Author: Adrian's Got the Moose

Border Crossing. Five English lads, another Australian, and myself in a minivan designed for people about a foot shorter than the shortest of us. Every one of us is showing the scars of our travels. A supposedly friendly soccer game had lead to much damage to English flesh, one of them displaying a large chunk of missing skin on his knee that really should be dressed. My foot is still problematic, swollen and painful but is on the mend. It seems that everyone had a boozy last night in Siem Reap, everyone is half asleep, hungover and easily confused, which does not bode well for dealing with officials. The bus reeks of nervous, boozy sweat, which I am contributing to. Last night after drinking and shopping I bought beers back to my hostel and drank more with the owner of the hostel. I have not had enough sleep. I am wondering how I am going to handle Laos roads, I have a blister pack of motion sickness pills but that does nothing for my nerves.

I am distracted by dramas from the English, one of them (the one with the skinned knee) has left his passport behind, and many frantic conversations with the driver lead to phone calls to Siem Reap, a friend of the driver is going to head to the hostel, pick up the passport and drive towards the border, but this is going to cost him dearly. With masturbation-like guilt, I succumb to checking my wallet for my passport. We stop at one of those petrol station rest stops, and I stock up on iced coffee and lollies, and I wash down some motion sickness pills with Pocari Sweat. We change buses, causing further confusion, then continue on. We stop again, at a restaurant I assume is owned by the driver’s family. Our luggage is piled up and the bus leaves, we are told to fill up with fuel.

I eat a mediocre stir-fry and drink not quite cold enough beer, while a local fixer shows up to offer us money exchange and Lao Sim cards.

Another bus shows up, and we load up again. The area near the border seems to be given over to marginally viable agriculture, and it’s clear that the government spares no thought in maintaining infrastructure, except for the ever-present political signs. Our driver nonchalantly steers the minibus around the worse of the potholes, but not skillfully enough judging by the swearing by the English, as if they have never seen a unsealed road in their young, sheltered lives.

Eventually the bus pulls up just outside the border, and we are instructed we have to walk across ourselves. Our bags are unloaded, and the minibus roars off. We collect ourselves in small groups and start walking towards the Cambodian exit. Our passports are found uninteresting, stamped out and our bags are X-rayed by a machine that looks like it was made during the Cold War. We hike across No Man’s Land, through untended gardens and forgotten slabs of concrete. At the Laos Immigration I am shaken down for forty USD for the visa, and then a further two dollars to fund the officers’s new motorbike. It’s obviously a shakedown but they have me by my balls and they know it, so I cough up. At the other side our passportless English companion is no where to be seen, but in any case here we seperate, myself, a pretty French couple and a single French guy go on one bus to the ferry to Don Det, which was luckily uneventful.

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Tuesday night. I’m drinking beer at a steady rate at a bar just off Pub Street, but oddly seems busier than the main event. and the music is marginally better, if too mainstream for my tastes (…and they were all yellow). A party of Western Australians are at a table next to mine, and their voices are both making me homesick and disgusted. The pair in front of me is either a May/September couple or dad and daughter. Not knowing is bugging me greatly. In any case she drips sexuality, from her languishing pose to her bared shoulders with Sak Yant tattoos, which he seems entirely immune to.

I was feeling The Fear. A non-specific anxiety clouding my every action and thought. Maybe it’s the last two days of argument and miscommunication with someone I love. Maybe it’s my constant budget concerns. Maybe it’s my infected foot that I really should be seeing a doctor about, and if I don’t find one here, my chances of finding one in Laos is even worse. Or it could be homesickness, something that no backpacker should ever admit to, like genital herpes or going to Mcdonald’s. This is the longest I have ever been away from Australia, and part of me just wants to book the first flight back home. Perhaps I am too old for this, I am now closer in age to the retiree organised tour crowd than most of the backpackers in the hostels. It’s getting hard to relate to people who never experienced travel without smartphones. I want to keep drinking here until it starts making sense.

What I end up doing is paying my bill and walking back to my hostel, stopping at a pharmacy on the way. Five minutes later and four US dollars later I am walking out with a five-day supply of Cloxacillin and some anti-inflammatories. Technically, antibiotics are illegal for sale without a prescription, but the line between legality and practice is vague at best in Cambodia, especially if you are a tourist. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I buy a beer from the store opposite my hostel to wash down the pills.

Things are looking up.

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Siem Reap, almost as far north in Cambodia as you can go, gateway to Angkor Wat. For many travellers, this is as much of Cambodia as they will ever see. It shows, the sidewalks are quite walkable, The tuk-tuk drivers look well-fed, and the security guards are almost paying attention to what’s around them. However the tap water still smells, and I keep wondering what businesses have against herbicides.

