Great Firewalling it up

It feels like the whole of the trip so far has been building up to China. There's hardly been any place we've visited (even Peru!) that hasn't had a Chinese influence, and the closer to China we've been drawing, the more significant that influence has been. And lately, what with China leapfrogging to second world economic power, people have been talking more about the Chinese globally buying up everything.

Paul often comments that you can tell the change in a country as soon as you cross a border. China is definitely no exception. We'd been preparing ourselves for a whole lot of difficulty and culture shock after Vietnam, but actually it was quite the opposite. We pulled into the border city of Nanning – everything was developed, organised, and the people ignored us in the streets. People we did come into contact with were smiley and polite (aside from the excessive hacking and spitting). In short it was a surprise. We'd been expecting the language barrier to be a trial, but in fact it was a sanctuary. If they can't communicate with you, they can't sell you something. They can't use your language as a weapon against you. And when you do try to speak Mandarin, they're so happy and give you special attention. We discovered this when we went out to dinner with a couple from Sheffield who had been in China 6 weeks and were about to cross into Vietnam. We found a plastic restaurant with a menu all in Chinese (reading it was a bit like a linguistics puzzle exercise) and they impressed us with their Chinese food-ordering skills. The restaurant owner was over the moon that these guys were speaking Mandarin, and was eternally helpful and patient with us. After the hostile reception we were constantly receiving in Vietnam, this was lovely. I suppose the phrasebooks and the relative scantness of Western people have made us feel like old-style travellers again. You know, when people used to take language courses before going on holiday and arming themselves with phrasebooks rather than relying on everyone being able to speak English.

The next day we took the train east to Guilin, and from there the bus to Yangshuo. One thing we love about China (apart from the polite and friendly people) is that there is hot water available everywhere (even trains). And this is great as a lot of portable Chinese food is of the just-add-water nature. So on the train we, like everyone else, produced pot noodles and took full advantage of the facilities. Things suddenly felt a lot cheaper.

Yangshuo/Guilin is said to be one of the most beautiful parts of China, nay, the world. It is filled with green-covered karst mountains (like Halong Bay, but not in the sea) and little villages and gorgeous rivers. Well, so we were told. It was a little difficult to tell as it was absolutely bucketing it down. We had a wet hour looking for our hostel (with the heavy bags not getting any drier) and were too burdened to notice the scenery. But once we were settled (with an amazing view from our window, I might add) we could tell even through the rain that it was a sight to behold. In the region Guilin is the 'brand', the famous place – but Yangshuo is thought to be the prettiest. It's nestled right in the heart of the mountains, which are floodlit at night. And yes, it's uber touristy. This hasn't been as headachy as you'd think, though. For a start that means things are set up to handle the likes of us, and there's probably more English spoken here than anywhere else in China (so yes, back to avoiding touts). The tourists are mostly Chinese – which is a fun thing to watch in itself. Really fascinating, actually. They all sneak photos of us like we're the curiosity (which was funny to start with, but is now starting to feel a bit invasive). We're enjoying watching how Chinese tourism works, and it's refreshing to feel such self confidence in a country. In SE Asia we were always being pleaded with and begged to feed their tourism economy - but China doesn't really need it. They're doing well enough, whether we're here or not, thank you very much!

It rained pretty solidly for the first few days and we went of a couple of soggy cycle rides. The hills looked enigmatic and mysterious looming in the fog, as we teetered on the wet and narrow paths between the rice paddies. It wasn't the sort of thing that could ever be captured in a photograph, so I enjoyed it with my eyes. Chinese girls and boys with flowers in their hair would sail past us on their tandem bikes whilst busloads of others visited the big attractions. We were feeling pretty saddle-sore after just one day on the bikes (several more to come!). I suddenly had quite a lot of admiration for Jill and Bryn (of Vernon) for their cycle tours round France, and up-coming Lands End to John o'Groats. Good luck!

Eventually our patience with the weather paid off and the few extra days we'd booked but were considering regretting, were filled with eternal sunshine. On our way out for breakfast on our penultimate day (the first sunny day) we ran into one of the hostel staff who was just about to take everyone on a free bike tour. Just what the doctor ordered! In our stinginess and naivety we were solely relying on the free leaflet map which actually told us nothing about what our route actually looked like. We'd spent many soggy miles getting lost and irate this way. The countryside was even more spectacular in the sunshine than in the rain. And the moving air as we cycled kept us cool. Our guide told us that a lot of rice paddies, especially the ones you can take tours to, are kept solely to attract tourists. They don't need them for the rice as they make more money with the tours so, like the Highland cattle in Scotland, they're purely decorative.

We had another day of physical exhaustion and map related general lostness and confusion, before leaving on the sleeper bus for Hong Kong. This bus was infinitely nicer than the nasty Vietnamese ones, and we adopted some other travellers for border-crossing moral support.

Paul had arranged for us to couchsurf with Ada, a warden at a charity trust boarding school (perhaps for naughty kids?), and we had a set of instructions to get there. First of all, joy of joys, we were back in a city with a metro system. We've discovered we love cities with metros. This is how we can forgive London. Maybe we'd even cope with living in Glasgow. Second set of joys – though we had been relishing the chance to battle the language barrier, there is quite a lot of English spoken in HK (for obvious reasons) and it made figuring out the right bus and right place to get off a lot easier. Third joy – the shopping centre where we were to meet Ada had a free customer telephone so we didn't have to spend money and hours fiddling with a coin-operated one. Hurrah!

Ada whisked us up the road to the school and gave us reams of helpful introductory instructions, a form to fill in (the most testing question being 'what are your hobbies?' - nothing like the kind of paranoia-forms we would have had to fill in back home!) and then showed us to our room for rest and shower before lunch. We were lodged in one of the boys' floors of the boarding house surrounded by dorms, with our own bathroom, private bedroom, fridge and kettle. Such luxury! At lunch we were introduced to Erature, a young lady from Malaysia who was working there temporarily. She showed us how to queue, collect our lunch (Chinese school food!) and sit on our respective boys and girls sides of the room. We had quite a few interesting meals in that place. Poor Paul was left all alone on a table of boys, and all the kids were pretty reluctant to speak to us (although we suspect they spoke a lot more English than they let on). After lunch the kids had activities – today, 'watermelon ball'. This was essentially 5-aside football played with a plastic blow-up watermelon coloured ball. Go on my son!

Later on we met the staff and Bobby, our designated interpretor who would be helping us with our presentation to the kids after the weekend. Ada's attitude towards Bobby was hilarious. 'I don't like this boy's personality,' she told us. 'He is too passive. I want him to learn confidence.' Later she asked us, 'have you seen the fat kid, your interpretor, yet?' Bobby was shy, but we had a back-up member of staff in case he bottled out.

That evening it was dinner 'Chinese style' (they consider their lunch to be 'Western style', although to us it tasting like Chinese takeaway) where we all all sat round tables with dishes in the centre and helped ourselves. I was permitted to sit with Paul on a boys' table (they still weren't talking to us) and we were shown how to go and collect the plates for the table etc etc and guessed how to navigate our way around eating conventions (do you use different chopsticks to serve your food than to eat with?).

The kids had more activities after that, so we sorted out our plans for the next day. Essentially, our visit to the Russian embassy. Ah the Russians. We're beginning to wonder why we're even going there at all. The visa form was like applying for a job as a Russian. Worse, as all we wanted was a transit visa, a job as a Russian in transit. It had very small spaces to answer questions such as 'name all the countries you have visited in the last 10 years and when' (in 3 lines) ! ! ! Give your last 2 jobs and current employer's address, chief's name, phone numbers. 'Do you have specialist training in firearms, explosives, nuclear, biological or chemical substances?' (for Paul, yes). What organisations or charities are you involved with or co-operate with? Etc etc. It would have been funny if it hadn't felt so invasive and impertinent. We were thinking perhaps we didn't want to go to Russia that badly after all, if this was the effort we had to put in. We felt that even more strongly (to the point of outrage) when we made it to the embassy the next day and the stern-faced Russians charged us £100 each! What's so good about bloody Russia anyway, I ask you? Why don't they want us to visit? Do they not want our nice foreign money for their economy? Turned out this initial bout of hoop-jumping was only the tip of the iceberg. We're not even staying in Russian, godamnit! The trans-Mongolian had better be the highlight of the whole entire trip.

