Nathan has been camping out here at the Barkly St .. not only has he been an angel to live with, and inducted me into the world of Nintendo Wii, but also shared crazy stories like the Zombie Street Sign Hacker of Texas .. and this video he made with his hilarious friends.
i recommend you watch it.
Who ate the cheese?
Somewhere, there must be a link to more videos like this .. yes, here: Justin Juswah has a youTube channel.
i postponed the visit to Tuol Sleng as long as i could. Didn’t want to face reality and find out what happened. Strangely i felt conscious of the whole genocide thing as soon as we landed in Phnom Penh .. as though the soul of this country was still deeply wounded and grieving.
At the museum, i ended up stumbling on a small room, filled with dust and storage. i don’t think this room was meant to be open. There was a big box of skulls and bones, not organised for display, just sitting; this was more disturbing than viewing the skulls on proper display.
Many skulls in another room had been given proper display cabinets, with airholes so that the victim’s souls could enter and connect. This was a compromise between giving them proper burial, and allowing the world to see the evidence of what happened.
i took some photos in the not-display room, but felt like i shouldn’t .. so perhaps i won’t publish them here. i’ll put other people’s photos instead.
So the genocide researchers have found 389 burial sites .. most with 500-1500 people. There was one site with 150,000 people and the biggest site had 510,000 dead bodies. Tim and i tried to work out how big that would be.
Really Big.
At the start of the revolution, people were marched out of the cities into the country to become honourable peasants. If the inner bourgeoisie couldn’t be marched out of them, they were killed. Doctors, teachers .. anyone educated was killed.
Ironic, because Pot and some of his henchmen were teachers who’d had a very elitist education in Paris.
.
These days in Cambodge, they don’t kill people so much, just sell off land to developers and march the peasants off to another part of the city, possibly with a skerrick of compensation. This article at the bbc gives detail, via Kylie in Phnom Penh.
photo credit: blake_lennon
photo credit: tkelly7029
Plus:
Oh thank heavens i’m back home. G Love and Special Sauce is on the stereo, Sam’s getting fish n chips from the new place on Sydney Road .. and the massive heat wave faded away just before i arrived. Tim and Nathan are here, with beer.
Life is perfect.
Sometimes you can have enough of a foreign place and living out of a backpack. Phnom Penh is beautiful in its way, but the poverty gets to me (not as much as it affects the locals obviously), my comfort zones are stretched, the heat and dust wears me down. i needed the comfort of home.
mmmm .. off to Victoria St to get me some frozen lychees.
photo credit: roboppy
Here at the floating markets of Can Tho, Vietnam, they have i’m sure the Biggest Grapefruit in the World. These things look like honey dew melons. They are big. And delicious.
Just spent 8 hours soaking in the magnificence of the Mekong Delta, with my own private boat captain. (My own company got a bit much, but the markets, the river and its ecology were all gorgeous.)
Occasionally the propellers get caught in plastic bags. So the drivers get the long paddle out of the water, peel off the plastic, and throw the bag back in the water.
The floating markets are so photogenic. i think the locals might get a bit sick of the tourists though. All taking photo but no buying the goods.
i’m trying to be unobtrusive with the mini-camera .. but there’s one guy with a seriously big lens. One of those tourists who doesn’t smile back when you smile at him. You’re only real if you make a good picture .. and even then you’re real in a fully objectified sense.
Anyway, he was the Voracious Tourist for me .. on whom i projected my own “negative affect” as Jude might say.
(Voracious Photos to come .. later on)
photo credit: -RS-
Nearly finished Deadwood and Life on Mars, so i was definitely in need of a new DVD obsession. Fortunately the strange futuristic evolutionary tales of “Heroes” were filling the gap nicely.
Similar to the genetically-modified characters of Dark Angel, the mutants of X-men, and also the returned “altered” people in the world of the 4400. This one concerns people who are developing new skills and talents .. the next step in human evolution. In the future, everyone will be Superman, Spidergirl .. Catwoman; able to use their own special powers for good .. or evil.
If i could have a superpower, i would definitely be able to fly. Save so much hassle at airports, and cut down on carbon footprint too.
Or maybe radiate peace and love from my heart into the world around me, so that people around me experience balance and a deep sense of personal safety. That would be cool.
Give me comment please: What would your superhuman power be?
PS: when i came to Phnom Penh, all i really wanted to see was the rest of Season One. Fortunately Katie discovered the series and shared my fascination. We got through the whole 23 episodes in 3 days!! How outrageously self-indulgent.
Just a few loose threads in the plot at the end of it all ..
photo credit: TCM Hitchhiker photo credit: Randy Son Of Robert
Shanny and Phil turn up in a tuk tuk, to take me to the Russian and Central Markets. Peter is their regular driver who takes them all around town from their base in the Lake District. He’s a friendly man and a good driver.
