theOven

- Hong Kong is my least favourite Asian destination
- Cambodia is a great backpacker destination
- Malaysia is much better beach destination than Thailand
- Thai Airways sucks
- I don’t like roasted sunflower seeds with dried anchovies
- Angkor, Tiger, Chang and Singha are all good beers
- Tequila can be shot with lime instead of lemon
- People buying charter packages to Asia and Tailand is getting ripped off, accommodation is soooo cheap if you book online or get a guesthouse
- Malaysia have bottled drinking water approved according to EU standards
- Women has a strong sense of smell then men
- Elephant shit smells like cow shit….well..shit smells like shit…
- You can get templed out
- Backpacking is a great way to network with people from all over the world
- James thinks I have a German accent
- I feel safer driving a tuk-tuk or moto in Cambodia than in a Malay taxi
- Malay hospitals are very good, and the emergency is empty early on a Saturday morning….??..(No mom I wasn’t sick, just getting malaria tablets)
- Irish, Scandos, POMs and Germans are everywhere
- Irish girls aren’t as ugly as Noel claims, the ones I have meet are all awesome in every way (get your mind out of the gutter…!).

After Phnom Penh, Bangkok seemed like a very civilised and organised city. And after all the stories I had been told about the place, I was surprised of how ok I found it. I had been recommended a guesthouse called My House by Helen and Susie, and went straight there from the airport. It was easy to get to with the Airport bus (100 bath) and was located only a few hundred meters from Khao San Road in a quiet side street. The rooms were simple and clean and cost 190 bath for a single bed with toilet, fan and cold water. They showed three movies a day, with one at lunch time and two at night, and the whole place had a relax feeling about it.

The first 3 days went to sightseeing, I saw the Grand Palace, National Museum, Wat Pro Wat Kreaw, Wat Arun and took the express river boat. On my second day at Wat Pro, I was just walking around, abit templed out again, so I decided to buy an ice-cream before I explored the last remains of the temple. When I then was ready to do the last of my temple watching for the day, I suddenly saw 5 familiar faces walking towards me. To my surprise it was the Irish girls. They were having a day looking around in Bangkok before they were taking the night train to Chiang Mai. A bit odd that we would walk into each other in such a big city as Bangkok, when we had trouble finding each other in tiny Siem Reap.

After 3 days in My House guesthouse, I felt a bit sick and decided to get a hotel. I booked a room online for 1000 bath and moved from the backpacker part of Bangkok to the business part and close to all the shopping malls. The hotel was a good change, and two days of shopping was good too. I didn’t buy that much, but wandering around at the malls and just looking is an experience in itself. Asian pop culture can be very entertaining just to observe. I also went to the Potpong nightmarket, which was good and lots of fake stuff to buy for almost nothing.

After 5 days in Bangkok, on my best behaviour, I was ready to get back to Europe and London.

When you get to the Jetty in Phnom Penh you are run over by 10 tuk-tuk drivers that want to carry your backpack and take you to a guesthouse. Since I already had decided where I wanted to stay, I got a tuk-tuk driver that wasn’t holding up signs or screaming out names of places. But it didn’t seem to make much difference, as I was still forced to argue with him so he would drive me where I wanted to go.

I ended up staying in the Lakeside Guesthouse on the Boenk Lake in central Phnom Penh. It is a little lake which is sheltered from the traffic noise and chaos. I paid 3 US$ for a double bed with toilet, fan and cold water. The food was cheap and the guesthouse had a boat connected to their restaurant that you could sit on at night and enjoy a meal and a drink.

The first day in Phnom Penh I met up with Helen and Susie again and we went for a walk around the city and got to see alot in the almost 4 hours it took us. Our main task was to find an ATM, and we ended up seeing almost all the sights in central Phnom Penh during our hunt.

The second day I was by myself during the day and went to see the Killing fields, the S-21 museum and the National Museum. The Killing fields isn’t much until you have visit the S-21, just a piece of land. The S-21 however is a strong and a bit creepy monument of the horror that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime forced upon the Cambodian people.

The national museum was a good thing to see after the S-21, as it is good to end the day with something bit more lighter entertainment, but if you have been to Angkor, there is nothing new there or very impressive.

The night of the second day I meet up with the Irish girls again and had a few drinks and congratulated Vicky on her birthday right after midnight, however I think the girls had a real celebration the day after.

After two days in Phnom Penh I left for Bangkok.

Compared to Siem Reap, Phnom Penh is a huge city and 10 times more chaotic. As far as I could see there are no traffic rules and people do not care about red lights or the traffic police. And you quickly learn that if you want to cross the street, there is one thing you have to remember; never stop walking.