So Paul was fuming quite a lot as we wandered quite aimlessly around the financial buildings of Hong Kong Island. We had a bit of time to kill before our next engagement at 6.15. By pure coincidence, about a week before we were due to arrive in HK, a HK British Council representative had sent and enquiry to Paul through the Chemical Connection website (the science communication project he did for the university). She was quite surprised when Paul said they could meet in person. So we met in a posh cafe in a posh shopping centre full of Suits (it's all about Suits in HK Island) and they talked science festivals and workshops.

That evening we had the floor to ourselves at the school as all the boarders had gone home. It was eerily quiet since the night before they'd spent all evening tearing up and down the corridors shouting. Erature kindly let us in as the school was locked. This was a dance we'd have to do with her all weekend – arrange a time for her to let us out in the morning, go out for the day and phone her from the free phone in the shopping centre asking her to let us back in again in 15 mins. Sometimes things would be a lot simpler if we had a phone with us.

Saturday we were meeting an old school friend of mine, Alice Lo. I'd been to stay with her (and another friend – they shared me) in HK 11 years ago over the 1999 Christmas holidays. It was strange to be back as it felt quite different. Also I hadn't seen Alice since we left school so it was quite exciting. She took us to lots of places using the 'public light bus' system that we probably wouldn't have been able to find on our own. Some places were familiar from before, including some pretty spectacular live seafood. Actually I've never seen fish so huge, crustaceans so colourful, or creatures so weird. It was raining quite hard by the end, but it was a fun day out and great to see Alice again. She also revealed to us why couchsurfing in Asia has been so much more difficult than e.g. South America - there's just not a culture of having people to stay. They don't like it. Seems I was quite lucky to have stayed back in 1999!

The rain became a big feature of that weekend. We decided to do our customary shopping centre-junk food-cinema day and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. It was good, we enjoyed it. After it got dark there was a brief break in the rain and we went to Kowloon to look at the typical skyscraper-lights view of Hong Kong island. Not ten minutes after we were safely back at the school, though, the storm hit with a vengeance and there was much flooding.

I must add that we very diligently shopped in ParkNShop during our stay (treating ourselves to cheese – yes, cheese! - and bread that night) – people who know Logan will understand why.

School again on Monday and this was our big day. We retrieved our passports from the 'friendly' Russians in the morning, all safely and expensively visa'd up, and came back for lunch (another food adventure, though not as crazy as the breakfasts which I'm glad we experienced but wouldn't like to make a habit of). Bobby was nowhere to be seen, but we were sure he'd pull through.

We were presenting in the dining room and the kids had been promised dancing – but we also had a short talk to do. We were starting to have second thoughts about this as Ada kept telling us they didn't like seminars (then why did she ask us to tell them about Scotland?) but, well, Bobby needed the public speaking experience for his passive character. One of the members of staff had made a nice display all about Scotland for us and we were set up with mics and a projector screen and everything. After school a team came to move all the tables, and then at the very last possible minute (waiting until the bell had gone) the kids shuffled in.

It was immediately a more daunting prospect than we'd imagined or than anywhere we'd faced before. We had support from the staff, and Bobby performed fantastically, but the kids were truly the worst behaved I've ever come across. What's more, they were the worst behaved Paul had ever come across and he's visited a lot more schools than me. The chatting amongst themselves throughout alone was distracting (there were a lot of them, it was loud) but then things dissolved into chaos when it came to teaching the dancing. It's very difficult to be authoritative with a language barrier, and they did the whole 'urrrgh! A BOY! I can't be partners with a BOY!!' (Vice versa for girls, and some boys objected to being partnered with each other too) beyond the usual adolescent patheticness.

It was all quite funny really, if not horribly frustrating. Ada had assured us they were all excited to learn about Scottish dancing, but this wasn't apparent as about half of them refused to do anything at all. In the end Paul got a self-conscious all-boy demonstration group going and they even managed it with music. Boy it was all hard work! The staff felt we had been received well, although we weren't so sure!

They were quite hyper during dinner and some of the girls made a half-effort to say a few words to us, so maybe it had worked after all. Bobby was certainly in high spirits. It was strange, because we'd assumed an Asian school would have the kids all orderly and whipped into shape (like the Japanese schoolchildren on the plane to Singapore, and like the kids in Cambodia) but a special kind of chaos reigned here.

In all it was a really interesting experience and it would have been good to stay longer and get more involved (who knows, perhaps some of them might even have begun to talk to us?). But once again it was time to move on and press back into mainland China.

About HK's relationship with China – Alice noted that the pre-'97 days were really the best, but right now they do have the best possible deal. They have nearly all the autonomy of a successful city state, but can also go asking China for help with anything they can't do themselves. And China's doing pretty well for itself these days. So long as they're left to do things their way, being under the wing of a world superpower isn't that bad.

Same Same but Different

We'd selected our hotel in Hoi An very carefully and booked it on the basis that it had cable TV with BBC World. The Royal Wedding footage kicked off with a BBC World version with Mishal Husain outside Buckingham palace and I was a bit concerned we were going to get some odd BBC World Asian version of it but at 3.30pm it flicked over to Hew, Chris, Fern and Matt and for a few hours, we were back home. Historically, I've been quite anti-Royal but in I've softened in recent years and in particular as a result of this trip. One of the questions we often get asked is "when is your independence day?" and the fact is, we don't have one as everyone else gained their independence from us (chortle). In Scotland we have Burn's night which is kind of our "Scottish Celebration" but we don't have any form of "British/UK Celebration" apart from events surrounding the Royal Family; be it the Queen's birthday, Trooping of the Colour or a Royal Wedding. Yes, they're un-elected, maybe they do cost the taxpayer some amount of money (although I would imagine in the scheme of things it's not that much) but they do bring us a huge amount in tourist revenue and it would be hard to imagine the UK without them. So I view the Royal Wedding as an excuse to celebrate the UK - we do pomp and pagentry better than anyone ese in the world and it's a spectacular sight, whatever your political opinions. It's worth noting in particular that people wave Union Flags, not Royal Standards. For us particularly, this was a way to feel a bit close to home from so far away. Also, two young people are in love, they're getting married in spectacular fashion and we all get to watch. People back home get to have a day off and do some serious partying if they want. Isn't that a nice thing? It's a shame that there was quite so much anti-wedding vitriol on Facebook.

So what did we think? We'll, it was one of the most well-oragnised and beautifully executed bit of pagentry I've ever seen. I thought they both looked great, good choice of hymns and certainly a good choice of vows. I wasn't too keen on the anthem or motet mind but I've always hated John Rutter with a passion. Overall, fab and I really hope they have a long and happy marriage, particularly when so much of the rest of their family has buggered it up big style.

Anyhow, back to Vietnam. Our hotel really was stunning - balcony, Air Conditioning, breakfast included, hot an cold water and for the first time in ages...a kettle! This meant that we could boil water for drinking - buying water is a constant chore and makes a considerable hole in our budget.

Actually, that brings me to our budget which is a topic that many people ask us about - how on earth are we budgeting and therfore affording all of this? Well, the UK Chancellor would have fun understanding our budget but I'll have a go at explaining.

First of all, we have the daily budget. That's money we've saved from employment, gigs and generally living frugally while we were earning in Edinburgh. It's £30 a day for the two of us whch sounds like very little and to be honest, sometimes it is. To keep track of it we have a running total and running average and I'm proud to say that as a result of a lot of Couchsurfing and a lot of extremely kind friends (particularly in the USA and Canada), we're currently under budget there. That means that we can afford a tour in Mongolia which is great because otherwise we'd get to see nothing but Ulan Bator and we hear it's not that nice.

Second, the "extras" budget. This is a small amount of money that's coming in as a result of renting our our flat (to our lovely tennants Matt and Nat who always pay their rent on time!) and a bit of web-work that I'm still doing. We keep this for big expenditures such as our Inca Trail, Greyhound passes and and Japan Rail passes.