Along the way, his tuk tuk starts to make cranky noises but after a while it’s okay. Using bits of English and sign, he tells us it’s an oil problem, but he’ll fix it later. He waits at each market while we shop.
My favourite part of the market is the area where women sit cross legged on the counter chopping meat with giant cleavers. The meats hang raw and bloody in the muggy shade. No refrigeration.
oh, there’s the deep fried spiders too.
You always get the best noodle soup at the market, no doubt!!
What a fun day. i love it !!
Note to Self: next time i’m about to take a 3 hour sea journey .. do not eat pig trotter soup from a street stall in South Vietnam; just in case the journey is extremely rough.
i had to take a photo of myself halfway across, to find out exactly how green my face was .. but i’m not publishing the photo here. Oh no.
Landed on Phu Quoc Island, a large island which has been sometimes Cambodian, but mostly Vietnamese . (Known as Koh Tral to the Cambodians the island is much closer to Cambodia .. and rumour has it they are not too happy about losing the island either.)
After a 20 minute moto trip, met up with Zeena and Phat .. and did my best to be good company for the evening we had together, but unfortunately i was horrible sick. The smell of their dinner made me go and have a lie down on the beach.
Oh dear.
The pig trotter soup tasted great, too! Really nice soup, and i had fun ordering it, with a fellow traveller from Holland. One of those classic situations where neither party speaks any of the other language.
. PS: i’m on a tropical paradise. Shutup michael. Stop your moaning.
photo credit: JasonDGreat
Sometimes i notice that things go wrong in a funny way. My bike and my car always seem to break down at the same time. Or i hit my head on a cupboard door three times in the same day.
Lately i’ve had a bad time with technology:
All my own doing .. nobody to blame.
But .. i must remember to look on the bright side, put all this into perspective .. because i have sustained no physical injuries. i’m firmly attached to my limbs, my heart and my brain.
Gadgets are just bits of metal and plastic aren’t they. Nothing compared to a beating heart, a thriving brain .. and a valiantly surviving liver. No point getting attached to material objects .. this is a Buddhist country after all. Got to remember to breathe in the joy of being alive. Yah. photo credit: lotje
Just finished reading Barack Obama’s “Dreams from my Father” – it’s a good read – flowing narrative that draws you in, with insightful and nuanced reflection. The book is about his journey to discover and forge his own identity, and also about his thoughts on race politics. He writes about growing up with the identity struggles that come with mixed cultural background, working as a community organiser in Chicago, and returning to Africa to meet his father’s side of the family.
i was surprised how emotional i became when reading about Obama in the latest edition of Time mag. Emotions that kept returning as i read the book. Could there really be an authentic person in politics? Someone with intelligence, decency, style and the competence to govern .. who believes in assembling the best minds and working together to solve problems?
That sense of hope that he generates was sorely needed in the world, especially when looking to the USA to return to its noble visions of highest and best potential.
For me it’s not so much about the colour of his skin .. as the fact that we are about to have a Community Organiser in the White House. Not only a person who works at grass roots level, but someone who understands that to solve big problems, we need to find common ground and work together.
(i say “we” .. meaning that .. that the whole world depends on that one country to be their best. Unlike the fearful and aggressive, unreconstructed alcoholic version of the US we’ve had recently.)
In my view Barack is a good person, who believes in getting things done .. and does things differently. My hope is that he will move politics back into a place of decency and competency, genuine problem solving and that he will inspire others to join the world of community organisers.
He is a good person .. i wonder if he will turn out to be a great person.
i just remembered watching the acceptance speeches at Ben and Rhi’s house, projected huge upon the wall. Just as sweet as the day kevin007 took the throne of Oz.
Links:
photo credit: Hot Meteor
This was meant to be an island paradise getaway. A heavenly new year, with friends on the beach. After the mild dramas of travelling by bus to Sihanoukville (Lauli and her buddies went the day before; Jem and her friends found their pre-booked tickets had been sold, i was worried about having to charter a boat on my own) .. we were all looking forward to a chilled-out party on the beach.
There was bbq action, dance music, stories and balancing on a swing over the sand.
Lovely.
Bang.
A loud silence, then some shouts and that awful feeling of not knowing what’s happened. Followed by the sickening feeling of discovering what has happened.
Someone’s let a very big firecracker off in his own face.
Shanny’s seen the whole thing close up and looks like she’s about to pass out. “He’s blown his face off! Have you seen Phil?”
i still feel a bit sick and shocked from the events of the evening. This was about 11pm local time. Celebrations were clearly off the agenda. People milled around wondering how to help. Several people did help, giving first aid, painkillers, calling the mainland, deciding whether to call for a boat or pray for an airlift direct to Bangkok.
16 hours later, Yuma made it to Bangkok. But the reports aren’t good.
Still on life support. Not yet stable.
Prayers welcome .. angelic support appreciated.
