you know what I'm saying?

After three days of templage, you could be forgiven for thinking that we would be templed out. You are soooooo wrong. You know why? Because we are hardcore Templars. Oh yes.

After the temples of Angkor, which we thought were hard to beat, we wanted to go further afield, a little off the beaten track to some of the lesser spotted temples outside Siem Reap. We spoke to our friend and driver Richard about our options for travelling to Beng Mealea and Koh Ker.

"Yes. I can do this," he said, "I take you there. I've been many times, I take you on motos. Two bikes."

Motos are the local name for motorcycles here.

I am very dubious about this. I have never been on a motorcycle and I have a recurring memory of Shonagh's mum calling motorbike drivers 'organ donors' from when I was a kid.

Look, no landmines here - what a relief!

"I'll drive a bike," says Kate, who has never driven one before in her life.

"Yeah, ok," says Richard.

I feel obliged to step in here, "I think that is a very bad idea. Richard, Kate has never driven a motorbike before."

Richard is nothing if not quick to adapt, "Ok, no problem, I get other driver. We take two bikes, two passengers one bike, one passenger on other."

I'm not sure why this doesn't make me feel better, but it doesn't. I've seen motorbike drivers in South East Asia, in fact, I've seen the traffic in South East Asia and it's cosmically insane. There are no rules. It's like Fight Club. The first rule of South East Asia traffic is that there is no South East Asia traffic. Fact.

Our guide Tay at Beng Mealea

Ang is saying nothing, and Kate's travelling nickname has become Kate'll do it Dykes, so it's down to me.

"Er, maybe we could have a trial run," suggests Kate.

"Yeah, trial run," says Richard, "Sound like a plan. We go now."

I want to cry. Instead, I leap up and say, "Yes. We go now."

Two seconds later, I am wrapped around Richard as if we are Siamese twins and we're heading into the side streets of Siem Reap.

Look at that straight spine! Look at me on a moto! I will never get bored of this. Never!!

"If you kill me," I whisper hoarsely in his ear, "I will come back as a ghost and I will haunt you until your last day on earth."

"Yeah, ok." says Richard, with his customary cool.

After five minutes, Richard starts to have a coughing fit and I realise I am constricting his breathing and release my grip on his ribcage. He seems somewhat relieved. I realise that I have not yet died and start to breathe again and look around me. This isn't too bad.

When we get back to Happy Guest House, K and A cheer at me as we sail back into the yard on Richard's bike and I walk over to them.

"How was it?"

I stretch out my hands which are shaking so violently I could mix a Harvey Wallbanger without even attempting to move (seriously, I know this, I had one the other night).

Richard - what can I tell you, the chicks love him....

"It was like this," I tell them, nodding at my hands, "But it's actually ok. We should do it."

And so it is settled. The next day, Richard and I set off on one bike and his friend Pisith,
Kate and Ang set off on another. Twenty minutes later we are out on the straight, flat roads of Cambodia sailing along at a ridiculous speed and I am loving it.

Being on a moto takes some getting used to, but once I do, it is one of the best feelings ever. Better even than the speedboat, and I thought that was pretty exhilarating. But being a passenger on a moto feels like flying. It's fast and scary and the wind is in your face. I love it!

The gang at Koh Ker, Kate is the one behind the camera.

We swap bikes halfway along and I ride with Pisith, who we have not met before. Pisith is a student at University, he is only 21 years old and this is his first trip with tourists out to Koh Ker. Actually, we learn later, this is also Richard's first trip with tourists out to Koh Ker, in fact, it is both of their first trips to Koh Ker, full stop, as we learn approximately halfway through the trip when Richard gets a little lost.

But first we are off to Beng Mealea. This temple is less preserved than the temples around Siem Reap and is, in many places, a ruin. There is no equivalent to English Heritage here, so you are expected to be responsible for yourself and if you want to climb through, up and over the ruins, then it's at your own risk.

Still pumped with adrenaline from the motorcycle ride, suffice to say I do want to climb the ruins like tomb raider. However, you should not tackle Beng Mealea without a guide, not only because it isn't that safe if you don't know what you're doing, but also because they know stuff that you don't, such as what it is you're looking at, for example. We do not realise this at first and so turn down the offers from the first two guides we meet. However, this is ok, because a wiry middle-aged man, Tay, soon comes to my rescue and helps me clamber through a section of the ruins I was clearly trapped in, and then starts to guide us round in the most charmingly accented English I have ever heard.

Oh, it's me on a moto - what a surprise! Doing something really weird with my face, I think we'd just hit a bump!

Tay makes our trip to Beng Mealea thoroughly enjoyable and is genuinely delighted when we give him some money at the end. After the temple, we head across the country road to Harmony Farm, an orphanage, school, and sustainable farm NGO that we had heard about in Siem Reap. We meet Marli again, the assistant director at Harmony Farm and whose enthusiasm for the place, the children and the staff is unmistakable and highly contagious. She is not romantic about the challenges of volunteering, or about the difficulties of raising money and support for a project like Harmony Farm, but the Farm is currently providing education, care and support to over 100 children from the local community, many of whom cannot attend school on a daily basis and without which their opportunities for education and indeed, childhood, would be severely limited.

Harmony Farm really needs ongoing support and they are currently raising money for solar panels to replace the overly expensive and inefficient generator that currently runs for a few hours a day. You can - and please do - find out more about and join me in donating money to Harmony Farm here: Give them cash please!!

Even better, if you fancy a trip to Cambodia that's a bit more than sightseeing, why not volunteer there? Email Marli on marli@harmonyfarmcambodia.org for more info.

Band shot number two! Rock and roll!! Richard is the one behind the camera...

After Harmony Farm, we head out to Koh Ker. Getting there is a bit of an adventure, not only because Richard has slightly fabricated his knowledge of the area (it's not a worry as everyone is very friendly), but because, unlike the tarmacked roads of the journey so far, the last couple of hours journey to Koh Ker is only accessible via a dirt road. This is a different experience and as I do not know Pisith so well, I spend the first ten minutes clutching on to the back of the bike and hoping that it will be ok.

But at the point where the bumps in the road are so frequent, I am actually bouncing off the back, I decide the time has come to swallow my pride.

"Er, Pisith?"

"Yes Sarah?"

"Erm, I'm actually pretty scared on this bit, can I hold onto you now please?"

Pisith laughs a little, "Yes Sarah, it's ok."

One of my fave shots of the trip so far - nice work and band shot number 3!

The ice between us firmly broken, Pisith and I start to chat a bit more. The thing about dirt roads is that you have to go a bit slower and because you go a bit slower, you don't have to wear your helmet - honest Mum, he's a really good driver and it was perfectly safe!!

The next day we head out to spend the morning at the temples and this is great as, because they are less tourist populated, Pisith and Richard can come in with us (usually your drivers have to wait for you outside). The two of them are natural-born posers and want their photos taken every ten minutes, but we get some great band shots. By one o'clock it is time to head back to Siem Reap, and so we're all back on the bikes and away.

This time, as I have gotten more confident, and because I bully him a bit, Pisith goes faster than on our outward journey, so fast in fact that we leave the others behind and then have to wait by the roadside for them to catch up again! But there is no doubt in my mind that our moto journey to Koh Ker will be one of my most enduring memories of this trip, and that the friendships we have made at Happy will never leave me.

In case there was any doubt of this though, Richard invites us out on our last night to one of the 'locals' bars where only Khmers drink. This is a strange place, with Khmer karaoke (enduring memory number 25, Richard singing karaoke blasted out of his face) and the serving of 'slow' beer, which is lager served with huge wedges of ice. We were soon joined by Pisith and another Happy driver, Adam, and then we were soon smashed out of our faces. Really smashed. I don't even remember going to bed, let alone getting home.

And here is something we actually saw over the last couple of days - the main temple at Koh Ker, Prasat Thom

The next day we are up at 6am - yes, 6am - to head off to the country's capital Phnom Penh by bus. As we creep out, we almost trip over Richard, who is unconscious in the hallway.

Ang is vomiting at the first truck stop, but I manage to last until we arrive at the capital before bringing the contents of my stomach forth. I swear never to drink again. Again. Our new guest house, The Royal is lovely, and Phnom Penh is vastly different from Siem Reap. There is a far more city-like feel here, but now, on our third day, I am starting to get a like and a feel for the place. But I'll tell you more of that in my next post.

Missing you, my homies. Peace out.

Here's Ang and I. over-excited at Richard's singing onstage at the local's bar in Siem Reap - yes, I have had far too much slow beer at this point....

Cambodia Dreaming

2009-07-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

Angkor Wat at sunrise on my birthday. Priceless and almost indescribable.

It's been five days since my birthday already! Where have they gone? And we've done so much since then, I don't know how I'll squeeze it all into one post without boring you all to death, but I'll try. There's going to be a lot of photos in this one.....!

Angkor Wat - there are so many spaces like this, including many long galleries. This is a part of the temple called the Cruciform Cloister.

We did a day of temples on the day before my birthday, and managed to see seven - of very different shapes and sizes - all of them fascinating and intricately, elegantly beautiful. When the Europeans stumbled across the Angkor temples, they at first assumed them to be Roman or Greek in origin, concluding - very wrongly and with our typical arrogance - that the Khmer civilisation could not be responsible for such incredible architecture.

The North West gorupa or entrance hall at Angkor Wat, with a guardian lion. This was taken at about 7am, yes, 7am!!!

There is frequent reference, even now, in the guides you read, of the Europeans 'discovering' the temples, but of course they didn't. The Khmer people never forgot they were there, though many were overgrown on their rediscovery in the nineteenth century and many have always been used for worship by local people as Hindu and Buddhist temples.

The Red Buddha, one of many beheaded by the Khmer Rouge, who killed not only Buddhists, but people who wore glasses, and those who spoke more than one language in their doomed quest to return the whole country to a nation of farming peasants.

Buddhism replaced Hinduism as the Khmer religion, and the temples reflect both forms of spirituality, with scenes from the Mahabarata, the Ramayana and many statues of Buddha throughout each site. Vishnu and Shiva are most frequently seen, but we have also become familiar with many other Hindu gods and their 'mounts' (the creatures that carried the god like a personal tuk tuk, and who often fought alongside them).

Garuda on the Elephant Terrace at Angkor Thom.

My favourites are Garuda, Vishnu's mount (Vishnu had many incarnations or avatars, and it took us a while to figure this out!), who is half man, half bird, Hanuman, the monkey god, who was a loyal friend to Vishnu in his incarnation as Rama (whose adventures are laid out in the Ramayana) and Ganesha, the elephant god and son of Shiva and Parvati.

The South East Tower at Angkor Wat - showing the amazing architecture. There are five towers like this in a quincunx - sounds obscene doesn't it, but apparently it means five towers, one in the centre and four evenly spaced around it in a square or rectangle - brilliant!

My birthday wish was to see the sun rise at Angkor Wat, and thanks to my two very own birthday pixies, this wish duly came true. Angkor Wat is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and it seems that around every corner there is something new to inspire, delight or amaze. The ancient Khmer architecture has an entirely unique style, and Angkor Wat is typical in this. We got up at 4am (yes, I really mean 4am) to leave at about 5am with our now regular tuk tuk driver, Richard.

Vishnu with 8 arms at the entrance gallery, Angkor Wat. There was a really strange photo shoot going on just around the corner from this statue, with women in wedding dresses and loads of photographers. After the mythological spirituality of the temple, this was really surreal!

I love tuk tuks and I wish that we could adopt them in the UK, although I know they would never pass Health and Safety regulations. I would like to drive a tuk tuk in the UK, I would like this to be my primary means of making a living and in the evenings or in quiet periods of the day I could write the great English novel (I haven't worked on it once here yet - I'm assuming it's not time).

Our tuk tuk!! This has been our main method of transport around Siem Reap so far, driven by our friend and guide, Richard, who takes great care of us and who takes our lengthy visits to each temple in his stride and spent his day off with us and took us to meet his family.
"Free of charge," he insisted, "Because you are the best customers!"

When we visit temples, Richard waits outside with the tuk tuk. We lost six hours in Angkor Wat, wandering the different enclosures and levels, admiring the reliefs on the walls and the intricate architecture. Richard thought perhaps we had got lost or died and came to look for us. Twice.

The perfect departure from Angkor Wat on your birthday - 4 Japanese women spelling out L-O-V-E!! Best of all, this was their second attempt, in the first one they spelt out E-V-O-L.

"Oh my God." He said, flatly, on our return, "Oh my God. You have been gone six hours. Most people, two or three. You, six. Oh. My. God."

Many of the reliefs on the walls in the temples are of apsaras, the famous celestial dancers who danced for the Gods, and I must have a million photographs of them in my possession now. The thing is, although you see them at every temple they never cease to be as beautiful as the first time you see them, and I promise you that you never tire of them.

An Apsara at Banteay Kdei temple - we had a great guide here who provided us with loads of great information on the temple that we would not have otherwise known. After this though, I picked up a gorgeous guidebook for $5 from one of the sellers outside the temples, a young lad who I refused the book from over and over until I was finally persuaded by his sheer relentlessness and the power of his sales pitch - NLP was invented in Cambodia, I swear!!

Unfortunately, many of the temples suffered from neglect - many were overgrown with trees and one has been preserved in this fashion and featured in Tombraider, we were told on our visit!

Ta Phrom - or the Tomb Raider temple as we were told - with silk cotton trees growing on the inside over the temples, almost like snakes coiling over tree branches.

And from the inside! Ta Phrom is preserved with the trees intact deliberately whereas in other temples they have been removed. Keeping them in situ is a careful balance as they can damage the temples if they are not looked after properly.

