From Golden Buddhas to the Golden Triangle

It’s been quite a whirlwind the past week and an interesting migration from South East Asia to India. We had about 1.5 days to experience Bangkok before we flew to Delhi which we spent boating from sight to sight. We happened to be in Bangkok on the day of the funeral of the Princess and so thousands of Thai people, dressed in black, were visiting the Royal Palace to pay their respects. As a result the palace was closed to tourists so we went to the Wat with the massive golden reclining Buddha instead- pretty impressive. We headed to Chinatown for our last taste of dim sum before departing that part of the world and experienced the obligatory Kao San Road that night for dinner and drinks.

The next day, we flew to Delhi...what a change! So far India has been challenging but breathtakingly beautiful with scenes and buildings like nothing I could have ever dreamed about; but first came the nightmare of Delhi! We arrived in the Indian capital pretty tired and were driven to our hotel. On the plane I had read our India guidebook and absorbed the lengthy warnings about potential scams pulled in Delhi. The Hindustan Hotel was in a pretty murky backstreet and sure enough when we walked into the hotel we were told that there was no room and we had to move to a sister hotel (scam number 1 in the Lonely Planet!). We insisted we stay there as that’s what we’d booked and the manager came to speak to us after about an hour of waiting. He finally apologised profusely and showed us to our room- after them saying the hotel was too full and under renovation- very strange. Stranger still, the room sported a round bed and multiple mirrors. Who knows what this place had been before but the room was pretty dirty and falling apart. The manager had also, kindly, informed us that the area was dodgy so not to walk around at night! This didn’t fill us with confidence to go out and get some dinner. We went to the first place we could find and got chatting to an English guy who has lived in India for 25 years. A pretty shady character with slight hints at his career in drug trafficking, but he was quite helpful and gave us some good tips. Walking back to the hotel we bumped into a chatty man, obviously trying to sell us something, who asked where we were staying. We told him the Hindustan at which he gasped and asked ‘Have you not heard what happened at that place?’. Worried, we asked and he told us that one week ago they had found a French girl dead in one of the rooms having been murdered. Mildly concerned, we brushed his story off as a potential scam to get us to move to his hotel instead and returned back to our dingy room.

The next day we tried to find a travel agent to hire a car and travel the Golden Triangle. After an hour of being driven around and taken to the places where the driver could get commission and not where we wanted to go, we ended up at somewhere that looked half decent. After much negotiation we booked ourselves a driver for the next three days to take us to Rajasthan and Agra. When paying they asked us where we were staying in Delhi...again the gasp! They told us that in fact the hotel is just a cover for the drug dealing management and that the French girl had been taking drugs in the room with an Indian guy who had then done a runner! Nice. We could not wait to get out of that place! But first, we had the sights of Delhi to see.

The company supplied us with a nice driver who took us to all the sights. We visited the huge and impressive Jama Masjid with a high minaret giving views over sprawling, busy Delhi. We also visited a complex of tombs of previous kings from 16^th century and went to the house and garden where Ghandi was assassinated. We capped the day off by going to hear the Qiwallis sing at a Mosque (I am still not sure what the Qiwallis are but I think they are holy men associated with the mosque). Our driver dropped us at the top of a packed, dirt road market. As a blonde, white girl it’s never particularly fun navigating these densely packed streets but we pushed down following the people that kept pointing further and further down the street. We finally hit an undercover warren of market stalls which wound down to a central point where the small mosque sat. Jonny, as a man (and wearing his Muslim head covering) got whisked off to a tomb area where women weren’t allowed. Meanwhile, I sat, receiving some very curious looks from the men and women sat on the rugs, and listened to the singers- their warbling, prayer-like singing created an incredible atmosphere as the sun began to go down on Delhi.