I had been warned by the hostel owner in Battambang that Siem Reap was very quiet, that dorm beds could be had for a single US dollar a night. My room was basic, but at only $5 a night was still cheap and kept me away from interupted sleep in dorms.

After a snooze and a swim in the hostel’s pool, I made my way in the rain to Pub Street. The massage girls who had vexed me so greatly six years ago, seemed entirely absent, but the Tuk-tuk drivers helpfully offered me to set me up with ladies, uppers, downers, and finally, in desperation, transportation.

I noticed that the patrons walking and sitting on Pub Street were mostly older Westerners, with a light splash of Koreans and Japanese. No locals at all except for the staff, but it was a Wednesday night. I drank a few happy hour beers before I got bored and ordered a Grab to get back to my hostel.

The next time I braved Pub Street was a Friday night, and a little later in the evening. More tourists, and small handfuls of well-heeled Kymers, but not exactly pumping. I enjoyed a few draft beers, and then a delicious mango daiquiri at Arum’s suggestion, the effects of which I didn’t feel until I stood up and almost fell over. I decided this was a good time to try a fish massage. The idea is that you put your long-suffering tourist feet into the fish tank, and the carp (Garra rufa) eat the dead skin from your feet, leaving them as smooth as a baby’s bottom. It costs three USD, and you get either free water or a beer. Of course, I asked for the beer, the last thing I needed at this juncture was to sober up. I gingerly put my feet in the water, and the fish started to take an interest in my uncared-for feet. Some of them fought over prime real estate on my left foot, which was a little strange to see. It felt very odd, sometimes pleasant, often way too ticklish to be comfortable even in my altered state, and sometimes painful with one of the more vigorous and larger fish.

However I was exposed to other predators, a Western man unaccompanied is viewed by the local sex workers as problem they can solve. One of the local freelancers, started flirting with me, not scandalisly dressed but my spidey sense was tingling, and I tried my best to ignore her. I finished my beer, checked to see if the lady was not within eyesight, and made a run to the Seven Eleven at the end of Pub Street. As soon as I left Seven Eleven, I tried ordering a Grab but my phone went flat, so I made my unsteady walk back to my hostel. While crossing the traffic barrier the previous freelancer made a last effort to invite me to one of those charge by the hour hotels, but I managed to keep saying no thank you and didn’t break my half-drunk stride.

The next night I tried again, and I noticed the same freelancer, this time showing off a lot more skin and some very high heels. She didn’t notice me as she spoke to an older gent, but I wished her happy hunting as I continued. I ended the night at Barcode, a gay bar with a nightly cabaret show. I enjoyed the show a great deal and got a kiss on the cheek by one of the more impressive performers, who decided I was not allowed to hide in the corner like a Mormon in a strip club.

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I only ever can be a belated and unreliable witness to atrocity, I mutter to myself as I carefully walk up the stairs. I have used that line before, and I suspect it’s partly copied from something Hemmingway wrote, but I’m still proud of it.

My driver dutifully dropped me off where I requested on the app, which was of course not where I should have started my exploration. But that’s the nature of doing this without the benefit of professional help. I walked through what seemed like the monk’s quarters, then found the steps leading up to the top of the hill, flanked on either side by impressive, and fairly new statues. Apart from sweating profusely, I am harassed by an unhealthy-looking dog most of the way to the top.

I was here to further punish myself emotionally, visiting the so-called Killing Cave of Phonom Sampeau, and nearby attractions on the hill with the same name.

The site has been home to numerous temples, some in caves, for centuries. But this is Cambodia, and no story here has a happy ending. A temple at the top was used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison, now repainted and reconsecrated.

The Khmer Rouge used a number of caves here as execution sites, leading the victims to the horizontal mouth of the caves, killing them, and letting the bodies fall into the darkness.

Men, women and children were executed separately and thousands met their end here.

At the bottom of the main cave, a stupa contains a display case full of bones of just a small percentage of the victims.

It’s worth noting here that this site is very understated compared to the sites I have previously chronicled. No entrance fees, no government officials in sight. If I chose to touch the skulls nothing would stop me except the monk offering blessings next door, and my remaining sense of propriety. I made a donation to that monk and received a blessing, and quickly put my shoes back on and almost ran to the surface. I made a small payment to my unasked-for student guide and left him behind to explore less claustrophobic and upsetting places. I followed a trail through the low vegetation and found a large Buddha statue and surronding smaller statues, which was lovely, but in a bad state of disrepair.

I sat here on a dirty stone bench for half an hour, reading my Kindle and contemplating why I kept doing this to myself before moving on.