A statue seller inside Ta Phrom, smiling here at us because we had just bought three tiny statues. Some of the sellers and children sellers are even canny enough to charge you for taking their photo! Not this guy, though, who seemed happy to be asked.

During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, who outlawed Buddhism (amongst so many other things), the KR troops cut the heads from many of the Buddhas in the temples. I have been taking a crash course in my spare time on Cambodian history, reading various internet sources, and the rule of the Khmer Rouge and the resulting genocide of the Cambodian people is one of the most horrific in history. I won't give give you a potted version here, but if you're interested, a great first stop resource can be found at From Slideshow to Genocide

One of the temples at Prasat Kravan, dedicated to Lakshmi. This is the only temple built with red bricks in this way and this relief has been restored to its original strange beauty.

Cambodia's history is - like many South East Asian countries - intricately tied up with the history of the surrounding nations, particularly Thailand and Vietnam, and with the past battles of superpowers such as China, USA and USSR for and against Communism. This legacy has left behind a long and broad trail of corruption throughout social and political life, that makes it very hard for the majority of the population here. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, although you can choose to avoid it in Siem Reap if you wish, or rather to close your eyes to it.

Chao Say Tevoda main temple with the keeper of the shrine to Buddha approaching to guide us to the shrine.

The keeper of the shrine at Chao Say Tevoda temple - who taught us the right way to devote incense at the shrines to Buddha. You donate a dollar or so, the keeper hands you three incense sticks which you clasp in your palms like a prayer and move forwards and backwards three times before placing the incense in a pot of sand before the Buddha.

Tourism has had a massive impact on Siem Reap, which has rapidly expanded as a base for touring the temples, and it is possible for Westerners to stay in posh hotels with full amenities (not that we can talk, Happy Guest House is the highest luxury we've had so far - they even give you towels!!), take tuk tuks everywhere, shop only in the malls and go to the restaurants and bars on Pub Street - I kid you not, it's real name, Pub Street, and filled with Western bars and restaurants where the only Khmers you'll see are serving you.

A great example of the intricate detail of the carvings on many of the temples and their surrounding buildings. This one is a detail from a pediment (carving over the top of an entrance) at Banteay Sray, one of the smallest temples and made to a miniature scale. Some of the doorways are only just over a metre tall, which was hilarious for me to watch as loads of tall tourists rendered themselves almost unconscious - repeatedly. Glenn, should we come to Cambodia at any point, I'm sooooooooooooooooooooo bringing you here.

The only place you really can't avoid the poverty is at the temples, where the desperation of the vendors, who flock to you as soon as you leave each one, is palpable and heartbreaking. Children offer bracelets, trinkets and small, traditional Khmer scarves for sale, lowering the price to ridiculous levels when you refuse. We've been offered up to 20 scarves and bracelets for just 1$US. The other day I was offered a traditional Khmer violin for a dollar, which is ridiculous. Although haggling is par for the course here, and can seem like a game to us in which we vie for the cheapest price, the poverty that lies beneath each transaction is very real, and I usually steer by a price that I would find ridiculous back home and stop bargaining before I feel like a complete fascist capitalist pig dog.

A child selling flutes at Banteay Kdei - not only was he selling but this little lad could play, too. Children his age gather in groups around and outside the temples (they are not usually allowed inside) and point to some very serious poverty in Cambodia. It is not unusual to be swooped on by large groups of children and teenagers all selling identical products, most commonly bootleg books, bracelets, trinkets made from palm leaves, scarves and flutes. The problem is if you buy from one in the group, they all want you to buy, so we learnt to pick our moments! These experiences are pretty heart breaking, but exceptionally commonplace.

The US$ is the main currency of Cambodia, with the national currency only really used for change or in daily use in the markets for Khmers. It's a weird system at first, but oddly you do get used to running with two currencies after a while!!

We've tried to do the tourist thing ethically here, and Cambodia has more opportunities for this than any other country we've visited so far: offering NGO hotels and cafe's (like the Singing Tree) where money goes to local projects. You have to do your research though, as corruption is rife even here, with fake NGO's being set up as a way of making money. All NGO's should be registered, but the registration process is very expensive, so it can be hard even for genuine NGO's to register. This sort of bureaucracy can be typical of Cambodia, it seems.

My favourite - probably not including Angkor Wat, which stands alone really - the Bayon temple, with its many faces of Buddha. Inside it is like a maze and when we went, it was late afternoon and it had just finished raining. Inside it was dark and eerie in the humid half light of the falling sun, haunting and unforgettable.

In addition to the sunrise and our visit to Angkor Wat, Kate and Ang had booked us into the most lovely hotel for my birthday night and the following day. They also bought me a lovely set of miniature statues of the Buddha and two Thai monks, as well as a lovely pendant of the Buddha from Thailand, the latter of which I lost today, but am desperately trying not to dwell on and instead to see the lesson held within.....mostly that it is possible to get very attached to possessions very quickly and that such attachments can bring as much unhappiness as they do joy. The trick it seems is to hold all things I love in a light, not a tight, grasp and by so doing, perhaps I will always be ready to let them go, as nothing really belongs to me forever anyway....

The beauty of Srah Srang Lake, near the temple sites.

The day after my birthday was a long day of rest, relaxation and lovely food, including to the fabulous Singing Tree, a cafe and community centre that we have taken to our hearts, and which is like a Peace Cafe away from home (except these guys do veggie burgers, and iced coffees that I would do almost anything for), which runs meditation classes, Buddhist films and a shop selling local goods produced by charities, orphanages and NGO's - yes I did some shopping here! We also visited a restaurant called The Butterflies Garden that has lots of butterflies in the garden outside and where you can eat your food on sofas that resemble beds - pure luxury! The money from this place goes to a local NGO and local children collect the butterflies that come to live here.

A Monkey at the Singing Tree Cafe on her birthday - we've been back there many times since and tonight Kate went to a meditation introduction there, while Ang and I sat outside reading and writing, and drinking beer and iced coffee shakes respectively!

It was at the Singing Tree cafe that we had the opportunity to attend a "Monk Chat" session, that does exactly what it says on the tin. We sat and spoke to a monk from one of the local pagodas (where the monks and their students live) for an hour or so about his life as a monk in Cambodia.

This was a real eye-opening experience for me, as I think I was holding some really romantic (in 20/20 hindsight) ideas about Buddhist spirituality and my own sense of and need for a spiritual quest in life.

I've got a face, you've got a face......It's all gonna be alright.....
A face of the Buddha, from the Bayon temple.

Buddhism was only reinstated as the national religion in the 90's and now plays a major role in education and in the rural areas, environmental protection. In Thailand, we saw that young men entered monasteries as a form of national service, but in Cambodia, entering a monastery is a vital practice for young men who are looking to improve their education and life chances. The young monk we spoke to, who has been a monk for 8 years, entered the pagoda as a way of gaining an education.

“Since 2001, I become a monk. Before this I live in a village, I look after water buffalo. There are many trees everywhere, it is far from town or city, maybe you say jungle. I do not know about anything then. I do not know meaning of life or about Buddhism. And perhaps it stay that way, but I am lucky, I ask my grandfather and he speaks to my father and he tells him I want to go to monastery and my father thinks it is a good idea. So I come, because I want to learn languages and I do not want always to work in the fields.”

Apsaras in the Bayon temple

He tells us that some monks stay for a long time as monks, that they live their lives like this and become teachers. For many, many others though, it is something that the young men do to seek a better education and what he calls ‘general knowledge’ about the world, something that he would not otherwise have received in his village at home. He has not seen his family for two years, though he is allowed to visit them once a year and he is starting to think that maybe next year he will leave life as a monk and seek work as a tour guide perhaps, or in the tourist industry.

I start to wonder if many of my ideas about (dare I say, attachments to) Buddhism back home were based on a very false idea of the reality of the practice of the religion in the countries in which it originated. 'My' Buddhism starts to look a little like another of the many luxuries I can afford, something that I can pick and choose to give some meaning to my existence in a world that from here begins to look more and more insane, unjust and unbalanced. This is not to say that there is nothing for me to learn from Buddhism, and it is still one of my most valuable sources of guidance. However, I feel as though my spiritual quest is indeed a luxury compared to the daily life here, where there is simply no time to spend navel gazing and wondering too intently about the meaning of life.

More apsaras from the Bayon temple - I told you I had a lot of photos of them....

I enjoy the evening greatly, even though or perhaps because it leaves me with far more questions than it answers. I have no sense of what Buddhism means to this young man or how it will change his life once he leaves the protection of his monastery to seek work. He certainly has a clear idea of how hard it will be for him at first, and speaks of his worries if he is unable to make money. Spirituality does not clothe us, nor does it feed us, after all. At the end of the session, the two monks chant for us, a prayer for luck and for all that we desire. It is a beautiful and soulful sound, though of course I have no idea what any of it means. Each one takes it in turns to pause for breath, allowing the other to continue the chant as he inhales.

More than any reflection on my own spirituality, which develops on its own path as the trip progresses, in ways I could not predict and rarely wish for, this conversation with the monk cements a fascination and growing love for Cambodia in me. As with Indonesia, there is a gritty resourceful hope at the heart of this country; a nation that has seen so much tragedy that I cannot help but feel that if you scratch the surface of the earth itself here, it will bleed. Yet there is such warmth here, and something far more enigmatic, more elusive, a sense that this country's emotional self is somewhere behind the scenes always, hard to find and harder still to pin down. I like it immensely, and look forward to each day when I wake up.

Richard driving the tuk tuk - I have no idea how this shot came out at all as I can barely begin to describe how bumpy the average tuk tuk ride in Cambodia is!

Many volunteers from all over the world, but particularly the West, come to Cambodia to volunteer in different programmes, some teaching English, but others doing more administrative, management or even hands on environmental or conservation work. Again, you have to do your research when choosing a programme, but we have met many volunteers here with varying degrees of training and involvement with the local programmes, and the sense of contribution and achievement they feel is clear. Tonight we met Bev, a lovely Australian woman who is teaching at a local orphanage.

"I've taught in Australia, but the kids are horrible there. The behaviour is terrible," she tells us, between recounting her many travel adventures with the natural Australian gift for story telling, "But here, there is so much love from the children, they are so affectionate, it's lovely."

Bev has never done any volunteering before and she came here after meeting a volunteer organiser at what she calls a "hippy festival in the bush" that she goes to every year. She tells us she is the sort of person who just does things on whim and her decision to come to Cambodia has been no exception.

We also met Marley at our guest house, a young Australian woman who is in Cambodia after several previous visits volunteering for a project called Harmony Farm, about 70km from Siem Reap, which she has become increasingly involved with over past years. She is currently self-funding as a volunteer but has been awarded funding from the Australian government to continue her work. Harmony Farm is an orphanage, school and growing enterprise as a sustainable eco-farm, teaching children and young people farming skills which will, they hope, in the future allow the project to become self-sustaining. Marley has a background in agriculture, and started as a hands on volunteer and teacher but now does a lot of administrative and managerial work, meeting with NGO's and fund raising.

When you get outside of the town, these rice fields are the most common sight by the sides of the roads. They are bright green and very eye catching and are one of the main ways rural Cambodians make a living, barely.

We visited the night market a few nights ago, which has to be experienced to be believed. Not only are there bargains to die for - I bagged a few and I'm now discarding clothes at a rate of knots to fit in all the things I'm buying - but there are masseurs, pools where fish will eat the dead skin from your feet, stalls where you can have ear candles inserted and a cocktail bar. I wanted to have my feet done by the fish, but after a Singapore Sling, Sex on the Beach and a Harvey Wallbanger (all at a staggering £1.80 each), I wasn't fit to climb into the pool. I was going to do a Long Island Iced Tea, but I don't think I would have made it home. As it was I had to insist on getting a tuk tuk home as I was really quite sozzled - maybe the heat, maybe the lack of food, maybe the fact that we really haven't had the opportunity to drink here much! Oh, well, apart from on my birthday when K and A pulled a bottle of champagne out of the hat - or out of the ice bucket to be precise!!

We spent a third day at the temples, and this one really was my favourite, even taking Angkor Wat into consideration, as on our last day we went to Angkor Thom, the remains of a city of temples and the old Royal Palace. Here we visited Bayon temple, which I loved, and which is famous for all the faces of Buddha carved into the many towers. There is no official agreement on how many faces there are, which I love! I think this is because some of the faces are partial and less clear than others, so no two people count them the same, and there is something about this elusiveness that just about sums up my feelings about Cambodia - nothing is for certain!

More views from the Bayon temple in the fading light.

The other thing I've been buying with ridiculous frequency is books - which is utterly absurd as they are the most difficult thing to carry due to their rigidity and their weight. But I am, at heart, a book fiend, and I cannot stop. I know, talk about attachment. In Cambodia, there is an ubiquitous trade in bootleg or 'pirate' books, which as a librarian and protector of copyright, I should abhor, but in practice, I love. Basically, original books are photocopied and rebound - actually stitched together, bound! - and sold very cheaply and not just by street and temple vendors, but in actual bookshops, too! It's brilliant, and means that you can pick up great 'new' books for about £3, which is cheaper than any country we've been to so far!

I bought a copy of the novelisation of 'The Killing Fields', the film about journalist Sydney Schanberg and his Cambodian friend Dith Pran during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. It makes me cry about every ten minutes, but I know that I will never forget reading this book whilst in Cambodia, and the sense it has given me of what it must have been like to be here in those dreadful days is better than any other resource.

