Clearing out my mailbox, I found this little gem that I thought I'd share:

Whilst bored in the library, I thought I'd compose a piece using the
word "set" as many times as possible. It has more meanings than any other
words in the English language. Hope it amuses you in some way.

Danny.

All was set for the International Badger Tennis Championships, at the
Amplegrove Set, set right in the heart of the South-West London
countryside. Greg Rusedski Badger had been given a new tennis set for Christmas, and
was confident of victory, but Tim Henman Badger had set up a scheme whereby
his victory was practically set in stone. At the start of the first set,
Tim Henman Badger set about his evil plan, but some would say he'd set
himself an impossible task, since it was Greg Rusedski Badger who set the
agenda, winning paws down. Then, as Greg Rusedski Badger set his racket on the
ground so as to tie his shoelace, quite unexpectedly, the Sun set and
the arena was thrown into darkness. Thankfully, Cliff Richard Badger was on
hand to do a live set and entertain the masses, who were gathered in the
badgers' set. Little did he know that they had only just finished building the
set for such spontaneous sets, and the last coat of paint hadn't quite set,
so he soon had a pink splodge on his posterior. He performed a set of
poems which had been set to music by Elton John Badger, but alas, Tim Henman
Badger had set his Explosives-R-Us dynamite set to go off half an hour
into proceedings, and the place was set alight. Tim Henman Badger had been
dead set on victory, but turned out to be the biggest loser of them all,
when a panda car picked him up, and set off for the local prison.

Hello,

My updates really have been getting more and more spaced out. In a temporal sense of the word. My last group email was from Phnom Penh in Cambodia almost 5 weeks ago. After the harrowing visit to the Killing Fields, we decided it was time to chill out a little & went on a trip to Sihanoukville on the coast. Where am I now? You’ll just have to read until the end of this mail to find out. Or scroll down like a cheat.

Sihanoukville is on the Southwest coast of Cambodia, and we stay by the pleasant Ocheuteal Beach. We get motos down to the beach, and stay at a place that was reasonably priced and near the beach. The fact that it didn’t have a roof didn’t bother us too much. It’s a phenomenon that we saw a few times. Instead of building a whole hotel, and then open it up, which would take a long time, they build and finish the ground floor and open the hotel as a work in progress. Its weird – the ground floor looks perfectly normal – plasterwork and paint all done but the upper floors are just the skeletons of wooden scaffolding.

There’s another beach – Victory Beach that most of the backpackers go to which we’d heard some fairly rotten reports about – that it was dirty and that the hawkers on the beach can be pretty aggressive. Thankfully, the beach we were on was lovely. There were little huts along the beach selling food, and in exchange for buying a couple of things, you could use their deckchairs and sunshades. Local girls walked along the beach selling fruit. One girl gets me to promise to buy a fruit salad if she beats me at noughts and crosses. After drawing many times, I’m eventually distracted and loose. I’m thus forced to buy a delicious fruit salad, freshly prepared by the girl chopping up the fruit on the beach. Tough times.

We stop back at Phnom Penh for a day en route to Siem Reap. We get the express boat across Tone Sap lake. I spend most of the 5-hour journey watching films (Street Fighter) that have been bizarrely dubbed into Cambodian and bollywood tunes. We stop at a smelly floating village where we get a smaller boat to the shore. We have moto drivers waiting for us, and we’re driven down a dirt track to our Guesthouse in Siem Reap centre. Which is next to another half built hotel.

Siem Reap is where the famous temples of Angkor are situated. We get a 3-day pass to explore them, and hire moto drivers to drive us around. On our first afternoon there we climb up to Phnom Bakheng. It’s somewhat magical watching sunset from this ruined hilltop temple alongside the monks and elephants.