Third, we have the redundancy budget. This is money that I got when my contract ended at the University of Edinburgh. Most of it went on our New Zealand Campervan.

Fourth and finally we have the surprise budget. Over the course of our trip we've had a few quite extraordinarily kind people give us small amounts of money - particularly at Christmas and birthdays. We tend to roll it all together and spend it on something that we wouldnt otherwise have done or live a wee bit of luxury somewhere. That was where our posh Bangkok hotel and ladyboy show came from for example.

Then we anally write down everything we spend in a little notebook and do constant calculations at a bad rate of exchange so we know where we stand!

So there you have it, the truth exposed and the question that everybody wanted answered, answered.

So, back to Vietnam (again). Hoi An was a lovely place, possibly even our favourite place in South East Asia so far. It reminds us a bit of Trinidad in Cuba, gorgeous, low colourful buildings slightly crumbling but in a really good way. In the evening you can walk by the river which is lit-up by chinese-style lanterns and candles floating in paper boats. It's true that it is really touristy and you do get the usual offers ("hey, you wan't motobike?", "you buy, happy hour?") etc. etc. but they're not too persistant. We took a load of wanders round the city and out to the beach as well which is a little less trashy than the one at Nha Trang.

We also by chance met up with Joe, a chap from Yorkshire who we'd previosly met in the hostel in Saigon so we went for some drinks with another guy (Julian) he'd acquired who was also travelling the world. We actually ended up staying longer in Hoi An than we'd planned as all the transport out was booked due to a holiday but we really didn't mind. We were happy just to sit on our balcony and relax. We even had breakfast on our balcony instead of in the hotel dining room which was a really great thing to be able to do. It was just a lovely few days, peppered by repeated Royal Wedding Highlights on BBC World which we didn't really mind seeing again.

One of the things we tried to get used to was bargining for things. This is something we found quite extarordinarily difficult. All the sellers will give you a massively inflated price when they see that you're a foreigner and it's then your job to try and get them down to something close to the local price. The thing to bear in mind though is that they will turn you away before giving you the actual local price as they see it as your duty to pay more as you're so rich and affluent and clearly have money to fling around. Also, there's a massive difference between those selling goods for tourists and those selling goods in markets to locals. Those selling to locals don't care quite so much as they'll just sell to the next local who comes along whereas those selling tourist stuff will hassel you incessantly as you're their market (and so few people buy from them - they're everywhere, all selling exactly the same stuff). We found that trying and failing a few times with different sellers is helpful as you get an idea on what the local price might be (or what they're willing to accept from you). It also helps not to care that much about buying whatever-it-is as then you're prepared to walk away and when you do, they'll chase you down with a better price. Finally, you have to do it all with a smile. This is something we found really hard, despite our usual cheerful and sunny characters as we find the whole concept of taking the oh-so-rich-and-stupid foreigners for a ride offensive but we did get better as we went on through Vietnam. A good strategy was to bring they fact that they're overcharging you out into the open in a funny way "look at her grin, she knows she's overcharging us!", "What? I could get six of these for that price at home, you've just spotted my blonde hair!", etc etc.

One thing that we didn't bargin that hard for (and perhaps maybe we should) was the dress that Charlotte had tailor made. If you've seen the "Top Gear" Vietnam special you'll know that Hoi An is the Saville Row of Vietnam and everyone comes here to get clothes made on the cheap. Almost every shop is a tailor or shoe shop, hung with all sorts of beautiful things. Charlotte decided to get a dress made and had sketched some ideas so we were in the market. Ideally, we would have gone to loads of tailors, discussed the ideas, get quotes, beat them down etc. but we really couldn't be bothered with that. Our hotel had punted us in the direction of the tailor they own and since we really liked our hotel we decided to check them out. They were very friendly, professional and helpful modifying the dress from Charlotte's ideas and sketches to something possible. Measurements were taken in the morning a fitting in the evening and after adjustments, we picked up the finished product 24 hours after walking in in the first place. Quite impressive" It was a gorgeous fit and looked amazing on Charlotte and was a price she was happy with so all was good. Maybe we could have got a lower price with a bit more effort but we really didn't care. We do feel bad for having broken every rule in the Hoi An shopping book, though.

We were definitely sad to leave Hoi An as we'd really loved it and settled in. Our hotel was just spot on, we'd identified a Vietnamese sandwich person who made sandwiches we really liked (Vietnamese sandwiches really are the thing), we'd identified a curry place we really like (Ganesh's - highly recommended), asigned ourselves a "contemplation bench" by the side of the river for lunch-eating and thinking of big thoughts and even made a couple of friends in Joe and Julian who we met up with several times for dinks and nosh. Our transport out was a "sitting bus" to Hue and then another horrid "sleeper bus" to Hanoi. There were more people sleeping in the aisles (unoficial passengers methinks) and the toilet was blocked and like a pond. In case you're ever in Vietnam, the company not to use is "Camel Tours" and they were also responsible for what happened next.

Our bus arrived in Hanoi and one of the bus guys gave us a long speech about how if we hadn't booked accommodation the we could have a free transfer to "their" hotel where we'd get a good price. We'd already booked anothe place (as we always do) so we were ushered into a taxi which we knew we'd have to pay for but it was OK as it had a meter. The driver put our bags in the front seat which meant that we couldn't see the meter so we had no idea what the fee was going to be. Our hostel had told us that a taxi should be about VNF60 000-VND80 000 (about $3-$4 ot £2-£3). When he stopped (after going to the wrong hostel first), the price on the meter was VND490 000 ($24 or £16) - it was clearly rigged and this was a scam taxi. We argued but he told us it was a "long way" (yeah right) and after a bit of a fuss we managed to get hime down to VND300 000 ($15 or £10). He had the doors locked and wouldn't unlock them until I'd handed over the money (clearly well practiced at this game) so we eventually made our escape but we arrived at our hostel raging. The hostel folk were very nice and sympathetic - I think they're used to it. NB there's not very much you can do to get out of this kind of situation, but someone later told us that a tactic you can try is to start taking photos of the driver and taxi. This might scare him into submission.

Fact is, we're trying to do this tour to understand and respect other people's cultures but what's the point when people clearly don't respect us? From Thailand through Cambodia to Vietnam this has been constant and I've said it before in previous posts - we are viewed as walking ATMs. So far my impression of the people here is that they are selfish and disrespectful and it makes me a) not want to be here and b) not want to encourage others to come either. I have to confess that I was perilously close to finding us the next flight out of Vietnam back to the UK (Charlotte's note - I wouldn't have agreed to that!) as I couldn't see why I should remain supporting a tourist economy that is both crooked and unpleasant and the whole experince made me more homesick than ever. I calmed down after a shower and a bit of breakfast and the knowledge that it's not long to go now. The taxi company not to use is "Taxi Trung Viet" with the number "62 61 61 61" on the side.

Hanoi was an assault on the senses after the relative calm of Hoi An. The number of scooters had skyrocketed and the applicibility of driving rules had diminished significantly. We had found our friend Joe from Hoi An (who'd had a similarly horrible journey but at least hadn't been scammed) so we joined forces and went to explore the city. It was a bit grubbier than Hoi An but certainly had a charm with some really nice colonial buildings. It also had a lake in the middle which was great to walk round and we even managed to cross the motorway (death defying things that we are) and investigated a non-touristy area.

That evening another fellow UK traveller, Julie arrived and we met her over breakfast the next morning. In true backpacker style we joined forces and headed into Hanoi. Charlotte and I were the experts by this point so we were able to do the directing. We had another wander around the lake before heading to the "Hanoi Hilton", a former prison where the French held Vietnamese dissidents and the Vietnamese later held captured Americans. Propaganda abounded with the Vietnamese referred to as "comrades" and the French the evil imperialists. They claimed that the Americans were treated well with regular parties, letters from home, entertainment etc. but it's hard to gague what was really true. It was really interesting though.