One of the Victims of Landmines Bands, who play outside the larger temples. I bought one of their cds as they play lots of traditional Cambodian folk music, which we are developing a real fondness for, and which sounds like nothing else I've heard before.

Another legacy of Cambodia's troubled past are landmines, of which there are estimated to be 3,000,000 left unexploded across the country, following the three decades of war the nation has experienced. Planted by various factions, including the Khmer Rouge, but supplied by the Soviet Union, USA and China, landmines make much of the countryside a very dangerous place. We visited the Landmine Museum about 30km outside Siem Reap, where Aki Ra, a former Cambodian soldier who planted landmines, now works as part of an NGO he created to clear up and defuse them. He set up the museum to raise money both for the continuing clean up work, and to fund an orphanage and children's home that works to help disabled children, some of whom were themselves harmed by landmines. The museum includes a garden in which defused landmines are placed as they would be in the countryside, to give you an idea of how easy to miss and how dangerous they are. Although some will kill you, many will cause very serious damage to limbs and so many landmine victims are amputees.

Landmines at the Cambodian Landmine Museum run by Aki Ra, a former Cambodian soldier now devoted to clearing landmines and improving the lives of young Cambodians. These landmines are triggered when you step on them and are the reason why so many Cambodians have lost limbs.

Landmines hanging from a tree in the Landmine Museum Garden. These ones are really awful, and will normally be concealed in forests. Trip wires run from them close by, so that when someone walks past and triggers one, they are likely to die instantly.

Death and injury have become so commonplace in Cambodia that many of the local people talk to you about such incidents with chilling casualness. Richard, our tuk tuk driver, invited us to his village on his day off to meet his family, to whom he introduced us with great pride. He mentions two friends of his who died of malaria when he was working as a fisherman in Sihanoukville (a coastal town) in his youth.

"I don't know why I no get," he tells us, mystified, "There were four of us, but two get malaria and die, not me. I come home after, too dangerous there."

Ten people live in the house where Richard grew up, his brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces as well as both his parents. In addition to the main house there is a larger wooden building raised on tall stilts, which stands perhaps on slightly lower ground and can be used in the rainy season, which began in May. It rains heavily for a while almost every day, and you can soon predict from the humidity and sudden change in the wind, as well as the heavy dark clouds, when this will happen. During our visit to the village, however, we are blessed with good weather, which is just as well as Richard sends one of his nephews straight up a palm tree some 50 feet tall to collect coconuts for us. Richard then hacks these open, slips in a straw and hands them straight to us to drink the milk, which is one of the best and unique experiences so far!

Richard's nephews at his village. These children were beautiful, always smiling and full of energy, cycling, running and leaping around or fighting with each other. The only English word they know is 'Hello', which they would repeat to us constantly, and which we, of course, repeated back!

After the village, Richard drops us off at a local restaurant where we get to watch some apsara dancing, yes, as in the apsaras from the temple reliefs! Live and in the flesh, this is just as uniquely, exquisitely beautiful and I am torn between wanting to be one of these elegant dancers and wanting to watch them dance forever. No wonder these dances were thought to be for the gods. As well as the slow, elegant female dances or Apsara dance, which shows an Apsara and her maids collecting flowers (this dance has a heavy Thai influence), we see folk dances. Unlike the Apsara and classical dances, which were performed only by women at the show, all wearing ornate and beautiful clothes decorated in gold - reflecting their importance and the fact that they were originally performed exclusively for royalty - the folk dances are performed in every day dress and feature men and women.

One of these, the Robam Kom Araek, features the dancers leaping over bamboo poles, which are held at either end by other dancers and banged on the floor, while couples or pairs of couples leap over them in time to the beat - the last time I saw this was at Howard's wedding, during a display of Filipino dance and this one is thought to be a Khmer version of the same. My favourite though was the coconut dance or Robam Kous Trolaok, in which the male and female dancers move much faster than in the classical dances, and clap together coconut shells. There is much shouting, chanting and grinning during this one and it looks like a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, we head out to Harmony Farm to see Marley and for a look around and we will be taking schoolbooks and pencils for the school. After that, Richard will take us on to the temples further out from Siem Reap, and we will probably stay in a local village somewhere before heading back on Friday. Then we're off to the country's capital, Phnom Penh!

Finally, a really big thank you for all my emails, phone calls, text messages and facebook messages on my birthday - what an extra special treat to have so many reminders of home on my first birthday ever in another country!! I had a great time here, but to hear from you all really made it the perfect day - so a very big thank you all the way from Cambodia and peace out until next time!!

2009-07-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

The Buddha at the Chedi on Khao Tang Kuan, or Monkey Hill

Almost by accident, Songkhla became our main and only stop in Thailand. We got to Monkey Hill and to the Laem Samila, or Samila Beach to see the mermaid statue (it is lucky to touch her breasts, apparently, but I bet you it was a bloke who made up that story after being caught one night in an embarrassing situation....) and my personal favourite, the statue of the cat and the mouse, after whom the two islands you can see from Samila are named.

Apparently, the cat, the mouse and the dog were all passengers on a Chinese sampan (a wooden boat) and tried to steal a merchant's magic crystal. They jumped overboard with it, but all of them drowned, and the cat and mouse became the two islands, the dog became Khao Tang Kuan and the crystal became the white sands on the beach. I've really noticed that South East Asia like to do tragedy - you can tell from their pop videos (not that I spent the whole time watching Asian music videos, I spent most of my time in serious contemplation of the BBC World service, but tip for the weary, if you want to understand a culture, look at its music videos). Lots of the people in them die tragic deaths and their partners are left to mourn for them forever, leaving you thinking, Crikey, it's only a pop song.

Here they are, but no dog. Why no dog? I just don't know. Just no dog.

Anyhoo. So our plan was to be in Cambodia for my birthday on Friday. We thought that maybe this would still allow us time to visit a few places along the way, particularly Bangkok. I really wanted to be in Cambodia for my birthday (I have a secret dream about it and that's all I can tell you without risking your life in case it doesn't come true), and K and A will end their trip in Thailand anyway, so they will tour it at the end of their journey. We 'plan' (ho ho) to stay about a month in Cambodia before crossing into Vietnam, and I will fly solo from there (or that's the plan, nothing booked yet - ho ho) back to KL and home - Ta dah!

So we catch a bus from Songkhla back to Hat Yai, where we have a few hours to kill before the night bus to Bangkok (thought we'd save some more time by travelling at night). We like Hat Yai very much, and head back to a Thai cafe we fell in love with the first time we were there, well we fell in love with their food and we tend to think a lot with our stomachs! After dinner we dashed across the road to some street vendors and I bought two great pairs of new trousers, which are officially my new favourite things - fact.

The Dvaravati (a kingdom of Thailand that existed between C6th and C11th) Chedi (the Thai word for a Buddhist monument containing the remains of Buddhist relics, aka a stupa) on Monkey Hill - so beautiful.

The night bus to Bangkok was a real experience. I was sat in front of a woman and her toddler son, who spent the first two hours of the journey seemingly examining my scalp for fleas. This was a great opportunity for me to practice patience, and weirdly, I ended up finding it quite comforting, must be my monkey heritage! We were also treated to a showing of Dragonball Evolution, a great movie that, for the record, can be watched entirely dubbed in Thai with no loss of the story line whatsoever. Besides, the man who plays the lead is very attractive, so who cares what he's actually saying? I mean that with great respect, obviously.

Sleeping on the night bus was a real challenge though as I couldn't have my seat all the way back without squashing the little boy who was sleeping on his mother's lap, but I got enough sleep for me not to kill anyone en route, so that was something. The speed at which those night buses travel is really quite astounding too, I think they only get away with it because a) they don't care, b) driving like you have a deathwish in South East Asia seems to be compulsory and c) no one but the chronically insomniac is watching. Because I was so tired, I didn't have time to be scared as the bus seemed to lurch onto two wheels as it took a corner.

I was fascinated by these two Buddhist women, who were praying on Monkey Hill that day. The process is rather complicated to outsiders' eyes. First, they go round the four corners of the site, ringing the bells as they go and lighting incense at each of the shrines. Then they go to this shrine of the Buddha, light more incense, and then they pick up tubes of sticks, which they stand and shake until one falls out (there must be a way to do this so that only one falls out). The stick seems to have something written on it, because they looked at the stick closely and then went over to a large board that seems to tell them what it means.

The driver wakes you up at 2am precisely by turning all the lights on and playing terrible Thai music - I knew it was terrible because I'd seen so many good Thai music videos, see how useful a travelling tip the music video thing is? - so that you can get off at a large service station and get something to eat, although strangely enough no one seems that hungry at TWO O'CLOCK IN THE FRICKING MORNING, ARE YOU INSANE??????? (That's what happened in my mind as I actually had managed to fall asleep at that point).

All the smokers trudged off though, but significantly - drumroll please - I was not amongst them, as I am no longer a smoker - Fact.

I gave up smoking after a conversation with a boy called Reuben who I made friends with in the Perhentians when we discovered we both liked Marvel comics and would both quite like to try out being Wolverine (more than we fancied being Spiderman, who frankly, neither of us thought was all that - he was 12, I have no such excuse). I won't go into the details of it now, but for the first time in my life, I could not give a clear reason why I smoked. I actually felt a bit silly about it. I promised Reuben I would try not to smoke for the rest of the day.

The view from Monkey Hill over Songkhla - although it's much bigger than we thought it would be, it was still surprisingly walkable.....

He smiled with his trademark wisdom beyond years smile.

"Well, if you're going to try a day, you might as well try a week."

Well, a promise made between adults always has an element of knowing risk to it, but a promise made to a child has always seemed to me to be sacred. So a week it was, and that was 10 days ago. Cold turkey, over and out. I'm a non smoker. I figure if I can give up in South East Asia, where you can buy 20 Marlboro Lights for under £1, then by the time I get back to the prices in the UK, there'll be no chance of going back. Time for a change, right?

Anyhoo, so we get to Bangkok at 8am and hang at the bus station for some coffee - obviously. We planned to go to Bangkok, find a hostel, see some sights and leave maybe Wednesday for the border. But then we met a slightly strange Welsh guy who knew Thailand really well and had just come from Angkor Wat and he told us we could get the bus to the border in about an hour and be there in three hours - so we did!

The Chedi in the background, with a statue of a Buddhist monk in the foreground

On the bus I had time to feel a little sad about leaving Thailand, but I'm big on no regrets right now, so took the time to pick my sadness apart a little. After Songkhla, which I had really liked and the many Thai people we met on our travels, I was feeling good about Thailand and very curious to find out and see more. However, my brother is a big Thailand fan, and I also realised on the bus that it would be fantastic to have an excuse to come back here, but this time with him!!

So that's my new plan. I haven't really asked him about it, but I'm sure it will be fine. In fact, while I'm here, I have a new dream to organise a small group - maybe 10 people max to come back to South East Asia in the future, so if you're interested, sign up now and I'll get your name on the list.......

The border crossing to Cambodia? Without a doubt, my favourite out of the two we've done on foot so far. We were whisked from the bus station to a tuk tuk before we could say 'Where's my backpack going now?' and then we were sped to the border. This was fab because it was a tiny sort of truck tuk tuk and we hadn't done one of these before (we want to try all forms of transport South East Asia has to offer and have only baulked at motorbikes so far - mostly because we fear we are a potential deathtrap - but I'm even starting to be tempted by that......)

I've taken a lot of photos of monkeys during our brief stay in Thailand, but this is my very favourite...
I'm calling this one, 'Are you there? Is anyone up there?'

Or rather, we thought we were going to the border. We were actually taken to an open-fronted tin hut that had 'Welcome to Cambodia' spray painted on it, and which was staffed by teenagers. Very friendly teenagers, but teenagers nonetheless. One of them had a voice that was still breaking. We were told that we could get our visas here, and though we asked about the border with some insistence, we were told we could no longer get them on arrival there. We were hesitant, and Kate, who is the Lonely Planet Queen, was adamant that this was awry, but then loads of other Westerners started to file in, including people who had been on our bus and they didn't seem bothered so we joined them and got our visas in three seconds flat, were back in the tuk tuk and off to the border. Our wallets felt lighter than they should have, but we had the visas.

Our biggest fear was that the visas weren't genuine (although they looked it, and were now affixed within our passports) and that we would be turned away at the border, but immigration was no problem and sure enough there was a sign in the Immigration Office saying that they are currently not doing visas on arrival as they are tightening their passport control (I thought about writing a note for the suggestion box to point out that allowing adolescents to produce visas at over the odds prices in tandem with local transport operators might be a start to regulating this, but a member of staff had obviously taken the suggestion box to empty it, as there wasn't one around).

The Mermaid of Samila Beach and her outrageously lucky breasts, not that you can really see them here.

I did find out later online that we had paid over the odds for ours, and that this is par for the course if you don't want to sort it at an Embassy before you go (which can take 3 days) and that there are loads of these visa businesses operating on the border, and it's completely down to the tuk tuk driver which one you're taken to, as they get a cut from the extra money you pay.

In reality, we only paid an extra 10 US dollars for the privilege of this utterly surreal experience, and I'm inclined to think it was worth it. These guys really work for their money, harder than any sales person I've seen in the West, and on a serious note, it's a key indicator to how hard it is to make a decent living here. We crossed the border at Aranya Prathet, Thailand and arrived in Poipet, Cambodia just seconds later.

Scams on transport links from Poipet also abound, and a sweet smooth talker called Leung tried to hook us one of those (the Cambodian government likes to tourists to only travel from the border in tourist buses or private taxis, so bus companies have started to hook up with guest houses in order to increase commission, so if you want to choose your guest house, get a taxi - it also takes 3 hours less time).