The next day we set off on our driving adventure with our driver, guide, bodyguard and friend for the next three days- Shashi. Our first stop, after around 6 hours of driving, was the Pink City- Jaipur. This ancient city, where all the buildings are a lovely pink colour, is walled with looming gates guarding the entrances to the old centre and teeming with bazaars. We spent the remainder of the first day visiting a garden where a Maharajah had exercised his interest in astronomy and astrology by building huge instruments and then visited the Hawa Mahal palace. The palace is an incredible looking building that keeps going up and up to the top floors where the ladies of the palace, who were not allowed to be seen in public, could sit and watch the goings on through small windows. The next day we took the short drive to the Amber Fort and this was amazing!! From a distance the huge pinky coloured fort looks like it has been carved out of the mountains and is surrounded by large man-made lakes. We climbed up and took the audio tour to explore the Maharajah’s rooms, the beautiful public meeting room and the rooms and gardens for the many wives of the king. It is hard to express in writing the sheer beauty of this place and Jonny and I wondered why this was not included in the wonders of the world to be honest. After descending we took a short stop at the Water Palace, which sits in the middle of a huge lake-only accessible by boat and only to the royal family, and the palace of the existing (if a little less powerful these days) Maharajah.

The next day, we drove to Agra but on the way stopped at the Monkey Temple. Again, this abandoned city and temple complex which sits at the foot of rocky mountains, was pretty breathtaking. We followed the Hindu pilgrims up the many steps to the main temple where we sat and received a blessing from the holy man guarding the statues of the Gods. We were pretty happy that we now had little orange blobs on our heads like many Indian people we saw, even if we didn’t really understand why! On the way back down Jonny fed some nuts he’d bought to some already well fed monkeys and we watched people bathing in the algae covered Ganges water that flowed through the temples before we got back in the car to go to Agra. Before we reached Agra we had another stop in Fatehpur Sikri and visited a huge, beautiful mosque guided by a nice kid who studied at the Madrassa in the mosque.

On our first morning in Agra we got up before the sun to go and see the famous Taj Mahal. At that time there was less than 100 people so it wasn’t crowded. When you enter the gates to this monument you have seen a thousand times in pictures, it is breathtaking in real life. The huge white marble building looks like a cardboard cut out against the sky- it’s hard to take in how big it is. We meandered around the Taj as the sun came up, looking at the light changing on the marble and took the obligatory Lady Diana pictures on the benches. For the rest of the day we dragged our tired asses around the Agra Fort and went to see what’s called the Baby Taj; another, much smaller tomb, which is said to have been the inspiration for the main event. After a great morning we made our way back to Delhi via the birth place of Krishna, a Hindu God, which to be honest went a little over our heads due to the fact we’d been up since 5am but interesting just the same.

A word about Indian roads...I honestly thought I would never experience anything as bad as Ghana roads and traffic but India takes it to another level! Shashi was a very good driver but had to share the road with elephants, camels, goats, motorbikes, cows, dogs, rickshaws, buses, trucks, people driving the wrong way and many mental drivers! A dual carriageway here is turned into a 4 lane racing track as no one respects the lanes and overtakes on the left and right. The crammed buses travel at crazy speeds and Shashi even pulled over to report one bus driver to the police whilst he was driving us back to Delhi. We were pretty happy therefore to arrive in Delhi safely and be getting a flight down to Kerala in the South rather than driving. We are now in beautiful Fort Cochi in some seriously hot weather and eating some gorgeous food. I will update the blog with more details soon.