We took in the Cathedral that afternoon which looked strangely out of place in Hanoi. We also found a restored traditional house which was really nice and had a gramophone and a James Brown record. Traditional indeed!

We managed to find a nice wee street-restaurant that evening which had a selection of things to BBQ which you could point at, have BBQd and then be charged for. It was pretty good and not expensive at all. There we also met and joined forces with Clemens - a German chap travelling on his own and looking for some friends.

The next day was our cue to go and visit Dead Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh). He was the leader of the Vietnamese struggle against the French and then later the North Vietnamese effort. He died at the age of 79 in 1969 - long before the war was settled. He had originally requested that he be cremated and his ashes scattered all over Vietnam to signify a united country but that was ignored, and he was embalmed and laid in state at a mausoleum in Hanoi. It was a bit of an adventure getting to it. We met at our hostel and headed towards the citadel. The hostel staff had marked a route through but that turned out to be blocked by a guard with a gun who then chased us off as we stood looking confused at our map. Eventually we found our way (via a long way round) within sight of the mausoleum which had a massive grassy area in front with paths so we started heading accross to the sound of whistles blowing and guards chasing us off. After lots more walking we got to security where our water bottles were removed from our posession and our cameras impounded to be picked up after we'd been through. Closer to the mausoleum, the guard uniform changed to white, I was signalled to remove my hat (which I would have done anyway thank you) and we were in. For maybe 1 minute we processed past the slightly ghostly looking figure with it's wispy beard. I was prodded by one of the guards on the way round - we reckon he didn't like me walking with my hands behind my back which is odd as I've always seen it as the most respectful way to walk and I was really doing my best. It's worth going to (but you can only get in if it's before 11am and not Monday or Friday) simply for those few minutes of gorgeous refrigeration within the building. Afterwards we took a look round the Ho Chi Minh museum which was completely incomprehensible with Ho Chi Minh's various good deeds represented by fruit, a brain-type open area and a Picasso-style sculpture. More of a weird art gallery than a place of information. Befuddled, we took a look at the Temple of Literature before lunch at "Koto" which is a training restaurant for street kids to learn to be waiters, chefs etc. It was a wee bit more expensive than our usual fare but was really good and had a really nice atmosphere.

We all boarded the bus the next morning to Halong Bay - probably the #1 tourist spot in Vietnam. The bay had 1969 limestone islands which tower into the sky and loom spectacularly out through the mist. The way to see them is to book an overnight stay on a boat - there are about 400 tourist boats in the bay of varying quality but we'd managed to get a good and inexpensive one through our hostel. Many people had been worried about Halong Bay trips due to the news story about the one that sank, and all the deaths. And indeed, we did watch one of the other boats sinking in the bay on the first day. Hmmm. We started off with a fantastic lunch with crab cakes and plenty sea-food and then floated out towards Sung Sot Cave where we took in some of the rock formations including a giant turtle and a huge penis pointing at a nicely placed hole in the roof. It was then a bit of kayaking, some jumping off the side of the boat (I declined but Charlotte had a go!) before a spectacular sunset and a splendid dinner. It was a great cheer-up after our unpleasant bus and taxi experience a couple of days before. We made our way back to Hanoi the next day and bid our fond farewells to Julie and Clemens who were starting the trip south. It was been really nice to pick up and join forces with some fellow travellers for a few days (and with Joe and Julian a few days before) - maybe we'll try and do that again to help us deal with the madness of China. That evening we tried Bun Cha at a down-at-heel looking place recommended on Wikitravel. You get a bowl of flame grilled beef meatballs, some beef slices, spring rolls, loads of salad and herbs and more noodles than we could eat - fantastic food but the rudest service we'd come across so far in the whole of Asia! Oh well.

So that was 'Nam. We had one day around the hostel chilling and planning before boarding the bus that would take us to China. It turned out to be one of our easiest border crossings yet. The bus dropped us off and a golf cart picked us up and took us to the Vietnam exit bit. You basically had to fling your passport through the window and hope that one of the officials would pick it up, stamp it and give it back to you. There were loads of people crowded round the window and we were the only westerners. Eventually, one of the officials (a man) spotted me, found my passport an immediately started complimenting me on my hair. I think he hadn't noticed the beard and was chatting me up. He was then a little confused when he saw my photo with short hair. We escaped that to another golf cart which took us to the Chinese entry point. I'd been pretty nervous about this as I'd heard that they can be a bit nippy, sometimes confiscating Lonely Planets for example (as the Chinese LP has a map with Taiwan in a different colour than China and of course as everyone knows, Taiwan is part of China.). They turned out to be very friendly and easy going however and a very nice guard showed us how to have a machine scan our passports and print a form so we didn't have to fill it out by hand. I had a bit of a heart-stopping moment when the passport-checking guy spent ages looking at my photo, looking up at me and then repeating the operation, clearly confused by the short-hair/long-hair dichotomy but after consulting his colleague gave me the nod and let me in. Customs didn't even bother looking at the X-rays of our bags as they went through and thus, we were in China and heading off on another golf cart to our bus. Easy!

But a final word on 'Nam. I think it was our favoutite of the SE Asian countries but clearly still has it's issues. Maybe that's epitomised by the "Same Same but Different" T-shirts a lot of the Western tourists wear (everywhere in SE Asia. Everywhere!). It derives from the fact (we think) that if you've got the choice of two tours (for examples) and one's cheaper and you ask what the difference is, you frequently get the answer "Same Same". This is probably not the case and the truth is that they will, in fact will be different and probably not in a good way. Also a reference to what locals tend to say when they're ripping you off - 'same same Vietnamese!' The T-shirt seems to be some kind of bitter comment on local culture, but the locals have adopted the slogan too.

I can only really say what everyone says after visiting...."You don't know man, you weren't there!".

Cross over the road, my friend

After our long rest in Siem Reap, Vietnam felt like a new leg of our trip. I suppose we'd been exhausted, but now we were starting afresh and ready to take on Vietnam's craziness. I don't know what it was, but we both felt immediately happier here.

The first thing that strikes you about Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City, but no-one seems to call it that) is the traffic. Essentially, ceaseless walls of scooters/motorbikes coming at you with no gap. This is where that old hymn seems particularly appropriate - 'cross over the road, my friend; as the Lord His strength to lend' - you're going to need it. If you wait for a gap in the traffic you may be waiting for all eternity. What you have to do is take a deep breath (and maybe a quick last-minute prayer) and step out into the oncoming motors. It's very important to keep going at a steady pace and they should flow right around you. It's a very organic entity really. We often looked for native crossing-buddies to stalk, but sometimes this didn't work. Sometimes they were as hopeless as we are. If you pause or hesitate halfway across, that could be the last of you - so the feeling of triumph and euphoria after every crossing is huge.

We'd managed to find a couchsurfing host, Ellen, so we crossed our first road and set off to find her. We'd arrived at night and she lived in the middle of the backpacker district. It was all very reminiscent of the first scene of The Beach (the film) where Leo arrived in Bangkok. After some lazy Cambodian times it certainly was a kick in the armpit.

We discovered several things about Vietnamese food inn those first few days - first, it is incredibly cheap; second, it's really good. Oh, and the iced coffee (a big deal here) is strong and chocolatey and full of condensed milk and sweet and yummy. I have to be careful to ration myself for fear of headaches. Yes, this trip has made me one thing I never thought I'd be - a coffee drinker. Ok, so we have to admit that much of our time in Vietnam so far has been less about the culture and more about the next meal (but then, what's new?). But I've decided this is OK and a thoroughly acceptable way to travel, since coming across Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love in the guesthouse in Siem Reap (unsurprisingly a crap photocopy with several pages missing - I'm not sure you can buy many books that aren't photocopied round here). So yes, we are enjoying our food, and not always local food at that. We'll sneak a pizza or a curry or some pasta here and there. We're not ashamed.

On our first day walking around Saigon we discovered Pho (not pronounced 'foe' - all the vowels in Vietnamese are so heavily decorated it makes English look dead boring) - which is noodle soup. And you know it's the national dish because everyone has a T-shirt saying 'iPho'. But it's so much more than noodle soup. So fragrant, with a bowl of herbs, chillies and limes to add to your taste. I never thought I'd appreciate the watery Asian broth-soups, but it's exactly what you need on a hot day. Coupled with some fiery chillies and creamy coffee to wake you up again.