A monkey baby and his monkey mum - I'm calling this one 'Oh baby, baby, how was I supposed to know (the banana was all gone?'

You have to catch a free shuttle bus to get to the tourist bus station, but we resisted Leung's charms (even though he insisted on keeping a bus filled with passengers waiting for the whole time we refused) and said we'd chance it. We were prepared to stay in Poi Pet (aka scam central) and visit the casinos from which the town is starting to make its name, if necessary, until we knew more about the buses from a source of information that wouldn't earn money from our decision.

As the fates would have it, we were tucking into some pretty heavenly spring rolls when two American dudes, Greg and Adrian, rocked up in a shuttle bus and asked if we wanted to share a taxi from Poi Pet to Siem Riep (the local base from which most people tour the temples). Yes, we did. Our first ride in a car since our first night in Penang, and it worked out to only about $10 per head - the same price as the tourist bus. Admittedly, Ang sat on Kate's lap (I got to sit with the driver and helped him when we needed to veer wildly round trucks to overtake without playing chicken with oncoming traffic) for the journey, but the five of us did not stop talking until we arrived.

Greg and Adrian grew up not far from Manhattan and now live in Brooklyn, New York in a house share with a load of their friends - and they've all known each other since they were kids!! They are doing a round the world tour, and have already been travelling over a year. They introduced me to 'Wwoofing', which is neither a typo or what you're thinking, but refers to World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, where basically you stay on someone's farm and they feed you in exchange for you working for them, which they did in Australia. These guys are self-confessed Anglophiles and I am a huge fan of New York, so we got on really well, and really made each other laugh.

This girl was so keen to be photographed that I had to oblige as she really made me laugh! This was her favourite pose and though I wanted to catch her doing something more natural, she was adamant this was the one...Incidentally, that's candy floss she's got. You could buy it on the beach. I wasn't just interested in her because she had candy floss, it was the whole social and cultural experience.

Best of all, they got us a room at the guest house they had booked in advance (the first time they've done this in a year) called Happy Guest House in Siem Reap, which is our new home - there's a TV here, too! This is so much more upmarket than we're used to. The sheets are clean. I mean, they're actually white. It's like the Hilton. And they do a Khmer (local word for Cambodian) dish called amok with vegetables in a coconut curry sauce, it's like vegetables just dived into Angel Delight with curry powder and were then blessed by the God of Food. Exactly like that.

Siem Reap was once a small cluster of villages along the river, but is now a bustling little hive of construction and industry as it tries to meet the demand from tourists travelling to the temples of the surrounding region. Cambodia places more emphasis on sustainable tourism, though, than any place we have been so far, and Siem Reap, as well as being the place we will visit the temples from, also has a wide array of NGO projects that we intend to visit and support. Even cafes here have a social purpose. One called The Singing Tree we intend to visit tomorrow night for their film night, and has yoga and meditation classes (and hip hop dance classes) and an opportunity to Chat with a Buddhist monk on Saturday. It functions as a kind of community centre, but also aims to promote 'social ecology', serving mostly vegetarian food, and promoting and supporting local environmental and social projects through their shop and library (it wasn't the library that hooked me, honest).

Today though, we just took the opportunity to chill out after over 24 hours of solid travel. The girls snuck off for a few hours to do some secret things that I was not allowed to do, possibly related to my birthday, and I had the arduous job of sitting around in a big round chair identical to my one at home, chatting to the staff in broken English, talking to the cat, reading and sometimes snoozing. Tough work. Then we broke all our own rules and went to a local restaurant for the BEST pizza I can ever remember tasting, ever. Ever. We barely ate all three of them, it was tough, but the Khmer woman who owned it seemed to find us quite amusing as we moaned and groaned in ecstasy through the meal.

Why don't we have signs like this in the UK, instead of all those ones telling us not to do things? Surely this is more useful?

On our return, we were walking up the path as a young man walked down it and suddenly we all cried out: "Oh my God!!! Jeff!!"

It was Jeff (as you might have gathered) our young travelling friend and solo flyer we met in Penang on our first visit there (remember the crazy girl, the temple and Penang Hill?). It was fantastic to see him again and we all sat down to catch up. He has come from Vietnam and was full of recommendations for us, places to go and things to try. He is only in Siem Reap for two days and heads off tomorrow to do the temples, so we may see him again there - small world, huh?

OK, that's all I've got for now and sorry no photos of Cambodia yet, but worry ye not, faithful readers, this will be sorted tomorrow, I'll lay money on it. I'll post soon, hopefully on or just after my birthday. Try not to miss me too much on the day - I know this is going to be very hard, but you can utilise the time wisely planning gifts and surprises for my return on 15th August, or sometime round then, just in time for H's birthday! - and if you can, please light a candle for me if you remember on Friday?

The intrepids reach Thailand!

2009-06-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Yala station - see the armed guard? He spent the journey with several of his compadres on our train, walking up and down with his not insubstantial weaponry - fortunately he was always smiling, although I've heard Hitler was often quite chipper so that doesn't mean anything.

We cross the border on foot, from Rantau Panjang in Malaysia, walking across the Thailand/Malaysian border into the Southern Thai town of Sungai Kolok. We have not heard pleasant things about Sungai Kolok – mainly used as a party town and sex stop by Malay men – although the people we encounter there are friendly, curious and helpful to us.

We catch the train to Hat Yai, a bigger city further north and pay just over £1 each for a train journey of 6 or so hours. Crazy! We travel 3rd class, which is wooden seats and wide open windows and in the mad scramble onto the train we are lucky enough to get seats. Some of these seats spontaneously collapse as the journey progresses catapulting unlucky passengers with hilarious swiftness to the floor, and prompting the entire carriage to burst into fits of laughter that echo on for quite some time!

A typical Thai station - yes that means I didn't note down the name of it - why don't ours look like this? Apart from the fact that it would be harder to get the palm trees, I mean.

We had been in several minds about the border crossing here as there has been political and religious strife in Southern Thailand over the past few years and the train stations on our route are still considered a target by the Thai government and the border crossing here is not recommended by our guidebook or the FCO. But several Malay people we met in Kota Bharu assured us that they have done this journey many, many times and the level of their knowledge about transport links reassures us so we decide, in the spirit of adventure to give it a go – and we’re fine!

The train journey was amazing and although many travellers don’t do this journey this way round (most people fly into Bangkok and do this bit in reverse if heading to Malaysia), I would strongly recommend it. I had been both eager and nervous about Thailand as many people describe it as wildly hectic (although many who have also done Indonesia say that there are a lot of similarities), but travelling in and up through the South has been a perfect introduction to the people and to the rural scenes of Thailand.

A proud Thai father insists that I take a picture of his son feeding the monkeys - and with a grin like that, how could I refuse? The monkey wasn't impressed by my efforts though and refused to cooperate.

From the train, we are treated to our first glimpses of the rolling lush green hills and fields of southern Thailand, where bright blue birds flit low across the landscape, white cranes (they look like cranes, but I have to say that an international twitcher would know better) stalk loftily among laconic cows (I saw one cow with a little bird sat on his back!), stray dogs look up from dreams disturbed as we pass and the largest spiders I have ever seen hang ominously from their webs set between power lines.

On the train, we are treated to the consistent curiosity and stares of our fellow passengers, who giggle, gawp and even photograph us during our journey. We are also somewhat of a novelty to the armed guards who walk up and down the trains (a response to the trouble in the south, along with armed guards at every station), who pause at the beginning of the journey to shake our hands and take us under their wing, offering to close the window for me when I was being blown to smithereens and then laughing hysterically when I tell them I actually like it!

Having scared off a lot of smaller monkeys to secure this watermelon, he now doesn't really know what to do with it......

We stay only one night in Hat Yai, but enjoy our time wandering the streets of this city and eating in its cafes and restaurants. The day after our arrival, we head off on a local bus to Songkhla, only 25km away, a seaside town we want to visit before heading to Bangkok and making our way to the Cambodia border over the next week. My time is ticking by and we are keen to be in Cambodia for my birthday (so far I cannot talk about my birthday very much as it makes me think of home and a little sad, but I comfort myself with the thought that I can have another birthday when I get home so that no one misses it).

Songkhla, apart from its strange absence of restaurants - tonight we ate in a brothel bar, but the women were very friendly and kind to us and the food was lovely, and the band played us a song in English, which was lovely – is a functional fishing village and you are never far from the smell of the sea, by which I mean the smell of rotting fish (I think I smell a dead fella.......).

The beach wears a cape of white sand and shimmering blue water rushes to the shore. We were too hot the first day we went there so are returning tomorrow to see the statue of a mermaid that the beach is famous for, and to pick up some Chang Beer t-shirts on which we have all rather firmly set our hearts.

Our first Thai temple, I loved it here, and couldn't take my eyes off the tree on the left - a perfect place to indulge your fascination with simple things....

Yesterday though, we hung out at the beach and spent some time with some great monkeys at the base of Khao Tang Kuan or Monkey Hill. They are very tame and are fed by hand by the locals but one glimpse of their sharp little teeth convinced me that feeding them was something I would rather leave to others, and instead I watched the babies cheerfully romping down the slopes. Today we spent some time walking round the local markets and practicing our Thai – we are trying to learn numbers so that we can more effectively barter – so far we have thoroughly mastered both ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ and the sheer delight people take at our laborious and clumsy efforts make it all worthwhile.

A statue outside on of the temples today - this reminds me of the demon god who holds the wheel of life on my thangka (a Buddhist painting) at home

These the flowers and scarves that Buddhists drape over the hands of the statues - that's just one of his giant hands!

We also visited some of the local temples. Here, being a monk is a sort of national service, and almost every young Thai male spends at least three months in service as a monk. The temples are beautiful and their architecture and decoration intricately ornate and detailed, as well as being very well maintained and clearly cared for. Buddhists make up 75% of the population here and comprise both Thai and Chinese Buddhists, but there is also a strong Muslim community. We passed many Chinese temples on our walk through the old town, and many houses and shops have Chinese style shrines outside with candles burning constantly.

This is one of the carvings on the entrance to the temple and a good example of the ornate decorative architecture that seeks to remind of Buddhism in every detail - providing an opportunity for contemplation and meditation wherever you look.

A smaller shrine within the temple grounds - inside are tiny figures sat in prayer.
I loved this.

A detail from one of the temple doors. Elephants are big in Thailand - well, obviously elephants are big wherever you find them, but I mean they are a symbol of fortune here.

As ever, though, it is the people who make our journey and everyone here has been very friendly to us. Unlike Malaysia and Indonesia, we have more opportunities to meet and speak to women here, who are more confident and curious about talking to us. Men prefer to honk at us from passing bikes or cars – by which I mean they beep their horns, not that they honk like geese – but the few we have spoken to so far are very friendly. I am glad too that the lack of English spoken here gives us a strong incentive both to pick up pidgin Thai more quickly and to become more creative in our communication, often using mime to the hilarity of the locals.

Thai is very hard though, even when you have the words phonetically, as it is based on five tones, which, when used incorrectly, can change the meaning dramatically, so we learn most from practicing with local people, who laugh uproariously as they correct our pronunciation.

Food is our one main issue as we have yet to encounter a strong understanding of vegetarianism and almost everything is cooked or served with meat or fish. Despite this, we have managed to track down veggie tempura served with sweet and sour chilli sauce and fried rice with vegetables, both of which I have delighted in!!

A statue outside a cafe in the old town and a small homage to Songkhla's famous mermaid, which I hope to see tomorrow.

Our hostel in Songkhla is the Romantic Guest House, one of the most luxurious yet as both our rooms have huge double beds and – get this – television!! Although there are only two channels featuring English (BBC World Service and Aussie channel) speech, I actually spend most of my very late nights – it’s so very, very hot and it makes me an insomniac but as yet does not seem to make me tired in the day – watching a combination of music channels and movies badly dubbed in Thai. For the record, you really don’t need to know what actors are saying in movies – you can either pick it up from the visuals, or even better, just make it up in your head. I have got quite addicted to a number of Chinese soap operas shown back to back in the early morning in this way...

When I haven’t spent the night avidly watching my luxury tv or writing, I’ve been surfing the web for our travels, which has been a bit of an adventure in itself. I found a wifi connection to surf from my room quite quickly, but it came and went intermittently. So after sitting in every conceivable part of the room, I tried every floor (4 of them) of the hostel, several unoccupied rooms (or at least I assume they were, they don’t lock the unoccupied ones so I just snuck in under cover of dark in the early hours of the morning without bothering with the light – if anyone was there, they were too terrified or bewildered to say anything) before I finally struck lucky.

This is what happens if you ask Angie to hold your camera while you're busy buying flip flops in the market. She takes random photos of herself. She likes to call these 'Pictures of myself on holiday on my own' and I doubt she is expecting me to upload it to the web. Actually, as we all have some rather incriminating shots of each other I may be setting a dangerous precedent here...

While investigating the front of the building, I discovered that if I held the laptop out of the window, I got a fairly good, fairly reliable connection so I’ve spent the early hours alternating between sitting in front of this window, and if it cuts out climbing through it to a small balcony to connect from there.

The nicest part is that from this window I can see the Theravada Buddhist temple on top of Monkey Hill, where we are hoping to visit tomorrow, if it does not rain again. Moreover, I get to experience the sounds of Songkhla live and unleashed, with its cacophony of fighting, howling stray dogs, motorbikes that ride the street throughout the night and occasional late night conversations amidst groups of passers by. I can even see the moon.