I made my way down the hill, and discovered several other statues and ponds, overgrown and forgotten. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a thriving site of worship before it was tainted.

Eventually I made my way to the lower section of the hill, to my final task, the famous Bat Cave. I settle down to drink beer and wait for the bats. Every early evening, over a million Wrinkle-Lipped bats (Chaerphon Plicatus) leave their caves in droves to hunt insects in the nearby lakes and rivers. Each bat can eat one and a half times its body weight in a night. The insects they eat are pest species in the rice crops, and it is estimated that the bats save twenty thousand Cambodians from food insecurity. Or in my opinion further insecurity. The road below the caves has become a tourist site in itself, and locals set up tables and chairs and sell beers to thirsty tourists. Of course I am happy to continue and contribute to this tradition.

Also here is a soon to be complete Buddha Statue, workers were on the scaffold as I arrived, apparently the project has stalled before due to lack of funds.

After my forth beer, the bats got their act together and departed for the evening, which is quite an impressive display.

By the time I had gotten bored of the bats, I was impaired and melancholy. A local tour guide supplemented his takings by taking me back to town with his fed up looking Frenchman client.

That night I felt a desperate need to be anywhere other than Cambodia, and I blew a tidy sum on pizza and ice cream, which could have been served up anywhere in the world.

The proprietor of the hostel in Kampot barely looked up as I dropped off the key on the desk and departed. I booked my bus ticket to Sihanoukville with a smaller company running minibuses, and was happily shocked when I discovered that the staff member had an excellent feathered friend.

The minibus was an older model, but I tend to be more concerned with the driver than the vehicle in SE Asia. An hour out of Kampot the road becomes an unsealed mess, forcing the driver to slow to a walking pace as he negotiated a path through the worst of the potholes.

Sometimes due to heavy vehicle traffic, the bus was forced onto the very soft shoulder, leaving the whole bus to be on an angle, which made me rather nervous, but our driver knew how far he could push this. I noted in alarm that there were several stockpiles of blue metal on the side of the road as if the money to fix the road only lasted long enough to transport the materials on-site. Two hours and a bruised coccyx later we reached the outskirts of Sihanoukville.

Phnom Penh is ugly because by the time anyone realised they could make it beautiful it was too late. Sihanoukville is ugly out of a twisted sense of civic pride. Rampant Chinese investment has left the place a horrid monstrosity of over-development. Russian interests have led to high crime, and according to the expat I shared a beer with last time I was here, means it is easier to get a sad handjob from a Russian than any local. But I was not here for handjobs, sad or otherwise. I was only interested in getting to Koh Rong Samloen. I only had enough time to order, but not drink a latte before a lady escorted us from the bus office to the pier. Still clutching my coffee, I managed to go to the Seven-Eleven to buy some jubes and some questionable Dim Sum on a stick, then jumped on the ferry. Luckily and dispite the best efforts of the skipper, I ate and kept down the coffee, jubes and dim sum by the time we docked at Koh Rong Samleon.

Island life is slow. You wake up, eat when you want, swim when you want and shower and head to bed when ever you feel like it. I spent four nights on the island, quickly settling into the routine.

Second night in and I was safely tucked into my dorm bed with the curtain drawn when, with a very Italian arrogance, the lady in the bunk above me peeked into my space and asked if I knew how to turn off the air con. No idea I replied, in shock at this breach of etiquette. A few hours later I was being kept awake by the same Italian moaning, and whacking the rail. Next thing I know she’s again in my space, and asked me if I could sleep on my side so I don’t snore. Wordlessly I turn onto my side, while thinking how the fuck was I snoring when I was awake because of her? Nothing is said the next day, but I overhear another lady telling a friend on the phone that a friend of hers in the hostel had a kidney infection, which is, of course, a problem when it is easier to get hash brownies than antibiotics on the island. I wonder if those two things were related.

On my day on the island I decided to take a walk to the other side of the island to Lazy Beach. It starts off looking like the early stage of a highway build, and then I turn into a more standard jungle path.

A wasp decides to attack me on the big toe, but I manage to brush it away before it does too much damage, and I keep walking. I end up at the rear of a semi-abandoned resort, and then the beach.

I spend a quarter of an hour swimming in the choppy surf before having a read in the shade before heading back.

After a late lunch, I go for a lazy walk to the far end of the bay, to check out a waterfall, which turned out to be a little disappointing.

However, the walk did show me the tumultuous nature of the tourist industry on the island. I saw an empty resort with a skeleton staff feeding scraps to dogs, and abandoned villas, with overgrown gardens. Again I can’t help wonder how it would be now if COVID never happened.