Our first day’s tour proper begins at the fortified city of Ankor Thom. We stop at the south gate and then onto The Bayon. It looks like a ruined temple from a distance, but close up it is absolutely amazing. It has 54 stone towers decorated with faces looking in 4 directions (the ones that are in all the pictures). We also see Baphuon and Terrace of Elephants, but the weather isn’t bet suited for sight seeing – the heat makes it a little unpleasant, and so we have a siesta before heading back out again. We go to the awe inspiring Angkor Wat. We climb up the very steep steps and pause to reflect that you could never possibly do anything so precarious in the UK. We chat to some monks at the top of the temple, and they don’t appear to be obsessed by Jo’s boobs for a change. On the way back we see lots of wild monkeys playing by the side of the road. Monkeys, monks, elephants, ruins and beautiful ruins; it’s a cliché, but still amazing.

My temptation to get up early to see one of the temples at sunrise is defeated by the reality that I’d have to get up at 4am or so. Instead we get up at a civilised hour and do what is known as the small circuit. At one of the ruined temples a shifty looking policeman (well his uniform says police on it anyway) approaches us. We’re a little concerned as the thin blue line is a little more blurry in this country. He offers to sell us a police badge for $5, and we politely decline. Another 2 policemen try and sell us various parts of their uniforms before the day is over. The highlight is seeing the ruined Ta Prom; a big rambling temple from 12th century that has been left to nature to take over, tentacle-like roots of huge trees engulf the stonework. Broken stone blocks many of the entrances, and I felt as if I were in a computer game, negotiating a maze. Indeed, some of the film “Tomb Raider” was filmed here. We also climb Ta Keo, a temple with lots of steep narrow steps that rises 50 metres upwards.

Well that was Cambodia, and next we were going back to Thailand. We took a crappy beaten up minibus with no aircon down bumpy dirt roads and across bridges of dubious quality down to Poipet on the boarder. During the journey my bag almost falls out of the back of the bus after a Dutch girl thoughtfully opened the window for it. Poipet is described by guidebooks as “a hole”, so I wasn’t expecting much. Thankfully our border crossing was mercifully brief and we were soon on a new aircon bus on the other side of the border, being served snacks, as we headed along a smooth motorway towards Bangkok.

We stay near the Khaosan road (backpacker central), and Bangkok seems a much less intimidating place this time around, now that 3 months of SE Asia have hardened us a little. We have 18 days left in Thailand, and we discuss what we should do next. Our choices are made harder by the fact that Songkran festival is coming up on 13th April and lasts 3 days or longer in some places, and isn’t a good time to be travelling around. It is basically the New Years celebration with a water theme. Monks wash their Buddha images, and everyone else goes crazy, throwing water and flour at people. These days a lot of Thais use big supersoaker waterguns as part of the celebratory water fights. Unfortunately there are a lot of accidents, with drunk driving and lax road safety contributing to the many deaths. When children are throwing bags of water at drunken motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets will inevitably have tragic consequences.

One of the places we think about going to, but don’t is Kanchanaburi, famous as the location of Death Bridge- bridge on the river Kwai. Nearby is The Tiger Temple, where tigers roam free under the watchful eye of the temple’s abbot, who keeps them calm while a pack of tourists tentatively stroke and photograph the fearsome creatures. The tigers were born in captivity, abandoned and rescued by the monks as cubs. A sign at the entrance informs visitors that the authorities bear no responsibility for injury or death. Could just be a matter of time.

We do however, go on a day trip to Ayuthaya, a former Thai capital until it was practically destroyed by the Burmese in 1767, and famous for its hundreds of Temples. We start at Golden Mound Chedi, a giant white stupa and we already are feeling the oppressive Thai summer heat as we climb to the top. We explore Shrilankan; Burmese and Cambodian style temples, including Wat Phutthansawan with a large reclining Buddha. Next is Wat Phra Si Sanphet, a large ruined complex and Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit that houses a large golden seated Buddha. We have a breather at a place that gives elephant rides. A problem facing Asian countries is what to do with the elephants that were once used in industries such as logging. They can’t be returned to the wild – and there isn’t often much of a wild for them to return to. The solution is to use the elephants in tourism – giving rides, and also as rides for the people protecting elephants in the wild from poachers. Is it cruel? I’m not sure – their keepers seem to love and take care of them, they seem well fed and have access to shade, and I’m not sure what the alternative would be. There is a really cute baby elephant there that does tricks, posing for photos and standing on her head. When we stop for lunch, we discover that a Japanese guy from our tour is missing, and despite waiting for a long time and searching for him, he doesn’t turn up. Before we head back, we see a European style Buddhist temple, looking very much like a church, complete with stained glass window. Several hours later when we get back to Khaosan road, we see the nutter of a Japanese man that had disappeared earlier walking down the road, in a new set of clothes. Maybe he got hot and decided to go back on his own steam. Who knows?