Me on the wifi balcony, my very own internet cafe. Yes, it's very dark out here, and very hot. That's why I look bald and sweaty. I'm not bald. But I am sweaty.

Anyhoo, that’s more than enough from me for now. Suffice to say that I miss you all, and the beauty we see every day only reminds me of the beauty of my friendships at home, and causes me to appreciate each one anew, as do the many emails and Facebook messages you all send. Keep them coming and special thanks to Mum, Shon, Bean, Glenn, James and Lynda for being my most regular – and not to mention entertaining, in such wildly different ways! – correspondents.

I didn't notice this until today, but someone has drawn the best face on my lampshade in my room. Random.

Kecil Island Paradise

2009-06-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

It's a hard life, but someone's got to do it.

Ok, we planned to stay only 4 days on Kecil Island, the smaller of the Perhentian Islands and yet here we are, nine days later! As ever, if you want to make God laugh.....tell her your plans!

We took a bus from the Cameron Highlands straight to the jetty point in Kuala Besut, where we collected our tickets for the boat to the island. The boat to the island is actually a speedboat, something I intellectually knew, but hadn't really allowed myself to contemplate, as those of you who know me well, will also know about my fear of open water (intricately linked to my fear of drowning, intricately linked to my lack of swimming skills).......

I'd never been on a speedboat before.

We stood on the jetty and waited for the speedboat to arrive. It steered gently into the bay and I thought, that's not too bad. We had a bit of a wait until we could get on, in which time my nerves had plenty of time to increase exponentially with each second, then finally we boarded and were issued with our life jackets.

Mira Beach and our very own taxi boat - this little boat does everything, taxis us around, brings the supplies every day and even takes out the rubbish!

Soon enough though, we are clambering over our rucksacks onto the little vessel. I try – and to a certain extent fail, though I do not have the chance to dwell on it for long – to ignore the sign on the boat that clearly reads ’10 passengers only’, having already completed a mental headcount of at least 14people waiting to board. I ignore as best I can the Lynn Faulds Wood voice in my mind chiming ‘It’s a potential deathtrap!’ over and over, along with the unnecessary and obvious mantra of ‘I can’t swim, I can’t swim, I can’t swim.

The boat steers gently from the jetty as we secure our life jackets. I buckle mine tightly as it may be the only thing that ensures my survival if we don’t make it. Kate and Ang are deep in conversation with a couple from Auckland, New Zealand, about their travels and are swapping notes on their favourite places and I am grateful for the chance to hide my terror while their attention is distracted. However, my terror gathers momentum as boat starts to gather sudden and not inconsiderable speed. A glance around the boat tells me that I am not alone in this as I see several faces wide-eyed and feigning calm. A hand on my knee and Kate’s voice in my ear tells me that I may not be able to conceal my own fear as well as I suspect.

“How you doing there, monkey?” she asks.

I turn back to her, grinning, “I think I’m ok!”

Our very own chalet with all our washing outside! Those stairs were steeper than they looked - thank Goddess there's no alcohol on Mira!

Oddly, I actually mean it. Nothing could have prepared me for the thrilling exhilaration of my first speedboat ride: the nose of the boat in the air, the sheer speed of movement, the wind that whips across my skin and the slap slap slap as hull hits water at regular, bouncing intervals. At first, I was terrified, but wild-eyed terror soon turns to wide-eyed enjoyment as I become more accustomed to the sensation. The fear never leaves entirely, but instead combines with excitement to create an electric sense of joy that I can only compare to the early days of love, where I am often terrified, but always wanting more.

After a while, I turn back to Kate and admit, "This is the best thing we have done so far! Without a doubt!"

I would get plenty of time to get used to speedboats, as they are the main form of taxis around and between the islands, but the thrill never wore off for me!

Mira Beach in all her glory! This is the centrepiece that greets you on arrival - public art! Look at those waves!

Describing the island is very hard, as it really defies words. White sands, brilliant blue sea, bright sun and blazing heat, lush green jungle, teeming with lizards of all sizes, birds with beautiful voices and even possums and rats!! We stayed in a place called Mira Beach, the most deserted of all the beaches on the island and a far cry from the tourist resorts of neighbouring Long Beach and Coral Bay.

We lived in a small wooden hut, with enough room for a double bed and a mattress for me on the floor. Rats and lizards come and go with impunity and you just have to get used to it - something that we mastered quite quickly!

A whole blog post without a mention of Misssssssssssster Lizzzzzzzzard? Don't be ridiculous.

It's a writer's paradise and I can honestly say I've written more in the last few days than at any other point in the trip, including some poetry of a quality I can't promise, even some of my crazy doodling, which the locals thought I should get made into Batik! Our first night brought a sunset so beautiful, it made me cry. The air is so still, well, apart from our last night, when a wild and crazy storm raged all night, with the sea only metres from our hut!! Lightning crashed silently across the horizon is brilliant strokes of red and white - the urge to get naked and stand in the middle of it was almost overwhelming, but I contented myself with standing on the beach in my new sarong!

Apart from writing, I managed some shopping (two sarongs and a new skirt - score! and I managed to dump one of my pairs of now too big trousers as a result), did some walking through the jungle (the only alternative to the taxi boats), plenty of reading and - now strap yourselves in, you won't believe it! - some snorkelling!! Yes, snorkelling! Me! Kate was lovely and helped me in the water loads and showed me how to breathe (then kept making me laugh so that I kept inhaling water through my nose) - and not only did I get to see loads of very friendly fish, I loved it!!

Over on Coral Bay for the afternoon and Kate and Ang tough out the hard life of the island over an iced tea...

There were some darker sides to the island. It is primarily a tourist resort, and has a growing drug problem on some of the more commercial party beaches. This problem is starting to cause outbreaks of thefts, and we fell victim to this on our third day or so, when someone came into our hut and stole Kate and Ang's small rucksacks. As ever, we had all our valuables on us (I go nowhere without my phone, passport, money and computer) and the thieves obviously did not check what they were stealing as their biggest catch in both bags were Kate and Ang's memory cards, which had all their memory cards from New Zealand, and means they have lost almost all their pictures from the last seven months. Obviously they were both heartbroken and the thieves are facing some serious bad karma. The only thing of mine taken was my spare toiletries bag, which had some suntan lotion and my electric shaver - nothing I'm worried about.

The sunset that made me cry - I'm officially a sap.

This was the only black spot marring an otherwise beautiful trip, and after our paranoia in some of the cities we have visited, to be struck by theft on an idyllic island just seemed perverse. Nonetheless, we were very sad to leave the island this morning, but excited at the prospect of the journey ahead, and we were glad to arrive in Kota Bharu today. KB is usually thought of as a passing through town, but we've met some great people here already at a local guest house (not ours, but run by the same family, who have taken a shine to us and are already asking us to stay another day) and ate out tonight at the local night market, where we feasted on a variety of Chinese food - hmmmmm.

Tomorrow we are planning to walk across the border to Thailand, but in all likelihood we will stay another day. There is a museum here that contains some fascinating instruments used in circumcision, and Ang and Kate think it would be a terrible shame to miss it. As ever, I'll keep you posted!

Finally - a record number of followers, thank you everyone! Now where have all my comments gone...........?

Is it because you is all emailing me instead????

Our final sunset on Kecil - the island of darkly etched beauty.

Oh, ok, if you're going to beg - just one bad poem that I wrote on the island then.

The lizard, disturbed from sleep
by the scratching step of the squirrel
pokes out his head between two beams,
licks his lips and looks for food;

The squirrel, disturbed from scavenging
by the lizard's sudden face,
scrambles fast and far to the edge of the hut
and leaps in brief flight to the tree;

I, disturbed from my wonderings (my wanderings)
by this tiny drama played by natural actors unaware of me,
liuft up my gaze from my pen, from my self
to see instead the poem that is everywhere around me;

(my gaze especially likes to rest
on the tree where the fearless squirrel lands -
the one where the red flowers grow
each like a wonderful accident, or perhaps a miracle).

Do something scary today

2009-06-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

A waterfall at the flower farm, taken at my signature jaunty angle - it's art, man, it's art....

This post is dedicated to the one, the only, the gorgeous and the brave Shonagh, my fellow pioneer and all round beautiful superstar - missing you more than words and love you loads hon - keep the champagne on ice!! Hope Hamie is feeling better xxxx

We arrived safe and sound in the Cameron Highlands in a little minibus that we shared with some of the unfriendliest Germans on the planet.

The trip from Penang to Cameron only takes a few hours, and we left at 6am (I know, feel my pain) to arrive at about 10am. We had set our heart on staying at Daniel's Lodge, which had been recommended to us by quite a lot of different people, and secured ourselves a room there, to our delight.

Daniel's Lodge is a sprawling, very laid back hostel, set back slightly from Tanah Rata, one of the main places to stay in Cameron Highlands. It has its own little bar (this did not factor into our decision to stay here) with a pool table (ditto previous) and a large camp fire every night (ad nauseum ditto-ness). Needless to say we have acquired quite a taste for Chang Beer - the cheapest beer in the bar - while we have been here! We took our first day to wander around the town and get a feel for the Highlands. The temperature is so much cooler here and such a relief after the hot sweat of Penang.

These flowers at the flower farm are known as Butterfly flowers because when you take two buds and put them together - hey presto, a butterfly! Not a real one. It just looks like one. It's not magic or anything.

The scenery is beautiful, as the Highlands are home to countless strawberry farms, bee farms, flower farms and tea plantations, many of which are open to the public at no charge. However, these farms and plantations are known locally as "agri-tourism", and Cameron Highlands is probably the most tourist heavy place we have visited so far, which strangely, we were not quite expecting. Because of this, although the scenery is beautiful (if you keep your eyes averted from the endless hotel blocks and souvenir shops - you would not believe how many gifts you can produce shaped like a strawberry until you've seen this place), it is much harder to spend time with or to meet many local people, which has been a key feature that has made our trip so far. However, it has been a great opportunity to meet other travellers, which we haven't had much of an opportunity to do in Sumatra because tourists have been quite few and far between there.

On our first night, we discovered the wonders of the T Cafe, a local first floor cafe that serves all kinds of food in the most singularly laid back and welcoming atmosphere. It reminded me for some reason of some of the cafes I've visited in Brighton before, the staff are very friendly and the place is well loved by locals and visitors alike. Moreover, they do a lovely vegetarian lasagne that I was very eager to try. Not quite as good as I've become accustommed to at Peace, but definitely not bad.....!

The sheer beau-tea of the plantation - no wonder this stuff tastes so good.

And to give you an idea of the sheer scale of this migh-tea operation.....

The following day we slept late after a few beers (the night before, I mean, we didn't start the day with beer - we can do that at home - although some people here really do!!) and headed out in the afternoon for a pre-arranged tour of the local farms and a tea plantation. None of us were too excited about this, but it was cheap and something to do with a free afternoon so off we toddled. Our guide was Balu, a local young man with a very dry sense of humour and an infinite sense of patience. Our travelling companions were a family from Singapore (great appetite but no sense of time) and a young man from Holland, who was instantly adopted by the Singapore family who spent all their time trying to feed him! Eventually he started to hang with us at each stop, I think to escape their attentions. The Singapore family were also late for every single stop that we made, despite poor Balu telling us very politely what time to be back. This is a good example of cultural differences, as, being English we were not only on time, but waiting patiently on the bus in an orderly queue....

By strict order of the management..... I think they meant the flowers, though there were a few worried looking chickens about and a man with Dennis Healey eyebrows...

Our first stop was the flower farm, and we were expecting to be underwhelmed, but actually we all loved it. The flowers were absolutely stunning and there were so many I had never seen before. I went a bit snap happy, but I am still trying to figure out the zoom on my camera, and my little screen isn't always informative, so I discarded as many as I kept in the end. I have also started to master the art of photography at a jaunty angle, and these are fast becoming my 'signature shot', as you've seen with the waterfall above! Highlight of the flower farm was definitely the peppering of very surreal statues everywhere, from a HUGE Indian's head to strange little cherubs and even a badly coloured in Mickey Mouse. One minute you're wandering through a small jungle of wild flowers and the next you're face to face with Goofy - random.

Our brave little Dutch dude with the Rhino Beetle - I touched it! The beetle, I mean, not the Dutch dude. I'm not a perv. Well. Ok. But not that kind of perv.

We moved on to the Tea Plantation, which was the part of the Camerons I had been most excited about and it was no disappointment. We visited the Boh plantation, which has been owned by a Scottish family, the Russells since the 1800's. The third generation of the Russells now runs the company, Caroline. Strange to come to the Highlands only to find the Scottish ruling the local economy. Work on a tea plantation is hard and financially unrewarding. There was a time when tea was hand-picked, mostly by women, but now the majority of tea is picked by machines that are run by two men at a time and produce three times the amount of tea that hand-picking could. Only up on the highest slopes does the tradition of hand-picking continue, and the pay - whether you work on the machines or the slopes - depends on the amount you produce each day, but is very low.

"It is not a good way to make a living," Balu tells us, shaking his head.

The brave scorpion woman - shortly before she lost it big time and threw one on the floor and I lost it big time and moved at something approaching the speed of light. Seriously, time slowed down around me. It was like the Matrix, man.