When I returned to my hostel I discovered that a tour group had been dropped off, and were busy taking advantage of the happy hour half-priced cocktails. While this no doubt made the owner happy, I felt that the number of Eurotrash babes in the shallow water taking selfies had reached critical mass, and I took my first beer for the day a few metres up the beach.

The hotel I am staying at is owned by an Australian, and they have the TV in the bar streaming Foxtel, an Australian cable network. I keep glancing up and seeing familiar advertisements for Bunnings, Hungry Jacks and My Chemist Warehouse, in between highlights of AFL.

On my last night, I glanced up at the TV above reception and it’s playing Miss Cambodia. I don’t need this, I mutter to myself, then grab my phone to message Arum that I love her.

I take a Tuktuk to Bassac Street, the local nightlife “walking street” that every Cambodian has told me I must visit. I have dinner and beers, and watch some fairly entertaining Karaoke, but after Hanoi and Saigon, it’s fairly quiet and tame. The Tuktuk driver on the way back barely waits for me to sit down before roaring off, and changes gears as if the clutch slept with his wife.

The coffee at the hotel is nothing more than instant, so I discover a small stall thirty metres away, where the lady owner, Passregsa, does a steady trade to nurses from the local hospital, parents to students at the nearby school, and many local professionals. There might not be air conditioning, but she charges a third of the price of the Starbucks around the corner.

The Russian Market. The Russians have moved on but the name remains. Clothes, fragrances, homewares and trinkets, motorbike parts and just about anything you can think of is available here. Also food, which for me was Mae Pok, and as an added bonus the last of the fishball soup in the pot. The fishball soup is not to my taste but I gave it ago before pushing it to the side.

On a whim with time to kill before my bus out of town, I decided to get a massage. The masseur was attractive, but not scantily dressed, so I assumed everything was legitimate. Then she pointed at my groin and said something I couldn’t understand. I managed to convey that I didn’t want any “extras”, but I considered myself lucky that I left with my virtue intact.

At a petrol station on the outskirts of town, our bus parked at a forty-five-degree angle from the bowsers. Next door is a villa, virtually a mansion. Over the road is a line of hovels that probably flood every time it rains.

The next morning I barely managed to settle my bill, and get a Grab to what turned out to be the back of a warehouse, and not the bus station or office that I expected, even though it was the pickup point listed on the ticket. I sat on the steps of a nearby agricultural bank for half an hour, considering the futility of man, the nature of my self-destructive tendencies, and how the bank staff would react if I got a swag, a portaloo, and an esky full of ice and Pocari Sweat delivered right here and just smiled inanely for the next year.

Finally summoning a herculean level of willpower, I walked to the nearest intersection and hailed a taxi. The taxi driver didn’t speak a word of English, which was fine because I don’t speak a word of Vietnamese. After trying to drop me off a hundred metres up the road, I managed to convince him I wanted to go further, showing him what I hoped was the bus company office on my phone. He then tried to drop me off at a hotel a kilometre down the road, and when I refused to get out he enlisted a staff member who spoke English and we managed, somehow to get to the office.

A few minutes later I was sitting in the office, staring at the bus over the road that I was told was the bus I needed, because I had completely regressed out of object permanence. Exactly on time I boarded the bus.

I was the only Westerner on the bus, and I suspected the only non-Kymer, we were all heading over the border into Cambodia, and ultimately the capital.

Half way through our seven-hour journey we exited Vietnam and entered Cambodia. the whole procedure was done by our guide, who collected passports, got us to wait inside the checkpoint building, then back into the bus for a short trip to the Cambodian side, where the procedure was repeated. Luckily no questions were asked of me, as I doubt I could have recited my date of birth. The Cambodian border town was a graceless monstrosity given mostly over to dubious-looking casinos, and we had a meal break before continuing, and a short stop for me to go to an ATM to pay back our guide who paid my visa fee for me because the fee must be paid in USD.

Hours later, we entered Phnom Penh, passing Wat Phnom and Independance Monument, before stopping at the bus company office. Grabbing my pack, I stepped into the office and begged the WIFI password from the most stunning lady working there. I did a little dance of joy when I discovered that my hotel was a ten minute walk from the office, and I bypassed the Tuk Tuk drivers and made my way to the hotel on foot. There I managed to check in without further incident, where I showered, shaved and and slept for ten hours, the deep, untroubled sleep of children, and idiots.

Ho Chi Minh City. That’s what it’s called officially, but I have yet to hear any native call it that. I don’t think anyone idolises Ho Chi Minh anymore, unless they are required to for employment.

I was staying in a tiny alleyway off Bui Vien Street, a street dedicated to transferring money from international travellers to the pockets of needy locals.