I probably shouldn't just talk about food, but the spring rolls are also great (very different from the Chinese ones) and there are filled baguette sellers on every street corner, and amazing stuffed noodles and oh... so many things. Food places range from hawkers to a little stall with a small table and child's stools next to it, to little plastic cafes, to tourist cafes, to posh restaurants. When we were in Penang staying with Rick, we met his friends Gerry and Kevin, who recommended a restaurant called Ngon to us. We recommend it too! (On Pasteur, if you're interested.) It's seriously classy - a proper business lunch venue, but in all we probably only spent about £3 each. Yes, we have started to live it up a bit.

We spent a quiet few days in Saigon, not pushing the sightseeing too hard. We visited the old French area (nice post office, nice cathedral), crossed some roads, went to some museums about the Vietnam war, visited a Chinese area full of pagodas and mental street markets, crossed some more roads, and went on a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. These are part of a massive tunnel complex which the Viet Cong used to be invisible to the Americans during the war. Our guide was a veteran who had fought on the South Vietnam side (i.e. along with the Americans) and he was a very interesting chap. It was difficult to gauge his actual opinion of the current regime, but he noted that Vietnam is unlikely to have a revolution like everyone else seems to be at the moment because they're tired of all the bloodshed. They just want a bit of peace, and the communist government isn't actively oppressing them. Nor is Vietnam really communist.

At the tunnels museum we were shown the tiny passages that the guerillas crawled though (enlarged for our Western frames). Even enlarged most people refused to go down them. I conquered my claustrophobia (it would be a pity to miss out after we'd come all that way) and did a quick trip, but it certainly wasn't enjoyable! We were also taken to a shooting range where people could pay extra to fire some guns (we didn't). It certainly added to the ambience of the place. Kevin and Gerry had told us about this bit - and noted that maybe it wasn't the best idea to give an Irishman and AK47 to point at an Englishman!

As part of the Cu Chi tour we were taken to 'look at disabled people' - which we were a little bit suspicious about! It turned out to be a craft workshop which employs disabled people to make lacquered mother of pearl artworks. Despite our scepticism, it was quite interesting. They showed us the step by step stages for the making process. And the stuff was pretty nice, not that I'd buy any of it, of course. You just have to hope the workers get a decent wage.

The rest of our time in Saigon was spent in the pursuit of English conversation and entertaining the belief that we are possibly rain gods. It does seem to be a feature of this trip that wherever we go, we bring spectacular rainstorms. Vietnam so far has been no exception. As for English conversation, these are much sought after in Vietnam. We were on one of our usual food adventures (I learnt that the Vietnamese are particularly into salads) when a lady at the table next to us started to chat. We're automatically very wary of this sort of thing in case it turns into an opportunity for the other person to somehow try to get money from us (bad foreign cultures for doing this to us). But this lady explained that she was an English teacher awaiting her students. They often meet at cafes in this area because there are so many captive foreigners (enjoying their meals) to speak 'foreign' with. (All foreigners are assumed to speak Foreign, aka English. I wonder what would happen if you didn't?) Presently two 8-year-olds tipped up and we discussed the solar system with them. Then they fixated on me having children. The teacher decided that I would have twins, and then gave a re-enactment of how horrible it would be. Nice. It was an interesting evening, and nice to speak to locals in a context where money isn't involved. The next night our host Ellen took us to visit her English class. It was good fun, and we even did the obligatory Tatties and Herring.

On our last night in Saigon we re-watched the Top Gear Vietnam special, and realised we would be following their almost exact same route. In fact, we met quite a lot of people who were actually doing that route on bikes, or who were visiting Vietnam directly inspired by that episode. In their own way they've probably done a lot for the tourism industry here. So next (as decreed by the TG boys) was the mountain town of Dalat. It was built by the French to be a mountain retreat. And it did feel a bit like an Alpine town, until you opened your eyes properly and saw all the motorcycles, and caught a whiff of the smell, and has someone try to sell you sunglasses. But the main thing here was the coolness. The air - so fresh. I almost needed my jumper!

Our guesthouse was wonderful. It had all the details just right. Even a hot shower. Let me repeat that - a hot shower! We spent a few days wandering round the town doing not very much - mostly looking for food. We got quite good at negotiating prices, we're quite proud of ourselves! We never get it reduced by much (our price is always inflated due to Foreigner Tax) but it's the trying that counts. It's letting them know that we know they're overcharging us, and that we're not happy with it. My favourite haggling episode was in Hoi An where a market woman tried to charge us more than double what she eventually accepted for some limes. When we responded with mock horror and a 'you must be joking you chancer' she burst out giggling. She knew it would (or at least should) never work, but it's all a game so she had to try. It was a rare occasion where I actually felt on a common level with a local. Usually you feel so separate. Everything is about grovelling and ripping you off and shouting at you from across the street (we do not respond well to 'oi you!' and 'you buy something!'). And responding to everyone's 'hello' and wondering if it's normal for Vietnamese to greet everyone they see, or just Westerners. We've even had mothers wheel their tiny kids out as we pass to teach them to say hello to the white folk. It makes us feel alien and wrong. But this woman's laugh included us for a split second, so we bought her limes (even though they were more expensive than some of the others we'd tried for).

Paul has also adopted a new tactic for dealing with hawkers (who are quite happy to walk into restaurants and hassle you while you're eating, by the way). It's generally a policy of confusing non-sequiturs, like, 'You want buy sunglasses?' 'I can't, I've just been circumcised', 'want books?', 'I'm sorry my grandmother's dead', 'I've already read all of those', 'I can't read', 'my ears are made of cheese'. It seems that in all these countries, we alternately love and hate the locals. We want to live up to our ideal of everyone deserves equal respect as human beings, we really do, but it's bloody difficult when the people you're trying to respect so clearly don't respect you.

The highlight of Dalat was probably a place called 'The Crazy House', which no, was not an institution I was planning to leave Paul in. It was a house designed by a woman with a PhD in architecture and was a bit like the cover of a 70s prog rock album, or Rodney Matthew's 'Yendor' if you're at all familiar with that. It was a structure of concrete shaped into branches and passages through trees and crystal caves, and all sorts of things. Like a fantasy tree house or a place where Ewoks live. Anyway, you'll have to look at the photos. It was fantastic to explore - the imagination that went into it charmed me. It was still under construction but was already beginning to look neglected - with chipped paint and graffiti everywhere.

The journey from Dalat to the beach town of Nha Trang was spectacular in its scenery, but sadly, for various anatomical reasons, neither Paul or I were in a position to enjoy it much. A return to sea level brought a return of the heat, but that was nothing a bit of frolicking in the waves couldn't solve. We were accosted by another English learner ('may I practise English with you?') and marvelled in confusion at a structure that looked like Barbie's Mosque.

We had what I think is the best curry since we left Britain (Paul still prefers the Siem Reap one), so if you find yourself in Nha Trang, go to Omar's. We also got ourselves a reasonable deal on some supremely tasty giant shrimps. The way the beach works is that you lounge about all day, and an array of hawkers parade past and pose next to the 'no peddling' sign. They then try to sell you things at ridiculously inflated prices ('my ears are made of cheese', 'I'm not allowed to eat'). The shrimps had been recommended to us, and we eventually offered the lady half the price she was asking. She wasn't having it so we parted company, but later she came back and conceded. I'm glad she did. The shrimps went onto the coals, then onto the sand (an accident, but she coolly washed them off again), then were served up with a dip of white pepper and salt with lime juice and a chili sauce that must have had garlic in it somewhere. On so tasty. Perfect beach food. Spurred on by our negotiation success we bartered some cut price buns. The prices charged on this beach are horrific, but they seem to get away with it.

There wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do in Nha Trang, but we also found some beautiful old streets and a temple of the Cambodian ilk (who builds a brick temple? It's like finding a temple in Leeds). We took a night bus to our next destination of Hoi An which was... an experience. We got on, unaware of the need to take your shoes off and put them in a small plastic bag (obviously that's what you're supposed to do - duh!), which caused a very unpleasant little man to begin a horrible tirade of shouting (oi you!). The Vietnamese seem to have a uniquely unpleasant take on being horrible. Anyway, the nasty man punished us for our unwitting mistake by making us take the cheap seats, which involved a little bunker at the back with 4 narrow beds on a slope (so that we slid forward with every jerk). Everyone else got little bed booths. Grr. We were not pleased. The bus did its usual stopping for hours for no apparent reason and people were stuffed in the aisles so we couldn't get out. The driver drove like a maniac - in short, it was a pretty horrible journey! I think we might give the train a go next time. It was a great relief to escape and find our guesthouse in Hoi An just across the street.

Hoi An is another place entirely, and possibly the nicest place we've been in all of South East Asia. Paul can tell you all about that in the next post. For now we're sitting in our room enjoying the Royal Wedding coverage (yes we are! And not ashamed of it either!) and feeling nice and British from afar.

Pajamaland

In 1988, the UK children's magazine programme "Blue Peter" ran an appeal for Kampuchea, as Cambodia was called then. I remember seeing pictures of piles of skulls and hearing the name "Pol Pot" but, given that I was only 8 years old I didn't understand much more than that other that the fact that Pol Pot was a bad guy who'd killed a lot of people.

Cambodia was a major empire - the Khmer Empire actually occupied most of the land that is now Thailand and Laos including modern day Cambodia. Attacks by the neighbouring Siamese (now the Thai) and Dai Viet (now Vietnamese) people reduced the size of the empire eventually resulting in Cambodia being the site of continual territorial fighting. This ended with the French forcing the king of the time to sign an agreement making Cambodia into a French protectorate and as such it became part of French Indochina. It was occupied by the Japanese during World War II but they were happy to leave the French in charge as they in turn we occupied by Japan's ally, the Germans. Post war Cambodia gained its independence as a result of prince Sihanouk who later abdicated in order to become Prime Minister. He was later deposed in a coup and went into exile in Beijing where he started making friends with an emerging revolutionary movement he'd nicknamed the "Khmer Rouge". Civil war was the result, escalated by the Vietnam war as the Viet Cong were now allies of the Khmer Rouge. This lead the USA to bomb a number of sites in Cambodia where the Viet Cong were hiding. This lead loads of folk to lose family members so they joined the Khmer Rouge (as it was something to do with their lives I guess) thus increasing it's size and power creating a lot of pissed-off people who later took out that aggression in unimaginable ways. The Khmer Rouge eventually won power under the leadership of Pol Pot (who was actually called Saloth Sar but no-one quite knows why he changed his name) who had this crazy idea that the country should be an "agrarian society" (pure farming) so he marched people from the cities to farms in the countryside to work as forced labourers. Intellectuals (including anyone who wore glasses), doctors, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist Monks and anyone who didn't like this new set-up were tortured and executed until after about 4 years of horror, the Vietnamese invaded and the Khmer Rouge fled. Civil war continued for the next 14 years, ending in 1993 but flaring up again in 1997.

That's it as I understand it - you're welcome to comment and tell me I've got a detail wrong but the result that we have today is the most important. Cambodia is impoverished with a large percentage of the country living below the bread line. This kind of poverty has led to things like the scamming that we encountered at the border, a pretty lawless society and a severe lack of infrastructure or trust in fellow man. What we did notice however was that while the taxi/tuk-tuk/scooter hassling continued, it was so much more friendly but also slightly desperate. Instead of ordering you to take their tuk-tuk (like in Thailand), the Cambodians almost pleaded with you.

Anyhow, back to our story. Our hostel in Siem Reap (which means 'Thailand Defeated'!) was lovely with some of the friendliest staff we'd encountered. We had a private room for about $6 a night with an en-suite bathroom, a TV with loads of cable channels (including BBC World!), towels, bed linen, toilet paper and soap - luxury! I reckon they were actually renting the rooms as a loss leader as the hostel had a load of other services it could provide - food, visas, tuk-tuks, taxis, buses, tours etc. so we decided to have dinner there as the food was pretty well-priced. Quite a smart business move!

If you've been following the Blog you'll have read that we've been getting a bit fed up of the constant tourism so we'd decided to try and do some volunteering in Cambodia. The problem is that most of the schemes want you to pay to volunteer (which seems pretty odd to start with) and there's plenty of dodgy "orphanages" that have a business plan involving getting however many visitors through the door per day and getting however much in donations off them. The "orphans" are frequently bought in from schools and families who need a bit of cash and get trained up to do performances for bleeding-heart tourists such as us.

Our research had turned up two leads which looked good and genuine and where you could volunteer for free. One was the Sao Sary Foundation which we'd found on Couchsurfing and the other was About Asia Schools. We met Tola, the representative of About Asia Schools in the Blue Pumpkin, a rather nice coffee place in Siem Reap. He explained a bit about the charity - it's actually a travel agent (About Asia Travel) which ploughs a portion of it's profits into setting up schools, mainly around Siem Reap. Education in Cambodia is free but materials are generally not and it's common that a family wouldn't be able to afford books, pencils etc. that you need for schooling. Tola had arranged for us to meet Ali, the headmistress of one of the schools. It turned out that the following day was their music and dance day so we abandoned our plans to go to Angkor Wat and instead agreed to do two sessions of Scottish music and dance with the kids.

That afternoon we took a walk around Siem Reap taking in a couple of temples along the way. There isn't a huge amount to do in the city itself as everyone goes there to go to Angkor Wat but we really like the cheery vibe around the place. We found another one of those rather nice BBQ places with the pan of hot coals like we'd seen in Thailand and after a pretty keen meal we went to "Molly Malone's", the Irish bar. We normally avoid these but we'd been given a flier for their pub quiz which was in aid of some local charities and it sounded like it'd be a laugh. The quizmaster, Mac was an English guy in a kilt who wandered around the bar asking questions even at one point ending up in the road outside being offered menus from other restaurants and tuk-tuks. We'd teamed up with a guy from Germany and a girl from Malaysia who were pretending they'd studied at Oxford and between the four of us we did pretty well. I had a bit of an "I've got a Ph.D in electrochemistry pal!" moment when the question "what is the name of a negative electrode" came up. I answered "anode" to be told that the answer is "cathode". In a sense we were both correct as he was probably referring to batteries and I was referring to electrochemistry but in the absence of other information he decided to accept either - a sensible move. There was a raffle after in which we one a $10 voucher for the Blue Pumkin - generally a good time was had by all. On the way home we ran the "hey you wan' tuk-tuk/massage" gauntlet. I'd made a paper frog our of one of the raffle tickets so I gave it to one of the women who offered us a massage. She seemed taken aback and burst into a fit of giggles.

We headed to the school the next day to be greeted by a bunch of enthusiastic but well-disciplined 5-15 year olds (good mo-a-ning tea-cha!) which we led in songs, dances with "Tatties and Herring" (Isla's actions again) being a particular highlight. We had some trouble getting them to dance and clap while still listening to the music as opposed to just dancing and clapping randomly so for the afternoon session we changed it and started with a load of simple clapping and stamping to music games which worked a whole lot better. The afternoon's version of "Tatties and Herrin'" took a whole new slightly-violent turn as the kids tried to "herrin'" both me and Charlotte. You can see the first round of T+H in our Cambodia video...

We had a fab time - we were hoarse and wiped by the end of it but we treated ourselves to a slap-up meal at the Blue Pumpkin and life seemed pretty good. One interesting thing we noticed was the number of kids wearing outfits that were effectively pyjamas. We've heard that this is a bit of fashion which has come over from China and we saw plenty of adults dressed the same way when we went to Phnom Penh. It seemed to be 'a smart matching set of clothes' rather than 'something you wear to bed'. I does look a bit odd to our eyes.