The plantation though is beautiful, really beautiful, with the bright tea leaves stretching across the hills into the distance like a wild green patchwork quilt. After a brief tour of the factory, showing us how the leaves are crushed and dried, pressed and sorted, we ran across to the cafe - which stretches out over the plantation on long wooden legs - to taste the tea and we were not disappointed. Tip for the wise: drink coffee in Indonesia (so good I sent some home) and drink tea in Malaysia (so good I'll be sending some home). There was something wildly romantic about the tea plantation that makes the harsh reality of life there hard to believe, and it was hard to avoid the images in my mind of running across the hills of the plantation like a tea-Maria (see what I did there), hair streaming behind me, singing 'The hills are alive!'.....

"Er, back on the bus, miss!" called Balu, jogging me out of my reverie.

Next stop the bee farm! Those of you who know me well know of my fascination with bees and so I was really looking forward to this. The bees were fantastic and I could watch them for hours.

This flower was something else, it was like paper - except real. They were so beautiful that although by trade I am not a nature photographer, I could not resist having a go. It could have been worse, right? Right.....?

"No get too close to bees!!" warned the Singapore father behind me, as I leaned my face towards one of the many, many hives on the farm.

"They're really not likely to sting, you know," I said, "Because they'll die."

"Bees are crazy," he whispered to me confidentially.

I grinned and looked both ways around me before answering, "So am I," I told him.

He looked shocked for a second before starting to giggle. He didn't talk to me again though, except when they all came back on the bus with corn on the cob when he - quite worriedly, actually - offered me his one. His corn, I mean.

I resisted the urge to buy honey from the souvenir shop (I don't even like honey, but the temptation was very strong - I'm such a consumer), but did buy a bracelet and a new pendant - this one with the Chinese symbol for Dragon on it - current jewellery count is now at 4 bracelets and 5 necklaces! Score!

Ok, I'm actually so pleased with this one, I almost can't believe I took it - and on my little camera, which Kate and Ang's cameras snigger at behind my camera's back and think my camera doesn't know, except my camera is really paranoid and so it does know - but I did! Huzzah!!

We moved on to the Butterfly Farm, which I loved. As well as butterflies, there were a plethora of insects, from horned beetles to scorpions and the guides are very keen for you to hold them. I wanted to hold a scorpion, but then was fortunate enough to witness a girl in front of me take one, only to have the guide throw another two onto her clothing.

"No, no! Please no!" she screamed, to no avail, and I did pretty much the same when one of them fell to the floor and began scampering around. My inner grace was completely lost as I shoved the elderly and toddlers from my path to save myself. Still a way to go on that inner zen, it seems. Awkward.

I'm calling this one 'The Butterfly and the Flower'. I took it at the Butterfly Farm - go figure. Michael, in some senses perhaps we are all the butterfly with the incomplete wing? Beautiful in our imperfections...

Our final stop was the strawberry farm, and this was the only part that genuinely did underwhelm us, as we have plenty of these back in Blighty. However, the cafe with its array of strawberry cakes and tarts more than made up for this as we skipped the farm and headed straight for tea and cake. Smooth. The sun was beginning to set, and we were all heartily pleased with our day's labours and the sheer amount Balu had helped us to take in over a period of about 5 hours. It was a whistle stop tour of the Cameron's favourite tourist attractions, but as we're not really here for the attractions, it was the best way for us to do it.

That evening we treated ourselves to several Chang's and played a fair amount of pool. Apart from one disastrous potting of the white with the black - what a shameful Rookie error - I won all the games I played and then we went onto play doubles with two other travellers. Charlie, a young Englishman - from a village called Ham, near Sandwich in Kent, you couldn't make it up, could you? - had come straight to Malaysia from China, where he had spent three months teaching English in a posh school.

"What was that like?" I asked.

He smiled, "I tell everyone it was an experience," he told me, "These are very affluent kids, usually sons and daughters of high level communist party members. The headmaster ran with the Olympic Torch, actually."

"Jazzy," I mused.

Our other pool player was Kane, an Aussie and cool as a cucumber, with a very dry sense of humour. When we were joined by Ruby, the young daughter of one of the staff at Daniel's, who is, shall we say, somewhat exuberant, Kane was far from subtle in his attempts to drive her away.

Missssssster Lizzzzzzzzzzzard..........
I know it looks as though he's falling off, but he was actually asleep. At least I'm hoping he was, because if he was dead then this shot actually becomes something really morbid.

"Hey Ruby, why don't you go and tend the fire? Ruby, was that the phone? Ruby, are kids allowed in the bar, I'm sure I saw a sign. Ruby, I think your mum wants you in reception right now...." all delivered in that trademark twanged accent.

We were a little tiddly after pool and I vaguely remember posting some obscenities on Facebook - sorry about that Steve 'Bee Dance' Bomford! But the next day we managed to do something scary - our very first jungle trek on our own!

We were assured at reception that the walk we had planned would take no more than two and a half hours, and we would get to take in Orang Asli, an aboriginal village on the way. However, it seemed to take about an hour and a half to get to the start of the trek itself, which had no markers as to the trail we were on (I was expecting something a little more organised, a bit like Queen Elizabeth Country Park, but with bigger insects) and involved a climb through a village filled very basic housing and inhabited by very friendly and helpful people. Our chosen route would also mean we could stop for a light lunch before our jungle trek.

Orang Asli, the aboriginal village we shouldn't have been at, when we realised we were where we shouldn't have been yet. Everyone was so helpful to us and so friendly here. See that cloud. That's rain about three minutes away from us starting our jungle trek. Fortunately, it never lasts long here!

"We're looking for Path 10?" we asked, showing the map at the village shop.

Although no one we spoke to spoke much English, all of the people we asked along the way pointed up, up, up. This was strange to us as the path took us right past people's houses on the hillside, making us feel that we were trespassing, but everyone was very friendly, with some people and children even accompanying us for part of the way there.

We stopped for a rest at the top of the hill and I asked Kate for the map. I had a funny feeling that I had seen Orang Asli, the name of the village, before. Sure enough, the 'aboriginal village' that reception had told us about that would be 'halfway through' our walk, was the village we had just come through.

The gang of pioneers - just before we realised we were in the wrong place. Look how happy we are in our ignorance!

"Aren't we here?" I said, pointing out the village to Kate on the map.

She glanced over, "No, no, we're further down, look here's path 10." She looked closer, "That's weird, it looks like.....Hold on, let's look at the smaller map." She turned the map over to the one he had been following.

"But this says Path 10! Here! This is where we should be!"

We were all bemused somewhat until I realised that on one of the maps, the one we had been following, Path 12 had actually been mislabelled as Path 10. Hence our final destination. As none of the people we had spoken to spoke much English, they had not known the number we were asking for.

Ah, how we laughed. We thought it shouldn't be too far down if we were on Path 12 instead of 10, and it would bring us right back to Tanah Rata at the end, so we would just hold out for a late lunch in about an hour's time. Ah, the sweet naivety......

Me inside a very big tree in the jungle. There were a lot of shots like this as I was quite light headed and behaving like an idiot. The rest are censored and will never be shown on cyber space. Ever.

Two hours later and we were still climbing through the jungle. It was about 4pm and we hadn't eaten anything since 10.30am. When I started to feel my blood sugar crashing, I must admit, things got a little hairy in my mind. I've never had a sugar crash in the jungle before.......I decided that it would do no good to dwell on it, and that just to keep going was the answer, so I did.

After a while though, Kate, who was walking behind me, and had noticed that my footing was getting slightly uneven and I seemed to be losing balance a lot, called out "Sarah, are you ok?"

I fessed up that I wasn't feeling good and Kate and Ang were great, we had a bit of a rest, they fed me peanuts and then Ang found a bit of chocolate at the bottom of her bag.

"Mohammed gave it to me in Medan and I forgot all about it til now!" Good old Mohammed, helping us out of sticky situations even when he's not here!

Twenty minutes later, apart from having an odd case of the shivers, I was feeling good again. This was when we heard a series of shouts, screams and crashes through the jungle behind us. A group of westerners about 8 people strong came panting round the path.

"How much further down?" they asked us.

"About 45 minutes, all downhill from here, it's all good," We told them (not strictly true as there is a steep climb up for them at the end of that 45 minutes, but who wants to hear that?), "How much further up from here?" We asked, referring to the peak of Mt Jasar, which we had originally planned not to climb.

"Two minutes tops," one of the men told us, as a woman came crashing out behind him.

"Watch out for the bees!" she called, clawing frantically at her back and her face, "I've just been stung by one three times and they chase you!"

I resisted the urge to point out that as far as I am aware a bee can only sting you once, as I thought this might not be helpful.

"There's a sign saying there's a hive!" One of the others called back to us.

Cripes, we thought, relieved that there wasn't much more climbing to do and glad it was all downhill from there.

Two minutes later we passed a couple who stopped to say hallo, but still we found no bees.

Two minutes after this, we heard screams and shouts and then a familiar crashing through the jungle and the woman reappeared.

"Bees! There are bees! I am stung! In my hair!" She shouted.

We deduced that there was a bee in her hair and Kate whipped off her jumper and preceded to whip it into the woman's hair. Suddenly a large bee flew out of her hair and a large expletive flew out of my mouth. It was really quite a huge bee, and a very bright red it seemed to me, but it disappeared as fast as it arrived and there were no more. It seemed that when the bees attacked (when good bees go bad) the woman and her partner ran in opposite directions, and she waited five minutes or so, visibly shaken and stung a few times before venturing back. We heard her call to her friend and he answered from close by and we heard no more screams so all was well.

Still climbing. It's been hours and we're still climbing. Oh Sweet Lord. Yeah, get a photo of me now, when even my sweat is sweating. Thanks. That's brilliant. One for the blog. Oh, and I'm doing something stupid with my tongue. Perfect.

We walked another few minutes before we came to a piece of tape strung across the path with a note attached to it facing the other way. Due to our wrong path adventure, we had taken the reverse of the route to most other trekkers and as we climbed under the tape we read "Danger! Caution! Bee hive in this section and beware of bees for next 40 metres" (a clear missed opportunity to write Bee-ware here). A quick calculation told us that the spot we had picked for our half an hour break had been smack in the middle of this danger zone!! Why the bees had not attacked us is a mystery......

It was another few minutes to the summit, and cloud cover misted the view completely, but this in no way marred our exhilaration at having made it on our somewhat unplanned trek! There was something beautifully eerie about standing 1600 metres in the air as clouds washed over our faces and we paused awhile before heading back down.

The paths on this part of the jungle treks are almost entirely unmarked and we came across several junctions where it was more by luck than judgement that we picked the right one. What we didn't want was to inadvertently pick Path 6, which everyone warns against and even the map advises not to take as the path is very overgrown and trekkers are warned that it is easy to get lost. After a while though, we could hear the sounds of civilisation close by and we were confident we were on the right track. Going down the mountain was a bit hairy in places, as the gradient is steep, but I prefer climbing down to climbing up, with all the little jumps and slides and we were careful to take it slowly on any parts with a steep drop to one or both sides of the path.

By the time we got back to Tanah Rata, we were exhausted and no longer hungry but we had eaten nothing but peanuts since morning and headed to our favourite Indian cafe for some well deserved claypot noodles and murtabak. The portions are huge and for once none of us managed to finish our meals so it was back to the Lodge for a well deserved rest. As my neck muscles were seizing up so badly that I could now only exercise peripheral vision by eye movement (ok, maybe I'm being melodramatic - a little....), the girls gave me some an organic version of deep heat and after a few applications I was right as rain, and fast asleep.

Today we've taken the day to relax and are planning to treat ourselves to a bottle of wine tonight before our trip to the Perhentian Islands tomorrow, where we're hoping to stay in Kecil island for a few days. We're keeping an eye on the Thai borders, too, and travel through the southern borders from Malaysia is no longer an option due to civil unrest so we're looking at an alternative route to Cambodia. There's no internet in the islands though, so I'll be offline for a while and we've got a couple of weeks left in Malaysia left yet before we have to make up our minds. We're thinking that maybe we will have to look for a cheap flight into Cambodia, where we would like to be for my birthday, and it would be great to make it to Vietnam before I have to fly home in August, but if we don't, it's a great excuse to come back again - bringing as many of you all with me as I can if you're up for it!!

Thanks again for all the comments, emails and facebook messages. Can't tell you how much I love them and to those of you sending me pictures, this is doubled, I've created a new folder on my pc called Memories of Home and looking at them when I'm homesick makes me feel so much better! Matt, if you haven't seen the photo of us all at my leaving do, ask James - it's such a great shot of you, and of us all together!

And talking of great shots....This is taken with Kate's panoramic thingummydoodah on her camera and I think it's genius. I can't quite recall why I look so scared though........ But I love this image, a lot! Until next time.....xxxx

Happy Birthday Dear Old Dad!

2009-06-09T22:04:00.000-07:00

Samosir Island, where we were staying in Bagus Bay Homestay - this was our home for a few days. It's a hard life travelling, but someone's got to do it!

A very very big Happy Birthday to you Dad! Gutted I'm not at home but I hope you're having a great day and a wonderful time. I miss you and am sending you very big hugs through the ether.

We're back in Penang, Malaysia after saying a sad and fond farewell to Indonesia, though I don't think it will be too long before I return there - the English language is very important to Indonesia, and I would love to go back one day and teach there, either in Medan or Bukit Lawang.

But, that's a whole other show.......

I left you hanging on the edge of your metaphorical seats at Danau Toba, didn't I? Danau or Lake Toba, is a lake that is 500 feet deep at its deepest point, with an island the size of Singapore at its centre, Samosir, which is where we spent four blissful days. It had originally been our plan to thoroughly explore the islands, but the main town, Tuk Tuk, is so blissfully peaceful and so beautifully idyllic, that we ended up staying there, apart from one long walk down to Ambarita and back, for the whole time. After so much moving and sight-seeing, our break on Samosir offered us all a chance to relax and write, read or unwind. It was sheer bliss.