On the 17t of August I took the River boat from Siem Reap (which means Siam (Thai) defeated) to Phnom Penh. It’s a 6 hours boat trip on the Mekong River, and a must if you are travelling in Cambodia and have 23 US$ to spare. The weather was nice and for the first day in a long time there was not a cloud in the sky. For this reason most people was siting on top of the boat and not inside. Don’t think it’s the safest way to travel, but it sure makes it more interesting.

The boat departs from a part of Siem Reap that is a village of house boats floating on the river. Then runs straight into a big part of the river where you can’t see anything but water. At this point I felt that I should have taken the 4 US$ bus instead and fell asleep. But When I woke up about 2hours later, we had entered a more narrow part of the river and you could see beautiful landscapes on both sides. Once in a while we past small houses and villages on pillars, kids that was waving and blowing kisses and small fishing boats.

It was like the river was the highway and we were just passing by all this country towns on our way to the big city. After 4 1/2 hours of sun and wind in my face I felt I was getting sunburned and when inside to get some shade. I fell asleep soon after and when I woke up we were in Phnom Penh. Even if I sleep half the time, it was worth every penny and I would do it again if I had the choice.

Day 1

Angkor Wat
Bayon
Ta Phrom
Plus 4 other smaller temples

(I took the small tour with a moto driver)

Day 2

Angkor Wat (this time with guide)
South Gate of Angkor Thom
Bayon
Bauphon
Terrace of of the Elephants
Phimeanakas

(Explored Angkor Thom on foot, only took a moto there and back)

Day 3

Preah Khan
Preah Neak Pean
Banteay Kdei
Srah Srang
Prasat Kravan
Pre Rup
Phnom Bakheng (Sunset)

(Grand tour with Paul, Amy, Ally, Aisling, Emma and Vicky in two Tuk-Tuks)

3 day temple pass is 40 US$.

Angkor Wat is one of the worlds biggest religious buildings and was built in the 12th century in the Jungles of Cambodia. It was built as a temple for Vishnu, the Hindu God, but was later changed into a Buddhist temple when the Angkor king changed religion. Angkor Wat (means Capital Small), and it was a part of Angkor Thom (means Capital Big) which together was the capital of the Angkor kingdom that reached from China in north to Indonesia in south, when it was at it’s most powerful. In the 17th century the whole city was evacuated when the Siam (Thai) invaded the country and it was left in the Jungle until the 1880’s when a French explorer discovered the temples on a trip through south east Asia.

The big attraction Angkor Wat is an amazing experience to visit. The whole place has a feeling of greatness and you can’t even imagine who it looked when Angkor was on it’s biggest. The art and details are fascinating and very impressing, however it is a bit confusing that all the wall art is from Hinduism and all the statues are from Buddhism.

In Angkor Thom, which is a city, I have to say that the Bayon was very impressive. From a distance it looks like just another ruin, but when you get close you can see 52 pillar with four faces each looking to the north, east, west and south. The South gate is also worth a close look as you pass through it to get into the city. I also think that the Bauphon will be very impressive when they finish the rebuilding of the puzzle.

Other than that I think that the Ta Phrom temple that was used in the Tomb Raider movie was good. An awesome place to take photos. They haven’t been able to clear off all the trees there yet, so it’s like a jungle is growing on top of the temple. There are also a few temples a bit further out that is worth a look.

But don’t except to see fully restored temples when you go to Angkor. After many years left in the jungle the temples had been crushed by nature, and trees and bushes was growing everywhere. The French quickly started the restoring of Angkor after their discovery. However in 1975 when the Vietnamese lost Cambodia and the French was long gone, Khmer Rouge took over the power. As a communist party they did not allow any religion, and since Angkor was a Buddhist centre, they chopped up almost all the Buddhas and Buddhist symbols in the temples and undid years of geological work.

You are allowed to go almost everywhere at the temples and few areas is restricted. This might be cool for the tourists, but not for the constructions. You can see sign of too much touching and climbing already, and whilst the temple guards are sleeping in every doorway and window, some tourists goes wild.

Cambodians have had the main responsibility to restore Angkor Wat and that has been a little bit of a disaster. In some places they have just put in brand new constructions, instead of restoring the old ones. If an area is hard to access, don’t be surprised to find a steel-construction close by to make it easy to access. At the moment the Germans, Indonesians, Indians, Japanese and French have found the Cambodians work so insufficient, that they are helping to restore all the temples in co-operation with Cambodia.

The temples were an awesome experience, but after 3 days of temples, I was a bit templed out. They started to look alike, and since most of them are built in the same era and style, many of them are similar. But this is a must stop destination if travelling in south east Asia.