We had to leave Siem Reap for a bit but we knew we'd come back so it didn't seem to bad. Our bus to Phnom Penh picked us up at the hostel and drove us to another bus which then drove us to a third bus which drove us to Phnom Penh. We met a tuk-tuk driver at the bus station who had an odd bargaining technique. I explained the destination asked how much and he said "4 dollar" to which I said "how's about 3 dollars?" and his answer was "5!". Bizarre. We settled on $4 as that seemed fair enough - he was limping and his pals were kidding him on that he needed the money for his operation - it was all good spirited. He took us to Patrick, our Couchsurfer's place and then tried to plead with us to take him on for the next day but since we didn't know what we were going to be doing we took his number instead.

Patrick is from Chicago but is spending some time in Cambodia teaching English. He was the first to admit that the system he's working in is flawed as he has no qualifications other than his degree in English Literature and the ability to speak English which is possibly not the best for the Cambodian education system. We quized him on his experiences and impressions of Cambodia and he was able to fill us in on some of the historical details we hand't quite got to grips with yet. That evening we had our first experience of a moto (scooter) when Patrick drove us to the Phnom Penh weekend night market. Cambodian traffic is mental - most moto drivers don't have licences and the lights just change colour and most people ignore them. Charlotte and I clung on for dear life as we weaved our way though the hoards of motos, tuk-tuks and 4x4s. At the night market we saw more folk in pajamas and some kind of "Cambodia's got Talent" dancers who's hearts really weren't quite in it. Dance routines seem to be a big deal here - there were parks full of people learning them all over the place. We also learnt about Cambodian actresses who are basically regarded as prostitutes and get killed off if they don't become the mistress of one of the really rich guys. Charming.

The next day was one of the "Museums that Ruin Your Day". This was the Tuol Sleng or "S-21" Museum. It's a former primary school that was used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison and torture venue. There's little in the way of explanation but it doesn't really need any. Some of the classrooms have been partitioned into cells, some of a make-shift brick variety and some of wood. Some of the bigger cells have a metal bed but this was not for comfort. It was for strapping people to. Every cell has a foot manacle, some have various devices that you couldn't (or wouldn't like to) imagine what they're for and there's photos on the wall of many of the bloodied bodies - you can't imagine what they'd been through. Perhaps the most revealing thing was a sign in the grounds in Khmer, French and Broken English. These were the rules...

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
   
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
   
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
   
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
   
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
   
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
   
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
   
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
   
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
   
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
    

Altogether it was a really depressing place but we did begin to get an impression of this probably most important period in Cambodia's history.

That afternoon we decided we'd had enough of the Khmer Rouge so we gave the killing fields a miss and instead had a wander round some of Phnom Penh. It's a pretty grubby looking city, especially given that it's the capital. There's still the odd open sewer and plenty of open drains. The palace did look nice from the outside mind.

In the evening we met up with Patrick again and along with his flatmate Brendan, another UK Couchsurfer called May and Ryan from the flat downstairs and we all went out for dinner. As luck would have it, Ryan was a semi-fluent Khmer speaker and was able to order from the Khmer-only menu. We also had a lady come round selling frogs and crickets so I had to swallow my frog-loving nature and have a go. Surprisingly, thy were pretty good - crunchy (Crunchy Frog, oh yes) and a bit fishy. The crickets were nice and sweet. A pretty unusual snack for us I guess but when in Cambodia....

Our next destination was Kampong Speu (pronounced Spoo, not spew) where we were to spend a week volunteering. Our contact was Vichetr Uon, a Couchsurfer who uses Couchsurfing to get volunteers for his organistion, the Sao Sary Foundation. SSF has a number of different arms but the heart of the organisation is the centre which is a refuge for young people who are most at risk of sex trafficking - usually the poorest families. At the centre they get a variety of different lessons the most important of which is English, taught by volunteers but they also get IT when there's a teacher, social and business education and in particular skills such as sewing.

Kamping Speu is a dustbowl well off the tourist trail and when the bus dropped us off, we first had the challenge of getting to the centre. Vichetr had given us his 'phone number but didn't seem to realise that we didn't have 'phones. We wandered up and down the highway for a bit with motos, buses and trucks flying past us, making phone signs at people in the hope that someone would take pity on us. Eventually a guy leant us his mobile and we managed to get through to Vichetr who told us to wait and someone would come and get us. After a bit, Chanry, one of the SSF staff arrived and we went to the centre on the back of scooters with our giant bags on our backs and our little bags and fiddles balanced in interesting ways. At first it was difficult to figure out what was going on. There were a few people around making handbags out of poly bags and we had a chat with Justin (that's his English name, not his Khmer name. It got a bit confusing as the kids would all introduce themselves variously with both), one of the older lads but we were still a bit scared and confused about what we'd let ourselves in for. After lunch, though, the other volunteers arrived, Claudia (Germany), Isa (Austria), Carole (France) and Guillaume (France). They were all teaching English so Charlotte tagged along with them and I set to work on the computers. I'd been told that they had a few viruses. This was no exaggeration, they were flooded, probably the worst case I'd seen. In addition to that, if you tried to touch the metal case of the computer you got zapped. This also extended to putting in CDs and accidently touching the metal bit in the middle of the spindle. It was pretty exciting. The computers had web browsers and were good enough to open and write notepad files so I managed to give two of the boys a lesson in writing webpages. We decided that reinstalls and up-to-date virus checkers were needed and these could only be obtained at the office/guest house where we were staying.

I could go into lots of technical detail about the work I did at the centre but it would make for pretty dull reading. Suffice to say that my time was spent going to-and-fro between office and centre, downloading virus checkers, virus rescue CD images, trying to buy CD-Rs and installing some pretty dodgy version of Windows. It was frustrating as I knew that a job like that would be so easy at home but here with limited resources and flaky equipment it was a total nightmare. The boys helped me out and in the process I tried to teach them as much as I could. I gave them another HTML (web page) lesson and by the end of it, they we making their own webpage without any difficulty. They were really bright guys and a whole lot of fun - we got on really well. In the UK any one of them would be University material but here that's a lot more difficult and expensive, especially when things at home may not be so good. They were all so keen to learn and really wanted to be computer scientists so I hope in the future they find some way to do that.

Charlotte busied herself teaching English. I was to help her out with a lesson which I was bricking it about as I feel that I know nothing about language. I only ever teach stuff that I feel I know. Luckily she took the situation in hand and did a really amazing job teaching the kids about future tense. It became my job to come up with verbs that could be expressed in the future tense, a job I just about managed. Charlotte also took some fiddle lessons. As luck would have it, the centre had had a fiddle donated a while back and when the kids heard us play, they all instantly wanted to learn. One girl in particular was really keen so Charlotte took her under her wing and gave her lessons - she picked it up really fast and her bow control in particular was really good.

On the Thursday Vichetr took us on a wee trip around some of the local villages to show us some of the other projects that SSF is involved in. They involved giving people pigs, digging wells and building toilets but always targeting the poorest of the poor families. Vichetr was telling us how most other organisations (including some pretty big well-known names) ignore these people saying that they don't know how to work with them. SSF goes right to the bottom but always tries to be as responsible as possible so no-one just gets a handout. For example, the sows are "serviced" by a boar but 50 % of the piglets come back to SSF to be donated to other people. It's a pretty good system. At the end of the tour we stopped with one family who SSF had been working with to set up their own grocery business. We had some of a local crushed ice drink with some kind of syrup poured over the top and some tapioca-like seeds at the bottom. It was really nice and so refreshing as that day was a total scorcher.

That day also happened to be Isa's birthday so a night out was planned. This is a bit of a misnomer in Kampong Speu as there's not a heck of a lot in town but we did have a great evening at a local food/beer establishment that the other volunteers had been frequenting during their time in Kampong Speu. It was another Cambodian BBQ thing, this time with prawns, beef, veg and plenty noodles and lots of towers of the local brew of course!