Bui Vien Street does provide just about anything a visitor may require. Food from everything from cheap local fare to overpriced Indian staples. Alcohol at a bewildering level of price points. Clubs with pretty local girls who will love you for either a short time or a long time, depending on your budget and your level of self-denial. Obviously, I felt at home, one could spend months here and not feel a moment of culture shock, and judging by the comfortable stance of some of the Westerners, clearly many only leave the street under sufference.

I had a cheerful and cheap dinner of Cantonese fried rice, washed down with three excellent Beer Saigon Greens. The bill came to less than the borderline inedible pizza I had in Dalat, and I tipped moderately, but enough that a few beers could be bought on the way home for one of the staff.

A walk to the other end of Bui Vien Street showed more nightclubs than I can remember seeing seven years ago, one of which had three very attractive, but very bored local girls dancing on podiums.

The next morning, I made my slow way to the War Remnants Museum.

As is said often enough to become a cliche, history is written by the victors, and the War Remnants Museum reflects this. Almost gleefully, it has a whole section dedicated to the horrific effects of Agent Orange, which is entirely justified, but at least the deformed fetus in embalming fluid has been removed at some point in the last seven years.

Another section was devoted to photographers from many countries, many of whom had died during the conflict, including one of my idols, Robert Capa- “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”. He died how he lived.

Another section featured artwork from children, which tugged on the heart-strings, even though I knew I was being manipulated.

I couldn’t help but notice the faces of the people walking around, many of which I felt, perhaps no better than myself, were only there out of a sense of obligation and were just ticking the box.

After dinner I returned to my hostel and walked up the stairs to check if my laundry was dry and was promptly invited into a drinking session with a sizeable bottle of homemade vodka. The wielder of this vodka was Dave, a Vietnamese-Australian, and his conspirators to this irresponsible drinking were two Russians hiding from Putin’s draft and Greta, a Lithuanian, who was smarter than the rest of us put together.

The rest of the night is a blur of drunken debauchery that need not be documented for the reputation and future marriage and employment prospects for all concerned.

My plan for Dalat was to chill, catch up with my blog and take a break from the heat of humidity. Dalat seemed to be off the beaten track as far as mass tourism goes, and competition for tourist dollars meant I could afford a private room for barely more than a dorm bed in Hoi An. A basic one to be sure, but the lovely owner, after leaving me alone with coffee and some promotional material for tours, led me to the room, where I promptly collapsed on the bed and slept away most of the morning.

The next day I took a convoluted walk to Hang Nga Guesthouse, commonly called Crazy House.

Designed by Dalat architect Don Viet Ngu, the main building is shaped like a giant tree, with design elements such as mushrooms and cave systems.

All I know is that it felt like reading a Lewis Carroll novel while drinking a magic mushroom shake. It was only turned into a guesthouse tourist attraction when the money the architect borrowed to build the place became delinquent.

The next day I took a Grab Bike to the outskirts of the city, to a minor tourist attraction called Two Graves Hill. Which had a convoluted, Romeo and Juliet-style story. Vu Minh Tam travelled to Dalat to study martial arts and fell in love with La Thi Theo, a lady from a poor family. His parents did not approve, and while he was fighting in a war, his love received the false report of his death in combat. Out of grief, she ended her own life. When against his family’s wishes, Tam returned to Dalat to reunite with his lady love, only to find her grave, and laid down next to her and died, heartbroken.

The grave site itself seems much younger than the story seems to indicate, which makes me wonder how true the story is. Nearby are several much older style tombstones, overgrown by Lantana, forgotten and forlorn.

Further investigation into the pine-covered hill showed young people picnicking, construction dump sites (some things are sadly universal), homeless person camps and bizarrely, a campsite for the local Scout camp.

My next stop was Linh Phuoc Pagoda, an impressive complex.

Most of the surfaces were covered in mosaics, a level of detail I have not seen outside of the oldest churches I have seen.

Off to the side of the Belltower was the main Buddha statue, which was epic.

I thought I had seen all there was to see, and I was about to order a Grab back to my hotel when on impulse I followed a group of Koreans to a set of stairs leading below the ground of the pagoda. The first sub-level was entirely devoted to a showroom with some very fancy furniture, the kind of furniture you would need a forklift to rearrange.

Then in the corner I noticed some interesting statues, and some more stairs.

I followed the stairs, which lead into a passage that turned out to be a depiction of an underworld or hell, which didn’t seem to match depictions of any of the common ideas of hell in Buddhism.

Complete with glowing eyes, and sound effects of moans and the clanking of chains. Mildly disconcerted, I departed.