We decide to take a long trip to a beach on an island, and opt for Ko Pha-Ngan. You can get an overnight bus there from Khaosan, but we opt for a more adventurous route. We get the morning train (the overnight trains all sold out because of the holidays) from Bangkok south to Surat Tani. From there we get a songthow gown to the pier to catch a ferry. Unfortunately there are only 2 day ferries and they both leave in the morning. We have to wait for 5 hours to catch the night ferry that leaves at 11pm. The food vendors at Bat Dan pier seem to be more interested in selling themselves than in selling their food, and spend several hours putting on makeup, and they try to massively overcharge us for our meagre snack, which is a little upsetting. As we wait on the boat, I read “Neither Here Nor There” by Bill Bryson and it strikes me what a boring old git he is – blowing every minor incident out of proportion, always finding something to grumble about, and never venturing anywhere more adventurous than Europe or America.

On the night ferry to Ko Pha-Ngan there’s a roomful of people sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and I don’t sleep well. There’s a big Thai guy in the middle of the deck who seems to be staring at me (one of the crew?), and he makes me feel very unsettled and not really in the mood for a deep sleep. Unlike Jo, who hits me when I wake her up at 5am when we arrive. We get a ride to the North of the Island to Hat Khom beach and stay in a place called Coral Bay. I work out that our journey has taken almost 22 hours, and take a well-deserved nap. That evening we take a walk over the rocks to get to the neighbouring beach to check out the town and to buy a hammock. Along the way we see the most perfect sunset that makes me think I have stepped into some saccharine painting. Unfortunately the sun setting also means that it is dark when we attempt to get back, which involves negotiating the same rocks that we scrambled over on the way there; Jo slips and gets a nasty cut on the back of her leg. Fortunately she has over a week of lying on the beach doing nothing in which to recover. Which is what we did. Our routine consisted of breakfast (normally a banana pancake), followed by lounging around on the beach or in the hammock, reading a book and then having something nice for tea. You can live very comfortably for £4 a day. Which means you could pack it all in, and live for 2 years on 3 thousand pounds in a cabin on a pristine island beach.

So a few days on we repeat the exodus to Bangkok, stopping at Ko Samui and taking the night train back this time. An odd job is that of the guy that has to wake everyone up in the morning on the night train, and turn them out of bed so he can clean them up. An old northern guy on the train isn’t happy at all about being woken up early in the morning and gets into a bit of an altercation with the “wake up” fellow, who gets the railway policeman to have a word with him, handcuffs at the ready. Trouble is averted when a Thai guy brokers peace talks in which it is agreed that if the old fella says sorry then the matter will be dropped. When I was little, and didn’t want to get up in the morning, my dad would throw my duvet on the floor. In Thailand, it seems that they fetch the police instead.

We have a few days to Spend in Bangkok before we leave for London, and much of it is spent shopping. We visit the busy Chatuchak weekend market. It is massive, selling anything and everything, with over 9,000 stalls and attracting about 300,000 people. I’d like to explore it properly, but the oppressive heat means that we evacuate to the air-conditioned charms of the MBK shopping centre where I stock up on monkey themed t-shirts.

Our last day in Bangkok is spent killing time waiting for our flight. We bar hop around khaosan road, watching movies and drinking Cokes. By the time we get our flight at midnight I’m not looking forward to the in-flight movies quite so much, having watched 3 movies already that day. But end up watching 3 more films by the time we get to London anyway. Sars free, I might add.