Friday was Isa and Claudia's last day so they'd organised a special dinner with fruit and banana cake bought at the local market. Claudia could play guitar and had been practising some songs with the kids so Charlotte and I tagged along playing fiddle as well to "My Heart Will Go On", "Country Roads", "Yesterday" and "Stand By Me". We also had the obligatory rendition of "Tatties and Herrin'" - gotta love Isla's actions, a demonstration of the "Gay Gordons" and a sort of haphazard "Circassian Circle". Guillaume even did some fire juggling and a splendid time was had by all. There were a few tears to be sure as Claudia and Isa said their goodbyes - they'd been there three weeks or more.

At the weekend we worked some more, I thrashed away at computers and Charlotte started to take a look at some of the funding applications SSF was putting in for. As much as I tried I couldn't get rid of the viruses - it was like a bubble in wallpaper that just kept popping up again every time I flattened it. Eventually I came to a realisation; while the virus checker can be kept up to date, Windows cannot be as none of the versions of Windows in Cambodia are genuine and if your version isn't genuine, Microsoft won't let you keep it up to date. In addition to that, it was likely that the Windows install CD had the viruses to start with. It was extraordinarily frustrating but I guess that sums up the situation in Cambodia. Things are difficult due to lack of money, infrastructure, corruption and apathy. I realised that Vichetr and his staff have a really difficult job to do and it's not made any easier by circumstances. It was also really interesting to experience the Asian attitude to education which is far more demanding than our attitude. The kids have a pretty tight schedule of school, classes, meetings and educational videos but little time for fun. It's a really different culture.

Eventually, the time came for us to leave and the kids at the centre gave us a lovely send off with loads of wee speeches, some lovely letters and drawings and a final rendition of "Tatties and Herrin'". We'd had a really interesting time there and learnt a lot about Cambodia and the difficulty of trying to do good things in it. It was also a really nice week for us, going to-and-from the Guesthouse and the Centre on bikes, eating in the local places etc. It almost felt like a kind of normality.

It was back to Siem Reap and Ankor Wat for us and after a surprisingly expensive bus ($10 as opposed to $6 going the other way. Hmmm.) we arrived back at our lovely guest house. It was actually fully booked so we stayed next door for a night which also turned out to be a fine place. We'd eaten little but rice and veg all week so we decided on a pizza blowout at "The Pizza Company". It's a bit like Pizza Hut with that very special plastic taste that we all crave. Unfortunately, it all seemed to be too much for Charlotte (who'd already been ill with a cold all week) and an upset stomach was the result. The next day was spent in the guest house with many toilet visits...

We finally got to Ankor Wat (World Heritage temple ruins) the next day with Charlotte feeling a little delicate but in reasonable form. We decided to start small by taking a look round the Roluos Group before heading to Ankor Wat itself and yes, it's stunning. Cambodia may have had a bad time but when it comes down to it, Cambodians built Ankor Wat and it doesn't get much better than that. We took a day's rest the next day. The only noteworthy event was that evening when a young waitress in the place we were eating came up to enthusiastically complement Charlotte on her hair (which rightly enough is looking pretty nice at the moment - even more like a Victorian cherub that usual). She wanted to stroke it, saying that her own hair was so much thicker and she couldn't really do curls with it. It turned out she was an aspiring young actress and had just had a load of portfolio photos taken which were pretty nice (she showed them to us with joy). I really hope she makes it.

Back at the temples the next day we watched the sun rise over Ankor Wat (stunning and worth the 4.30am red-eyes) before heading to Bayon (the stone faces where some Cambodian ladies wanted their photos taken with Charlotte) and a load of smaller temples, one with trees growing all over the stonework (I think they used that one in "Tomb Raider") it was all amazing. What wasn't amazing however was the amount of tout gauntlets we had to run. As soon as our Tuk-Tuk stopped to drop us off, loads of folk would come jogging over to try and sell us hats, guide books, postcards, bottled water, coffee, breakfast, bracelets, paper hanging things, necklaces, wooden Cambodian figures, a wooden penny whistle type thing, a wooden jews harp, a carpet, a tablecloth, a brass rubbing or a painting. This is not a problem if you can just politely say "no thank you" but that didn't work and they would continue to follow you reciting things. The most disturbing and persistent were the children, some looked too young to even be at primary school. This brings me to my biggest moan about travelling (and harps back to Cuba). In Asia, South America and Cuba I am regarded as a walking ATM an everyone wants to make a withdrawal. To be frank, I find it as dehumanising, offensive and degrading as if I were to regard the locals as "poor little foreign-types who are really poor due to their low intelligence as a result of the colour of their skin". I am treated like it people's right to have me buy their products/give them money simply because I'm white and from a more well-off country. We were trying to be as polite as possible but in a few cases the touts swore at us (in Khmer but we could tell it wasn't nice) when we said "no thank you" for the umpteenth time and when we wouldn't buy one wee girl's postcards we got more Khmer swearing followed by "Oh My God!" - obviously an important English phrase. The problem here was simple, they didn't have anything we wanted to buy and we don't buy stuff that we don't want. Clearly a difficult concept to grasp. I should really evaluate this policy as because I'm a rich foreigner I should just buy everything I'm offered thus necessitating 20 extra bags to carry it all.

Anyhow, moan over (for the moment). The Ankor area is amazing for sure but I didn't feel as I was in any position to be left alone to enjoy it.

We had a much nicer day the following day when we went to Bantay Srey, one of the further away temples. We also took a look at a couple of the other smaller temples nearer to Angkor Wat. They were all really nice, less touristy and given that we hadn't had to get up at 4.30am, we were in a much better frame of mind to enjoy it. The hawkers were a lot less mercenary as well and seemes to take our "no thank you" as a reasonable answer. Whether it was the heat or the proximity to Khmer New Year I don't know.

We had planned to leave a couple of days later but since it was Khmer New Year the buses were all to pot and we'd have either had to take a night bus (which we've both had quite enough of by now) or take a day bus to Phnom Penh and take our chances from there. We decided that this was a sign that we were destined to stay a bit longer in Siem Reap so we decided to spend a few days just seeing what happens around new year and hanging out and relaxing. We'd kind of got into a way of life there by this point and we weren't quite ready to give it up yet.

The afternoon before New Year a group of kids came round all dressed up for the new year and did some dancing and singing. Chhorpoan who runs the Guest House took part by taking a cup of water, stirring it with incense sticks and flicking it onto the kids. It was all strangely familiar to us who have seen guising before - a tradition we have at Hallowe'en in Scotland where folk come round performing and looking for money, sweets, beer etc. We took another BBQ that evening with another couple from Edinburgh who were staying at the guest house. Rachel, a girl travelling on her own from Coventry joined us as well so we could have a right old UK time. The Edinburgh folk were going to be back there in a week - I was more than a little jealous.

We had a nice wee party for Khmer New Year with some food and some dancing to the Khmer pop music we'd heard throught our time in Cambodia. Dancing in Cambodia is very genteel and invloves small foot movements and waving hands in a graceful manner. Chhorpoan tried to educate us but we were too badly coordinated to get it right.

The days in Siem Reap passed quickly. We read books, watched some movies and Charlotte tried to do funding applications for SSF to find that that brought it's own issues. We also ate some great meals since we were living very cheaply during the day. Of particular note were a couple of curries at "Little India" which were probably the best Indian-style curries I'd had since leaving the UK. We also had a great breakfast and evening meal at Molly Malone's. On our last full day in the Guesthouse we came down to find a chanting ceremony with a load of monks. After, one of them splashed water all over the Guesthouse to bring us luck and happiness. Nice.

So that was Cambodia. We had a bus journey to Phnom Penh with loads of people sitting in the aisles (I reckon the money they paid wasn't getting yo the bus company but was instead going straight into the pockets of the driver and his associates), being constantly stared at by a small girl. It was quite unnerving. And then a more luxurious bus into 'Nam (our bus from Siem Reap was about 2 hours late, but relief! The connecting bus waited. I feel for the other passengers who arrived on time). Cambodia was a fascinating country for us to visit and it really fires up the imagination as to what it could be, especially when you see the countries around it (the contrast as soon as we crossed the border into Vietnam was incredible. Suddenly, there was infrastructure and people going about their lives in a functioning country). Cambodia's got a way to go yet but we'll be watching for sure. Onward!