After a night at KL airport (actually got 6 hours sleep) I was on another AirAsia flight heading for Siem Reap, Cambodia. As my holiday had been located around beaches until then I didn’t know what to expect from the next stage of my travel. Siem Reap is 9km outside the city (if you can call it that) and is basically in the middle of rice fields.

The Airport is this little wooden hut and entering the main entrance hall was like entering a library. It was so quiet and grand, and no one runs or says a word, which is a bit wired for a International Airport. You have to pay the immigration 20 US$ on arrival to get a 1 month visa to Cambodia before you can go to the passport control. We all lined up in a queue when people in military uniforms checked our passports and wanted two extra dollars if you didn’t have a passport photo. In the que I talked to 2 British girls (Helen & Susie) and a German girl (Annika), which told me that Line’s lonely planet book was wrong and that there was ATMs in Cambodia.

Siem Reap city it’s self is tiny and it’s all centralised around 4 and 5 stars hotels, backpacker guesthouses and Pub Street which is the tourist’s playgrounds. I had pre-booked a guesthouse online, but it turned out that they were full even if the internet site told me they had available rooms. I quickly found another guesthouse, Villa Coconut Lodge Guesthouse (they are everywhere) and got a twinroom for 9 US$ which was a bit expensive (single rooms do not exist). After getting my baggage in my room, I went for a walk to see the city and meet the girls from the airport. We decided to meet up and have dinner later that night. Turns out that the two English girls (from Newcastle) had similar educational background as me (film and video studies). But they were travelling for a year and was in no hurry to get into the industry, as I am.

By the way; first time you walk in the streets of Siem Reap you might feel bad for all the kids that comes up to you and tells you that they are hungry or that they need money for milk, but I promise you that that will pass in an instant after spending more than a night there. The truth is that if you buy or give these kids anything you are not helping, but making thing worse. The kids are sent on the street to beg, because it’s very very beneficial for the parents. Whilst a government employed person in Cambodia earn about 20US dollar a month, can these kids get approx. 150 US$ and more by begging, so they are by no means hungry or poor, just good actors/actresses. That fact that they get so much money, keeps them away from school because they hang out outside the pubs and restaurants every night until 5 in the morning. Cambodia really needs more educated people to run the country after Pol Pot killed all academicians under the revolution in the 70’s. So do not buy anything from or give money to the kids in Cambodia. It’s not helping them.

Well back to my story. After hanging out with the airport girls the first night, the Irish girls from Perhentian (Aisling, Emma, Amy, Vicky and Ally) arrived the second night. We had some problems finding each other because I only had two of the girls Malay phone numbers, but none of them worked in Cambodia. I finally found them at the guesthouse I originally booked at, as I knew they had done the same as I and tried to book online.

The day after I moved in with Aisling, Vicky and Ally at the Golden Temple Villa Guesthouse, as this was cheaper for us all…we thought. It ended only being cheaper for me, but for the girls it was the same. The guy in the reception was more interesting in getting my money that giving good service, so I ended up paying on top of what the girls was already paying, which was 4 US$ each.

On the second day at the temples I meet Paul from Canada, he seemed like a cool guy and he joined us for dinner that night and kept hanging out with us after that. It was good having another guy there even if it was only for a while, but I didn’t get his email address, so I hope he reads this and puts it in a comment.

I left Siem Reap after 3 days of temple watching, and felt a bit templed out, but I’ll tell you more about that in my blog on Angkor Wat and the temples.

If Langkawi was Paradise, then words can’t describe Perhentian. With the clearest water and the most relaxed and friendly atmosphere, it is the ultimate holiday destination and perfect for backpacking. We had some small problems finding accommodation, because the places are limited on Longbeach which was the beach we decided to stay on. In the end Line and James got a chalet (small cottage) and I sleep in the dorm. For only 25RM I didn’t mind and it was clean and quiet.

After James and me had finished almost all of our 25RM tax free Smirnoff “lemonade”, James decided to invite 5 Irish girls to join us in some card games. That turned out to be a good move and we ended out hanging out the rest of our stay. Lucky for me they all had similar travel plans and we decided to meet up in Cambodia.

The diet on Perhentian and in Malaysia is a bit different than the one I’m used to so I did get some stomach troubles, but not much. However it all went wrong the 3rd day when we went snorkelling. After swallowing too much saltwater I had to get it up again, and that was not a pretty sight. But I wasn’t the only one, 5 of the 8 in our boat had to do the same thing, so it was kind of like a spu fest. However it was a great day, where we saw seaturtles, shark, clownfish (Nemo) and a freakish looking dinosaur type fish that shat alot.