So that is where I am now – London, home of dangermouse etc, as I catch up with various things that I missed in the last year; congestion charges, television programmes such as “Your Face or Mine”, my brother looking like a grown up and other assorted oddness. I’m staying in London for the moment, job-hunting, though will be visiting Devon for a bit (going down this Thursday).

That’s it then. Looking forward to catching up with people. Let me know if you know of any decent jobs! I've got acess to a computer, so I've got absolutley no excuse for not replying to your mails, so write back and let me know what you're up to!

End of captain’s log.

Mark

Jo's last update:

hi guys

Well its been a while since i last wrote, and i dont know where to
start. So much happens in such a short space of time. I have written
45 pages in my diary since i last wrote so i will try not to repeat
it all here!!

We are now in Cambodia, and have travelled right the way down the
coast of vietnam - for 30 pounds! After Hanoi City, we went to Hue
and took a trip up the perfume River to see the Royal tombs. Then
we moved onto gorgeous Hoi An. A really cute little chinesey town
with great food and really friendly people. Only trouble was, in this
tiny town of 65000 people, there were 200 tailors, all with a copy
of the Next Catalogue copying absolutely everything, shoes you name
it. So we went a bit mad, in fact very mad (18 kilos) and in the end
it was a case of get me out of here before i spend any more money.
Then we took a very bumpy 14hr bus ride down to the beach resort of
Nha Trang. Not my favourite place i have to say. A bit like benidorm
only dirtier, so we just spent a day at the mineral baths and got
the hell outta there. Then we went on to Dalat in the mountains
where we hired an old russian army jeep and driver for the day. That
was really cool (literally i havent been so cold since we were in
New Zealand). Dalat is really kitsch - its where all the vietnamese
go on thier honeymoons and there is a mini Eiffel Tower and swan
boats on the lake. You get the picture.

After Dalat, we got the bus down to Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh
City). After all the scare mongering in Lonely Planet, Saigon wasnt
nearly as bad as we expected. In fact it was quite nice. The city
is twice as big as Hanoi with 7 million people, although Hanoi is
the capital. We went to the 'War Remnants Museum'. (If you are
faint hearted move to the next paragraph). This has to be the most
shocking museum I have ever visited, even worse than the
concentration camp in Germany. There was the usual display of tanks
and bombs. But then there were pictures of US soldiers dragging
people along behind thier tanks til thier death; carrying out
chinese water torture; dropping people out of helicopters after
they'd refused to cooperate. Then there were pictures showing the
devastating affects of Agent Orange. (The americans sprayed 70
million tonnes on Vietnam and this defoliant contains a highly
carcenogenic and mutagenic chemical which is still found in the
food chain today). Picture after picture of mutilated children and
adults. Some just looked like aliens. Two jars containing deformed
babies, and pictures of maternity wards with shelves full of jars
of deformed babies. What wasnt bombed or poisoned was bulldozed -
cemetaries, villages, rice paddies. There were also pictures of the
My Lai Massacre. Here, the US decided to 'teach the villagers a
lesson' for cooperating with the Viet Cong (communist forces).
There were severe consequences for not doing so. In one day, 3
companies of american infantry massacred 500 fleeing and unarmed
civilians. They met no resistance at any time. The only american
injured, shot himself in the foot to get himself let off.
Villagers were herded into a ditch and mowed down by machine guns.
Women were gang raped and pregnant women, newborn babies and old
people were not spared. There were also pictures illustrating how
the war ahd sent some people over the edge: GIs smiling to have
thier photo taken while holding dead heads in thier hands; another
GI looking satisfied carrying the tattered remains of a head and
shoulders in one hand. It showed the four US students that got shot
while protesting against the war in the 1960s. And also 4 people
(3 US, 1 Japanese) who burnt themselves to death in front of the US
embassy.

