September 28, 2002
12:44 PM dublin time
begin prolonged [meditative] silence. back in about two weeks.
[link]September 23, 2002
10:00 AM dublin time
we said goodbye to battambang and cambodia and turned ourselves bangkok-wards for a bit of re-organisation and decision making. first we successfully change our homebound flights by a couple of weeks, meaning we now had time to take part in a much discussed and debated [among us two anyway] meditation course in south thailand.
but the course doesn't start until the first of october, giving us about two weeks to kill somewhere. but where? travel is probably the biggest cost in this part of the world, so we opted to head in the rough direction of the course's location near surat thani.
and so we find ourselves back on koh phangan, where we spent a pleasant five days this time last year. this time we're on a quiet little beach on the north of the island - thong nai pan noi - putting our don det relaxing to shame. we made our fist excursion off the beach yesterday to enjoy our second 'full moon party' - a night of dancing, [cough-medecine flavoured] thai-whisky-and-strawberry-fanta, paddling [while aonghus took a little sandy snooze], fireworks and fun.
especially fun. we have to stock up on that now because this mediation course is going to be serious business. for ten days, there's to be no talking, writing, drinking alcohol, eating meat. we get up at 4am and sleep at 10pm, eat only two meals a day and assist in chores [not sure what these are yet]. and then there's all the meditation.
i'm not sure if right now we should be greedily partaking in all the material evils that we'll be banned from on the course, or trying to wean ourselves off them.
[link]September 15, 2002
01:55 PM dublin time
once you've seen angkor and bought a couple of souveniers, you've pretty much done all there is to do in siam reap. so one morning at the crack of dawn we caught ourselves a boat bound for battambang - cambodia's second city.
oh dear, and we thought there wasn't much to do in siam reap. a little while after our [very scenic] boat journey there, we went for a stroll round battambang's sites. fifteen minutes later we were back in front of our hotel. it may be the second largest city in cambodia but that's not saying much.
as it turned out we easily managed to keep ourselves happily amused for a while. battambang can be deceptive that way. on the recommendation of a dreaded aussie we spent a gut expanding morning attending a wonderful cambodian cookery course, learning to prepare such delicacies as amoke, tom yam and chicken spicy. and i took lots of notes and photos and will definitely be trying these at home. as long as i can get my hands on some galangal, ginza, tamarind and other un-irish exotics.
we spent the next day being driven en moto by a couple of the local drivers. they took us to a guava farm and a hilltop temple but these were mere destinations, it was the route itself that was most interesting. we were taken along riverside tracks past tiny villages and staring villagers. our driver had devised this route himself. it was a bit more roundabout and unpaved than the usual one taken by drivers and their tourists but way more fun. the village children knew when he usually came past with the 'barang' and as we scooted by were ready with outheld hands for us to shake and gifts of flowers for me, all the while shouting 'hello', 'bye bye'. we felt like celebrities.
[link]September 11, 2002
07:49 AM dublin time
we did survive the bone rattling phnom penh to siam reap bus journey, thanks to a driver with a well tested talent for pot-hole dodging. arriving in siam reap, we heeded the lonely planet's advice and went straight for a much needed blind massage - for some strange reason, one of the necessary requirements of a cambodian masseur is that they be blind. it's all the rage here. i haven't yet come across a massage shop that didn't advertise 'seeing hands blind massage'. whether it's exploiting or genuinely helping blind people, or at this stage just a tourist attracting gimmick i don't know, but twas a very pleasant experience and made me feel human again after the rough road trip.
just before sunset the following evening, we set off to take a first look at the> reason people go to siam reap - angkor wat. with each of us settled behind an accomodatingly helpful moto driver, we headed north out of the town, quickly coming to the wat's moat encircled walls. the first thing that struck me was how few tourists were in evidence - i had expected throngs - especially at sunset and while it was far from empty, the numbers seemed to be in the hundreds rather than the thousands. i soon discovered that the reason for this lay in the deceptive size of the wat - it's ginormous - leaving plenty of lengthy stone corridors, pillared cloisters and adjoining chambers for visitors to explore. and that's just the main attraction. there's hundreds of other temples and ruined monuments to explore - spread throughout a forrest over an area of more than a hundred square kilometres. even at its busiest moments you can always find a quiet little corner to investigate in peace.
we spent an early morning and three evenings trying to take it all in. highlights definitely include a sleepily misty dawn waiting for enough sunlight to photograph the benign smiling-faced towers of 'the bayon', a sweltering dapple-shadowed early evening watching the ants march among the root entwined pillars of 'ta prohm' and a dusky darkening sunset around the back of angkor wat hoping for the picture postcard sillouette against an orange-red sky.
[link]September 08, 2002
04:58 AM dublin time
we took it fairly easy in phnom penh, venturing outside our guesthouse for a handful of market trips and visits to a couple of the sites; the pretty royal palace and silver pagoda and the contrastingly bleak s21 museum - a ex-school that in the 70s was turned into a prison/torture camp by the khmer rouge. harrowing stuff.
but for most of the time we sat in the relaxing lakeside guesthouse watching a neverending stream of films. this wasn't helping us wind up again after don det, but the third showing of 'austin powers: goldmember' did the trick and we booked ourselves onto a bus to siam reap leaving the following morning.
it would be unfair to say that the road from rhnom penh to siam reap is bad. for a start, the use of the word road is misleading, even the term track could be considered inaccurate. it is definitaly not a route we would have inflicted on our van in australia. to drive it in anything other than a fourwheel drive with industrial suspension, high clearance and a particularly skilled driver would be foolish. but alas we weren't aware of this and thought that at a third of the price of the boat ticket a 'bad road' would be bearable.
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