Looking back at Bagus Bay, where we stayed, with the water lillies just starting to bloom in the foreground in the fish farm.

However, Samosir has been hard hit by the dropping numbers of tourists visiting Sumatra, particularly due to its relative isolation, and after a day or so, we really started to notice the impact. Firstly, there are guest houses, souvenir shops and cafes everywhere in Tuk Tuk. And I mean everywhere, as in one after another, after another, after another. The government made a pledge a few years ago to make Lake Toba one of Sumatra's primary tourist destinations by 2010 and the local economy responded with great anticipation. However, it seems that little funding or co-ordinated support has been delivered since, leaving the local population economically vulnerable.

As with much of Sumatra, people make their living through a combination of tourism and agriculture, exporting palm wine, rubber, coffee, bananas and cocoa amongst other things. However, a chat with a local cafe owner, Anne, informed us that the weather in Samosir has been changing over the last year quite dramatically, and that they had had no rain for well over a month. This is disastrous for local crops and plantations, and when we were walking back from Ambarita, we passed many fields where workers of all ages were desperately turning and turning the dry, dry land.

Lake Toba, with the mountains behind - did I mention that Samosir is also a super-volcano?

We have heard accounts of the changing weather thus far wherever we have been. In Malaysia, many people we spoke to told us that it has been hotter in Malaysia this past year than the locals are used to, and that people are struggling with the heat. You can imagine if the local people are saying that what it feels like to us at times!! These conversations make me think seriously about global warming, and the devastating impact that climate change has and could continue to have on the lives of people all over the world, many of whose very existences are profoundly affected and even threatened in the face of such changes. It is simultaneously ironic and humbling that us westerners receive such a warm welcome in the countries affected by the very changes we are primarily responsible for causing...

The combination of climate change and decreasing tourists to Sumatra following the natural disasters (and perhaps also affected by the troubles in Aceh) of the past years has left a strong air of desperation over Samosir and Toba, and this was more palpable here than anywhere else we have been.

In Amarita, there are a series of stone chairs which are a local tourist attraction. They functioned as a court for the Batak Toba people here, who, when criminals were found guilty, would execute the criminal, torture him, marinate him in garlic and lemon, cook his organs and then feed him to the king! Yes, that's right, feed him to the king, as it was believed that criminals held huge amounts of black magic and their power would be absorbed by eating them. This practice went on until the 1860's, when a German missionary called Ludwig Nommensen was sent to Sumatra and converted the local Batak Toba people to Christianity. Locals moved to his Christian Village of Peace and the practice of Cannibalism was stopped. Our guide used a young local boy to act out an execution with us, complete with fake screams.

A stone Buddha in the Museum of North Sumatra in Medan. I love how the faces of the Buddhas change to reflect the country and region we stay in.

(On a separate note - did anyone else hear about the Aussie schoolboy who almost hanged himself at fake trial carried out as part of a school lesson. The boy was stood on a desk with a noose around his neck and the teacher left the room. The boy slipped off the desk and almost died - that's what I call a Health and Safety nightmare....!!)

After our demonstration, we headed into the local souvenir market, which was a really sad experience. Row after row of stalls selling identical products for tourists and the stall owners begging you to buy something. Unfortunately there is no ATM on Samosir and we weren't carrying much cash, and we ended up buying trinkets or in my case, just giving some money to the local people. We have no more room in our bags to carry anything substantial until we have had a chance to post some things home. It was very sad and we walked back to our guest house with very heavy hearts. Samosir used to see much larger amounts of tourists, who would number in their hundreds and thousands and fill the island, but there were probably less than twenty tourists on the island when we were there and competition for their trade is fierce.

Inside the Mesjid Raya, Medan, a beautiful mosque. Yusuf took us round and explained the intricacies of Islam prayer practice to us, as well as demonstrating the call to prayer with his beautiful voice - he's also a big fan of Craig David!

Yusuf, our tour guide in Medan and one of the loveliest people we've met yet - also a natural photographer who took possession of Kate's camera for the duration of our time with him - he got some of the best shots for us!

The local guides at our guest house were very friendly. There is a real gender division here, whereas all the women work as serving or cleaning staff, the men act as tourist guides and labourers and you can't walk more than ten yards without men calling out to you and offering to take you somewhere, sometimes with less pure motives than sight-seeing......! Again, as we are a small group of women travelling alone, we are very noticable very quickly and it wasn't long before all the local men knew our names. For some reason, they all remembered mine more easily than Kate and Ang, and so often we would hear "Sarah! Sarah!" as we were walking anywhere.

As a result, we took to spending a lot of time at a Hotel Cafe just down the road from us, called Hotel Toba, which was beautiful, the food was cheap, there was free wifi and the local guides are, I think, discouraged from hanging out there, so we never had any hassle. They also had their own bakery and I can honestly say I have never enjoyed brown bread with cheese more in my life.....!

Outside the Mesjid Raya, Medan, as the sun sets, a very beautiful place to be.

After Toba, we caught a public bus back to Medan and back to our old haunt, the Angel. You should have seen our friend Mohammed's face, who you may remember we met on our one night stay in Medan on our way to Bukit Lawang, when we walked in.

"Sarah! Kate! You came back!!" He exclaimed, then stared at Angie, trying to remember her name.

"Don't tell me! No, don't!" He demanded, frowning, before breaking into a broad grin and singing "Angie! Angie!" a la Rolling Stones.

It was lovely to see Mohammed again, and we spent all three of our nights in Medan in his company, ending each night up on the roof, swapping stories, singing and laughing into the early hours of each morning. He also sorted our ferry trip back to Malaysia for us, which freed up our time to spend a few days looking around Medan.

Crocodiles at the sanctuary in Medan. Seriously, these dudes are scary. They are so still and they stare and stare and stare, but when they move, they move fast.......

We took in some shopping - I've bought some great Sumatran coffee from a local market - a mosque, a meal in Little India (the largest Indian quarter in Sumatra), the Museum of North Sumtra, a crocodile sanctuary and a visit to the biggest mosque in Medan, the Majid Reya, which was beautiful. Our tour was courtesy of a local guide we met at the Angel, called Yusuf, who was awesome, camp, hilarious and so much fun. He took the greatest delight in showing us around, never expected money for it, and made our enjoyment his highest priority. As in Berastagi, you don't get any hassle if you're travelling with even one man, and having a local man with us meant that we avoided a lot of the extra charges tourists are subject to. We got used to travelling round Medan on a combination of local buses and motorcycle rickshaws, which are an awesome experience and really cool you down.

Mohammed, our favourite dude in Medan. He has the cheekiest smile, a really mischievous sense of humour and great English skills - he also does a hilarious impression of Australians! Definitely the Don.

Medan is a bustling city and travellers too often pass through it staying only for a day. We were so glad that we took the time to stay longer, as the place has a generous and passionate soul beneath its sometimes grubby and bustling exterior. I fell in love with Medan, and would love to go back, maybe next year, for longer. Mohammed often takes people from Medan to Jakarta, where he lived for almost two years. Yusuf also took us to his village one evening to meet some of his friends and to see the offtrack parts of Medan, where, only a stone's throw from the city centre, you're back on the outskirts of the jungle, and simple bamboo or wooden houses. The children playing in the streets and alleys there were delighted to see us and once again, the streets echoed with cries of "Hallo Meester! Hallo Meees! How are you?" as we passed. Many people stopped to talk to us in halting English and to shake our hands, grinning broadly.

I have a strong desire to learn Indonesian, too. At Lake Toba, we met a young German couple with a little boy, both of whom are university professors in Siantar, another large city. They are living in Siantar for the next two years and teach in Indonesia, which they learnt in an intensive course over three months.

"The language is very simple," they told us, "There is little grammar to learn, just lots and lots of words!"

I was sorry to leave Indonesia, it's a beautiful, beautiful country with amazing people and I hope to use the time before my next visit, however far in the future that may be, learning much more about the country and its culture. On leaving, we caught the ferry back to Penang, where I was lucky enough to see a dolphin leap out of the water alongside the boat. Kate and I spent a lot of time up on deck where you could smoke and stare at the seemingly endless ocean. I never knew the real meaning of flotsam and jetsam (actually, I still don't - why are there two words for it?) until I saw how much casual detritus ends up floating on the surface of the sea. I swear at one point I saw something that looked like a portaloo floating alongside....

The Monkey in Medan, with a flower in her hair. Yusuf put the flower there so I could be a Batak Karo girl for a while and then he caught this picture of me while I was talking to the little boy who was the son of the stall owner. We were sipping the sweet juice that is pressed in large mangles at roadside stalls and served straight into a cup of ice, it tastes a little like really sweet milk and is delicious.

So I'm writing to you now from Penang, Malaysia, and it was nice to come back here and take the slow walk from the ferry to our guesthouse. This time we did manage to get a room in Stardust, although we had all rather forgotten how hot it is here! We are moving onto the Cameron Highlands tomorrow, and we're not sure about internet connections there so don't worry if it's a while til you hear from me.

Please keep posting all your fabulous comments, and I love getting all your emails - they all bring a touch of home that is so lovely to receive. Love to all, Peace Out! x

Finally, I'm so pleased to be able to post this, Yusuf teaching us how to blow bubbles from a tapioca plant - enjoy!!

The Fire Dragon and the Volcano

2009-06-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

TODAY'S POST IS DEDICATED TO THE BIRTHDAY BOY, JAMES! HAVE A GREAT ONE AND A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM ME - WE'LL HAVE A BANANA SHAKE TO TOAST YOU WITH TONIGHT - HAVE A TRULY VOLCANIC DAY LOVELY xxx

This is Berastagi's larger volcano, Sinabung - we climbed her little sister, Sibayak, which took us about 7 hours all in, Sinabung can take up to 10 just for the climb up and down!

Forgot to give a big thank you to Kate yesterday for letting me use her pictures of Bukit Lawang - she is the real photographer amongst us and has been good enough to share her pics with me wherever we go. My little camera is great for video and sound though, and I took loads of videos in the jungle so an evening of slide shows for you all when I get home, methinks, you lucky, lucky peeps!

Although we were sorry to say goodbye to Bukit Lawang and to the new family we had found there, we were excited to embark on our trip to Berastagi. Although you can charter buses from almost anywhere to almost anywhere in Indonesia, the public bus system is much, much cheaper and, it turned out to be far more of an experience.....

Our bus from Bukit Lawang took us back to Medan. It was just a small mini bus, a 14 seater and it started out with just us on it. To get more customers, the drivers toot the horn approximately every 30 seconds to make sure everyone knows they are coming. Before long the bus was full. Or so we thought. Actually, in Indonesia there is no such thing as a full bus. The bus is never full. At its most packed we counted 19 people squeezed into the bus, it was hiliarious and at one point there were five people sat up front with the driver, crammed into only two seats!

The bus to Medan seemed to take no time at all, and we were the last people off. When we stopped, the driver ushered us from our minibus onto a much larger, full size public bus or coach. We were slightly bemused as to why the driver insisted we sit up front with him and thought it might be the novelty factor of western women again, until we saw the amount of people they can squeeze into a public bus and then we realised the driver had done us a favour. In return, we shared a packet of fags with him, which is a big bonding thing amongst men here. Anton had explained to us in Bukit Lawang that in Indonesia if you place your fags where everyone can see them, as the guides did with us, it's an invitation to share and that this is often the way to strike up conversations and to put people at ease. Indra had told us the same and thought the price of English cigarettes hilarious and horrific in equal measure.

"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed in his best Mary Poppins cockney, "It costs what I earn in a month for one pack of your fags, innit Princess!?"

The Catholic church of St Francis of Assisi, Berastagi, where we meet Ray and Benjamin. The building is a modern re-interpretation of the traditional Batak Karo longhouses here, many of which are now in ruins, which is a great shame as they are beautiful and traditionally built entirely without nails.....!!

Not that we really needed to get closer to our driver, the three of us were crammed into two seats and the gear stick was between Angie's legs, so I think she was a bit closer to him than she ever wanted to be.....

The journey itself was as hair raising as we have come to expect, with random over-taking in the face of oncoming traffic. This time, though, we weren't quite so concerned as we were the biggest thing on the road and everyone was racing to get out of our way! The best part was when we started to climb the hills and mountain sides to Berastagi though, this takes you round some hairpin bends that I never thought you could get a bus round and we passed a couple of mini buses by the side of the road that looked like they had conked out from the gradient alone! The bus driver was so laconic about the journey that I reassured myself - as I looked down a mountainside hundreds of feet below, only feet away from us - that he must have done it a million times!

The countryside was so stunning, it was impossible to be consumed by or even to notice the fear of heights after a while, which is quite impressive as Dad and Amy will tell you from our experience of similar terrain in San Francisco, when I curled up in the back seat like a whimpering kitten. The journey from Medan to Berastagi only took a few hours and although we had all lost the ability to feel our buttocks at all, we were excited to be there.

A traditional longhouse, this one long abandoned and starting to fall down. You can get inside across a small bridge, which spans a kind of square moat that holds no water now, but falls some 35 feet below.