In Saigon, among other things, we visited the Reunification Palace,
where the communist tanks crashed through the palace gates in 1975
to show that North Vietnam had finally won control of southern
Vietnam to form a new independent and unified country. Before the
war, southern vietnam was a puppet government run by the US. The
palace is now beautifully preserved as on that day when they ousted
the US elected president and dictator. One heroic pilot who bombed
the palace prior to its invasion, is now a pilot for Vietnam
Airlines!The previous president was so hated that his own army
bombed the palace, and so he ordered that a new palace be built with
a bomb shelter underneath (which we visited). As a anti-communist
and catholic, he was repressive about religous practices and as a
result, a monk famously set off the trend of self immolations by
burning himself to death here at the end of the sixties. (We also
saw a picture of this in the Ho Chi Minh City Museum - spoilt my
tea!). We also took a day trip where we visited a Cao Dai temple
midday meditation. Caodaism is a new religion which combines
Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, native vietnamese spirtualism,
chirstianity and islam! Then we visited the Cu Chi tunnels - a
250km network of underground tunnels built under the jungle used by
the Viet Cong communist forces during the war. It was amazing, we
were walking through the forest and suddenly this guy would pull up
a tiny trap door in the floor and jump down it and expect us to
follow!! The tunnels had been made bigger for foreigners, but i was
still bent over double and then squatting down shuffeling along on
my feet in some parts. It was really hot and dark and there were
bats down there too! The tunnels were amazing, what looked like
termite mounds above the ground disguised air holes for breathing.
They were three storeys deep in some places and even had a hospital
and a weapons factory.

After the Cu Chi tunnels, we made our way to Cambodia via a three
day
tour of the Mekong Delta. This is the southernmost region of Vietnam
and one of the biggest rivers/deltas in the world. Most of the
people
live on floating villages on the river, or beside it. We spent most
of our three days hopping from one boat to another. Everyone was
really friendly and i felt like royalty because we had to wave to
kids everywhere we looked, doing backflips to impress us and having
thier evening baths in the river with thier clothes on. Then we
caught the boat as far as we could to Phnom Penh - capital of
Cambodia. We have found a really lovely guesthouse right on the
edge of a lake where we can sit in hammocks and watch the sunset.
But today we took a trip to the Killing Fields and the S21 Prison
used by the Khmer Rouge... The killing fields were just horrific. We
were walking along and there were bits of bone and clothing sticking
out of the path underneath us, where the executioners had hardly
bothered to cover over the graves. There were 126 mass graves, and
they only uncovered 86. In the middle was a big memorial stupa -
8000 skulls piled high behind a glass wall as high as a four storey
house. Then we went to the S21 Prison, which used to be a high
school but Pol Pot and his regime turned it into a prison where
victims were tortured and later taken to the Killing Fields. Just
horrific.

Well on that happy note, I dont really have much other news. I will
be home a month from today and I am looking forward to coming home
but i know this time is just going to fly by.