Le Cambodge

I have left my blog for a little longer than anticipated and since my last entry we have completed our time on the island of Phu Quoc, travelled through Cambodia (Le Cambodge in French-love that name) and are now in Bangkok for two days before we fly to India!
Our time on Phu Quoc mainly consisted of chilling out on the beach which is what we wanted. Our room was a large bamboo cabin near the hotel’s private stretch of beach so we just ambled down in the mornings and swam in the beautifully warm sea. The island, like a few other places in Vietnam, is most visited by Russians (an old Communist chum no doubt) so all the signs are in Vietnamese and Russian. Not to generalise, but all the Russian men we saw wore very small Speedos and had amazingly committed and strange sunbathing regimes- many of them were pretty red too! After our first full day of chilling, and the obligatory beach massage, we decided to go on a night squid fishing trip. The trip didn’t start well with us being passed from company to company as two men argued who we were meant to be going with. As we experienced a lot in Vietnam, the hotel had promised us to a more expensive operator but had actually booked us on a cheaper one for a higher percentage of commission. Anyway we sorted it out and boarded our boat...error! We were two of eleven tourists on the boat- one Vietnamese family of four, a Portuguese couple with a young baby, a German couple and us. Within ten happy smiling minutes, the very choppy sea claimed its first victims- the mother, father and son of the Vietnamese family were being violently sick on and off the boat. Then the mother of the young baby was taken down but then the poor little baby started being involuntarily sick and screaming as she didn’t understand what was happening to her body. After about 20 minutes at sea, incidentally catching no squid either, we made a group decision to abandon the trip and head back to land. The tour guide misjudged the crowd and suggested we stay on the boat for dinner; everyone just walked away glad to be on still land and trying to settle their stomachs. A bit of a disaster but quite funny in the end!
The next day we went on a much less rough snorkelling trip. To be honest the water was pretty dirty, with Jonny emerging from the sea with a small oil slick down his face, so I stayed on the boat mostly and entertained myself fishing. I never knew how much I love fishing! I caught eight fish (the boat record and many more than Jonny!) and they cooked some of them for our lunch. That night we went for a lovely dinner before leaving for Cambodia the next day. We liked the little old lady we arranged our trip from Phu Quoc to Cambodia with, but little old ladies can be deceiving! We got the ferry to the Vietnamese mainland and a bus through the Cambodian border and travelled on to a town called Kampot where we were told we had to change to a taxi. It seemed odd as we’d paid for a bus all the way to Phnom Penh, the capital and when they attempted to squeeze 7 people into the car to travel for around four hours, we protested. The travel agent shrugged her shoulders and told us we’d missed the bus- which incidentally with the set ferry crossing and journey to Kampot we never had a chance of catching (damn little old lady!). After nearly an hour of trying to get them to do something the travel agent took us to a local minibus and said that would take us to Phnom Penh. It looked like a tro-tro from Ghana so we weren’t that concerned- a pretty beat up, 12 seater minibus- fine, we thought, we’ve done this before, just suck it up and we’ll be there soon. That was until they packed 27 people in, including 8 people sat on the luggage which protruded out of the boot and even one person sat underneath the driver!!!!!! At one point the driver was weaving in and out of traffic at break neck speed, with someone underneath him, on the phone and watching the drop down television he had in the front!! I was beside myself and felt very, very relieved to reach Phnom Penh alive (sorry Mum!). We were exhausted when we arrived and jumped in the nearest tuk tuk to get us to our hostel. Phnom Penh is a maze of streets without names, only numbers and no one seems to know where anything is. After 2 hours, 2 different tuk tuks and much frustration we finally found our hostel, a full 15 hours after we’d set off that morning. We had a good sleep and prepared ourselves for what was going to be a pretty emotional next day.
Many readers of this blog will have been to this part of the world and/or know the history of Cambodia, but for those who don’t, this is the little snippet I have learned. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia led by Pol Pot, or Brother number 1, who had ambitions to make Cambodia into the ultimate Communist country. He wanted the entire country to be remodelled into a purely agricultural, peasant- led society based on communes and self-sufficient sharing. Tragically, like Communist leaders before his time, this meant that anyone that questioned the authority and omniscience of the Khmer Rouge was an enemy who had to be wiped out. For Pol Pot’s regime this translated into anyone who wasn’t a peasant- educated people, teachers, artists, religious leaders, monks and their families were murdered on mass. They estimate that almost a quarter of the population, 1.7 million people, were killed by this regime in the 3 years they held power. The insanity and brutality of the time is brought home by S21 museum in the capital. It is a school