After 5 nights on Perhentian we left for KL (Kuala Lumpur). James felt sick the whole day and did not have a good trip from Kota Bestu to KL. Line and I didn’t get much sleep either and we arrived in KL very tired. Line and James very exciting about going home, and me a bit confused with the whole “I going to Cambodia” thing, felt like I was going home to.

Langkawi was like a paradise after 15 hours on Penang. Langkawi is a much smaller island and has a population of only 60 000 compared to Penang’s almost 1 million people. I meet Line and James on Chenang Beach and after Line and I went on a little mission to search for James, we checked in at a motel right on the beach.

Since it was low season on Langkawi, and the whole west coast in Malaysia has rain season, it wasn’t that many people there and not much to do beside sit on the beach and drink tax free alcohol (except Line, cause she is too pregnant). There wasn’t many people around either so we decided to leave after 2 days and head for the east coast and better weather and more atmosphere.

It was raining when we took the ferry to Kelis Kedah, which was a bit of a rough trip, with much more waves then I had from Penang, that really moved the boat in all directions. We then took a taxi to Alor Star, where we took the night bus to Kota Bahru. From there we took another taxi to Kota Bestu where we book places on the 7 am boat to Perhentian Island.

After having a sook at Melbourne Airport when I read Laura’s going away card, I had a smooth trip to Bangkok and Thailand. I had 6 hours on the airport there, before my next flight to Penang Island in Malaysia. The flight with AirAisa was without problems and I got through custom and into Malaysia easier than I had expected.

Standing on the Airport looking for transport into Georgetown, which is the capital city on Penang, a guy called Bryan approached me. It turned out that he was a tour manager, but that day he did a bit of taxi driving as well since the taxi drivers on the island was all on holiday in protest to the government introducing meters in all taxis. He drove me to town of 30RM which is approx 60NOK or 12 AUD. I told him I was taking the Ferry to Langkawi the next day, and he kindly offered to drive me to the Jetty first to book my ticket. And here is when it all went down hill. The man at the jetty told me that there was no more ticket for the day after, then Bryan said that there was no point checking with the other agents as they would have any either. Then Bryan offered to drive me to Perlis Kedah for 200RM the next day, but I said I rather take the bus, which Bryan told me did not exist. I found all this odd, but just wanted a bed and then investigate further. Bryan then drove me to the Federal Budget Hotel, and the owner there gave me a shabby room for 35 RM. I was to tired to do any more travel so I said yes.

After a quick wash I left the hotel to explore the city and the possibility of getting a ferry ticket. Georgetown is a dirty old, stinking city and I do not understand why the Pilot Guide book say it’s a must see. There was no tickets either and I went online to do some research. I came over a site that told me that I should by tickets from the Ferry company directly as agents could not be trusted. When I asked the man in the internet place about the site he did not respond and instead offered me to buy a ticket of his agent… So I took a gamble and bought a ticket of a very dodgy looking internet site with my VISA.

When I came back to the hotel the lobby was full of girls in every sizes and shapes and with all kinds of genders. As Georgetown is such a hole I didn’t think much about it. I then left to grab a bit to eat and when I came back I understood why the girls where in the lobby and what “Budget” meant. The girls where now outside, and when I tried to enter the hotel I could here “darling, darling” everywhere. One of the girls came up to me rubbing her private parts and saying “60 riggits”. I politely declined and the girls weren’t happy.

When I got up to the reception, the owner and his friend was sitting with two other guests, two girls from Italy, watching television and drinking Chinese tea. They offered me some tea and since I wanted to watch the movie I happily accepted. Whilst we watch the movie the girls outside kept coming passed with men and then leaving short after with the same man. When the owner and his friend was occupied making more tea, one of the Italian girls asked me discreet if I knew what kind of place this was, I nodded and said I was too tired to care. The girls agreed, and we left it at that.

I went to bed straight after the movie finished at 10 pm and sleep to 5.45 am. I then got up and had a shower before I left my key with a very surprised receptionist and went for a walk down to the Jetty. I wanted to be sure I could get a ticket. The walk took 20 minutes and was probably the most enjoyable I did in Pengang. I got to the Jetty at 6.30 and the woman at the Ferry company just shook her head and told me I was there to early. She didn’t receive the list of online bookings before 7am. So she offered to mind backpack when I got some breakfast when I was back, she had my ticket ready.

It annoyed me a great deal when the agent that had denied me a ticket the day before came straight after I got my ticket, and asked if I wanted a ticket to Langkawi for double price. I just ignored him and got onboard. Never setting my foot in Penang again.