So take care, and I'll see you soon - Jo x

Once again, I've had a mail slippage. It's been 3 weeks since I sent a big update on what I've been up to. So you won’t know for instance that I have now seen the oddest thing to date being transported on the back of a mortorbike: a coffin (I presume it was empty). Now, as I write this I feel pretty rough. Not really sure what's wrong with me- feel a bit tired out with a cough, runny nose, and it's really hot here which can be unpleasant at times. I'm sure it's nothing though.
I left my story in Hue, shortly after Maggie Thatcher and myself had disenbarked from the train. We visit the Kinh Thanh moated citadel and its forbidden purple city, which was almost entirely destroyed during the Tet Offensive in the war. The following day we take a boat trip down the purfume river to see some of the Royal Tombs; 1. Thein Mu Pagoda, a famous 21 metre octagonal tower, 2. Take a scary motorbike ride down a dirt path to the Tomb of tu Duc, an amazing complex which was never even used as a tomb, 3. Tomb of Minh Mang – up and own lots of steps in this serene complex.
Pop fact: I read about a lady who had hired a driver for the day. She said to him “Ok, I’m going for lunch now, so you can take a break now, but be back at 1pm to take me to the Tomb of Tu Duc.” He looks back at her, not understanding, so she clarifies: ‘1pm. Tu Duc”. She goes to have lunch, then at 1pm, her driver comes back, presenting her with 2 live ducks.
We continue on minibus to Hue, up the scary Hai Van pass, where the sheer cliffs don’t deter the drivers from continuing to overtake around blind corners. Driving here can really be a hair raising experience. We are sucked into staying in lovely Hoi An for several days. It is a clothes shopping mecca – over 200 tailors who can nock you up a suit within a few hours for 20 – 30 dollars. Jo goes shopping mad, and I get in the mood as well, getting a couple of nice tailored suits (and the rest). The tailors all have Next catalogs for you to browse thru and look for styles that you like the look of. The town in some ways is like some bizzare tailored next shop- the catalogues themselves are traded for almost $100! When we leave we post back a massive box of clothes back – the postage cost is a lot, but worth it.
We do some half harted ‘tourism’ in Hoi An, in between shopping bouts – we check out the famous Japanese Covered Bridge, Quan Cong’s temple and pretty Phuc Kien Fujian assembly hall. We also visit the ruined temples of Myson, but I think “ruins fatigue” has already begun to set in. It is “women’s day” in vietnam on this day, so lots of hatted women are wandering about, looking at the ruins, while the men do all the work.
Getting to Nha Trang involves a long 14 hour bus journey. The city itself isn’t much – a bit like a dirty version of Surfers Paradise. It’s dirty, with lots of beggars and touts on the beach. We see on guy with no arms or legs hobbling along the beach begging. One place that we ate at had rats running freely around the place. Jo comments to me that maybe that’s why my pizza had such an interesting flavour. Lovely.
The colder climate in the mountainous Dalat makes a pleasant change. We take in a packed day tour of the town, taking in the Truc Lam meditation Centre, Prenn Waterfalls (with infamous “Dalat Cowboys” – vietnamese dressed up as cowboys, who give tourists rides on their horses), Linh Phoc Pagoda (wth a giant dragon made out of beer bottles, a funny monk in a wooly hat that followed us, and a buddah statue with a crayzy neon halo), Dalat Flower Garden, the peculiarly kitch “Valley of Love” , the countercultural “Cray Guest House” with rooms in very bizzar shapes”, and Emperor Bao Dai’s summer palace. The very sad thing about Dalt, however, is that almost all of these attractions had their own mini- zoos with a motley collection of wild animals in pathetically small bare cages. Particularly sad was a malayan sun bear that we saw. He had a bare concret enclosure, with metal bars reaching up to the roof. He did the most amazing thig, climbing up the walls, across the wire mesh roof, and then sliding down the pole in the middle, fireman style. Jo was particularly taken with him, and as the poor thing rwached out to us in despiration through the bars, Jo stroked its paw.
We continued our bus trek on to Ho Chi Minh city, the centre of which is still called Saigon by most. I didn’t know what to expect here, hearing stories of a really hectic city, with pickpockets etc – but at no time did I feel unsafe. Though in some parts of the city, the amount of motorcyle traffic is to be seen to be believed. There’s 3 million bikes, I believe, with road accidents claiming many lives a week.
We take a cyclo to the War Remnants Museum (formely American & Chinese war crimes museum), which is not for the faint hearted. I was surprised by the (relative) lack of anti-american bias considering. More than anything the museum showed the surrering that can result from war. However, some of the specifics of the war; the My Lai Massacre (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/trenches/mylai.html) , the use of Agent orange biological weapons, daisy cutter bombs etc was just terrible. The worst thing was probably seeing the mutated babies that were in jars.