which was converted into a prison and torture camp by the regime. Thousands of men, women and children were tortured there before being taken to their deaths and the numbers escalated as the regime got increasingly paranoid. Only 7 people survived the camp, ironically mostly by being artists and painting portraits of the leader and we met one of the survivors the day we visited. We moved on to Cheoung Ek, which lies just outside the city and is known more commonly as the Killing Fields. Here, the Khmer Rouge brought those they wanted to exterminate from S21. As we walked around, you could see the depressions in the ground that are mass graves of the victims. The keepers of the ground have unearthed thousands of skulls and bones which are displayed in a memorial Stupa but have decided to allow nature to unearth the rest and dig no further. As the rain comes and earth washes away, more bones and rags appear out of the ground and you see them as you walk around. It is a difficult and heartbreaking place but one I feel is essential to visit.
It is crazy that while the developing world rocked out to the Rolling Stones, grieved the end of the Beatles and were being terrified by a shark film, so many people were being massacred in Cambodia. It begs the question of what human rights violations we are still blind to and what our government actively chooses not to see- China, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Guantanamo...the list goes on but this is not a political blog so I will move on!
Our final two days in Phnom Penh were spent visiting the very impressive Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda and Independence Monument. We also took a drive out to the slums to visit a non-profit project we read about in the town. We met an Aussie guy who has set up Justees (http://www.justees.org/) which employs disadvantaged young Cambodian men to print t-shirts with justice messages on. It was great to chat to him and see the process and we bought a couple of t-shirts- check out the website!
We moved on to Siem Reap and the wonder of the world that is Angkor Wat. We hired a lovely tuk tuk driver called Saly and started very early to visit all the temples. I didn’t know before going but the complex of temples is huge with structures dating back to 800AD. We spent 8 hours visiting the temples we wanted to see and it is breathtaking. My favourite was the slightly further out Banteay Srei which was set in tranquil rice paddies and had incredibly intricate carvings all over it. We explored all the temples including the tree temple, made famous by Tomb Raider, which has huge trees somehow growing out of the rocks, Bayon, which is a temple made of huge heads and of course Angkor Wat, the national symbol. It was a fascinating and very hot day but well worth the visit. We were staying in a really nice and cheap hotel that offered in room massages so I decided to have one to ease my sore legs while Jonny relaxed by the pool. The lady who arrived did not seem very happy to be massaging that day and I found out why when she rushed to the bathroom after 10 minutes and threw up. When she was done she wanted to carry on- I of course told her she was sick and needed to go home and gave her a couple dollars as a token. Amazingly she protested and tried to charge me the full amount for the massage- a very surreal event all in all!
The next day we visited a photography exhibition which happened to be connected to a children’s hospital set up by a Japanese-American. The hospital was in desperate need of financial donations and blood...so Jonny stepped up to the plate and gave them 350ml of the red stuff. We took a trip out to a temple which was also used by the Khmer Rouge and had a lovely dinner at Madame Butterfly’s set in the oldest colonial house in Siem Reap.
In the morning we took a bus to Battambang and, having only one day there, packed it full! We started by taking the bamboo train- the most fun thing I think we’ve done this trip! The locals use the old French train track still and we sat on a plank of wood which had two axles underneath, propelled by a small motor engine. We were hurtling down the rickety track which had warped and bent out of shape in the heat, at about 25mph, until we met another train coming the other way. At which point, our driver made us dismount, took the wooden plank off, removed the wheels from the track, allowed the other train passed and reassembled our train once they’d gone. It was amazing fun! We then visited a temple on a hill which has been built to mark the caves where the Khmer Rouge threw people to their death. Again, a very sad and chilling place. We hung around until night fall to see tens of millions fruit bats leave the cave to hunt in a long line which looked like billowing smoke. We raced back into town to see the youth circus- it is a non-profit organisation for disadvantaged Cambodian kids to learn circus skills. We’d read that the adult team, of which a few have been selected for Cirque Du Soleil, were on tour and so we would see the kids’ team. We expected an entertaining hour but nothing mind blowing- how wrong we were. The kids were absolutely amazing; doing contortion, tight rope walking, acrobatics, clowning, juggling- it was a fantastic night. Just as we were leaving an almighty storm broke and soaked, we grabbed a takeout pizza and retreated to our hostel. After a very long journey yesterday we arrived in Bangkok where we will explore for a couple of days before embarking on our final leg of the journey...India!