Berastagi is a city with a huge personality, and when you first arrive, the force of it is really quite overwhelming. It is first and foremost a tourist resort, founded by the Dutch who were seeking a cooler climate in the highlands. The temperature was noticably cooler than the jungles of Bukit Lawang, especially at night when it was even slightly cold for the first time on our travels. We had a bit of a nightmare experience on arrival when we failed to do our research and got ripped off at the Tourist Information Centre for a trip up the volcano Sibayak the following day. He charged us 400,000 Rupiah for the three of us, and we paid him 300,000 up front before heading out to an ATM. None of the ATMs were working and one had a power failure halfway through my transaction, and I only just managed to get my card back, making me worry that it was a fake ATM that had just stolen my card details. I texted Mum to let her know there might be a problem and to get her to check my accounts, then we headed back to the TIC to get our deposit back so we could get food and accommodation.

A close up of the longhouse mural, which Kate and Ang say reminds them greatly of the Maori designs they saw in many parts of New Zealand.

When we got there, however, the place was shut up and a guide outside with excellent English told us that we had definitely paid too much. A little pissed off at ourselves and the guy who had taken our money we headed for Wisma Sunrise, our guest house. The owner was really understanding and helpful and stated that we should make up a story that one of us was sick the following day and demand our money back.

"If he refuses," he advised us, "You get really angry and demand the money back, he will give it to you. Shout at him."

So the next day, Ang and Kate headed down leaving me at the guest house and did exactly this. Our money was returned and we began to like Berastagi again. The ATM had been refilled overnight and we got some more money, organised a tour for Monday morning and set off to explore Berastagi itself.

A bit of a dark photo of the climb to Sibayak once you leave the main path, but the overcast weather kept us from boiling to death on the climb! Seen from below, as here, it seems insurmountable, but it's just one foot in front of another....

After Bukit Lawang, Berastagi felt really hectic. We were the only Westerners we saw there for the first couple of days and we were highly visible. Everywhere we went we heard calls of "Hallo Meesta!! Hallo Meesta! Where you from? What's your name?" We learnt quite quickly that it is impossible to stop and talk to everyone, but we always kept friendly smiles on our faces as we called back answers while we walked on by. Berastagi has a great market, and we picked up some presents and souvenirs, planning to send them back to England from the local post office. Unfortunately, we learnt on visiting the post office that to send the goods back would cost almost five times what we paid for them, and so we're toting them around with us now until we return to Malaysia, where we have found postage much cheaper. We are also now jewelleried up to the max, I am currently wearing four necklaces and three bracelets......

The cafes and roadside stalls selling food in Berastagi are amazing and we tried as many places as we could in the days we were there. Our favourites were Eropa, the best Chinese restaurant in Berastagi (where the women were fascinated by our pale skin and strangely coloured hair, and I was very shyly told by our waitress that I was "very beautiful" so she's now got a friend for life), Raymonds Cafe (which has a personality all of its own, sells books and was the only place in Indonesia we've ever seen local women smoking) and we became addicted to the roadside stalls selling corn on the cob smothered in chilli sauce - it blows your mouth off, but tastes so good it's even worth the three hours you spend picking corn from your teeth after.

The crater at Sibayak, where visitors leave messages spelled out in rocks, and where Kate left her own surreal marking of 'Pea'......

The streets of Berastagi are lined with horse and carts, which tote locals and tourists alike to any destination you like. The people are seventy five percent Batak Karo, as in Bukit Lawang and there are many local longhouses - original Batak houses which are beautiful - although with the rise of tourism and the huge hotels in Berastagi, many of these are falling into disrepair, which is a real pity. We loved loitering around the town streets and visited a local longhouse that has been converted into a Catholic church, where we received a warm welcome on Sunday after the service. The place was packed with children and young people who remain at the church after Sunday service to clean up and then to play games and sports, sing and socialise. As well as being a beautiful place to visit, the atmosphere was lovely and we spent some time talking to a local lad, Ray, who was only 15 and has lived in Berastagi all his life. As his father left his mother when she was three months pregnant with Ray, he has never attended school, but has worked since he was a child, and is working hard to learn English in order to secure a better job. He was overwhelmingly delighted to have the opportunity to practise his English on some real English people, and chatted to us about life in Berastagi.

Poverty is a huge issue here. Less and less tourists have taken to venturing to Sumatra since the earthquakes, flash floods and tsunami over past years, and it has taken a heavy toll on the local economy, with locals competing with one another for work. Although you are touted a lot here, the people are not pushy and are equally as happy for a chance to sit and practise their English with you and to proudly show you their town and culture. There is a real sense of welcome here. The local economy is a mix of urban tourism, with people earning their living as tourist guides and running shops, guest houses and restaurants and agri-business, growing coffee, cocoa and palm trees. Many locals work a mixture of jobs and we met a young man called David who works three jobs in cafes, shops and guesthouses - Glenn, his cafe is called The Chelsea Cafe after the Blues, everyone loves football here - and earns only 340 000 Rp a month.

David, our guide to Gundaling Hill, happily relaxing with his drink at The Chelsea Cafe (I think you know why we stopped here, Glenn....). As a thank you, we went with him to the market, where he impressed a local woman he is in love with by showing her his English was good enough to have befriended three English people - Good luck with her David!

"I worry that it is hard for me to ever find a wife, because I do not earn enough and my English is not good enough yet to guide. I try to learn English every day, and listen to your music and watch films. I repeat what the actors say and see what it means on the words underneath," he told us.

David was kind enough to take us to the top of Gundaling Hill to see the sunset, which was beautiful, and humbled us with his delight when we bought him a drink at the Chelsea Cafe close to the top. He even walked us back to our guest house as it was dark. The difference in treatment from the local people (especially the men!) when we had just one male with us was remarkable. No one called out to us when David was with us at all - the representation of Western women in the media and movies that we ship out to Indonesia and the rest of the world has a lot of men thinking that western women will drop their pants at the word hello, it seems. However, after a few days, everyone seemed to recognise us in the town and this calmed down a lot as they realised we weren't exotic dancers or Britney wannabes!

I think the genuine interest we take in the people we meet and the places we go also helps. We have lost count of the number of times we have been told how friendly we are in comparison to many of the westerners who visit and who are often experienced as rude and arrogant by local people, one of those cultural gaps. We took time to explain many times that back home, people do not greet strangers on the street, and that England is not quite as welcoming as Indonesia......

The fire dragon on the volcano - can you believe it? In the background you can see the sulphur vents, which hiss loudly and are incredibly beautiful in a smelly, bad egg sort of way. I'm quite impressed with how serious I look in this shot, it's my new philosophical look....

The next day we met our guide, Karim, who was to escort us to the top of Sibayak. I was quite nervous about this, as I had seen the size of the bloody volcano and was worried that I might not be fit enough. I decided to employ an old strategy of Steve Hender's to help me through the day, The Positivity Diet, where you are not allowed to have any negative thoughts and if you do, you have to instantly reframe them as positive. The climb was hard work, and Kate and Ang are more accustomed to consistent climbs than I am, so Karim and I walked behind a little ways for a lot of the climb and I took the opportunity to ask him all about his life in Kabanjahe, the nearby city he is from, to distract me from the gruelling journey. Like Indra in the jungle, Karim was very mindful of us and regarded our wellbeing as his firm responsibility and he often took my arm at the steeper parts, talking to me the whole time.

"My name is a Muslim name," he told me, "It means 'later'. I don't know why my father chose this name, as we are Christian, but perhaps he meant that I would be a success later in my life...."

A view of Berastagi from Gundaling Hill, not far from our Guest House, Wisma Sunrise. This picture shows perfectly the mix of urban life and a dependence on agriculture that is typical of Sumatra.

Karim told me that, like many local guides, when there are no tourists, he makes his money working in the fields as a labourer. As many as 500 men gather each morning in the market at Berastagi waiting for labouring work in this way and many go home unrewarded.

"There is no money from the government here, so when there is no work, there is no food, there is nowhere to live. It is hard for many of the young ones here now. So many children living on the street, no work, no place to go. Indonesia has a big problem with mental health," he told me, frowning, "People go mad, with no money, no home. It is hard."

You certainly get the sense that underneath the friendly smile and chattering voice of Berastagi is a real desperation to survive, but the city has a gritty strength that reminded me of Portsmouth, and which makes me think it will always find a way through. In addition the local churches - most of the Batak Karo are Christian, a smaller amount Moslem and less followers of traditional Karo religion, which worships spirits, ancestors and animals - play a huge role in the local community, providing a place of relief and respite to many. We met Benjamin at the Catholic church who has returned to his hometown of Berastagi after thirty years in Jakarta, to start a Caro Development Centre in his old family home, which tries to raise the skills and aspirations of local Karo people in agriculture, languages and business so that they might make an independent living more easily.

The fields and plantations where many local people make their living, growing coffee, rice, corn and even chocolate, hmmmmmm.......

The main path up the volcano was a tarmacked road, and increasing in gradient as we neared the top. At the end of the road, it is time to scramble up a small bank. The lush vegetation begins to dissipate, yielding to hard stone and scree. We walk a gravel like path up and up the volcano side. We turn a corner, and there it is - the top of the volcano!

I have no idea, looking at it how we possibly get there, it looks insurmountable, in every possible way. Before this thought can hold my attention and work on my confidence and positivity though, I notice the sulphur vents, and the sharp smell of sour eggs in the air. Around the vents are yellow stains as the sulphur leaks through.

“People collect the sulphur from here to use as compost in the fields,” Karim explains, and we are stunned to think that anyone can do what for us is a one off trek, sometimes several times a day.

Although it is impossible from a distance to see a way up the side of the volcano, as we draw nearer, footholds reveal themselves and I see that the path is walkable. I have a Forrest Gump moment where it seems to me that life is like walking the volcano in many ways.

When you look at the future, it seems insurmountable sometimes to think how you will ever get there, but as one moment becomes the next, each step reveals itself and you draw closer and closer to your goal. It is that simple, which is of course, not to say that it is easy. Climbing is not something that comes naturally to me, as it does to say, a mountain goat, but it is really just the trick of taking each moment as it comes and putting one foot in front of the other.

Before long we have reached the sulphur vent that only moments before seemed so far away. Karim picks up a stick of bamboo and reaches into the vent, which billows large clouds of steam into the air and deposits bright yellow sulphur onto the sides of the vent. Someone has placed a large canvas sack here, that seems to be collecting the sulphur as it emerges. Karim scrambles back down, bringing us the stick of bamboo with a large pile of sulphur powder in the end. I touch it and am surprised by its softness, like talcum powder, but with a very different smell to it.

“Now we will got to the crater, I think?” he asks. We nod eagerly and begin to climb the scree once more, passing several more vents along the way. Before long, we reach a small peak and as we come over the top, a steep, sheer grey wall of stone rises high above us. There are more sulphur events here, but in a sharp drop beneath the wall and dead ahead of us is a large crater, almost circular. I laugh with delight as we draw near.

Another dark photo, but I'm posting it because off in the distance on the right you can just see the top of Sibayak, the volcano we climbed. This is the view from our guest house, Wisma Sunrise, and you can see Berastagi unfolding into the distance.

At the base of the crater, the floor of which seems almost sandlike, visitors to the volcano have spelled out hundreds of messages written in rocks: names, hearts with initials and messages of peace or welcome. I find this touch of utter human quirkiness and foible strangely touching, an impermanent graffiti using small pieces of the volcano itself. Kate scrambled down to write 'Peace' but Ang and I stop her at 'Pea' as we think it is a much more surreal message to leave behind....

From the crater, we climb again to the very top of the volcano and the view down to the jungle that covers the other side is absolutely stunning. We can hardly believe we will be climbing down there. We spend a couple of hours at the top of the volcano, chatting with Karim, singing and sharing our energy food of biscuits, bananas and crisps. I am delighted that my positive thinking diet has made even the difficult parts of the experience a real achievement, and I am surprised to realise the obvious - the bigger the difficulty of an experience, the greater the achievement when you make it!

A huge millipede we saw on our way up, the fag packet gives you some idea of its size, but Karim assured us it was completely harmless and picked it up to show us. This, of course, only made us scream like the girls we are and run away.

The journey down is through the jungle and on a much, much steeper gradient and we almost come a cropper a couple of times (ok, to be honest, I slid down on my arse once and nearly ripped my hip out of its socket, but it's impossible to dwell on the pain when you're laughing so much and Kate and Ang are hopping around you screaming "Man Down!! Man Down!!"), but the sheer exhilaration of the speed at which you are forced to move makes the experience amazing. Karim told us that on his own, he can run down the side, but I would be dead within seconds if I attempted it, so settled at a jaunty hop and jog for much of it, taking time and care at the difficult bits, mum, honest!

When we reached the bottom, we were hot, sweaty and happily exhausted, but the icing on the cake was about to come. As if climbing a volcano for a day isn't enough, when you get to the bottom there is a hot spring - and they mean hot! So, it was into our cossies and into the spring, which, unlike the jungle trek, completely stopped any of our muscles aching. We spent a couple of hours lounging in and out of the spring, which was sheer bliss.

"Could anyone else do with a glass of champagne right now?" I asked. If only we had thought to bring some....

A bus journey back to Berastagi found us back in Raymonds for the duration of the evening and time to plan our trip to Danau Toba, one of Indonesia's biggest lakes, and the island of Samosir, that sits at the lake's centre, formed from a volcano thousands of years ago. We found a local guest house that chartered buses, as it is a very long journey on public transport and we had decided to compromise on this small luxury as we will be getting a public bus back from Toba to Medan.

Our guide, Karim, collecting sulphur to show us at the vents.

As I write this, we have already been in Lake Toba for a few days, and it is indeed an island paradise, but with a darker side that I will tell you all about in the next thrilling installment of our Indonesian adventure.....! Stay tuned!

Ms Berry - loving your comments, sorry I missed you from the messages on the last one, I'm rubbish! How did the interview go? xx