The Reunification palace is famous as the place where NVA tanks crashed through the gates in 1975, before raining their flag, showing finally that Saigon had fallen. The brilliantly preserved buildig is, with bomb shelters etc is fascinating. Our guide wears an Ao Dai, which is the national vietnamese dress for women, and are very popular amongst school students & non-agricultuaral workers & they really are the most graceful piece of clothing. We also visit the hectic Chinese “cholon” district of the city to see the Thien Hau Pagoda, which was very active and we almost chocked on the massive amounts of incense being burnt.
We have a day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, a quite unique structure: a series of tunnels built in the hard earth of the district, from where the VC fought an intense guerrila campaign – and was the scene of some of the most intense fighting/bombing/poisoning in the war, as the stategic position was just a little ouside Saigon. As a claustophopbic, I was a little anxious about venturing down theunderground tunnels, but I was able to go through some. I backed out of going through one tunnel that stretches for 120 metres, and you have to crawl through, but managed the rest.
On the same day, we visit the Cao Dai Holy See, the centre of a peculiar religion with 3 million Vietnamese followers. It is based on incorporating most of the main religions, with its own “crossing over” style twist, where seances are regularly held, the result of which means that French Writer is one of their main figureheads. We see the midday service, with lots of bowing and chanting.
The next day we are woken early to the big band sound of a funeral procession outside our hotel, but we needed an early start for our 3 day trip to the Meknog Delta anyway. Our tour starts with a tour of some of the islands in the Mekong rinver – we stop at Mekong river where we see coconut tofees being made, taste local fruits and hear traditional song. We take a rowing boat thru the jungle, alongside lots of mudskippers. Fortunately seeing no snakes, but we do see a dead dogfloating buy us at one stage. We see a bee keeping villageand have honey hea. Our boat arrives at Can Tho as the sun sets, passing the most amazing scenery, with lots of local villagers waving at us, often as they bathe in the river.
The following morning we cruise to Cai Rang floating market, the biggest in the lower river. They sell their produce onlarge boats, with a bamboo pole with the fruit dangling down signaling what they are selling. Vendors in smaller boats try and sell us drinks, one of which is a bootleg verision of Redbull called “Cow Butt”. I kid not. We see rice noodles being made and stop to climb a mokey bridge ( a precarious bamboo bridge made by locals to cross the river – these are dying out as they are being replaced by concrete bridges). We go for a walk to see the Thot Not Sork Sanctuary, and are followed by lots of local children, that grab our hands, and make jewelry out of leaves, in the hope that we will buy them a coke. We finish the day at Chau Doc and climb Sam Mountain in time to see the sunset across the landscape of the Cavern Pagoda, over the paddy fields to the Cambodian border.
After another early start we see a floating village and fish farm and Cham village, where encounter some more kiddies begging “one pen! One pen!. Weleave the tour and begin our boat journey to Cambodia. We get stamped out of Vietnam, and continue on to the Camboadian border post, where we get stmped in (13 stamps). It was suprisingly stress free. I feared a frontier style outpost with greasy guards with droopy moustaches who would try their damdest to extort money out of us.
We’re now stying in a nice place overlooking the lake in Phnom Penh, where we’ve been able to catch up on the news via satelite TV. Yesterday was a hectic day, and not an easy one to take in. We Visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Uk, where 17,000 of the prisoners of s-21 were sent to be executed between 1975-78. There are about 130 mass graves, ony 80 of which have been dug up. In the middle is a glass memorial stupa that is filled bith skulls, bones and clothing. Walking round you can see rags of clothing and bones sticking up through the ground. It was a deeply upsetting place to be, even more so because of the many children begging – a continual drone of “some monee , wateer…” . I felt it was too soon for the site to be turned into some sort of grim tourist attraction, and deeply uncomfortable bing there. The day continued with a trip to The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide (formerly prison s-21) which documents the role of the prison in the killing of 3 million Cambodian during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. On the drive back, we pass a man who is probably the most disfiguerd that I have ever seen. I can’t even look. To top off the day, we watch the film “The Killing Fields”. We had both read the book, and were a little dissapointed by the film, which was limited, I believe, by it’s length. At present I’m still reading “Decent Interval”, a history of the fall of Saigon, written by Cia’s Chief Stategy analyst in Vietnam Frank Snepp, a book that is banned in the West.
Well, that’s about it. Off to Snookyville (spelt differently) on the coast for a couple of days R&R. Hope all is well. Write to me & I’ll try my best to reply.
Back to the studio,
Mark Seddon, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.